The Enlightened Turkey

February 23, 2010

A turkey flew up out of the tall hay field right beside my tractor.

I stopped the tractor and haybine and looked at the clutch of turkey eggs I had run over.

Most of the eggs were broken and I could see half-developed chicks inside the broken shells.

I looked at the freshly mown hay and realized this was just the first of many trips across this field.  We had to rake, bale, and haul in the round bales of hay.  And if the eggs were not run over by then, there was still no way a turkey would come back and sit on a nest that was out in the open.

I opened the tool box on the tractor and spread out the grease rag.  I found three eggs that weren’t cracked and swaddled them in the rag and went back to mowing hay.

I had a Dark Cornish hen that was broody.   I placed the three eggs carefully under the hen and she pecked my arm, but didn’t leave the nesting box.

I checked the eggs every day.  Most of the time I had to reach under the hen to check.

One morning I heard a peep and spied a little head poking out from under the hen.

I knew the poult would need time to dry off its feathers so I left it under the hen and waited until afternoon to check again.

This time I moved the hen and found one strong poult, one dead poult, and one egg.  The egg felt empty so I cracked open the hard shell.  It was rotten.

I carried the hen and the poult over to my brooder house so they wouldn’t be bothered by the other chickens.  I set up a feeder and water for the hen and poult.

The hen covered the poult with her feathers.  I tried to catch the poult to make sure it knew where the water was and the hen ruffed up her feathers and attacked me.

I kept the hen and poult in the brooder house for the next four weeks.  They were doing fine.  I decided it was time to let them out and see what they would do.

The hen moved out into the yard and clucked to her poult to follow.  After meandering through the yard eating grass and bugs, the hen took her poult into the chicken barn.  The hen  kept other chickens away from her poult.

When I went to shut the door to the chicken barn at dusk, I was surprised to see the hen and poult roosting on the old dairy stanchion four feet above the ground.  That little poult could fly and wanted to continue sleeping under the hen for warmth and comfort.

As summer turned into fall, the poult grew into the turkey it was meant to be.  Instead of sleeping under the hen, it would sleep beside the hen and put its head and neck under the hen’s feathers.

It was larger now than any of the other chickens.  But if the chickens noticed, I couldn’t tell.

Once the snow came, I kept the chickens locked in the barn for the winter.  I could tell the turkey was from wild stock because it was more skittish than the chickens.

When the snow melted, I started letting them back outside in the daytime.  The turkey really started to come into her own and express the urges she had felt all winter.

She ran fast.  She flew up into the tree limbs.  She even flew to the top of the barn.

She started to range farther in the field than the chickens.  And one night she didn’t come back to the barn at all.  The next morning she was outside the barn waiting to rejoin the flock.

But a week or so later she was gone again and this time for 36 hours.  She continued to repeat this pattern until her absences grew longer and she never came back at all.

But I thought I spied her with the wild turkey flock throughout that summer and fall.  She had found her kind.

2 Comments | Curious chickens, Curious living | Permalink
Posted by Curiousfarmer

Inbreeding

February 16, 2010

My  post, “How We Decide: Listen To Your Gut,” explained how we had three littermate boars who all had the same abnormality in which they couldn’t extend their penis to breed.

Dad and I discussed possible causes for this condition.  He thought it may be an inbreeding problem.  I thought it had something to do with the increased use of artificial insemination, (AI), in swine.

When we started using AI fifteen years ago, maybe only 10% of the nation’s hogs were produced with AI.  Now, probably over 90% of the nation’s hogs are produced using AI.

Boars which would have been culled because of poor natural breeding ability are now being artificially collected and their genes are spread throughout the population.  I detailed the steps I am taking to combat this problem in my last post.

Dad recently read an article about inbreeding which discussed the deleterious effect it has on reproduction.  And he rightly assumed that the dam of the three boars may have been slightly inbred.  So, combining these two facts caused him to theorize the problem was inbreeding.

Good thinking.  Except I told him I knew the sire of the boars was completely unrelated to the dam.  So there is no chance of inbreeding.

But Dad thought if one of the parents is inbred, then inbreeding may be a problem in the offspring.  And that brings me to my point.

It doesn’t matter how inbred one or both parents are. As long as the parents are not related, the offspring will not be inbred.

Let me explain.  But first let me define two terms, homozygous and heterozygous.  Homozygous is when a pair of genes at any location, (locus), is identical.  Heterozygous is when a pair of genes at any locus is different.

Let’s use coat color in cattle as an example.  One parent is an inbred Black Angus and one parent is an inbred Red Angus.  The Black Angus is black and its pair of genes is represented by BB.  The Red Angus is red and its pair of genes is represented by bb.

Because we know one gene is inherited from each parent, the offspring will get one black, B, gene and one red, b, gene.  The offspring’s genes are heterozygous, Bb, even though its parents were inbred and homozygous.  A single mating between unrelated, inbred individuals wiped out all inbreeding in the offspring.

This example also illustrates how inbreeding and homozygosity is not necessarily a bad thing.  Just ask any Black Angus breeder if she is concerned that her cattle are homozygous black!

Leave a Comment » | Curious genetics | Permalink
Posted by Curiousfarmer

Katie Couric Investigates Antibiotic Use in Livestock

February 11, 2010

I watched Katie Couric infuriate the US livestock industry over the past two days.  She reported on sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock and the “superbugs” that may develop as a result.  It was a fair report.

A little background to catch you up to speed.  The US livestock industry routinely uses a low level of antibiotics in the feed or water of birds and animals to promote growth.  This is what is meant by the term sub-therapeutic, or growth-promoting.

One of the problems with this strategy is the possible development of “superbugs”, antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  I don’t know if this has been proven, but it seems plausible.

We gave this some thought on our farm and discontinued sub-therapeutic levels of antibiotics years ago.  We aren’t organic, however, and we do reserve the ability to use antibiotics to treat disease.

And this makes sense to us, because, after all, this is how most people use antibiotics in their own life, (hand sanitizers excluded).

And this is a paradox many animal rights people don’t understand, but most livestock farmers enjoy raising animals and don’t want to watch them suffer from disease if there is a treatment available.

Katie Couric profiled the Danish swine industry which banned sub-therapeutic antibiotics years ago.  Contrary to predictions of the industry’s demise, the Dutch pig producers learned how to raise hogs without this crutch and their industry has even expanded since the ban.

Banning sub-therapeutic antibiotics is not without a cost, though.  The cost to raise a pound of pork increased five cents per pound.  This sounds about right.

And that’s why I’m not knocking hog farmers who choose to use sub-therapeutic antibiotics.  Five cents per pound over several years can make or break a hog farm; and it is an acceptable and legal practice in the US.

But sub-therapeutic antibiotics are not necessary and it gives the livestock industry bad press.  I wish we could come to a consensus as an industry and eliminate the use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics while still reserving the ability to use antibiotics to treat disease.  But of course I’m biased because that’s the protocol for my farm.

What do you think?  Do you see the difference between antibiotics used to treat disease and sub-therapeutic antibiotics to promote growth?  Do you pay more for antibiotic-free meat?  Do you seek out the lowest-priced meat?  What is important to you?  Why?

4 Comments | Curious food, Curious livestock costs, Curious meat | Permalink
Posted by Curiousfarmer

How We Decide: Listen To Your Gut!

February 9, 2010

As I struggled with my personal life last fall, our farm struggled.  We have only four new litters of pigs when we normally would have twenty.  The reason?  I failed to listen to my gut!

I’m reading an excellent book by Jonah Lehrer titled, “How We Decide.”  It’s about what’s going on in our heads when we make a decision.  In the second chapter, Jonah talks about how experts typically make a decision.

“Although we tend to think of experts as being weighed down by information, their intelligence dependent on a vast amount of explicit knowledge, experts are actually profoundly intuitive.  When an expert evaluates a situation, he doesn’t systematically compare all the available options or consciously analyze the relevant information.  He doesn’t rely on elaborate spreadsheets or long lists of pros and cons.  Instead, the expert naturally depends on the emotions generated by his dopamine neurons.  His prediction errors have been translated into useful knowledge, which allows him to tap into a set of accurate feelings he can’t begin to explain.”

I used three littermate boars for breeding this past fall and they failed to successfully conceive a single litter.  I had a bad feeling about these boars from their birth, probably before their birth.  But I failed to listen to my intuition.

These boars were sired by artificial insemination, (AI), using semen from a boar housed in Iowa at a company called Swine Genetics International, (SGI).  I like SGI and have had a lot of good luck working with them.  We have had a closed swine herd for fifteen years.  This means we haven’t brought any new swine onto the farm.  We introduce new genetics using artificial insemination.  I joke that the only swine we buy is delivered by UPS.

SGI helpfully separates their boars by breed, and further separates by type and expected function.  For example, boars may be classified as maternal, meaning they will sire excellent mothers, or terminal, meaning they will sire excellent market hogs.  They also have high marbling lines, high growth, high lean, and other types.

The type that gets us in trouble is the Showpig line.  These boars are always very attractive to look at, but usually end up disappointing us in the end.

The sire of our three boars which couldn’t breed was a Yorkshire from the Showpig line and his name is “Be Bold.”  That is a fitting name, because we were, even though we knew better.  But look at his video, isn’t he awesome?  Can you see why we were tempted?

The three boars we kept out of him looked awesome as well.  Dad even said they were the best-looking boars we’ve ever had on the farm.  So we turned them in with the gilts and proceeded to work on corn harvest and didn’t pay much attention to them other than at morning feeding or a casual glance walking by their pen.

The problem was they couldn’t extend their penis out of the sheath.  Boars have a long, pink, corkscrew-shaped penis.   Here is a link to a diagram of a boar’s penis.

 They would mount the right end and get all tight in there and get that orgasmic look in their eyes. But their penis was not going into the gilt.  They ejaculated inside the sheath.  That’s why I even saw the cervical jelly the boars produce which is usually a sure sign something is getting bred.

Now I probably could have pulled the penis out of the sheath and helped them get started breeding.  Some farmers would do that.  But by the time I figured out the problem, I was so frustrated I was looking forward to letting Johnsonville make bratwurst out of them.  And I had other boars which had grown large enough to breed.   

This isn’t the first time we’ve been disappointed.  In fact, it happens so often, I’ve been toying with an idea that would be a safeguard.  The problem is this idea also slows genetic progress. 

Here’s the idea.  Only keep gilts out of AI litters, no boars.  You see, on our farm, a boar can produce 200 offspring in a year while a gilt can only produce 20.  If I end up liking the gilt, then I can keep gilts or boars out of her later.  That way I  introduce the new genetics into my herd, but at a slower, safer rate.

I’ve already implemented this idea in some fashion.  If a gilt or sow has a litter and is a poor mother, or there is a genetic defect in the litter, or any other reason for not liking the litter, I don’t ear notch the piglets in the litter.  That way, five months later, when I am selecting replacement gilts, I’m not tempted to choose a gilt from that litter. 

I keep detailed records and write down any problems that may have occurred.  But I have been known to justify keeping a gilt from a problem litter because she looked so good.  If she is not ear notched however, I have no records on her, and the cautious curiousfarmer of five months ago, trumps the reckless curiousfarmer of today.

4 Comments | Curious genetics, Curious hogs, Curious reproduction | Permalink
Posted by Curiousfarmer

Cattle Coral Design: Low-Stress Stockmanship

February 3, 2010

Below is a drawing of our corral.  Mark from ISU asked for more information on our corral.  Thanks Jammer for helping with Autocad.

Dad spent all of one winter studying a book of corral designs.  He built his own design the next summer.  We have used it for over 25 years and there isn’t a lot we would change.

There is an exterior gate between #2 and #1 and an exterior gate between #8 and #9.  Gates open so that the corral could be used as a circular riding arena.  I will describe how we use the corral to preg-check the cows.

Cattle are lured into the large alleyway, #1, with hay or walked in using low-stress stockmanship.   Gates are opened from the exterior into #2, and through #5, #3, and #4.  Cattle are walked using pressure from at least three people from #1 to #2.  By the time we get the exterior gate shut, cattle are beginning to move into #3 and #4.  I run around and shut the gate between #3 and #5 to keep too many cows from crowding in.

When the veterinarian arrives, I move all the cows except for about fifteen back into #2.  Fifteen cows are now in #3.  And #4 is empty.  I now walk two cows at a time into #5 and #6 which has a crowding gate and they go down the alleyway into the catch chute, #7.  One or more cows stands and waits in the alleyway with a bar behind her to keep her from backing out.

When the system is working well, I’m slowly bringing in more cows as the vet. is preg-checking them.  One person is helping move the cows down the alleyway while standing in #10. 

If a cow is bred, she is vaccinated and turned back out into the pasture.  If a cow is not bred, (open), she is moved into #4.  At the end of the day we can load the open cows using the alleyway or back the trailer into #10 and load there.

Ok, this is quick and dirty.  Comment if you have questions and I will clarify.

2 Comments | Curious cattle | Permalink
Posted by Curiousfarmer

2010 Wisconsin Grazing Conference

February 2, 2010

I am looking forward to the Wisconsin Grazing Conference in Wisconsin Rapids, February 18-20.  The theme is “Pasture, People, Planet, Profit.”  Here is the schedule of speakers and entertainment.

I will report on some of the more interesting speakers  and any other scuttlebut I hear.  I have attended this conference several times and have always learned something and been rejuvenated by talking with my peers.  I hope to see you there!

6 Comments | Curious business | Permalink
Posted by Curiousfarmer