Copper and Sheep Update

I get requests from time to time to comment on old posts I've written about feeding mineral mixes to sheep containing copper sulfate. Pat Coleby from Australia popularized this and her mineral mix recipes are available online.

We made this mix from ingredients purchased at gardening stores for two years and had no problems and our sheep were healthy and had no parasite problems. In February 2008 we had the mix made for us at a feed mill. I double and triple checked all the info provided by the mill and everything seemed fine. In May 2008 we nearly lost one of our ewes to copper poisoning. I ended up driving to the large animal department at the OSU Veterinary College and picked up some Ammonium Molybdate and dosed the sick ewe with it for three days. She was jaundiced to the point where the whites of her eyes were light brown and her urine was dark brown. She was nursing newborn twins at the time. Contrary to the prediction of the doc at OSU, she lived and continues to be healthy to this day. She continued to nurse her twins and gave birth to another set in May 2009. We added Sodium Molybdate to the sheep mineral and kelp for the next 30 days to help safely flush the excess copper from the other ewes.

We are currently feeding sheep mineral from Countryside Natural Products. It is quite expensive but the sheep don't eat much. We are using the Coleby mix for our cow and calves.

This post should not reflect negatively at all on the recommendations of Pat Coleby. To this day, I believe she is way ahead of the pack when it comes to animal health and root causes of illness and disease. My belief is that I simply had a ewe who overate the mineral. I understand that she has changed her recommendations with the latest edition of her books but I haven't read them yet.

Vote No on Issue 2

This is from the OEFFA website:

Here are the real facts about Issue 2:

-- Issue 2 would create a Livestock Care Standards Board, stacked with Big Ag and factory farm supporters, which would have sweeping authority to make decisions related to farms and food in Ohio that would have the force of law. The Board would have largely unchecked power to override any act by the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Ohio Assembly.

--Issue 2 will create a Livestock Care Standards Board with no accountability to voters. Their decisions will be final. There is no further review or evaluation of the standard, no established forum for public comment, and no ability to appeal their decisions.

--Issue 2 serves the economic interests of factory farms, opening the door for the proliferation of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) in Ohio.

--Issue 2 emphasizes the need of the livestock industry to provide “affordable food,” yet ignores its hidden costs, including environmental contamination, human health impacts, and the loss of rural communities.

The Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association has been Ohio's voice for sustainable agriculture and local, organic foods for more than 30 years. We represent farmers, ranchers, gardeners, and conscientious eaters who value the importance of livestock in sustainable agricultural production systems and in providing prosperity for Ohio’s farm families.

October 16, 2009

How we spend our Friday nights at Liberty Farm:

Jennifer is washing and pressing the liquid out of our first batch of butter from Sugar. You can't get butter that yellow from cows kept in confinement.

We got 1/2 gallon of cream from 1 1/2 gallons of milk. It yielded 1 pound of butter and about 1 1/2 quarts of buttermilk. Biscuits and lamb sausage gravy for breakfast tomorrow.

Cream Line

We got 6 gallons today. No wonder Sugar won't gain any weight. I think we'll be cutting some of the grain from her diet.

October 12, 2009

Sorry for the light posting lately. When we leave the farm for a 10 day vacation, the workload is a bit overwhelming when we return. We still have about 8 yards of concrete to pour this month in the ongoing conversion of the dilapidated greenhouse into a garage and machine shed. And the contractor asked us to hold up on siding it until the concrete was done so they could work at it from all sides! I have a bad feeling I'm going to be out there in the snow nailing up vinyl siding. But we got our wood stove installed so I'll be able to come in and warm up. Our computer is in the same room as the stove and all this typing is making me sweat.

We separated the calves from Sugar last Friday. They took to drinking milk from a bucket like pros. Actually I bought buckets with rubber nipples thinking they would want to suck but it's much faster to just slurp it up. Taffy bawled so much she had completely lost her voice yesterday. Her moos sounded like croaks. It's coming back some today. Sugar is going with the flow like she always does. Porter doesn't seem to care as long as he gets his milk.

Since the separation, we're getting between 5 and 5 1/2 gallons of milk a day. This morning Jennifer got 3 1/2 gallons, gave the calves 1 1/2 (3 qts. each) and put 2 gallons in the fridge. Tonight I got 2 gallons and gave it all to the calves. The best part is we have CREAM! We'll make some butter by the end of the week and maybe celebrate the weekend with a little ice cream. You haven't lived until you've eaten homemade butter pecan.

All of the butchering is done for the year and we're now looking ahead to sheep breeding. The sheep will be shorn before the end of the month and we'll put the rams and ewes into two breeding groups in early November. Guess I better get to work on finishing the barn remodel so the rams have a place to live. Right now they're bunking in with Sugar because the calves are closed in their old stall.

Last but not least, our internet here on the farm is now smokin'. For those of you outside the normal cable or DSL area, I highly recommend this and this. We have the mifi connected to a cradlepoint router to make it a little more powerful and give us an ethernet connection for the desktop. The antenna really pulls in that cell signal. We're getting download speeds of over 1.5 Mbps.

October 5, 2009

We just returned yesterday from our annual vacation to the Outer Banks. It was a very relaxing week! When we returned home, we quickly realized that autumn had come with a vengeance while we were gone. I don't have the fuel oil furnace ready to go yet so we're relying on a couple of portable electric heaters until our wood-burning stove is installed on Wednesday.

Sugar's chewed teats didn't get any worse in our absence but they didn't heal much, either. After we get back into the swing of things this week we'll separate the calves permanently and put them on a milk bucket. I would much prefer not to do that but we got Sugar into this predicament and now it's up to us to get her out.

I've got two building projects to complete this month. We also have sheep shearing to look forward to and will be putting the rams and ewes together about this time next month.

ETA: We had a killing frost in our absence so the winter squash will be brought in this week to cure. We really need a couple sunny days in a row!