That's the Question
We've been really busy lately and yet we still don't have our garden planted and it's already the end of May! Our biggest issue with getting the garden in has been lack of adequate time and equipment to work the soil, at least that's our excuse and we're sticking to it. Our planned garden is also rather large, so shock and fear of the undertaking may be a slight deterrent. Thankfully, Oregon has a long growing season so we still have a couple of weeks, so there's hope yet for getting some plants into the ground. Victoria and I did till and plant a couple flower beds near the farm entrance with the small Mantis tiller we have. The Mantis is big enough to do small flower beds but not big enough to work an acre garden. Hopefully our mammoth sunflowers, poppy, marigolds, and forget-me-nots take off and provide some pollen for the honey bees.
Our soils are mostly clay so getting it into gardening shape isn't easy. When it's wet it's sticky and after it dries it's like concrete. I did turn over half the garden with the plow but we really need a disc or tiller to break it up enough to get it into planting shape. Tillers aren't cheap, and we've already spent all our available farm remodel and startup funds. A recent expensive car repair to replace the solenoid pack on the transmission didn't help either, but transportation is important.
On the positive side, we did plant a number of fruit, nut, and berry trees and bushes this winter, so we haven't been completely unproductive. Let's just hope we can keep them alive and healthy. We're already battling a bit of peach leaf curl in our peach trees and I noticed a bit of scab fungus on our apple trees. A couple applications of lime-sulfur fungicide seems to be working well and a bit of manual maintenance, like removing the infected leaves. I believe we'll have things under better control next year since we can apply the fungicide in the fall when it's most effective. We did perform a lot of maintenance on the apple orchard, removing all fallen apples and reducing the risk and potential food source for the codly moth. We still need to deploy a few moth traps and keep an eye out for apples that have holes in them to keep the orchard clean.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Friday, May 11, 2018
Got Worms?
Every animal lovers most cherished duty, de-worming... What, you don't like it? Yeah, I guess "cherished" is too strong of a word for this fun task. On the farm parasites just happen to be everywhere, and learning to live with them is a big challenge. With the assortment of animals we care for we have an even bigger variety of pests to contend with.
For the cats and dogs the problem is they have access to field mice and fleas, both carry tapeworm larvae. We routinely de-flea the little furry critters with Frontline and Revolution, but despite our best efforts the parasites will eventually come, and they have. Fortunately, it doesn't require a vet exam but we do have to purchase the medication from the vet's office, and administer ourselves. The joy of shoving a pill down a dog or cat's throat is difficult to describe, even more exciting is the occasional gagging and regurgitating of the pill onto the floor in front of you. Oh sure, you can hide it in a treat, and when you sit down on the couch and feel that wet little lump sitting there next to you and realize it's a partially dissolved pill that you attempted to hide in a treat, just know that the dog left it there intentionally to make a point. Ah yes, the guilty puppy face and indignant scampering away can easily be translated into a barrage of curse words--for the love of our animals.
For bigger animals, like our cows and horses, we have to deal with both worms and flies. It's even more of a problem this time of year as spring seems to be the time for all things to flourish. For years the common practice has been to constantly bombard parasites with a continuous flood of de-wormers in a rotation schedule targeting by effectiveness of types of worms for the season, but fear of parasites developing resistance to these treatment methods has caused professionals to revamp their recommendations. Now it's a more thoughtful approach of assessing the problem, then focus your treatment. We're adopting this more conservative approach and looking at it as an overall management strategy, where we're utilizing our powers of observation and all of our resources, including the chickens, to keep pests at bay. It all relates to pasture management, the healthier your pasture the healthier your animals. But even if we do a great job managing our pastures, rotating the animals and using our chickens to clean after, we still have to contend with the fact we live in a valley with lots of other animals, and pests and parasites migrate easily between pastures. It's just a fact of life.
That's why I keep an eye on the cows to see how they're doing and recently noticed the horn flies were starting to accumulate on Becky's back, Ron and Patty had some as well. So to keep our cows happy I opted to treat them for both flies and worms since I'm sure a fecal exam would suggest it's a good time to pour-on the parasiticide. This morning while feeding them some grain I took advantage of their focus on food as a distraction while I squeezed between them to pour-on their de-wormer and fly control. Last night Victoria administered the de-wormer paste to the horses, and thankfully they handled it well. I'm imagining the paste or gel used doesn't always taste that great, although, we did choose the brand that smelled like apples and was supposed to be apple flavored.
I'll probably smell like cow when I show up to work today, but that's just my work-life balance routine.
References:
Preventing and Treating Parasites in Your Horse (pdf), Oregon State University Extension Service
Equine Recommended De-worming Schedule (pdf), Colorado State University
Managing Internal Parasites of Cattle (pdf), Oregon State University Extension Service
For the cats and dogs the problem is they have access to field mice and fleas, both carry tapeworm larvae. We routinely de-flea the little furry critters with Frontline and Revolution, but despite our best efforts the parasites will eventually come, and they have. Fortunately, it doesn't require a vet exam but we do have to purchase the medication from the vet's office, and administer ourselves. The joy of shoving a pill down a dog or cat's throat is difficult to describe, even more exciting is the occasional gagging and regurgitating of the pill onto the floor in front of you. Oh sure, you can hide it in a treat, and when you sit down on the couch and feel that wet little lump sitting there next to you and realize it's a partially dissolved pill that you attempted to hide in a treat, just know that the dog left it there intentionally to make a point. Ah yes, the guilty puppy face and indignant scampering away can easily be translated into a barrage of curse words--for the love of our animals.
For bigger animals, like our cows and horses, we have to deal with both worms and flies. It's even more of a problem this time of year as spring seems to be the time for all things to flourish. For years the common practice has been to constantly bombard parasites with a continuous flood of de-wormers in a rotation schedule targeting by effectiveness of types of worms for the season, but fear of parasites developing resistance to these treatment methods has caused professionals to revamp their recommendations. Now it's a more thoughtful approach of assessing the problem, then focus your treatment. We're adopting this more conservative approach and looking at it as an overall management strategy, where we're utilizing our powers of observation and all of our resources, including the chickens, to keep pests at bay. It all relates to pasture management, the healthier your pasture the healthier your animals. But even if we do a great job managing our pastures, rotating the animals and using our chickens to clean after, we still have to contend with the fact we live in a valley with lots of other animals, and pests and parasites migrate easily between pastures. It's just a fact of life.
That's why I keep an eye on the cows to see how they're doing and recently noticed the horn flies were starting to accumulate on Becky's back, Ron and Patty had some as well. So to keep our cows happy I opted to treat them for both flies and worms since I'm sure a fecal exam would suggest it's a good time to pour-on the parasiticide. This morning while feeding them some grain I took advantage of their focus on food as a distraction while I squeezed between them to pour-on their de-wormer and fly control. Last night Victoria administered the de-wormer paste to the horses, and thankfully they handled it well. I'm imagining the paste or gel used doesn't always taste that great, although, we did choose the brand that smelled like apples and was supposed to be apple flavored.
I'll probably smell like cow when I show up to work today, but that's just my work-life balance routine.
References:
Preventing and Treating Parasites in Your Horse (pdf), Oregon State University Extension Service
Equine Recommended De-worming Schedule (pdf), Colorado State University
Managing Internal Parasites of Cattle (pdf), Oregon State University Extension Service
Friday, May 4, 2018
Chicken Moving Day
Yesterday was chicken moving day! Last week we worked on building a new coop in the pasture that can be moved around all three pastures, so the chickens can help spread the manure and cut down on the fly population. The new coop isn't completely finished, but it's nearly done and last night we were able to move the birbs into their new digs. We waited until dusk, after they settled into their old roost, and gently picked them up one-by-one and carried them into their new roost.
It took them about an hour for all the chickens to test the new roosting branches and find which branch and what spot on the branch they liked the best. I'm not sure if it's determined in some sort of 'pecking order' or if they have free choice? Lance, the head rooster (Black Australorp), waits outside the coop entrance every night for all the hens to roost before he goes in. He's very protective, a good roo. After he went in we knew it was moving time.
The move freed up the old coop so we could move the French Black Copper Marans from the brooder into a coop of their own. They're now living in the run along the barn. Unfortunately, our hatch produced far more roosters than hens so it's going to be awhile before we get any quantity of the chocolate Copper Maran eggs.
All the chickens will be 'cooped up' for a couple of days as they adjust to their new living quarters, then it's back to free ranging hen-mania...
It took them about an hour for all the chickens to test the new roosting branches and find which branch and what spot on the branch they liked the best. I'm not sure if it's determined in some sort of 'pecking order' or if they have free choice? Lance, the head rooster (Black Australorp), waits outside the coop entrance every night for all the hens to roost before he goes in. He's very protective, a good roo. After he went in we knew it was moving time.
The move freed up the old coop so we could move the French Black Copper Marans from the brooder into a coop of their own. They're now living in the run along the barn. Unfortunately, our hatch produced far more roosters than hens so it's going to be awhile before we get any quantity of the chocolate Copper Maran eggs.
All the chickens will be 'cooped up' for a couple of days as they adjust to their new living quarters, then it's back to free ranging hen-mania...
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| New Pasture Coop |
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| Chickens Settling into Their New Roosts |
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| Original Coop in Run Along Barn |
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