Animal husbandry and care

1. Stop taking them to the county fair.

2. Stop buying them off CL or at the local Flea Market/Farmer's Market.

3. Keep other farmers off your property.

4. Develop a science based bio-security procedure.

5. Be aware that keeping livestock healthy will be a reduced priority when faced with under prepared neighbors with guns.

Disagree totally with this practice. They are trying to use "survival of the fittest" as a production model. Selective breeding is about a lot more than who doesn't die!

If you follow their logic further down the path, why don't they just let their animals go feral and hunt them instead of keeping them in captivity at all??

There is value in culling to improve your genetics, but it should be based on production merits and a base of desirable traits, not "this one didn't die". Withholding medical care, parasite prevention, etc., and calling it "management", they are kidding themselves.

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It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with the simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

I agree.
Sometimes the choices are difficult. Clearly, a badly cut horse facing a $2000 surgery is an easy pick.
But if your best cow has been having a problem, you might want to get her well again. But there comes a point. If you try to get her well with antibiotics and she doesn't respond, then you must sell her for slaughter. But you now have a waiting period for the drugs to clear her system. Often a cow that wasn't getting better with drugs, will get worse without them. But you must wait. By the end of the two or three week wait, you must wait until the next auction. It becomes obvious that you should have shipped her, without injecting her with antibiotics. Every situation is different and everyone must choose for themselves.

But you are not going to produce parasite resistant livestock by not worming them. You just create an environment thick with parasitic worms.

That is simply not true. Do you understand how a vaccination stimulates the immune system? What "common ailments" are you refering to? You can cull for bad feet, poor udder attachment, etc, but self-inoculation isn't likely.

Super bugs exist because of human misuse. Each drug must be taken to eliminate the virus. When taken in short waves, the surviving virus is selected and over time can develop an immunity to that specific drug.

With chickens, probably so. I was thinking more about goats having kidding issues. There is more likely a diet deficiency.

In a bit of a rush to get back to work so did not read all the replies. I have done the let them die method on honeybees and I have to say I am glad I did. I did this with a full plan. I first got the bees on naturally drawn combs which are smaller than small cell to the standard size cells of factory made foundation. I pull frames with alot of drone cells and keep some on the outer edges of the box which get used for honey storage more than brooding. I treated with oxalic acid for mites the fall before the plan was to go into effect. Most of my bees came from feral hives removed from a building. and they were thriving. I put them on foundation and started having mite problems is what gave me this idea/goal. The first year I lost only about 1 in 5 hives. The next year I only lost 2 of 30 over winter. I only have 5 hives currently but I sold alot of them and other factors like over swarming from neglect(to much work to be done). I do not treat my hives. 5 hives went into winter and only one seems week. So it was a combination of getting them more or less on small cell/natural cell and latting the bad genes die that made my hives what they are.

I have never done this with any other type animal. I have not had the need to do so. With proper care I have had few losses not predator related and not that many of them. I look at vaccines and worming as good care not continueing bad genes. Wether you use organic methods of worming or chemical is upto you. I have tried organic methods and had good results in birds with diatomous earth.

Wow!
You have created/developed/modified honey bees to be more resistant to mites in just a short time!

What's your next project? Developing a strain that is resistant to Honey Bee Collapse?

You are an encouragement to us all. I think I'll begin work on a pesticide resistant bee. Just spray the hives and keep the ones that live. Great idea, thanks. I'll have the only pesticide proof bees in just a few generations.

Sooooo....

What about Organic animal husbandry? The laws in the state of Texas state that you are not allowed to withhold medical treatment for a sick animal, but if you treat with anti-biotic drugs, the animal is immediately and forever more ineligible for organic labelling, Vaccinations and worming have to be very carefully scrutinized, and in some cases there are no organic vaccines.

Does this make anyone who attempts an organic animal husbandry program naive, or cruel? Or perhaps this explains the 9.75/lb price tag on organic chicken breast - not the expense of organic feed so much as the limited number of chickens that make it to slaughter with the organic label and their lives in tact...

So you feel that loosing 1 in 5 hives(20%) is not worth the gain I gained with healthier bees and now have no pesticide residue in my hives. BTW the honeybee collapse has been tied to mites. The mites carry the virus from hive to hive. Without the mites as a vector there is not collapse. My hives are not mite free but the levels stay real low. If you reread my post though you will see it was more than just the couple years I invested as the bees came from a wild source and were not swarms that recently escaped a beekeeper. They gave me the idea. Most of the hives that did die were of italian queens. The buckfast survived well but the resulting queens I raised were very defensive hives. My bees are mostly carnolian descent from the looks of them. You need to read more about natural cell size or small cell and how it helps your mite population. I just do not see why you would think this way.

You seem to have a very limited understanding of organic livestock production.

__________________
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” - E.B. White

Admittedly so.

All I know about it is what I have read on USDA sites.

That's why I asked the question.

Either you didn't read it on a USDA website or you did not comprehend what you read. The question has no answer because the assumptions you used to preface and form it are incorrect.

Vaccinations are on the accepted substances list, as is Ivermectin for emergency use against parasites, as for the anti-biotics, it depends on the animal. For mammals breeding stock can be maintained conventionally up to the third trimester of pregnancy. For poultry breeding stock can be maintained conventionally 100% of the time.

__________________
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” - E.B. White

Ivermectin for emergency use does not sound like routine worming to me. Perhaps I'm not comprehending your meaning?

For anti-biotics, I am fairly certain that my reading that *any* use of anti-biotics makes a dairy animal ineligible for organic dairy production - from http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...kP5A_wuWQ3qz9A :

I understand that treatment with non-organic methods may not be withheld if it will save an animal's life, but can that animal then be a part of an organic program?

The reason I am asking these questions is that there seems to be an awful lot of
"If you don't do things this way, with these chemicals, you are a BAD FARMER," so I thought I would start asking questions. I admit that I am ignorant of the answers. If I knew them, I probably wouldn't be asking them. I would be a know-it-all like you. So, rather than telling me what an idiot I am, how about parting with some of your grand wisdom? Or not...

My 'experience' goes back far enough (late 1940s and early 1950s)to remember when there weren't commercial wormers/vaccines/antibiotics available for animals.

Part of the reason we didn't have serious issues was that most herds of livestock of any species was a 'closed herd' ... most people didn't buy animals at auction to add to our herds, replacements were selected from animals raised, which limited outside contact. I don't remember anything being wormed, but the most exposure is with confined animals and none of our animals were kept up, even our chickens and hogs were 'free range' or pastured. We did have 'treatments' for minor illnesses and injuries ... iodine, sulphur, creosote are ones I remember ... mostly things that are now banned as being an environmental problem.

The only major problems I recall were primarily predators ... and two *new* strains of disease that cropped up without drugs or vaccines to treat/prevent ... the first was anaplasmosis, for which there is now a vaccine and the only time I personally remember losing any mature cattle to disease. The second was the 'trigger' for my father to retire ... a new strain of scours and he lost 10 calves when he normally lost no more than one or two in a calving season (70 cows).

An organic farmer is required to have an organic parasite management plan. If that fails however, he/she is permitted to use Ivermectin for backup.

Nope. A dairy animal must be maintained according to organic standards for one year prior to its milk products being sold as organic.



Depends on the animal. Breeding animal? In most cases, yes. Production animal, depends on the type, what you've needed to treat with and at what point in the life cycle you had to administer that treatment.

I did share wisdom with you in the above post. Relax. Your first post didn't come across as someone looking for answers to questions, but rather trying to prove a point. No one is saying there is only one way to manage stock, the point is the complete and utter lack of any management does not behoove either the farmer nor the animals. This idea that organic farmers are just letting their animals run wild and free without any intervention is fallacy. Organic farmers manage their stock just as conventional farmers do, their protocols for doing that just look a little different.

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“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” - E.B. White

If I pay $2 for a chick, I'm not apt to go to too many emergency measures, such as taking it to the vet, if it gets sick. However, I'd be stupid to allow my $500 ram to decline in death with some easily treatable disease or illness. Perhaps the people on this blog took their stand because their investment was low for each animal?

I don't think we should ever just allow something to die unless it's just beyond our means and power to keep it alive. But it might become freezer-filler rather than breeding stock.

If your a good care giver, your not going to have a problem on the most part. We don`t have many deaths among our animals in the year, but we do not go out of our way to save some animals. I do what I can for a cat, but will never take a cat to the vet. If I have one chicken die, I don`t feel bad. But on the most part our animals stay healthy, care goes so far when it comes to animal health, kinda like people. > God Bless and Thanks > Marc

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Our Diversified Stock Portfolio: cows and calves, alpacas, horses, pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, cats ... and a couple of dogs...
http://springvalleyfarm.4mg.com

Good point, For us up here, a dairy animal given an antibiotic while milking, after it recovers has to be sold from the herd. I have always thought that the organic label for all treatment of animals was not very well thought out. I feel that a small calf given an antibiotic as a small calf should have no problems giving organic milk as a cow. Sparingly used antibiotics should not be a problem for organicly raised animals, as long as you do not over use them and withhold for the reccomended time period if not longer.> Thanks Marc

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Our Diversified Stock Portfolio: cows and calves, alpacas, horses, pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, cats ... and a couple of dogs...
http://springvalleyfarm.4mg.com

This is a really good point that I hadn't thought about at all. What would you do on your farm if you had to rely on little or no input, maybe for months or years?

That's a topic all by itself.

Bruce / blog.bigpig.net

Months ... I keep the basics stocked for 6 months to a year at a time for most things, antibiotics, worming, vaccines, etc.

For years with no access to antibiotics, wormers, vaccines, you'd have to go back to methods of two generations ago, pretty much what you could grow on your own land and use very harsh culling/quarantine methods.

I remember my mother and grandfather talking about trying to eradicate "Texas tick fever" in the 1920s (?). They now have vaccines for it but then they did not. Cattle were run through a vat filled with a solution to kill the ticks and if anything showed symptoms, they were immediately taken out and shot and burned. And they didn't have the insecticides they do today ... they used things like arsenic, creosote and sulphur.