Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Norma Sutton" <sweetspringfarm@gmail.com>]

A tox screen was done Paul.  I lost a baby crop one year after a rainy season here due to selenium leaching out of the soil.  Now when it is rainy I move my flock off the bottom pasture.  That is the only area that leaches like that.  A tox screen is a good idea though. Thanks!

Norma

 

On 5/31/07, TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net> wrote:

You're probably right that it was the soil, but was it lack of minerals or
poisoning from all that spraying you mentioned? The vet wouldn't run
toxicology on goats, would she. And a soil test will NOT tell you your soil
has been poisoned with all kinds of sprays. That's the question I'd be
concerned about when moving to new land.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 5/31/2007 at 7:00 AM Norma Sutton wrote:

>Paul,
>In this case it was the soil.  The individual in question had just moved
to
>this property and has been raising goats for close to 50 years.  The vet
>couldn't figure out why the babies were dying.  When a soil sample was
sent
>in it was virtually dead, after doing a little research, it was found that
>the property had been over farmed, over fertilized and over sprayed for
>anything and everything.
> What I was saying is that IF you move to another state, another area, and
>you do not no the background of the property you are moving too, and you
>plan to raise livestock, a soil test might be a good thing to have done.
>In the wild goats are hardy and do live in some really inhospitable areas,
>but in domestication, when they are fenced in and in goups they aren't
>nearly so hardy.  In the wild, if a area is lacking in what they need they
>will move to another area.  They can't do that when they are fenced in.
In
>a fenced situation you can have overloads of parsites, over browsing, etc
>and in a fenced situation they will eat thing that they would leave alone
>if
>they could move to another area.
> I'm moving to E. Montana in a few years.  I will probably do a soil test
>when I get there just to be on the safe side.  I can't afford to lose my
>breeding stock.
>Norma
>



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