What do you want to know? I can help on the sheep side of things. Organic farmers don't use any chemical parasite control - they rotate the sheep around the paddocks after a set period of time and give the paddock time to 'rest' and minimise the chance of them getting parasites. I think some of the trouble with the 'organic' label is that it is not truly organic. It takes 20 years to get a AAA organic certification for you land, so even if your sheep are 'organic', your land may not be. I'll have to check DH's diaries to confirm exactly what we give them by way of vaccines and parasite control.
Wellllll, basically, I want to know how often you drench, what with (ivomectin etc) also any sprays/dips/tags for flies/ticks.
What and how often you fertilze your paddocks and what you use for weed control.
Also, can I assume that meat I buy in the stupormarket is grass fed unless otherwise stated?. Ie, is supplimentary feeding with commercial pellets something you routinly do?
Also. are you like chicken farmers who are contracted to work for a company?, (like Inghams) or do you manage your own stock and just send it off to public market?
I love the concept of organic, but I grow my own chooks, and there is no way I am not treating them for parasites before I eat them lol.
I am just wondering how many "bad" things there really are in your average cow.
Last edited by Livinthedream; February 3rd, 2012 at 05:58 PM.
: added q's
With beef, most of it is Grain fed unless otherwise stated as grassfed, but they changed the advertising laws concerning beef and now terms such as 'grass fed' 'supplemented with grain' etc are now illegal to use and the only way they can advertise beef is by age, so yearling, weaner, intermediate etc. All the big supermarkets use lot fed beef as they have a higher turnover. They would have you believe that they trawl the saleyards buying beef from local farmers all of the time, but most of their beef comes from feedlots.
We use 6-1 vaccine for our lambs at marking time and we do use clik for fly control and occasionally we will dip or jet them with vetrazin to protect them from flies. We use firstmectin on the lambs when we drench them. We use a variety of things depending on what we want to treat them for. And we do use Cydectin. The vaccines are given to the lambs at about 2mths old and the ewes just after lambing. Drenches for parasites and flies are given as needed but usually on a 3-6 month cycle depending on what we use. They all have a withholding period before you can sell them after they have had it.
As for pesticides/herbicides, we use Estercide, lontrel, verdict, uptake, roundup, MCPA and a few others depending on what we are spraying (barley, wheat or canola etc) and what we are trying to kill (red legged earthmite, rust, fungi etc). We spray as it is needed. Usually once the crops have been sown and then after harvest in preparation for the new crop or to control weeds. We fertilise with Superphosphate, lime, urea and that is applied at sowing.
We feed our sheep grain (barley) and give them salt and mineral licks. They also have green pasture or dry feed (hay) depending on what is available during the year. We are not contracted to a company, we raise our own sheep and sell them at the closest market.
Anyone here a beef/sheep commercial farmer?
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