The Old Folks Home

[pennyJo1960]

We had 2 days with snow nice powder was fine but left
and none since

I like the snow

 

[microchick]

Wickedchicken6, the funny thing about the Amish around us, is that they all tend to over graze their land with little concern towards long term stewardship. Most of their pastures look like golf courses. To make matters worse they graze the timber. Even sheep hoofs can damage hardwood roots and as you undoubtedly know, cattle eat everything that doesn't crawl away from them except hickory. We have a surplus of hickory trees and are trying to restore native oaks. I understand their need to run their cattle in ravines during the winter to protect them from wind but most have their cattle in the timber during the summer to 'clear it out'. We have 20+ acres of native timber that when we bought our property looked like a park. It is only during the past three years that we have been seeing a return of ground cover and TURKEYS! I love my wild turkeys. It's not unusual to see a flock of 20-30 in our front yard over the winter months. I have to remember to pick up a bag of corn for them next time out. I will hunt deer mercilessly but nobody dare raise a gun to my turkeys.

As for the sheep, we had Katahdins. They couldn't even handle the parasite load. I hated it. There was one ewe in the flock that I named 'Madonna' She was the sweetest animal and gave birth to twin lambs in our pasture. She was part of our neighbor's flock and his final decision was to sell the whole flock...and by more Katahdins that he was sure would be more parasite resistant than the the ones he had.

We had showed him all the information that the Home Extension flock specialist had sent us including educational films on keeping sheep but he just didn't understand the need to do parasite control. I even asked my husband if he thought we could keep Madonna and her lambs. He'd grown fond of her also and reminded me that our grass was so heavily infested with parasites that it wouldn't be fair to them. Maybe some day.

As it is now, I'm pretty aggressive with my parasite program with our chickens. They say coccidia has a limited lifespan in the soil without a host. As for the other parasites, I'm not taking any chances.

 

[whoop whoop]

We use flubendazole powder in the feed for chickens, it is more effective for worms and does the wild birds as well.

 

[Alaskan]

It is good to open up forests.... it just depends on how you do it.

Trees can grow in such a thick dense stand that it stunts them all and causes erosion since no ground cover can grow. It is good to prune the woods a bit so trees can grow big and tall and thick, and so enough sunlight reaches the ground for ground covers to grow.

The trick though is you need to have at least a few areas that you prune by hand....not by animals, since the animals will eat the tasty things first...with the result of no berry bushes and no fruit trees and such.

As for turkeys... you do not want the undergrowth and brush to get too thick, they need to be able to move about easily. Their favorite nesting spots are the middle of large bunch grasses, like bluestem.

Bunch grasses are usually the first grasses to disappear under heavy grazing, and they are the best habitat for all ground dwelling birds. As bunchgrass grows it makes a donut. The donut hole is a perfect nest, the donut ring of grass is perfect camouflage, and the paths between the bunch grasses make great highways for the little birds to run.


For a good (or bad?) example of how constant sheep grazing will turn a forest of massive trees into a lawn without a single tree to be seen...look at Iceland, most of Ireland, and lots of England and Scotland. All of those places started out as dense forests with massive thick trunked trees.

Moderation is key..... and you have to keep watch on the plants that are most sensitive to grazing pressure.

 

[Wickedchicken6]

I'm aware that cattle will eat the bottom leaves of trees around here because I've seen pastures with the lovely and very evenly manicured bottoms of trees in cattle pastures. Those pastures are typically eaten down quite well. I'm pretty sure our cattle would turn up their noses at anything less than great hay. I doubt they'd eat course slough hay if their lives depended on it. Our cattle are somewhat spoiled.

We maintain a body condition of about 3.5 to a 4 for winter, just perfect to have a healthy calf but not so much that they have calving trouble or have trouble with ketosis. They have a nice jiggle as DH would say. They may get down to a 3 or maybe as low as a 2.5 with a robust calf on them. But our cows have never touched trees or anything else so I'm really not that knowledgeable about what they'll eat in that respect. I haven't had any experience with that.

This timber you speak of...is it on flat land? Do you have pictures? I'm having a hard time to picture this. We have "sloughs." Sloughs are a low spot in the field where poplars and sometimes willows grow around the low spot. Some people clear their land and drain the low spots. We haven't done this. Each clump of trees growing is a slough. The trees are dying around the sloughs now because they've been sitting in water for too long. The only other trees we have is if we plant trees for wind breaks around yard sites.




Here's what some people's land looks like around us. Pretty wide open.

Turkeys. I love turkeys.

That's seemed to be what some people did up here as well......a lot of people jumped into getting Dorper sheep thinking they would be the answer. They weren't. No animal is a magic animal...they perform as well as they're taken care of. I've done like you and learned as much as I could. I'm still learning...lol. That would have been really hard to make the decisions you did, but in your situation it sounds like you made the best choices. If you did decide to one day try Katahdins again...you'd be in a much better position.

I've asked my vet if I should do a float test and he is resistant to the idea. He doesn't think I should have any deworming concerns. I may have to press the issue...I don't want issues with that. I want to catch things before I have things show up.



Flubendazole powder. That sounds quite close to our fendbendazole (safeguard) dewormer.

 

[Wickedchicken6]

It is good to open up forests.... it just depends on how you do it.

Trees can grow in such a thick dense stand that it stunts them all and causes erosion since no ground cover can grow. It is good to prune the woods a bit so trees can grow big and tall and thick, and so enough sunlight reaches the ground for ground covers to grow.

The trick though is you need to have at least a few areas that you prune by hand....not by animals, since the animals will eat the tasty things first...with the result of no berry bushes and no fruit trees and such.

As for turkeys... you do not want the undergrowth and brush to get too thick, they need to be able to move about easily. Their favorite nesting spots are the middle of large bunch grasses, like bluestem.

Bunch grasses are usually the first grasses to disappear under heavy grazing, and they are the best habitat for all ground dwelling birds. As bunchgrass grows it makes a donut. The donut hole is a perfect nest, the donut ring of grass is perfect camouflage, and the paths between the bunch grasses make great highways for the little birds to run.


For a good (or bad?) example of how constant sheep grazing will turn a forest of massive trees into a lawn without a single tree to be seen...look at Iceland, most of Ireland, and lots of England and Scotland. All of those places started out as dense forests with massive thick trunked trees.

Moderation is key..... and you have to keep watch on the plants that are most sensitive to grazing pressure.

You have a forest too? Everyone has forests. With donut holes.

 

[getaclue]

Fresh basil works fine too. I used dried, because it's more readily available to me. The chickens will eat some of it, but it's actually good for them. Replenish as needed.

 

[Alaskan]

You have a forest too?  Everyone has forests. With donut holes.

In some spots...some spots are open...

I do have some small stands of dog hair spruce (spruce growing as close together as hairs on a dogs back), and I was looking at them when we were doing our yearly "hike the property while looking for tge perfect Christmas tree". I really need to thin them out come summer. Growing so tightly together is bad for lots of reasons...one more is that some are looking diseased. They are fighting so hard for space to grow, that they aren't able to stay healthy.


As to cattle and tree eating..... they usually aren't anywhere near as bad as sheep (sheep will pull out a seedling and eat the root..the cow will just nibble the top..might grow back) or as goats (goats strip all the bark and so kill the entire tree...cows usually just eat the tips).

However, cows can "prune" the trees much more than you might like, and will eat tasty berry plants to the ground. Cattle usually put more pressure on the woody stuff when 1. There is no grass or hay to be found and 2. The weather is cold and nasty, since there is high nutrition in the woody stuff.


By the way..... your sloughs are excellent for wildlife. Lots if open area, with some thick growth areas are great for lots of wildlife.....sad to see them die back.

Was it two years back? Texas was going through the whatever drought year in a row...driving through far west Texas, it was something else seeing the 100 year old oaks all dead. As far as the eye could see...giant oaks dead.

Looking at it in the grand scheme of things though ...these things happen.... Texas at one point was desert, at one point was rainforest, and at one point was about half underwater. (As a kid I always thought it was a trip...8 hours drive from the ocean, picking up fossilized sea shells)

 

[Alaskan]

Oh... the donut holes are in the grass....in bunch grasses.

 

[drumstick diva]

AW Alaskan

, would you ever like to go back to Texas? I bet you could find an isolated area to keep you happy.