Birchtree Farm

We picked up our new ram, Flint, on Labor Day. He is a spunky little guy. He was born this year, in April, so he's just a young'un but should be ready for breeding by November. Actually, he's probably ready NOW, but we're not. :-) We don't want lambs in February. So, he'll have to wait a bit.

He's been sheared since these pics were taken, and he looks quite different without 6 inches of fleece on. The first day he looked quite comical to us (all horns and rumen) but now we've gotten used to it.

Link: http://www.noanimalid.com/

The National Animal Identification System is on the way. Haven't heard of it? It's an initiative by the USDA, agribusiness, and microchip-making companies to require the tagging of every animal to include cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, poultry, rabbits, camelids, horses, and farmed fish. It's being implemented on the state level, with some states already mandating compliance. The database probably will be "privatized" which means very little privacy protection for you and your data. What's in the database, you ask?

Contact name, address, and phone number for the "premises" on which the animals reside, or the same information for any site where animals may "commingle", such as vet's offices, and fairgrounds. Further, the GPS coordinates of each such premise must be provided. Any animal movement on or off a registered premise must be provided to the government within 24 hours. Take your horse on a trail-ride? Don't forget to let the government know. Take your chickens to the fair? Both you and the fair must report the movement of your chickens. How is this accomplished? Each animal recieves a unique animal identification number (AIN), which is connected in the database to the unique premises identification number (PIN). Groups of animals that live together their whole lives from birth to slaughter (for example, pigs or broilers on production farms) may be assigned a group identification number (GIN) instead of individual numbers. So large producers are essentially spared much of the labor and tag buying that smaller producers will have to do in order to track individual animals. Very convenient for them.

It's basically governmental surveillance of private property on a massive scale. Does it trample on our rights? Of course. But so few people know about it that relatively few alarms have been raised.

Who is going to pay for it? The USDA says that producers will have to "share costs". Uh huh. No one is really able to say though what the costs will be. Is there going to be a fee for reporting animals movements to the tracking database? No one has said. What about the fee to obtain a PIN? Can you say "license to farm"? I knew you could. Whenever the government requires you to apply for something and pay a fee to be allowed to do it, they then have given themselves the ability to *deny* you the right to do that thing. You have to get a license to drive a car right? No license, no driving. Or if you do, you can be fined or spend time in the pokey. If your livelihood is based on raising livestock, but you have to get your PIN from the government in order to do this, you are at their mercy.

The claim is that we need this system to prevent and track future disease outbreaks within 48 hours of the reporting of a given disease. Well, the system will do exactly nothing to prevent a disease outbreak. How can it? Will they be able to track where an animal was and what other animals it contacted? Probably. But this could be done (and has been done) with our current systems. And what is the point of tracking a cow infected with BSE (mad cow disease) over the last 48 hours? She contracted the disease years ago. And even if the NAIS worked perfectly, would this justify subjecting millions of citizens to increased costs, paperwork, and invasion of privacy? No.

They say we need the system in order to assure overseas consumers that our products are safe. But at the same time they say we have the safest food in the world. Well, which is it? I say that if producers want to voluntarily enter such a system because they believe it will open more overseas markets, fine and dandy. Let those who want to participate do so, and let the rest of us alone.

We are, by the way, participating in the Voluntary Scrapie Program. Key word: voluntary. And we don't have to pay a fee yearly or risk having agents descend to impose fines for non-compliance or threaten to seize our animals. We can opt out at any time if we wish.

Read for yourself:
http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/

And a good proposal for revision of NAIS can be seen here:
http://www.texaslonghorn.net/pr/index.cfm?con=dd_plan

Rose is a pet. She comes right up to you, looking for that scoop or bucket you must certainly be carry that contains the pelleted feed. What? You mean you *aren't* carrying the bucket of yummy pellets? What's wrong with you? You're supposed to bring it! Well, at least you can scratch my head while you're here.

At least I think that's what she's thinking. I'm reduced to sneaking out of my own house in the morning when I walk the dogs so as not to be spotted by Rose, who will loudly demand that I come and bring the yummies NOW (even though they never get them in the morning, only the evening). As soon as she sees you, she begins a loud complaint. And she's teaching the others to do it too. I don't want them to wake the neighborhood at 6 or 6:30am, hence the sneaking.

But what's neat is that you can recognize their individual voices. Rose is obvious - a long drawn out deep bawl. Quinn sounds more like what people usually think of sheep sounding like - "baa-aa-aa-aa". Cozette sounds like she's got a frog in her throat and she can only get out a couple of croaky "Baa-aa"'s. Orange is somewhere in between.

Anyway, so far no one has complained. The neighbors on one side have two big dogs who bark and growl out their windows at anyone within sight, so they have nothing to complain about. And at least our sheep aren't up having bonfires or playing music till the wee hours on weekends. The other neighbors have expressed only interest or even delight that we have sheep. One said her father used to have a sheep named "Nottingham" that would follow him around like a dog, and even follow him into town on his walks.

Our new ram will be arriving in early September. I wonder what he will sound like? :-)

Yesterday I went out to top up the water tank, and found our ram lamb lying dead by one of our big cottonwood trees. He was only 3.5 months old. Not a great thing to have happen when you've only been shepherds for a total of about 10 days. He had been wormed several times by the breeder; the last time was two days before we picked up the sheep and brought them home. He was coughing when we got him home, and the next day, so we were advised to give him a shot of antibiotic. We did so, and also gave him a vitamin/energy solution called Nutri-Drench. For the next week he seemed to be doing better as far as the cough. Everyone got a dose of Selenium/Vitamin E gel on Friday to give them a boost (sheep need more of these nutrients).

Then we got a pretty bad heat wave. That day the heat index had gone as high as 105. When we got home all the sheep came to greet us except for Indico, who came only so far and then stopped and just stood still. I realize now he was probably very weak and was only trying to keep up with the rest of the flock, but couldn't quite do it. Sometime that night he died.

So we buried him in the pasture, and let the breeders know. They had also lost a ram lamb a few days after we had picked up our sheep. It seems perhaps the worms had become resistant to the standard wormer, and so they dosed anyone who seemed to need it with a different and stronger wormer. We may end up doing the same. The breeders are going to replace him for us, when it gets cooler, since breeding season doesn't come until the fall anyway. We really appreciate all their help and their willingness to replace Indico for us.

Link: http://www.homestead.org/SheriDixon/TheUnsungBenefitsofHomesteading.htm