I believe that the important job of helping to conserve historic and rare breeds of livestock from yesterday go together well with conserving the land for tomorrow.
Modern farming practices ignore the wise old saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." Mono-cultures seem to be the rule rather than the exception, farms have miles and miles of corn and soy beans, others have hundreds of Holstein cows... in fact 91% of America's milk comes from this one breed and if a disease to which Holsteins are genetically susceptible were to break out there could be major shortages of dairy products. Genetic diversity, strength, vigor, longevity and mothering skills are being lost in many farm animals. By allowing the minor breeds to all but disappear we may be loosing a thing of future, as well as historic value. We can never see what the future holds and, it could be of immense importance to be able to reintroduce some of the survival skills which allowed these older breeds of animals to evolve. In contrast some man made breeds have become so far from what nature intended that they need humans to survive... cows whose udders have been shaped to fit the milking machine instead of a calf's mouth, turkeys so obsenely large that they cannot reproduce naturally, chickens bred to grow at such an accellerated rate that they start to outgrow their own organs by 12 weeks of age, sows so removed from the act of mothering that without a farrowing crate tend to crush too many of their young...
The Milking Devon was the cow of the pioneer, it was the first breed of cattle to cross the Appalachians. They were brought into the Plymouth Colony from Devonshire, England in 1623. The Spanish had earlier introduced cattle in the South, but Devons were the first cattle imported from Britain and played a large role in the pioneer family's lives. They were a triple purpose animal, used as draught animals as well as providing milk and meat. They have excellent mothering skills, very few problems with calving and thrive on pasture. These animals are critically rare, with a world population of less than 500 females.
We started with two Milking Devon heifer calves, half sisters Valentine and Autumn.
When Valentine was a baby she would have three bottles a day, so each of the girls would be responsible for one set time. This worked well, but sometimes she would be a little stubborn about taking her bottle if the wrong mother was there for that particular feeding. This was especially so with her first feed of the day. When a school group visited we hoped that the children would get a chance to feed her, but she absolutely refused to take her bottle even though it was several hours late. As soon as Stephanie held the bottle she drank it greedily. As time went by she seemed to be getting more strongly attached to just Stephanie, who became fully responsible for the bottles while Madeleine and Rhianon give Valentine and Autumn their daily ration of grain.
Due to two very bad hay years I dispersed my Devon herd, two good friends now have most of the cows and "my" bull Chucky.
Gemini was the last Devon born here, as you may guess by her name she was a twin, the second set that her mother Music has had. She and her sister were born in January 2004, three weeks premature on a bitterly cold morning. A full term calf would probably survive arriving when the temperature is -27, but small premature twins are a different story. Twin #1 was covered in ice when we discovered them, luckily Gem was freshly born and still had a chance.
We brought them into the heated garage and tried to warm the first born twin, but she was too far gone. Gem was weak but we managed to get her to take some colostrum from a bottle. For a few days she was drinking Jersey colostrum then we slowly changed over to Jersey milk for two weeks, then started adding goat milk. By four weeks old she was on just goat milk and at six weeks of age she figured out where it was coming from and started helping herself.
June 7, 2003. This was the first Milking Devon birth that I saw... even though I was in the house several hundred feet away. I grabbed my camera and was down there in time to get some pictures of Elsie bonding with her new baby.
I really enjoyed this time watching mother and daughter get to meet each other. For a little while the baby had trouble working out where the faucet was and Elsie was getting a little agitated, positioning herself with the calf near her udder, but the calf kept coming to her momma's face. Eventually she got it right and had her first feed.
I am sad that we no longer have Milking Devons but I am happy with where most of my herd went. They are in good hands and I keep in touch with my friends who now own them. I was lucky to find homes for the young bulls with dairy farmers wanting the Milking Devon genetics in their herds.
You can find out more about Milking Devons at these websites:
With the advent of tractors, farmers were turned against their horses by tractor salesmen who [I'm sure] coined the phrase "Hay burners", making horses seem like nothing but a waste of hay. So most of the farmers gave way to "progress", sold the horses and bought a tractor. This did make their work a lot easier, but the tractors don't reproduce and eventually most tractors become as obsolete as the horse they replaced. It seems that back in the days of horse power most farmers could make a living on the farm, whereas today the small farmer is almost extinct, with a high percentage of the survivors needing a day job to support the farm...
Because of the mid to late 20th century love affair with fossil fuel powered devices we almost lost that wonderful animal, the draft horse, but luckily a few farmers held onto their horses. Farming with horses may not just be a thing of the past with a few oddballs and the Amish hanging on. In time there will probably be a rebirth of this almost lost skill. The Draft Horse Journal has an interesting article, What Does Progress Mean. In it Ohio State University Extension agent Randy James concludes "Net income on an Amish farm, can be ten times higher per acre than on a modern, high-tech farm."
We now own a Shire mare, a Clydesdale mare and a Drum Horse filly, you can see their pictures on our horses page
The American Livestock Conservancy's Conservation Priority List criteria is:
Critical: Fewer than 200 annual registrations in the United States and estimated fewer than 2000 global population.
Threatened: Fewer than 1000 annual registrations in the United States and estimated fewer than 5000 global population.
Watch: Fewer than 2500 annual registrations in the United States and estimated fewer than 10,000 global population. Also included are breeds with genetic or numerical concerns or limited geographic distribution.
Recovering: Breeds which were once listed in another category and have exceeded Watch category numbers but are still in need of monitoring.
The Suffolk Punch originated in Eastern England in the Suffolk and Norfolk counties.
Watch:
The Shire was developed in the Midlands. Over the ages the horse was know by many different names including, the Great Horse, the War-Horse, the Cart Horse, the Old England Black Horse, the Lincolnshire Giant as well as the Shire.
The Clydesdale takes it name from the district in Scottland where it was founded.
Recovering:
The Percheron originated in the province of Le Perche, near Normandy, France
The Belgian as it's name implies, is native to the country of Belgium.
The Irish Draught is considered endangered with barely 2,000 purebreds worldwide.
The Large Black Pig, also knows as Cornwall, Devon or Lop-eared Black, was the breed of heritage pig that we thought would be most suitable for our operation. We had a pair of these pigs, they are calm, easily handled animals, our's were like dogs. Unfortunately our little gilt Pig-wig was injured and it didn't look like she would be suitable for breeding, and our other pigs would pick on her. So I gave her to my friend in WI who has three of my Devons. I think my friend has been watching too many movies because now Pig-wig helps herd sheep!
Our boar left his mark on our crossbred pigs, so many of them are black with big floppy ears.
We unknowingly acquired a pair of Nigerian Dwarf Goats from a neighbor who decided that he no longer wanted what he called his "Pygmy Goats". We told him that we would take them and he brought them to us. It was several weeks before I realised that these were not Pygmies at all so I went online searching for an answer to what these goats were and I discovered what they were.
Not long after they arrived Mary had twin bucks, they were really cute little guys and I was pleased when a young couple wanted them for pets. When the kids were sold Madeleine started milking Mary, who soon became very tame. Nigerian Dwarf goats have milk high in butterfat and it has a nice taste, so what was lacking in quantity was more than compensated by the quality and taste. Another good thing about these goats is that their size and gentle nature makes them a good starter goat for children.
Since Mary had become a useful productive animal we decided to get a few more of this breed of goats and bought three does; Chiquita, Gidget, and Cha-cha and a buck; Wookie from the Sedgwick County Zoo. They are really tame and love to follow people around....and because of their overly friendly nature we sold them to someone with a safer home for them. Chiquita and her twins just loved people so much that they would get into visitors cars, some people loved this while others were annoyed. We almost lost Chiquita when she was hit by a car... I could have kept them in a small pen or find them a new home, the new home won. We really miss these little goats as do many visitors to the farm, but they are better off away from cars.
Some breeds of chickens are designed to grow so quickly that they outgrow their organs and start dying at around three months of age. Their lives from egg to oven is usually 10 short weeks, they are slow moving overweight eating machines. We raised some of these once and I will never do it again, comparing them to the other breeds of chicks the same age made them appear even more pathetic. While the others ranged hundreds of feet away from their coop during the daylight hours, the Cornish cross chicks stayed within about twenty feet of their coop. When we took them to be processed we somehow missed one, so we decided to see how long she would live, being optimistic that in time she may become a normal chicken. We could always find her close to the chicken coop while the other chickens were scattered all over the farmyard. She lived for 6 months and was really starting to slow down to the point that we had decided to end her life before winter, but this didn't have to be done because one day she was too slow to move away from a car in our driveway.
Modern factory turkeys are little more than meat producing machines, bred for only for size with no attention to strength, stamina or longevity these pathetic creatures can't even breed naturally. To me they are the ultimate obscenity, showing what man's interference with Nature's beautiful work can produce.
The American Livestock Breed Conservancy classes poultry as "Critical" if there are fewer than 500 breeding birds in the United States, with five or fewer primary breeding flocks (50 birds or more), and globally endangered.
We have a selection of poultry listed as either critically rare or threatened, some of these breeds I have for their historic value, others just because I like the way they look and their personalities. In addition to these reasons are the more practical ones. The hens provide me with eggs to sell or incubate to produce the next generation, the roosters are a good size and will produce meat for our own use and to sell. The tom turkeys while not as large as the domestic varieties still provide a more than adequate size bird to put in the oven and our excess drakes and ganders serve the same purpose too.
The rare Dominique Chickens are often referred to as America's first breed of chicken. It was developed from English breeds introduced to New England in the early years of settlement. They are dual purpose chickens, a reasonable size bird for meat purposes and a good layers of brown eggs.
Welsh Harlequin ducks are listed as critically rare, they originated in 1949 in Wales from two mutant light colored ducklings hatched from pure Khaki Campbells by Leslie Bonnet. The American Poultry Association scheduled a tentative show for their admittance to officially recognize the breed in October of 2001. These ducks have a great personality, and are good egg layers. We also have Buff and Cayuga ducks which are both listed as rare.
The critically rare American Buff Goose is descended from the wild Greylag goose, which is found in Europe and Northern Asia, this breed was admitted to the American Poultry Association's Standard of Perfection in 1947.
Buffy and Pricilla with their three day old babies ready for release after four long weeks waiting.
Buffy and her goslings checking out Goosey and Bad-boy's nest the day after the Canada goslings [seen on the road in the background] hatched.
A few years ago a woman came here wanting to buy geese or ducks to live on her pond, so we sold her our pair of buff geese which Stephanie didn't like because the male often chased her. Two days later Dick was talking to our neighbor Jack who told him that he had seen a goose walking through his fields and heading toward the highway. Dick asked me to describe the goose to Jack and I told him that it was a rather large light tan colored goose "That's him" he told me, "and by the speed he was going he should be there by now". I looked out the window and sure enough there he was with his girlfriend "Hiss" who we had kept. They were talking goose talk to each other. Now this gander had walked about three miles, part way up a hill, down the other side, across Highway 43 and through some pretty wild coyote/fox territory, through the creek and up the hill to the farm yard. I have no idea how he found his way home, but he did.
I pointed him out to Stephanie, expecting her to be upset at his return. She said "It's good that he came home", I said to her "But I thought you didn't like him", to which she replied "I don't, but we will never make him go away again." Rhianon phoned the woman who had bought the geese to tell her of B2's return, she told Rhianon that Buffy was sad and offered to bring her back too.
The next spring Buffy and Pricilla [Canada goose] set up house in one nest box, Pricilla, a widow moved in with Buffy, a jilted wife whose husband, was off having a good time with Hiss, an African goose. They would take turns in sitting on the eggs but at times became a little boisterous and I was concerned that the eggs may be damaged so I set up a duplex for them. Upon candling Pricilla's eggs I found them to be infertile and gave her two of Buffy's eggs. Their neighbors Goosey and Bad-boy [Canada geese] moved in a couple of weeks later and Bad-boy became aggressive beating up on Pricilla each time she left her home, so security bars [a cage] was installed to keep her safe in her own home. The day came and goslings hatched, Pricilla and Buffy were so proud, Bad-boy's attitude softened as he sat on the roof of his neighbors house watching the goslings. Three days later the proud new mothers were released from the maternity ward and set off on new adventures with their babies. Buffy's faithless spouse suddenly regained interest in his wife and became a proud father in spite of his wife's obvious indiscretion... the proof of which is visible in the form of a cute little half Buff, half White Chinese gosling. Pricilla has become more of an aunt than a mother and comes and goes from the goslings lives, obviously upset that her "friend" went back to her husband.
This is their page about the health benefits of grass feeding, not only to the animals, but to humans too.
Just as important as saving breeds of animals is the setting in which we live, work. learn and play.
Sustainable Settings
is a demonstration and research project designed to focus community life around meaningful and environmentally sustainable practices.
Mission Statement: "We are dedicated to providing investment resources, including stocks and mutual fund investment resources, to those who are looking to make ethical investments. The Techniques and Philosophy section will serve as a suggested guideline for investing ethically. The ever-growing Resources sections for positive, ethical investments will be contrasted with the example of Monsanto, one of the world's most unethical investments that could be made so that investors will know what to avoid when investing responsibly."
When considering the whole picture we must also think of plants and seed.
I recently purchaced some seed from Heirloom Seeds and was very pleased with their prices and how quickly the seeds were delivered. I had been looking for an old favorite "Queensland Blue Pumpkin" and it was through doing a search for this type of pumpkin [or as you call them here "squash"] that I found their site. While I was there I decided to try a few other varieties too, I'm especially looking forward to tasty home grown tomatoes.
Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) is a nonprofit tax-exempt organization that is saving "heirloom" (handed-down) garden seeds from extinction. SSE's 8,000 members grow and distribute heirloom varieties of vegetables, fruits, grains, SSE's main focus is on heirloom varieties that gardeners and farmers brought to North America when their families immigrated, and traditional varieties grown by Native Americans, Mennonites and Amish. Since SSE was founded in 1975, our members have distributed an estimated 750,000 samples of endangered seeds not available through catalogs and often on the verge of extinction. SSE has always been the leader of the heirloom seed movement, and the diligent efforts of our members are making rare heirloom varieties available to gardeners everywhere.
Their Mission statement: "United Plant Savers' mission is to protect native medicinal plants of the United States and Canada and their native habitat while ensuring an abundant renewable supply of medicinal plants for generations to come."
