Chicken Thistle Farm CoopCast

Updates this week on the farm: We learned that Ollie is no more on the farm we took him to, Hay and livestock trailer, The seasons final chicken processing, 5 gallon bucket waterer gauge, And a question - what makes you happy when farming? In the Veggie Patch: Tomatoes and canning, Succession planting, We discuss the results of the above ground potato growing method (from coopcast 014) Questions, Conversations and Ruminations: We get asked all the time "Don't you get attached to your animals?" Can you care about the animals you eat for meat? Is it better to not like them? Is that why we've gone to a system of mistreatment?

This weeks farming updates include a lot of rain and finally a little warmth. We were about to get the snow fence down and watch the pastures start to turn a little green. We started allowing customers to pre-order pastured chickens this week and we are almost already sold out. We found a dead chicken in the coop... looks like a heart attack. In the green house we have been potting up tomatoes and making soil blocks.The Farmers Choice segment this week answers the question we posed in CoopCast 065 about how do manage a sick pig. In the segment we:Follow up on pig illnessShare some of the thoughts our listeners had like call vet, ask Walter, check poopShare what the farmers did which included emailed Walter, posted on boards, called who we bought from, talked to large animal vetWe found that the Pigsite and Merck vet manual were quite helpfulPenicillin and tetracycline - when antibiotics and the farm work together.In a Farm U segment we talk about the notion out there that you can "breed resistance" to disease into your animals and how that's not really accurate.Resistance to disease/ building a better herd has a role in breeding but genetics isn't the whole story. The stauts of host- Nutrition, stress, normal flora, etc all impact the likelihood of an animal getting sick when exposed to the pathogen. In most cases it's less about genetics and "resistance" and more about infectious dose of the organism.

Want to get people fired up and yelling for no reason - mention raw milk... which we did and this episode dissects the fun that follows. But before we got to that conversation we talked about spring planting plans and the beehives!

This episode is mostly listener questions that we answer about our hoop house, construction methods, and gardening inside the hoop house. We also touch on garden planning and winter beekeeping. Hoop house hoop bender - http://www.lostcreek.net/ Hoophouse book -

Don't you love it when people say something exciting, positive, motivational and then... add in the BUT! We just announced last week that new episodes are on the table - here's the BUT.