I read a comment in one report that the most frequent causes if
mortality in Barbados lambs ***in the feedlot*** are coccidiosis and
parasites.
I imagine in Barbados as in America, if they are going to the feedlot
model to raise lambs, they are subjecting them not only to a highly
unnatural environment, but also probably selecting for things like high
performance on concentrate rations (that make the gut sick anyway, which
is an invitation to parasites) as opposed to the things the family
farmer (or nature) would be selecting for. I could be TOTALLY wrong,
but feedlot equals unnatural to me, a situation that promotes all sorts
of sicknesses in the animals.
I suspect this is where a lot of the hardiness of livestock breeds has
gone. My understanding is that in the cattle industry, producers have
been urged to crossbreed to the point where there are few consistent
gene pools, other than the high performing feedlot bulls that would
starve to death in an average pasture. Big cows that are too expensive
to feed and can't put on the marbling from grass that is necessary for
edible beef. They HAVE to be feedlotted.
This is where I feel that the more people attend to the business of true
animal husbandry, working to reestablish the genetic strengths that kept
livestock alive before it became all about commodities markets and
chemicals, the more we'll secure our own future wellbeing. Maybe if
more of us small farmers take the ram by the horns, so to speak, and
work on our breed(s) to intensify those characteristics that made the
pure Barbados so desirable in the first place, we'll be unwittingly
doing our food chain a favor in the process.
It's not a bad thought, returning farming to the small farmer. But the
small farmer has to accept that he's not going to survive long buying
drugs, pesticides, fertilizers and all the rest that we're supposed to
need to keep our animals propped up, and expect to come out smelling
like a rose in the end. The animals need to be returned to a state of
health, they need to be managed to maintain that health (which isn't an
accident), and it helps a lot if the soil is managed like a living
organism that lives or dies by the hand of the farmer.
I'll get off my soapbox now, but it's important to me to plant the seed
wherever I can, that you really can't judge what's real by starting with
a flawed model. I don't know if Barbados sheep are suddenly dying willy
nilly because of worms, or if this is a disease of the feedlot paradigm,
as I read about. It's a road to nowhere, except more and more
genetically weak animals unless careful selection takes place.
Barb
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