Tape worms are caused by the dog eating fleas. I know this because our base housing in Little Rock was INFESTED so bad with fleas it took antimology two times to get rid of them. Anyways, our Doby got tape worm twice in a month and the vet said it was the fleas. So, your bunnies and squirrels probable have fleas and that is what's causing the dogs to have them. Ew all around, right?
Ew is right... but at least my dogs don't have fleas too. Yet.
As far as food for your dgs are concerned. I think your best bet might be raw. There are quite a few good websites on info on feeding raw. TBH, feeding raw is sometimes not quite as expensive as people think as animals eat alot less of it than they do commercial food. Commercial food contained a lot do fillers while your dogs will actually absorb most of the raw and be satsfied faster. As far as the buunies and squirrels perhaps it would be helpful to fereeze them for a couple of weeks to get rid of any parasites.
In a perfect world I would do raw, but even though I know you're right about them eating less then, I still don't think I could afford it. I have two dogs, one is 32 lbs and would eat like nothing... but my problem with her would be that she utterly refuses to eat raw meat. Yeah, she's a weird dog in a lot of ways. She catches the bunnies and squirrels and my other dog eats them...
And my other dog is 100 lbs of muscle and energy. I could afford to feed the other one alone, but not the big one. He would need to eat 2-4 lbs of food a day, according to the raw feeding guides I've looked at. My family doesn't eat that much meat a day because we can't afford it, I'm not going to feed to to my dog! Maybe if my husband hunted or we had some other super cheap source of meat.
For me personally, 10 acres would be enough. It'd give me room for 2-3 chicken coops (for clan breeding or diff breeds), a barn for goats/kidding, enough pasture for the goats/birds, & an area for a good house for a LGD. The rest of the area would be permaculture - food forest, berry bushes & some rinky-dink raised beds for 'show'.
Any more land than that and I'd need hirelings. Bleh.
What's your ideal, Ashdoes? Adding in livestock you want.
Lol, one acre. We have 2.5 and I feel over-whelmed. I made him fence just an acre for the backyard, and I'll be filling it with trees and berry bushes, lots of chickens and maybe a couple goats. I love the look of over grown and filled in, and that's easier in smaller spaces. I won't get my way though, we'll pay this off by military retirement and rent it out while we move to a bigger piece of property....because if you go to war, I basically say yes to anything you ask for.
We have 2.6 acres and were overwhelmed at first but have now (more or less!) got it under control. The hardest part for me was getting the right equipment for the jobs we needed to do. We didn't even own a mower when we moved here! I don't have even close to all of it utilized the way I would like it, but I'm on my way. There's still some territorial conflict going on over the top yard (the house is on a hill and most of the yard slopes down, but there's a big expanse of yard, probably a little less than an acre including where the house sits, that's just open grass) between my husband and I. He likes grass, I hate it and think it's useless (well, not totally, chickens like to graze on it and cows eat it, but that's all it's good for!) and would like to get rid of most of it in favor of garden beds, fruit trees, etc. He hates mowing around the nonsense I do (but I do it anyway!). But most of the rest is fruit trees, my very large garden, walnut trees, an oak grove, and chicken pens. It's a process.
I think I could handle 40 (maybe more) acres by myself (more or less, I'd need help occasionally) because if I had that much I'd raise cattle (and possibly other large stock, but definitely cattle) and a few horses to ride to check said cattle. So like 1/2-1 acre for the house and surrounding permaculture beds, 2 or so for fruit trees and shrubs and a large annual garden, then the rest would just be pasture and hay ground. Why don't I list chickens? I'd probably have a coop near the house for breeding and raising chicks, and just because I love having chickens around the yard, but if I had that much property and the resources to buy/build all the necessary infrastructure, I would do intensive rotational grazing and follow the cattle with chickens, which would be housed in large mobile houses. And obviously I would need a LGD to guard the chickens... See, I have it all planned out! The only thing missing is the money to fund said idea...
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I really LOVED watching my first (and only so far) mamma w/the new kiddos. I could have just sat and watched for hours. I observed her telling them different things like, "Here's food" "Come here NOW" "Freeze" and others. Pretty interesting how she talked to them and how they responded. Amazing thing to me was that she was a hatchery chick herself that had no mama. Just knew what to "say" and do.
I think it will be amazing and just as exciting every time (if I could just get someone to cooperate out there
)
Nope, it never gets old! My first broody was a hatchery chick, too, and she's my best broody to date.
Here you go .... as that VIDEO IS LONG and unnecessarily LONG ... I think I have in memorized so here goes nothing
1. take a cup or so of rice and soak it in a cup or so of water .... shake it up, stir it ... whatever ... you get cloudy rice water.
2. Put this in a jar with plenty of headroom.... cover with a paper towel let stand for a week it will turn yellowish & grow some scum....
3. Strain off scum
4. Add Milk to the liquid ... 10 parts to 1 part
5. Put in glass jar with plenty of headroom , loosely cover with paper towel let stand a week
6. Curd will form liquid will be yellow
7. Strain Curds leaving LAB liquid
8. Feed Curd to chickens
9. put LAB into fridge for up to 1 year or mix 1 to1 with molasses and it can sit out on counter and be stored for up to 3 years!
TO USE: 20 parts water to 1 part LABs liquid ... mix & spray
EASY
I keep seeing people refer to LAB's... I know what they are, and now I know how to make them, but what are they for?
Yeah, I've used nustock on the legs. It is just that you can't tell if progress is made - I've never seen the scales that have lifted come completely off. So it contnues to look as if there is an active infestation. I try to keep up with treating, and preventive treatment of clean legs, but maybe a year later I'll notice a hen who was previously scaley leg mite FREE start to have the mites.
Could be the huge number of wild birds in the coop run, who knows.
garlic in feed would be easier than continuing to treat legs preventatively, but the amount of garlic might be too costly for me. especially since this years garlic crop is tiny as moles destroyed it over winter in the garden.
Not to be a pain-in-the-butt know-it-all, but moles are insectavores. It's a common misconception that moles eat roots, bulbs, and root crops, but it's not true. They may nibble a veggie here or there, but never enough to do much damage. It was more likely pocket gophers, which are really common here in MN. I tell you this not to be a know-it-all (well, that might be part of it) but because it may help you control them if you know what is actually stealing your crop!
