Animal husbandry and care

Yep. When I purchased my land last year part of the due diligence showed that cattle had been there 70+ years ago. So we had to get soil and water tests done to look for arsenic. We also walked every inch of the 168 acres looking for evidence of dunking pits where the cattle were treated for ticks.

The property was a citrus orchard from the 60s to mid 80s so that required a different series of tests to search for their toxic chemicals. It brings out the libertarian in me because the USDA required those chemicals and processes years ago but now says never mind what we said before and how wrong it turned out to be, if you want to live and organically farm here now do exactly what we say now.

Sent via PM

Sorry, but anybody who has a lot of animals getting sick and /or dying has got some serious management issues.

Properly cared for animals very rarely get sick or die from anything other than predators, harvest, or old age.

If I had an animal that was not thrifty, I would treat it and remove it from the breeding herd (or flock). There is absolutely no excuse to stand around and watch it suffer and die slowly. That is animal abuse.

It is absolutely not OK to practice lax, or unsanitary, or unsafe management and then blame the animal if if suffers from lack of care.

Not sure I totally agree with this. Over 60-some years in the livestock business, one way or another, I've lost animals to disease (no vaccine or effective treatment), accident (lightning, drowning, hypothermia/freezing, broken bones, snakebite) and several from just unknown causes ... fine the night before, walk out the next morning and they were lying there dead.

There is now vaccine or effective treatment for some of the diseases I've lost animals from in the past, the drowning was a real freak accident and with better weather prediction, the blizzards that I've lost animals from are not as unexpected as they used to be so that isn't as much of an issue as before. But I've lost more animals from these situations than from predators, certainly.

SFM, it's been interesting to hear about the history of livestock care. With respect to disease, I think that we are heading there now by overuse of antibiotics - resistant strains mean that treatments won't work any more, and we are back to square 1 again, which will probably look like it did in the 1920s or before, in terms of veterinary care and abilities.

Bruce / blog.bigpig.net

Treatment and removal from the organic program is how it's usually handled. These guys were advised to do that when they had a bunch of sheep go down, but decided to "let nature take its course" and the sheep died.

I think treatment and removal is fine; you can then sell it to a conventional farm if you're organic, or just segregate them.

Bruce / blog.bigpig.net

I agree to some extent.

Internal parasites, for example. Romney sheep were bred to be resistant/tolerant to worms. They can do well in moist areas where other breeds cannot. If I were going to be breeding for worm resistance, though, maybe doing fecals and culling based on that would be smarter than waiting for them to die.

I'm not against worming, but another issue is frequency of worming. I bought a buck from a herd that had many Top Ten milk production milkers. Then I found out that she wormed every month. Every month! This is a recipe for creating parasites that are resistant to wormers and also, goats that have no resistance to parasites! I only wormed mine twice a year. The ones that didn't do well got culled. In my opinion, worming every month is not sustainable or good for the breed.

Frankly, I didn't ever vaccinate, nor did I lose animals to diseases that could be prevented by vaccinations. Because my herd was more or less closed, disease transmission was less of an issue than if I had been constantly bringing in new stock.

I don't think culling for weakness or unsuitability for certain local conditions or for a breeders ideals should go to the extent of simply letting the animals die. If they are culls, they should be culled, not kept until they languish to death.

__________________
http://upwardlypoor.blogspot.com/

I would start out with disease free stock and a nitrogen tank full of semen, and keep a closed herd. And then, if an animal started to show signs of disease, she would be quarantined ASAP and watched carefully to see if she recovered and how quickly. I wouldn't cull an animal for getting sick if she was able to bounce back from it without extraordinary care. I would keep the animals in conditions that were ideal for their species. Goats would be kept on high, dry ground, not allowed to overgraze pastures, and the pastures would be rotated very carefully in the interest of not infesting them with worms.

__________________
http://upwardlypoor.blogspot.com/

I don't know enough about chickens to render an opinion on the vaccination question.

With the sheep, which I have more experience with but not a lot, there are so many breeds, many of which have been tailored to do well in certain conditions. There are breeds that are more parasite resistant than others. There are breeds which are excellent mothers with few birthing problems, breeds that do well in heat, breeds which do well in extreme cold. There's even a breed that does well on a diet of seaweed!

"Simply worming the animals" sounds so easy, but the truth is, dealing with internal parasites isn't easy. As far as I know, there isn't a single wormer that will knock out all types of internal parasites and even of the types targeted by a single wormer, not all of the worms die. If I can eat the animals that don't do well when they're wormed only twice a year and keep and breed the rest which do well and can tolerate a small to moderate parasite load, that's very advantageous in my opinion.

__________________
http://upwardlypoor.blogspot.com/

Worming frequency also has a great deal to do with the climate. I've had horses in MT and in KY. I wormed twice a year in MT and had no problems, the long, cold winters helped a great deal. Here in KY I got into trouble (with some of the same horses) and now worm 4 x a year and occasionally still have some problems with fast re-infestation, I suspect in part because some winters it never gets cold enough to kill everything off.

Successful management will always depend a great deal on specific circumstances.

SFM, 4 times a year doesn't sound excessive for your climate. The once a month worming did, though.... :-/

__________________
http://upwardlypoor.blogspot.com/

No, it's not excessive in this climate, but it is something that did seem like a lot to me when I first moved here after worming twice a year in MT. A lot of people here worm every two months during the 'summer' season and back off a bit in the winter months. We also have more problems here with types of worms that we didn't have to worry much about in MT.

I agree with you that once a month worming seems excessive ... and I don't like those daily feed-through wormers either.

I've been thinking alot on this topic lately and I sum up my philosophy this way:

Ages ago, we took these species out of the wild to use them for work and food to make our lives easier so we could settle down and give up the nomad routine. We have a pact with these species now. In exchange for these benefits, we are obligated to make their lives better and to also improve the species as a whole, since natural selection no longer operates. We are obligated to meet their nutritional needs and free them from the lean times of winter which would cause some animals to suffer and starve. We are obligated to keep them as safe as possible from predators and we are obligated to treat their illnesses and injuries and if we cannot or if they will risk the rest of the herd/flock/species with their ailment, we owe them a humane death rather than a wasting away and suffering death. We are also obligated to breed them to the betterment of their species. We've neglected alot of this in the interest of profit. (raise some cornish rock cross broilers and maybe you'll understand what I am saying)

In the practical world where all is not ideal, this should be done to the best of a person's abilities and resources which means culling weak/injured/ill animals rather than treating them is sometimes warranted. Some of us cannot afford that $2000 surgery for the horse. If you can, you should, if you can't then for heaven's sake people - humanely put it down. Don't just let it limp around until it finally gets a lethal infection and dies. Letting animals die without treatment or humane euthanization is not right. We owe them as quick and painless a death as possible. Its part of the pact. They don't get chased down while terrified by a predator or wander around sick or with a broken bone until something finally eats them like might happen in the wild. We owe them better than they get in the wild. If they are sick and you make the choice not to treat, you should humanely euthanize ASAP.

Not to mention the fact that letting an untreated sick or diseased animal live until it finally dies of its own accord only further contaminates your farm system with pathogens. I can't imagine this practice working very well.

Here in Middle Tn goats are wormed every 3 months by me. I alternate wormers. Anyone who is a "farmer" has to cull their herd for many reasons at the same time. The Boer goats I had stayed "wormy" and sickly and were gotten rid of a bit late as I started using the billy almost imediately. I kept none of his offspring in my herd. Another of my culling standards for goats is when they have their second birth it had to be twins or triplets or they found a new home. Health and production were my goals. I never let a goat die but about 80% of the goats that needed any care out of the usual stuff was took to the auction.

Honeyrobber, thanks for the info. I've always wanted a bee hive but allergic to bees, but I appreciate your work and adivce. Keep it up.

__________________
Living Large Down on the Farm.

I don't vaccinate nor use commercial dewormers for house pets or livestock.
No sense pumping the poison if they can't get the diseases.

All livestock roam free on the acreage and have loafing sheds (3 sides and a roof) if they want to get out of the weather.

I ride my 24 year old mule all over the state. Take my dogs just about everywhere. I raise Asian Heritage Hogs for meat but will start walking the little things on a leash to sell them for meat or pets.

I've had no sickness, no diseases, no vet bills for over 30 years. Not even a sick chicken.

All I do is feed 100% food grade diatomaceous earth (DE) daily. When the right amount is fed, it works. All these years I've used Perma-Guard Fossil Shell Flour.

Huh?!? We live in the mountains of northern Vermont and typically get high winds, low temperatures and a snow pack of 4' (14' snow fall). We raise pastured pigs outdoors year round. They do great. We typically have 300 pigs on the farm at a time. This is how we pay the mortgage and earn a living so I'm pretty sure it works. Been doing it this way for almost a decade.

Cheers,

-Walter Jeffries
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
ButcherShop | Sugar Mountain Farm

Check out our Kickstarting the Butcher Shop project at:
Building an on-farm Butcher Shop at Sugar Mountain Farm by Walter Jeffries — Kickstarter

__________________
SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

Post of the day.

__________________
" It's better to ride even if you get thrown, than to wind up just wishin' ya had."

Chris Ledoux

I have to look at the financial side of it.

These are not just animals that get sick and die. These are investments of expensive stock, expensive feed and valuable time, to raise them.

A sick lamb that dies, is another $150, that won't be going into the meager farm account, offsetting the huge costs of feeding the mother. Never mind the time spent, tending to the flock's needs.

If raising animals is a business, it should be approached like a business and managing health, is managing business.

If they are just pets, then it's one's choice just to let them die.

I'll let myself go untreated if I am feeling under the weather ,but animals ......... nope .
How someone treats their animals says a lot about how they treat people .~ IMO ~

__________________
....piffy on a rock bun ....

http://www.gofundme.com/AngelBabyNeeds

NSA - The only government agency that actually listens to what you have to say.