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.