Pasture Raised and Grass Fed on Stony Brook Farm

No matter how hard we try, the reality of any farm is that it is an “unnatural” system. Through breeding, forage selection, grazing management, fencing, reproduction and growth goals, necessary survival rates, and a whole host of other human manipulations the gap between natural animals and unnatural farm animals is quite large.

Yesterday I wrote about saving a lamb who was unable to get a drink from its mother. The reason it was unable to get a drink was because the ewe makes so much milk that her udder was so full that it was too low to the ground, the teats were pointing straight down, and the teats were so engorged that they were too fat and too firm for the lamb to get his mouth comfortably around on the rare occasion that he was able to find the end of a teat. Had I not been there to intervene, it is likely that the lamb would have starved, although it is possible that he might have worked it out.

It seems, therefore, that the farmer was the solution, the savior. If, however, we look a step or two back, we see that the farmer was in fact the source of the trouble. Production minded farmers are constantly breeding their sheep up to produce more milk, while at the same time they are generally also breeding their sheep up to be more prolific, shooting for an average lambing rate of about 200% (two lambs per ewe), which would require a significant percentage of ewes to have triplets, while a good number will also have singles. The more milk, the more lambs that can be fed. The more milk, the faster and bigger the lambs will grow. The goal is to strike a balance between high milk production, high prolificacy, and high growth rates and potential. Within this balance, however, much will be out of balance, and problems will arise. Milky ewes will make too much milk, requiring an intervention. Prolific ewes will have too many lambs, requiring an intervention (bottle feeding). Etc. In other words, in creating unnatural critters that live in unnatural environments, we create problems for ourselves.

Nature kills its problems and nothing notices. On an unnatural farm, every death constitutes a substantial financial loss. It takes anywhere from two to five (depending on one’s per lamb profit) lambs from other ewes to pay the cost of a single ewe that doesn’t have or loses her lamb or lambs in any given year. In nature, a sick animal wanders away and dies, and nothing notices but the buzzards and flies. On an unnatural farm, there is a mad scramble to keep animals alive, if only to kill them later.

Any horse person has heard the non-horse person argument about bringing the horses in out of the rain or the cold, “It’s a horse! Just leave it outside.” The idea is that horses are big natural critters with thick fur coats that could get along just fine outside. The reality is, however, that domesticated horses are not natural critters and farms are not natural places. First, many performance horse breeds, because they have been bred up to perform at the levels they do, have high energy needs and cannot spare very much energy for warmth. Second, farm landscapes often do not permit shelter from the wind or rain or snow. On my farm, our pastures are wide open and are pitched directly into the prevailing wind, which blows pretty steadily all winter long at ten to twenty miles per hour. Also, our pastures are fenced. The movement of the horses is unnaturally limited. A natural horse in a natural environment in dangerous weather would walk until it found a sheltered spot. And, third, natural horses in natural environments that don’t find shelter in dangerous weather die. Just because the species deer still exists in spring doesn’t mean that a substantial number, and perhaps even a substantial percentage in a particularly hard winter, didn’t die. They did die. The goal on an unnatural farm is zero percent death loss due to environmental conditions, an unnatural goal.

If you ask them, you will find that most pasture-based farmers attempt to recreate as much as possible natural (environmental) conditions for their animals. They fall, however, far far short. Nature is inimical to farming. The true goal of every farmer is at the very least to mitigate nature; it is most often, even on the pasture based farm of a natural minded farmer, to overcome nature, to dominate nature, to control nature. Nature is a false aspiration. I am always at every instant on the farm at odds with it, even when I feel closest to it.

[Note: I originally published this post with the title, "Saving a Lamb with a Broken Back." Just after I hit the publish button, I realized that the title would most likely be read that it was the lamb with the broken back, and not the shepherd. Apologies for the ambiguity to anyone who saw the post with the original title.]

The other day, a lamb was born, and because its mother produces so much milk, her udder was really full. A really full udder hangs low to the ground, and the teats, because they too are really full and tight, point straight down, with the tip only a few inches above the ground, instead of pointing out to the side, four or so inches above the ground. The lamb, instinctively looking for the teats a few inches higher, just bumped and bumped and bumped against the upper part of the udder. A few times, he inched his mouth down along the udder, lipping it as he went, and found the teat, but the teat was so swollen that he couldn’t get his mouth around it.

When he was about twelve hours old and still hadn’t gotten a drink it was time to intervene. Ideally, lambs should get their first drink, which is full of antibody giving colostrum, within a few hours of being born. As I understand it, if they don’t get it until after about fifteen hours or so, they never really thrive because their immune systems aren’t “fully stocked,” so to speak. Unfortunately, earlier in the day I had thrown my back out worse than I ever had before trying to herd four lambs through a gate they didn’t want to go through, so i wasn’t too happy with the fact that I had a lamb to save, but I had no choice.

Luckily, one of the pasture shelters was very close to the paddock that the sheep were in and I was able to enclose it in an additional section of electronet, and then with my mother’s help, I lured the mother ewe into the shelter by holding her lamb out towards her as I walked backwards away from her. My mother “manned” the electronet “gate,” opening it for the mother and shooing away a different ewe that had been following along. Once we had the mother inside the shelter, I pinned her against the wall of the shelter and we tried to get the lamb to nurse. One quickly discovers when trying to get lambs to nurse that it is useless to try to force them onto the teat. As you push down, they push away. You can give it a shot, especially if the teat has a drop of milk on it. If the lamb’s lips touch the drop of milk, sometimes they get the picture right away and start sucking. If, however, they don’t get the picture right away, they just start to struggle against you. With my mother holding the lamb, I was free to direct the teat at the lamb’s face. I squirted a tiny bit of colostrum against his lips, and he got interested for a second, but he quickly started struggling against my mother, so she stopped pressuring him. She just held him still in front of the udder while I held the udder so that the teat was pointed up and at him. It didn’t work. He just stared blankly.

I decided to milk the ewe out so that her udder would hang in a way that gave better access to the lamb. I decided also that we should bottle feed the lamb. He was getting a bit lethargic, and I didn’t trust that he had enough energy to keep trying to get onto his mother’s teat, even if it were made available by milking her out. For some reason, I decided that the best thing to do would be to just feed him lamb milk replacer, a manufactured product, rather than milk the ewe out into a bottle. I milked the ewe out onto the ground until her udder was fairly slack. Then my mother and I went up to the house to mix up some milk replacer.

I expected the lamb to latch right onto the bottle. He didn’t. He just kept pushing the nipple out of his mouth. I fought with him for about a minute. He only swallowed once or twice. So later, while dealing with this lamb that wouldn’t drink from the bottle, while hunched over on my knees in excrutiating pain, I said, “F– it. He can starve for all I care,” and I stood up and walked away. My mother knows me well enough to know when not to argue with me, so she just followed along behind me.

As we were walking out of the pasture I looked over towards the barn and saw the farrier unloading his truck. I had no idea he was coming. I nearly blew my top. I snarled a few words at my mother about needing to help the farrier for the next couple of hours and that I would see her up at the house. I hobbled around retrieving the horses from the pasture and then stood around, hobbling here and there putting horses away and bringing them out for the farrier.

When the farrier left, I went to go save that stupid lamb. On my way out to the pasture, I stopped and turned around to go get my mother, but then I decided it would be better if I just dealt with it by myself. Certainly having her help would have made it easier, but I didn’t know how it was going to go, and I didn’t really feel like snarling at my mother anymore. Earlier, I had emptied the bottle of milk replacer and left the bottle in a bucket by the water hydrant up at the top of the pasture, so I grabbed it and walked down into the paddock with the ewe and the lamb. The lamb was pretty much apathetic. All that he needed was a little bit of colostrum, just a tiny boost, and he would be fine. So, I kneeled as gingerly as I could, lifted the lamb off the ground as lightning bolts shot through my back and gimped over to the shelter with the ewe following along behind us.

Once the happy family was inside the shelter, I grabbed the ewe and after struggling with her for a few seconds, pinned her against the wall. I had one arm wrapped around her neck and my shoulder pressed against her shoulder. How do you milk a ewe into a bottle with one hand? You don’t, but I tried anyway. We were only a few feet from the corner of the shelter, so I pushed the ewe back into the corner. When she felt the back wall touch her butt, she lunged forward as hard as she could, and as my body twisted the pain in my back was so bad I thought I might pass out. If she had just lunged one more time, she would have broken free of my grip because I was still seeing stars, but she didn’t. I got her backed up so that she was sideways in the corner. One wall was pressing against her shoulder, one wall was pressing against her butt, and my shoulder was pressing against her flank. With her pinned like that I was able to let her go so that both of my hands were free. The lamb had long ago left the shelter and was out in the paddock somewhere screaming. I was worried he would get tanlged in the electronet, but I had no choice but to get some colostrum in that bottle. The ewe was resigned to being pinned in that position, so I was able to quickly reach between her legs and while holding the bottle in one hand I milked her into it with the other. I milked mostly from one side, the near teat, but got a few squirts from the far teat as well. I let the ewe go. She charged out of the shelter to find her lamb. For about five seconds, I inched my body around trying to figure out how to stand without causing excrutiating pain, but I couldn’t so I just stood up. I staggered out of the shelter like a drunkard on a bender. The lamb was lying down a few feet away from the shelter. When the ewe saw me, she turned and faced me defiantly, standing over her lamb. I walked over and knealt down by the lamb and lifted him to his feet. I placed the nipple in his mouth, and as soon as that warm wonderful colostrum started to drip into his mouth, he started sucking, like mad. He took a break or two, but he drank it all. I thought it had only been a couple of ounces, but when I filled the bottle with water up to where it had been filled with colostrum and then dumped it into a measuring cup, I discovered that it had been about five ounces.

A few hours later, I went back out with some milk replacer — I certainly wasn’t going to milk the ewe into a bottle again! — to feed him again  He drank a few ounces, but wasn’t terribly interested in it. The next morning, I went out with some more replacer and he didn’t want any of it. I checked his belly and it was pretty full. It could have been left over from the evening before, but it could have been from him nursing. I looked at the ewe’s udder. Her teats were pretty slack. The udder wasn’t terribly full. Again, that could have been from being milked out the day before. As I did my chores, I kept one eye on the pair. At one point, I looked over and saw the lamb with his head buried in the ewe’s crotch and his tail wagging wildly. Success? I walked over to take a closer look. The lamb popped his head up. He looked like he was swallowing. I looked at his chin. He had a little colostrum goatee. I looked at the ewe’s teat. It was glistening with saliva. Success!

Oh, sweet success! Oh my aching f*ing back! I finished my chores and went up to the house and collapsed (laid myself gingerly) on the couch while my mother waited on me hand and foot for the next few hours until it was time to go back outside, having long ago forgiven her snarly son for snarling at her.

The other day I posted the following list of swine texts to a listserve on raising pigs. The texts are all available on Google Books and have been invaluable in my pastured pig raising education. Not too long after 1950, the pigs were moved into confinement barns and research including a pasture component basically ceased. The heyday of pastured pig farming was the first quarter to half of the 20th century, and the dates of the texts reflect that.

Especially important is the recognition given in these texts to high quality pig pasture — which means high protein — for saving money from reducing grain consumption and increasing growth rates. As pastured pig farming has gained in popularity, it seems that most people are just turning their pigs out on to mixed grass permanent pastures, which saves very little grain. Our costs could be cut substantially if we would plant proper pig pastures like alfalfa, rape, or red clover, or combinations such as barley, oats, and peas, and if we would hog down grain crops like corn. Our nearly 100% reliance on purchased grain keeps the cost of raising pigs on pasture much higher than it needs to be.

Here is the list of texts in no particular order. There are many more books and articles to be found out there. If you know of any that I haven’t included, please add them in a comment.

Feeds and Feeding, by Frank Morrison, 22nd edition, 1954. — This is the classic text on animal nutrition. There is an earlier edition (when it was still written with Henry), abridged, available on Google Books.

Pork Production, by Smith and Craig, 1920.

Productive Swine Husbandry, by Day, 1913

Swine Feeding, Michigan Extension, 1925

Swine in America, by Coburn, 1909

Swine Husbandry, by Coburn, 1897

Feeding Pigs on Pasture, by Rice, 1924

Forty Years Experience as a Practical Hog Man, by Lovejoy, 1914

Swine: Breeding, Feeding, and Management, by Dietrich, 1910

Farmer’s Cyclopedia of Livestock, by Wilcox and Smith, 1908

Pork Production, Bulletin of the Agricultural Experiment Station of Nebraska, 1915

Search Google Books for +annual +report +swine (or + hogs, or +pigs) for a lot of really interesting and valuable information from the various states in their annual agricultural reports from the earlier part of the 20th century

Journal of Animal Science — http://jas.fass.org/ — has a bunch of good articles in the archives