National conventions are terrific ways to spread diseases. People jetting in from all over, immune systems weakened by the stress of travel, confined in small rooms, mixing and mingling in shared facilities, then jetting back to wherever. It would be hard to design a better system to distribute pathogens.
Goats have their own conventions, and the same rules obtain. Mostly, goat shows are small affairs, a couple of hundred goats from a dozen counties, and the risks are slight. However, the Real Doctor recently took five of our animals to the national show of the American Dairy Goat Association. The goats spent four hours in a truck, then five days in six-by-four pens in a barn with hundreds of other goats, then another four hours to get back home. While at the show, they were in the competition, which meant walking around in an arena used by zillions of other goats from all over the U.S.A.
Our beasties did better than we had expected--nobody won their classes, but they all made the first cut and finished between 15th and 10th in their classes, and got some nice notices. So nobody got ribbons, but they did (despite a lot of effort and sanitizing) get some ickies.
By the last day, Opera had developed a fever and was looking pretty listless. Some banamine (works in goats like acetomeniphen in us) perked her up, and a course of ceftiofur (a cephalosporin antibiotic) has left her right as rain. Helen had a slightly elevated temperature too, which was also treated. But, in the two weeks since the show, a cough has spread through our kids, one at a time, and it may be correlated with a couple of the young kids getting the poops. Right now, Helen is back on ceftiofur after developing another fever, and Cavatina is finally coming off of a fever that spiked at 107.4 and has had her miserable for four days. So, hurrah! for ceftiofur and banamine and their judicious use.
So far, ceftiofur works. It works against Gram-positives and -negatives, and penecillin-resistant bugs. But for how much longer? Every dose of antibiotic, especially if I am not careful with it, is an additional bit of selection pressure that will favor the spread of antibiotic resistance genes in the environment. (Genes, not bacteria. First, genes are much easier to detect, since they don't need to be cultured. Second, the bacterial predisposition to promiscuous lateral gene transfer means that once a gene is out there, it will get around.)
So I read in Science a charming article about the hog farming and spread of antibiotic resistance genes in waterways in China. Antibiotics are a wonderful tool for rescuing sick animals, but it wasn't long after they were introduced that somebody noticed that you can just give your young animals lots of antibiotics all the time and they will grow faster. Never mind that they will excrete most of the antibiotic in their urine, and it will go out into the environment and give that selective nudge to the genes that will make antibiotics useless, profit is to be had!
Needless to say, hog farming in China is epic in its scale. So is the abuse of antibiotics. About half of the antibiotics produced in China are used to fatten up the little piggies. How much is that? About 100,000 tons.
Since I am human, I have a hard time visualizing numbers over 100 or 1000. So, a ton of water is a cubic meter. We'll assume that the density of dry antibiotic is the same as water, which is true to an order of magnitude. So, I am picturing a mound of antibiotic, as long and as wide as a football field, and as tall as the tips of the field goal posts. Or maybe a cube, half a football field on each side. Now that is some selection pressure.
(Question for those interested--how big a mound of antibiotics is used in American meat production? Answer here, if you highlight it: Ten thousand tons. Picture a cube about twenty meters on a side. Still some selection pressure.)
Sometimes, I feel like scientists giving humanity antibiotics was like giving a hormone-raddled teenager the keys to a Ferrari. Are we really mature enough to not wreck ourselves?
Friday, July 31, 2015
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
The Unicorn in the Garden
I woke up this morning and saw a unicorn in the garden. It's usually not a good sign if you see unicorns, and it can be indicative of a larger problem requiring a stay in the booby-hatch.
It's the end of July, and I'm spending a bunch of time this week buying, schlepping, and storing many, many tons of hay. I've been doing a better than ever job of managing pasture this year, seeding in spring, rotating my grazing, and so on. Nonetheless, from now until next year, our animals will be getting most of their calories from hay. We have more animals than ever--to be honest, we're at least 25% overcapacity on sheep--and our fields are still terribly underdeveloped, but the real culprit is weather.
Like most of the left cost, we're in a drought. We've also had many weeks of record high temperatures. So, the calendar has been bumped forward by about six weeks. Fields, normally green, were crispy yellow by June. I made blackberry jam last week, five weeks earlier than last year. Cornflower is blooming, two months early. Oak Creek is nearly dry--again, two months ahead of schedule. And, a month early, I'm buying hay, $275 a ton for some very nice second cut orchard grass. The goats may get another few weeks of pasture, as will the yearling sheep, but it's pretty much hay from here 'til February.
It takes time to rehab a farm, and our long term goals include rainwater harvesting, fertilizing, seeding, and developing fallow land (i.e., a couple acres of blackberries, teasels, and hawthorn) for hay. The goal is to make it so that our animals are supported by our patch of earth. I know that hitting this goal is going to take most of a decade, but it still causes me some angst that the sheep and goats are walking around on our property but grazing on irrigated fields twenty or a hundred miles away.
Usually, it's not until October that the local vegetation grows so sparse and lousy that the deer lose their fear and start grazing on our yard. It's the young ones who lead the way. This morning it was a yearling buck, one that had been partially dismasted in combat, so it had only a single horn, with a single point. Both Sophie and Eleanor saw the animal and barked lustily while giving chase, driving the unicorn from our garden and back into the dense thickets along the creek.
[Title reference]
It's the end of July, and I'm spending a bunch of time this week buying, schlepping, and storing many, many tons of hay. I've been doing a better than ever job of managing pasture this year, seeding in spring, rotating my grazing, and so on. Nonetheless, from now until next year, our animals will be getting most of their calories from hay. We have more animals than ever--to be honest, we're at least 25% overcapacity on sheep--and our fields are still terribly underdeveloped, but the real culprit is weather.
Like most of the left cost, we're in a drought. We've also had many weeks of record high temperatures. So, the calendar has been bumped forward by about six weeks. Fields, normally green, were crispy yellow by June. I made blackberry jam last week, five weeks earlier than last year. Cornflower is blooming, two months early. Oak Creek is nearly dry--again, two months ahead of schedule. And, a month early, I'm buying hay, $275 a ton for some very nice second cut orchard grass. The goats may get another few weeks of pasture, as will the yearling sheep, but it's pretty much hay from here 'til February.
 |
| Two tons of hay. Lifting 100-lb bales up that high is a good workout; it's good that it's two short tons, otherwise I'd have had to lift them higher. |
It takes time to rehab a farm, and our long term goals include rainwater harvesting, fertilizing, seeding, and developing fallow land (i.e., a couple acres of blackberries, teasels, and hawthorn) for hay. The goal is to make it so that our animals are supported by our patch of earth. I know that hitting this goal is going to take most of a decade, but it still causes me some angst that the sheep and goats are walking around on our property but grazing on irrigated fields twenty or a hundred miles away.
Usually, it's not until October that the local vegetation grows so sparse and lousy that the deer lose their fear and start grazing on our yard. It's the young ones who lead the way. This morning it was a yearling buck, one that had been partially dismasted in combat, so it had only a single horn, with a single point. Both Sophie and Eleanor saw the animal and barked lustily while giving chase, driving the unicorn from our garden and back into the dense thickets along the creek.
[Title reference]
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Wednesday Wordage, a pleasing acronym
I am WEIRD, I found out in an article about gut microbiota. You who are reading this are also, most likely, WEIRD.
WEIRD, of course, stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, and describes the culture in which most all of us here are immersed. And appropriately, for discussions of anything having to do with human society or ecology, WEIRD people are weird, compared with the totality of humans in the world and in history. So, a good acronym: catchy and meaningful.
WEIRD, of course, stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, and describes the culture in which most all of us here are immersed. And appropriately, for discussions of anything having to do with human society or ecology, WEIRD people are weird, compared with the totality of humans in the world and in history. So, a good acronym: catchy and meaningful.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
WOOT...wait...
WOOT!!! I finished with chores and milking and got dinner made before the sun was completely down...wait...oh, it's the longest day of the year.
Such is life on the farm. And why there ain't much here at the moment.
Such is life on the farm. And why there ain't much here at the moment.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Wednesday Wordage, Lost in Translation edition
The local Home Depot MegaSuperUltraStore has a cheerful bulletin board near their front entrance, with photos of some of their staff who can help you if you don't speak English. Beneath each faux-polaroid of a smiling staffer, there's a printout of their name and some info, e.g. "Roberta--Yo hablo Espanol!" There's about a half dozen, all speaking Spanish, until you get to the last one (who I will give an alias): "Susan--Yo hablo Francais."
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Tuesday Tool Torturous Treatment Edition
Today's tool is the Portasol disbudding iron.
It works a treat--gets up to temperature faster than electric dehorners, and stays hot. The only downside, compared to the more common electric dehorners, is that it's a little smaller (not a problem for our Nigerian Dwarves), and you'll need to refill it every six to ten goats.
Most of the time, as the owner of a herd of goats, I'm as nice as can be. I am generous with the treats, and try to give the goats all of what they need. There are occasions where they think I'm a little mean, like jabbing them with the occasional needle or trimming their hooves, but really, those insults are no big deal, easily compensated for by a couple of peanuts.
Then there's disbudding.
Most goats have horns, or would, were they not disbudded. For a goat to be shown in an American Dairy Goat Association sanctioned event, it can't have horns. For the safety and sanity of the goat's owner, it can't have horns. And really, for the safety of the goat's herdmates, it can't have horns, and for it's own safety so it doesn't get caught in fences, it can't have horns.
The horn starts as a growth from the skull, and if you were to dissect a mature goat horn, you'd see that it had at its core a projection from the cranial bone, covered with some tissue and then a heavy layer of keratin. It's a living part of the animal, not like an antler, so removing an adult horn is really amputation. Thus, it's best to take care of it before it starts growing.
When the kid is born, you can barely feel a little bump where the horn is going to be. If you wait a week, the bump will be a little button; you want to wait until you can easily feel it, but before the bud breaks the skin. Your object is to kill that horn bud--all the cells in the skull that will be growing into the horn--without killing the animal. There are paste dehorners, caustic goops that eat into the skin and bone. These are OK for cattle, but not so good for goats--they tend to rub them all over, causing random and occasionally severe damage. Better to use a disbudding iron.
The disbudding iron is a tube-shaped element, usually a little over a cm in diameter. Sometimes it's heated like a soldering iron, while our disbudder uses lighter fluid. Once it's up to temperature, you get your goat kid, wrap it in a towel or other restraint, drape it over your leg, hold its head down, and press the hot disbudding iron onto the horn bud for
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten seconds.
It is agonizing. The kid doesn't like it, and struggles and cries for all its little body is worth. You can trim their hair away, but there's still going to be the awful burning flesh smell, not to mention the lovely sizzling sound and sight of burning flesh. If you don't hold the iron in place for long enough, you'll have to do it again--you need to burn down into the bone a little way, to kill it completely. If it's a buck kid, you need to do a second burn, because their horn buds are not little dots--they're elongated, like paisleys. Then, having burned a ring around the bud, you use the side of the iron to char the surface of it off, bubbling and burning down to the bone.
Then, you have to do the kid's other horn.
It's horrible. I hate doing it. But, the next step after this for me was to do fourteen more kids. Then, being neighborly, I did eight kids for a neighbor. It made for a long and horrible-feeling day; I was jittery and jangly and irritable. It didn't help that I had to get a lamb unstuck from our fence, and just as I was pulling him out and had a hand on each hind leg, he jumped up and pressed himself into the electric wire. He was fine but it made me dance around.
I'm always worried that I'm going to kill the kids or leave them traumatized or something. We give them a dose of banamine, a painkiller/anti-inflammatory before, and a cooling spray afterwards, and an hour later they're bouncing around like nothing has happened. They're all out there now, romping and playing and being goat kids, with these two horrible burn scars on their heads.
Come to think of it, I had an anaesthesia-free operation on a sensitive part of my body when I was a few days old, and I have no memory or lingering horrible feelings from it. So, hopefully the kids will be alright.
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It works a treat--gets up to temperature faster than electric dehorners, and stays hot. The only downside, compared to the more common electric dehorners, is that it's a little smaller (not a problem for our Nigerian Dwarves), and you'll need to refill it every six to ten goats.
Most of the time, as the owner of a herd of goats, I'm as nice as can be. I am generous with the treats, and try to give the goats all of what they need. There are occasions where they think I'm a little mean, like jabbing them with the occasional needle or trimming their hooves, but really, those insults are no big deal, easily compensated for by a couple of peanuts.
Then there's disbudding.
Most goats have horns, or would, were they not disbudded. For a goat to be shown in an American Dairy Goat Association sanctioned event, it can't have horns. For the safety and sanity of the goat's owner, it can't have horns. And really, for the safety of the goat's herdmates, it can't have horns, and for it's own safety so it doesn't get caught in fences, it can't have horns.
The horn starts as a growth from the skull, and if you were to dissect a mature goat horn, you'd see that it had at its core a projection from the cranial bone, covered with some tissue and then a heavy layer of keratin. It's a living part of the animal, not like an antler, so removing an adult horn is really amputation. Thus, it's best to take care of it before it starts growing.
When the kid is born, you can barely feel a little bump where the horn is going to be. If you wait a week, the bump will be a little button; you want to wait until you can easily feel it, but before the bud breaks the skin. Your object is to kill that horn bud--all the cells in the skull that will be growing into the horn--without killing the animal. There are paste dehorners, caustic goops that eat into the skin and bone. These are OK for cattle, but not so good for goats--they tend to rub them all over, causing random and occasionally severe damage. Better to use a disbudding iron.
The disbudding iron is a tube-shaped element, usually a little over a cm in diameter. Sometimes it's heated like a soldering iron, while our disbudder uses lighter fluid. Once it's up to temperature, you get your goat kid, wrap it in a towel or other restraint, drape it over your leg, hold its head down, and press the hot disbudding iron onto the horn bud for
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten seconds.
It is agonizing. The kid doesn't like it, and struggles and cries for all its little body is worth. You can trim their hair away, but there's still going to be the awful burning flesh smell, not to mention the lovely sizzling sound and sight of burning flesh. If you don't hold the iron in place for long enough, you'll have to do it again--you need to burn down into the bone a little way, to kill it completely. If it's a buck kid, you need to do a second burn, because their horn buds are not little dots--they're elongated, like paisleys. Then, having burned a ring around the bud, you use the side of the iron to char the surface of it off, bubbling and burning down to the bone.
Then, you have to do the kid's other horn.
It's horrible. I hate doing it. But, the next step after this for me was to do fourteen more kids. Then, being neighborly, I did eight kids for a neighbor. It made for a long and horrible-feeling day; I was jittery and jangly and irritable. It didn't help that I had to get a lamb unstuck from our fence, and just as I was pulling him out and had a hand on each hind leg, he jumped up and pressed himself into the electric wire. He was fine but it made me dance around.
I'm always worried that I'm going to kill the kids or leave them traumatized or something. We give them a dose of banamine, a painkiller/anti-inflammatory before, and a cooling spray afterwards, and an hour later they're bouncing around like nothing has happened. They're all out there now, romping and playing and being goat kids, with these two horrible burn scars on their heads.
Come to think of it, I had an anaesthesia-free operation on a sensitive part of my body when I was a few days old, and I have no memory or lingering horrible feelings from it. So, hopefully the kids will be alright.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Wednesday Wordage...in memoriam, I suppose
I was saddened to hear of the death of Richard Sher, host/co-creator of one of my favorite radio shows, "Says You." I hope the show will go on; it brightened my weekends (and enriched my vocabulary--too often I find myself describing a situation as a cacafuego, a word learned from the show).
Here's a collection of words describing medical conditions, mostly archaic. What are the conditions?
1. Quinsy
2. Lumbago
3. St. Vitus' Dance
4. Dropsy
5. Yaws
6. Ague
7. Membranous Croup
8. White Death (aka phthisis, aka consumption)
9. Tertiary Fever
10. Fantods
11. St. Anthony's Fire
12. Picardy Sweats
Any other suggestions?
Here's a collection of words describing medical conditions, mostly archaic. What are the conditions?
1. Quinsy
2. Lumbago
3. St. Vitus' Dance
4. Dropsy
5. Yaws
6. Ague
7. Membranous Croup
8. White Death (aka phthisis, aka consumption)
9. Tertiary Fever
10. Fantods
11. St. Anthony's Fire
12. Picardy Sweats
Any other suggestions?
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