Neil Moffett

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since Feb 04, 2020
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Recent posts by Neil Moffett

Elena Sparks wrote:One thing I will say though is that the ewes you had survive demonstrated a resistance and strength that you want to retain in your flock. I don't want this to be negative to people who do believe in consistent worming, but this is my experience and opinion. If you worm all your sheep, you mask the issue and over time you weaken your flock because you breed the weak and the strong. The reason wild animals are so tough is because nature doesn't let the weak animals live. Weak animals die off, and the population rebuilds from the strong animals. In our flocks and herds, we take over the position of nature in selecting for the strongest animals. If we get distracted by our desire to keep everything alive, we are doing a disservice to our animals, and creating a weaker gene pool. You kind of have to have a separate compassionate self and breeder self.



I wholeheartedly agree.  If you don't want to kill things, don't raise livestock.  I don't mean that you need to be comfortable with it, but culling is a big part of good husbandry.

My practice is to take extra special care of animals that aren't thriving...and they don't breed, and get processed that year.  The ones that can make it on their own, stay in the flock.

Taking a "flock health" perspective feels wrong if we are human-centric in our worldview, but if you consider a more holistic perspective, a single sheep will fail to thrive without a flock anyways.  They are not an individual animal, they are a flock animal.  It makes much more sense to treat them as a flock.  Keeping a sickly sheep alive with the flock is just stealing energy from the flock.
1 year ago
Anything is a "potential carcinogen".  KALE has nitrates in it, which under the wrong conditions can convert to nitrosamines in your body and cause cancer.  

The MSDS for Blu-Kote says that the route of exposure for "potential carcinogen" is oral.  This is correct.  Don't DRINK isopropyl alcohol, kids.
1 year ago
I don't think it's worthwhile.  Assuming you are raising pigs for market and you want to make money and you have other things to do besides work, by the time you load pigs into a trailer and take them somewhere, clear the land, load pigs back onto the trailer, take them somewhere else...I think you're wasting your time.

What makes sense is to put electric fence-trained weaners (that you can pick up, so there's no loading process) onto land someone wants to clear, and then use electric fence to rotate them through various parcels until it is all cleared or until you are ready to process them.  So raising weaners on someone else's land makes total sense to me (total moves = 1), but transporting them from place to place (many moves) does not.  

My version is what Polyface does, if that matters.
1 year ago

Andrew Mayflower wrote:

Trace Oswald wrote:

Andrew Mayflower wrote:But to avoid conflict with current or future neighbors it's usually best to put up a fence some distance inside your property line.  



I would be very careful with this.  If the neighbor uses the land up to the fence and "makes improvement", which can be very simple things like a path or a small structure or their own fence, you could end up losing that part of your land through adverse possession.



I hear this said whenever this kind of topic comes up, here or elsewhere, but I've never seen any evidence of it actually being a legitimate problem.  Consider too that especially if the fence is set several feet inside your property you will still have to maintain the side facing the neighbor (mow, prune trees, weed, clear brush, not to mention maintaining the fence itself) you can provide plenty of proof that it's still yours, and prevent them from "improving" that side and have a good defense if they ever tried to make such a claim.



No, adverse possession is a very real and legitimate danger in this situation.  For the cost of some attorney fees, your neighbors could make keeping your property extremely expensive and difficult for you.  Since the fence is legally considered a property line fence, it would be incumbent on you to thoroughly document that you maintain the property on the neighbor's side of the fence.  Otherwise, after a set number of years, it can be determined that you have voluntarily decided to set your property line at the fence you built.

Pay for a property line survey and put your fence ON the property line, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Been there, done that, this is based on attorney advice from a past legal case.

As for the chickens, it is the responsibility of the livestock owner to manage their livestock.  If your neighbors aren't doing so, you need to make a stink with the local sheriff's department until they respond.  Call animal protection as well.  
1 year ago
I'm planning to band lambs for the first time this year to improve pasture management and all of "the books" say that you absolutely must vaccinate the ewes against tetanus or provide anti-toxin to the lambs.  

Yet I can't find any data on the risk of tetanus.  It's supposed to be very high.  What does that mean?  

I don't want an animal to suffer unnecessarily but as my other occasional posts on here have made clear, the livestock is here to do a job.  There is scientific literature on natural immunity to tetanus (in humans) despite the common medical myth that this is impossible.  I certainly get my tetanus boosters because the risk isn't worth it.  But it might be with lambs.  Vaccinating the flock would be a huge job.  Is my probable risk losing a lamb or so every few years?  In that case it's not worth it.  Or is it losing 30 percent every year?  In that case it's definitely worth it.  I just want to see data.  We've never had a case of tetanus in the flock before and we do use ear tags, so there's some risk there.
3 years ago
Figure out what the closest successful sheep farm to you has and get that breed.  That is where you should always start.  You can always cross breed in different genetics or if you start small, which you should, you can just process your ewes and start over if you really don't like the breed.

You can breed wool sheep to shed so you don't have to shear them.  Cross with a hair sheep ram to get a head start.  If you have to pay to get them sheared for a few years, you will surely learn valuable things from the shearer.
3 years ago