permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

Mark wrote:

I've saved the following for future discussion as it will be important for
homesteaders involved with small livestock production for meat. A while back I 
asked about raising sheep and goats for meat and it appears that Boer goats and
Gulf Coast sheep will be the easiest to raise with the leat maintenance 
required, i.e. no wormers and no supplemental feed grain. My source for GC sheep
lets his flock select naturally for parasite resistance. What about nematophagic 
fungi? What are sources for this and how well does it work and how difficult is 
it to get them established? Any references would be helpful.

> > Pasture rotation, co-grazing with cattle/horses, introduction of
> > nematophagic fungi are all management tools that can be used to help
> > diminish parasite problems with sheep and goats, but some - particularly
> > rotation - won't/can't work well for small producers, as you would 
> > have to
> > have exceedingly long (3-6 months or longer, depending on temp & 
> > moisture)
> > pasture/paddock rest periods in order for nematode larval populations to
> > die out.
> >
> > Goats and sheep are not small cows.  I've rarely, if ever, seen 'worms'
> > actually kill a cow; impact production, yes, but kill, no.  However, I'd
> > say that well over 85% of the sheep and goats that I've seen over the 
> > past
> > 25 years have been victims of parasitism.
> > It's largely a management problem.  Both species evolved in environments
> > that were not necessarily conducive to heavy parasite burdens.  Goats are
> > principally browsers, consuming mostly leaves, buds, twigs, but once
> > they're relegated to having to graze(that's where all the feces and
> > parasite larvae/ovae are!) they rapidly become heavily
> > parasitized.  Similar deal with sheep; they do well in areas where 
> > 'it's a
> > long way between blades of grass', but here in the Southeast, that's
> > usually not the case, and with heavy stocking rates on small pastures, we
> > rapidly see infective larval populations reach epidemic levels.
> > One thing that I tell my students(I teach a parasitology course to
> > AHT/Pre-Vet students) is that the old-time shepherds really had something
> > going by bringing the sheep into the 'fold' at night - in addition to 
> > being
> > able to better protect them from predators, it also got them off the
> > pastures when dew was heavy on the forages - the infective nematode 
> > larvae
> > crawl up the blades of grass in the dew film, and are just waiting there
> > for that goat/sheep to come along and ingest them.  As the sun comes up,
> > and the dew dries off, those larvae migrate back down to the soil 
> > interface
> > and are less available for ingestion.  It's a management tool that's
> > largely overlooked today.  Don't know if those shepherds 'knew' what they
> > were doing, but it helped, regardless.
> >
> >
> > Louis L. "Lucky" Pittman, Jr., DVM
> > Veterinary Pathologist/Asst. Prof.
> > Murray St. Univ.-Breathitt Veterinary Ctr.
> > Hopkinsville, KY




--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/pcwiki/index.php/london