Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #163: Joel’s Homesteading Tips Q&A (Part Two)

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Episode #163: Joel’s Homesteading Tips Q&A (Part Two) · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: That year, so you know, we we would graze up around the chicken shelters, you know, with the cows, and we'd have this these feed in the you know, feed bins up around the chickens.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Cows never paid them any mind.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: The year we took out the meat and bone meal and put in the poultry neutral balancer from fur trail, the cows literally, I mean, I wish we'd had funniest home videos back in the day because the cows literally did gymnastics to try to climb in those feed, those feed tanks.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they would be up on their back legs, they would jump, they would, I mean, it, I mean, it was crazy.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never seen anything like it.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So what is going on here?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: What is different for the first time that these cows are are wanting to get into this chicken feed?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the only the only change we'd made was the for the poultry neutral balancer.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McCullough, and I'm here with our favorite farmer Joel Salatin.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: And Joel and I had so much fun with the first podcast on Joel's answers to your home study questions that we're doing a part two.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna jump right in.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, we'll get through with more than two questions this time.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: We got to beat our record, Joel.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this question comes from Christy Van Well.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Christy says, I just finished listening to the podcast episode discussing cow minerals.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: We've just gotten our very first Jersey dairy cow, and I've been researching minerals as I know very little about cattle.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're on a small homestead rotating to new small paddocks daily, wondering the best mineral setup for one single cow.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: We've started right now with just Redmond, garlic salt, and Thorvan kelp.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Is that enough or does she need more?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, this is uh always a great starter question, uh, Christy, and thank you for uh asking it.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, there are kind of two really big um schools of thought in, I'll just say, our uh our our movement.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: One is to give a cafeteria style, you know, uh like a uh imagine a credenza with you know 20 boxes, you know, and and and you put all the different kinds of minerals in the boxes and let the cows choose which one they want.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: There are people that think that's absolutely the you know, the cat's meow, and uh it works and and that's great.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: For one cow, I would consider that overkill.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, your uh your mineral tray is going to be bigger than your cow.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so it and and you know, it's very hard to move around and things like that.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have not gone to that here at our farm.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm certainly friends with people who have done this, what you know called a cafeteria style um uh mineral program, just partly because the the box that you have to put it in is so big, it becomes a you know a big movement problem.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we've used at our farm now for oh my goodness, decades, is very similar to what you're doing here, um, Christy, is just redmond salt and Thorvan kelp.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the beauty of kelp, you know, it's not cheap, but the beauty of Thorvan kelp, you know, there's three kinds of kelp.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: One's one's prime the the three major sources of kelp are one is Norway, it's called Algit.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: The one from Canada is called Acadian, and the one from uh Iceland is called Thorvin or Thorbic.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and um the the two the two kelps from Norway and Canada are dried with natural gas.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: The ones from uh Iceland are dried with geothermal, and it's a lot lower heat and doesn't burn as much.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: The the beauty of kelp, just in general, is that seawater has the same balance of minerals in it, 53 of them, that are in healthy blood, mammal, mammalian blood.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Your cows are mammals.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and so a lot of this mineral thing is not so much you know, volume of one over the other, it's balance.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: We've addressed that numerous times in numerous aspects on this podcast.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's about balance.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so the beauty of the seaweed is of the kelp is that those minerals are coming in in their natural blood balance, if you will, and they're naturally chelated.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So if the if the animal needs it, they uptake it, and if they don't, they excrete it.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: To me, that's a similar metabolic choice.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And seeing you can correct me if I'm not thinking correctly here, but um uh that in other words, rather than putting the 53 the 53 minerals out on a great big long cafeteria, you know, box of little cubicles, giving the cows kelp that their own body chooses.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm gonna take a bunch of iodine today, but I'm gonna secrete the boron.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's essentially a cafeteria program that the cow's metabolism itself is picking and choosing from the array of 53 trace minerals that are coming in on the kelp.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So in essentially, we're giving that cow uh that cafeteria of minerals that she's internalizing her decision making as opposed to us seeing her tongue make that decision, you know, out here in these boxes of the components of what's in the kelp.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, anytime you can get it more in its natural state, and the body will recognize it and knows how to metabolize that better, or like you said, excrete it when it doesn't need it.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: But it it has to be in that natural form.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm assuming when you have these um little containers of the minerals, um these are just isolated minerals, correct?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's like a supplemental program, like for that.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I would consider that like a human buying bottles of supplements versus like a human consuming the kelp, you know, for their minerals.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I would always choose to have the food version of it, you know, the way that God intended it to be in the food.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's you know, yeah, when you see these uh these box, these cafeteria box arrays, you know, there's there's some weird colors, you know.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's some yellow stuff and and and you know, all sorts of you know, sulfur and and weird things.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so anyway, yeah, I I think I think you're I think you're thinking right.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've certainly done that uh forever.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we use the we use the Thorband kelp, it's expensive, but um we literally, you know, we have uh tens of thousands of animals, and we literally do not have a vet bill.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: We do not have a vet bill.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's just uncalled, you know, unheard of for some for a you know a farm that has as many animals as we do.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then the redmond salt is good.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I also would recommend uh C90 is is fine too.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh these are both natural, they're not iodized salts.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: You you don't want iodized salt, you want to uh use a regular how to how to feed it to them, you know.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: The beautiful thing is that um if it gets wet, the cow doesn't care.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so we just use we just make wooden boxes.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, it's it's a wooden box, whatever, you know, 24 inches by 24 inches.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: I can pick it up, you know, it's got walls on it, whatever, you know, 11 inches high with one cow, you know, you could use a uh a box that's only 12 inches by 12 inches, uh, with sides six inches tall, and just put a um you know, a little bit in.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I I would I would mix this, I would put this about 50-50 uh and let the cow decide if it gets wet.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she'll you know, she'll she doesn't mind it being wet, at least ours don't.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and the salt keeps the wood from rotting, so it acts as a wood preservative.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean we've got boxes around here that we've had for many, many years, you know, that that we use.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we just we just move the box with the cow.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So um, and and and I would suggest that that box of mineral can become a wonderful land healing point for high impact.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: You got some brambles, you got some brush, you got some weeds, rocks.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'll set that mineral box where you want some manure and some animal impact, and uh, and you can get, you know, you can get some um some special land treatment, you know, uh as you as you give your mineral.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: But uh no, I think you're right on right on the money there, and um you'll have one happy cow uh being able to eat what she wants.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what we find is that they do fluctuate a lot.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: They'll go a week and not touch it, and then they go a week and they you think they're gonna bankrupt you.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: But they, you know, those animals, they're not watching TV, you know, they're not looking at uh advertising on uh, you know, on uh um YouTube.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, they know exactly what they need, and they, you know, they they uh eat it and and take it as necessary.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh related question is from Matt Bone, and he says, Joel, do you still solely use kelp for your cow mineral program?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so now you so you're saying you use the kelp and the salt in a 50-50 ratio.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, we don't actually.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was telling uh Christy here, our first question that what she's doing is okay.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want, I didn't want to complicate that.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna have to complicate it.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm glad I asked.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so we use one-third, one third, one third.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, kelp, the salt, and our other one-third, everybody will freak out about this, is Fur Trail's poultry neutral balancer.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, uh, so fur trail is a brand, they're a company up in Pennsylvania and they make natural um uh mineral supplements for uh for livestock.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And years and years ago, uh we used to use just the kelp and the salt.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we were in business and it was okay.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And um the year that we began putting that we took out the meat and bone meal from our chicken ration and started using um neutral balancer instead.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's another story for another show, and maybe we've shared it on here before, I don't know.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, um that year so you know we we would graze up around the chicken shelters, you know, with the cows, and we'd have this these feed in in the you know, feed bins up around the chickens.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Cows never paid them any mind.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: The year we took out the meat and bone meal and put in the poultry neutral balancer from fur trail, the cows literally, I mean, I wish we'd had funniest home videos back in the day because the cows literally did gymnastics to try to climb in those feed, those feed tanks.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they would be up on their back legs, they would jump, they would, I mean, it, I mean, it was crazy.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never seen anything like it.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: So what is going on here?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: What is different for the first time if these cows are are wanting to get into this chicken feed?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the only the only change we'd made was the for the poultry neutral balancer.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, well, if that's the only change, maybe they're maybe they're wanting something more, you know.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started putting the poultry neutral balancer in their mineral box.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and I I couldn't see anything, I you know, I couldn't see anything visibly different, but that fall we got three, three letters from this is before the internet.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is long, you know, this is phone calls and snail mail, you know, we're going way back, but we got three letters from customers that'd been with us for a couple of years said, you know, we enjoy your beef, but this year, whatever you did never stop because it's so much better than it's ever been before.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and so again, what do we do differently?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing we did different was we started give letting the cows have fur trail poultry nutrient balancer.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's the deal with this?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very, very high in calcium, very high in cal this poultry neutral balancer, very high in calcium.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, calcium is the key to the calpanes enzyme that is secreted post-mortem for 60 minutes at ambient temperature.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I just said a mouthful.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: The point is that when an animal dies, that calpanes enzyme is secreted in its tissue that relaxes connective tissue, but not if it not if it gets cold.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: As long as the animal is at ambient temperature, it's secreting this.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So so it had so in order to secrete the calpanes enzyme, and Joe Robinson discovered this.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: She discovered this literally in the literature as she started researching grass-finished beef back 35 years ago and wrote pasture, pasture perfect, I think was her little uh book that all of us that were in the business got it and handed it to our customers, and we, you know, ate it up like like sausage and eggs.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um and she discovered this enzyme.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody'd been talking about it, nobody'd heard of it, and she found this buried in the literature from the you know, whatever, 70s.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: She was like Eucena, she's one of these, you know, uh research uh people.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so um so what what what she found was that this calpanes enzyme is what relaxes connective tissue at when the animal dies, and it basically becomes a muscular tenderizing agent.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because when an animal dies, it tends to constrict you know, think about um well it tends to constrain, you know, you get these convulsions and an animal goes through this, you know, kind of a uh uh uh movement, you know, as as the chicken, the proverbial chicken with his head cut off, right?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um that chicken has head cut off and it flops all over the yard.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because those are those are muscle just spasms.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Pigs do it, cows do it, turkey, everything goes through this these this kind of um twitching, twitching spasms uh at at death.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and that tightens up the muscle.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So this cow panes is secreted to relax those muscles, relax that connective tissue.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it only works if A, there's enough calcium and B at ambient temperature.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as it gets cold, it stops working.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: So what we surmised was that our animals were probably low in calcium.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when we put this um uh poultry nutrient balancer in with this high calcium, suddenly the calpanes enzyme, when we you know we went to slaughter with these animals, that the calpanes enzyme had been maybe operating at whatever 20% capacity, you know, before.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's operating at 100% and is actually able to do its complete relaxation work at the muscular tissue level, and suddenly the meat's more you know tender and and and and better tasting and everything else.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: So so we now have a three-part, so we, you know, one scoop, one scoop, one scoop.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we do it, you know, of the salt, the kelp, and the uh fertil poultry neutral balancer in our uh in our mix.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's that's our current mix.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Only you could take mineral supplement question and bring it around to death and spasms.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, wow, what an interesting turn.
• 17:07
  unknown: Yeah.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: But no, that's great.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's um, you know, it it for us, we just kind of felt like we stumbled into this, you know.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um we didn't we didn't think that anything was wrong.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and that and that's a good principle, Cena.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes sometimes we we don't realize how good things can be until we make a change and they do become better.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: But we stump we stumble along at, you know, whatever, 50 or 60 percent because, well, that's just the way it is, and we don't realize how good it can be with a few changes.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's a principle that's probably good for a lot of things in life, you know.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: We because we don't like change, we love routine, and so we'd rather we'd rather stumble along.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: My um my my mentor Alanation used to say, people uh what I'm trying to think of, people would rather fail at what they know than be successful at what requires change.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's so good.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's so good.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's true because we tend to be creatures of habit, and I think part of that is there's safety in that, like there's a sense of safety that you it there's a perception of control, you know, and we and we often when we don't feel safe, we tend to want to control the external environment.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that fits into it as well.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: But what you're saying is so true.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that I have found, uh, particularly in the last like 10 years of you know, this new health journey in space is that like, you know, especially when you look around in the in the new norm is sick.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you look and act like those around you, if it's normalized, that's just how it is, you know, and you hear people say things like, Well, I'm just I'm getting older, that happens with aging, right?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so these things have become normalized and ingrained, institutionalized, right?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and I have realized that those are all just limiting beliefs.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: That if you like you said, that if you're not, if you're willing to kind of fail, quote unquote fail sometimes, you can actually break out a lot of break out of a lot of these boxes and get to places where you maybe didn't even think existed.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: People ask me all the time, they're like, You're healthy now, so why do you keep trying new dietary protocols?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why do you keep trying new healing modalities?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and for me, it's yeah, I'm healed, but I think that there's always another level that you can get to because we're humans, and so we have a lot of emotions.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if, you know, this is follow along with me here.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: If if if it's true that mental and physical imbalances exist originally on an energetic emotional level, and we go through life living lives, and we are emotional beings, then you're going to have some emotional imbalances that happen from time to time.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you can keep practicing forgiveness, for instance, of yourself and others, and you can keep shedding those different limitations of these emotional, trapped emotions, emotional imbalances that are holding you back, you can then in theory achieve higher and higher states of whatever optimal health and wellness is for you.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I try new things, like, yeah, I feel great already.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: But now my goal is well, how how much better can I actually feel?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what else is in store for me out there?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the more I try, and the more it like raises that level of consciousness and it comes with it is you know, up raises the level of health, mental, physical, emotional, spiritual health, then the more I feel connected with God, right?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so the easier all these things become.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: So for part of me, part of part of my um, it's not even, I was gonna say a goal, but it's not even a goal of mine.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's more like uh a lived out passion is how close can I actually get to God?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And like how much can can that communication be improved?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: How much can I hear him better throughout the day?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, that happens when I keep raising my health and wellness level.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because I'm willing to try new things, and it's not that I'm not happy or not satisfied with where my health is, right?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you said, why not try?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: If it's fun, and it's fun for me to explore things.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm trying tuning forks right now.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, we had Eileen McCousick uh speak at one of our Two Days of Truth events, and she did the tuning forks.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: She talked about the physics behind it, and God kept bringing it back to me.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then she had a sale in on her online store, and I was like, all right, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go ahead and just try it.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been trying it now for about a week, and my kids love it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: They'll take the tuning when it when Trinity, my three-year-old, is having like a meltdown.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: My boys will actually grab the tuning fork, activate it, and rub it on her back, and it calms her down.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like I mean it's amazing.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I would have never thought of that.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's like just to pick it back on what you're saying, yeah.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's fun.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you make it fun in a game, it's not a chore, it's not from a space of lack.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, let's see what other opportunities are out there that could help me or somebody else, you know.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it reminds me of what you're talking about with yeah, with your minerals.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, good.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: What want to go on to question four or uh the the next the next uh the next question here on our list?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and we actually made it through two questions, so we're doing good.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is a question about ticks.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, so this one comes from um Cody.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is that broadfuhrer?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Broadfuhrer, yeah.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Cody Broadfuhrer.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, he wants to hear about ticks.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Joel, I've had a major problem with ear ticks on my cows this year.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: I try to avoid chemicals, especially uh because of the possible environmental implications.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there already is or will be resistance with insecticidal ear tags, porons, and feed throughs.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Any recommendations?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, so um there's a lot not said here.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: So let me just give a kind of a bullet list of things.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so one is chickens.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we just don't have any ticks here at our farm because we run these eggmobiles and have a lot of poultry around.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh chickens, guinea hens, ducks, all these things find and pick up ticks.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I think in grazing circles, we hear a lot about, you know, rotational grazing and and restorative grazing to the land, but we don't hear about the the scratch and peck element.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you got to realize that when there were massive herds of bison, there there were also massive flocks of prairie chickens, pheasants, and passenger pigeons.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Audubon sat under a tree in uh like 1830 and recorded in his diary, he said, I couldn't see the sun for three days because of the flock of passenger pigeons that flew over.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine a flock so big that it blocked the sun for three days?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, this is before Tyson and before, you know, Pilgrim's Pride and all these uh chicken outfits.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, so getting getting birds back out on the land is a big deal, which includes wild birds.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about edge effect, fencing out your woodlots so that so that there's you know shelter so the cows aren't marauding down all the stuff in your woodlot, the riparian area, so that you know, barn swallows have have uh uh water spots to come and you know, barn swallows come down, they swoop down, they they they don't land on the water, but they grab water uh as they go.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a barn swallow, they're they're a member, they're a cousin, they're a member of the Martin family, they eat, you ready for this?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: They eat almost half their body weight a day in insects.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, whale is is right, it's a lot.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then and you have bats, you know, bats come out at night and eat this.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I'm I'm just trying to I'm just trying to help you to understand that that if you got a bunch of ticks on your cows and and um that is symptomatic, that's symptomatic of something not quite right in that ecosystem.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: We leased a new uh property and we had cows down there this spring, and when those cows came, we we pulled them out, they you know, ate the grass, we pulled them out, and they had fly, they had ticks all down their rear ends.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: We took them to another farm where we'd run chickens and stuff, and in less than a week, the ticks were gone.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they left.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: They were gone from the from the rear end of the cows.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have any idea whatever happened to them, except that we know that they got in a totally different environment.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and and these and these two properties are only whatever, you know, 10 miles apart.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not like you know, we took them from Minnesota to Florida or you know, North Dakota to Saskatchewan.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, it was it was it was very, very close.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: So um I'm a I'm a big believer in chickens following cows.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you have a very, very small acreage, you know, five, ten acres, Cody, he doesn't say how many acres he has, how many cows this is, you know, what's what's going on here.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but if it's if it's a very small acreage and just a couple of cows, then you know the eggmobiles can become problematic because the chickens aren't far enough away from a home base to stay with the eggmobile, they'll they'll go back.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So in a very small acreage space, I like to do a kind of a hybrid approach where yeah, you can have them in in a in an infrastructure and then like you know, uh a day or a week let them out.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if they're only out exposed to your small acreage one day a week, they won't get so familiar with out there that they don't come back here to their coop, to their home.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can still get the benefit of the poultry, you know, on a very small scale, um, without losing them to the lawnmower handle and the porch swing and you know, all the other places a chicken might want to find a uh more fun, you know, the the the uh the vice in the shop um find a better home than than you provided for them.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we don't use, you know, we you know we don't use porons, we don't use insecticide ear tags, we don't do any of that stuff.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: But what we do do is try to provide a very diversified habitat with water, forest, open areas intersecting to create the the greatest diversity of of uh of bird life.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, birds birds don't feel comfortable ranging out from cover more than 200 yards.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of a kind of a rule of thumb for birds.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've got no protective cover woods farther than 200 yards from pasture, birds tend to not come out farther than that.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: So making making little you know, woodlot runs, uh, using your terrain here, you know, we basically put woods on all of our north, north slopes are steep, south slopes are gentle in our particular neck of the woods.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so our north slopes are wooded, our south slopes are pastures because they're gentle.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: But that gets you 200, that gets you within 200 yards of every piece of open land with a set of wood, with a set of woods that can then hide your bats and your you know, your your martens, your swallows, your you know, your your birds that can come out and eat ticks.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, including including stuff, you know, bluebirds, uh, all those all those birds like that are um you know are kind of related to the to the marten family.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a habitat issue, uh, there's a you know a production protocol with multi-speciation with the chickens following the cows.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's a good one.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then of course moving the cows, you know, every day to a new pasture so they're on new ground every day.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's you know that that's critical.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so, and even if you've got a very small herd, every day moves you.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can set up, you can set up, you know, a week's worth of paddocks one day a week, take you, you know, an hour or two, and then every day it's just um you know, five minutes, open the gate, let them go in the next paddock, and then you know, then uh one evening when you're home, you take that out all your old paddocks and you set up new ones, and you just uh go along that way.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: So those are those are some ideas, some things that you take into account.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Just remember that the ticks, the ear ticks in the cows are not because some nefarious fairy opened up a bucket of ticks and decided I'm gonna dump them on your place.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're not because your cows are finding the ticks.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they are they are simply speaking to you in nature's language that there is some imbalance in in the system, and um and and and you need to rectify that imbalance.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Including, and I'll conclude with this the imbalance could be a genetic uh weakness.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: For example, if you've got uh ten cows and two of them or three of them have terrible ear ticks and the other and five of five of them don't have them, then you can be pretty sure that that's a genetic weakness.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so over time you begin selecting uh calves from the resistant cows and not calves from the others.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and so that that's a that's another that's part of husbandry, that's part of you know livestock management is to continue watching for weaknesses and selecting for animals that that are not weak.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope hope those I don't have a uh you know a definitive recipe for you, but I hope that um you know I hope that you know it gets you some some uh some thinking and maybe something will be helpful there.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're really making the case for me to get chickens.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like the more I talk to you, I'm like, wow, they're so useful.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: But oh yeah, not chickens, but chickens.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you mentioned that the chickens can um get distracted and get on the porch swing.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, is that true?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: So chickens will swing on the porch swing.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, they don't swing on the porch swing.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they but they like to roost on the porch swing.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and wherever they wherever they roost, uh, and this is not this is just to rest.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: All right, roosting means the chicken's just resting.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: She's you know, she's either sleeping or she's just resting, whatever.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: But wherever they roost, they poop.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and so this this is the this is the big issue, is that on a on a very, very small acreage, you know, and I'm saying very, very small uh would be anything under, let's say, you know, eight or ten acres.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, on a very small acreage, the chickens can never get far enough from a familiar zone that they don't pick a familiar zone.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: So this happens, this happens routinely uh on very, very small acreages where the chickens lay they lay eggs all over the place, and I can't get them to stay uh you know in their in their where I want them to lay in their nest boxes.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've got this beautiful place for them to be, and they lay out here, you know, in the where the something else is, you know, where the tool shop is.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: They they you know, they lay under the lawnmower.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're they're very creative.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: They'll find, you know, they lay in the flower bed.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: They lay, and that's because they become overfamiliar with you know, with a with a place and all of its little nooks and crannies.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so on a very small acreage, I'm a on in in a suburban backyard, I say don't range them at all.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this before, where you have a stationary coop with a with a carbonaceous diaper, all right, in a like a backyard situation, if that's all you have.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have a homestead situation where you're saying under 10 acres, then you can't move them far enough away from your porch swing, your back porch, the lawnmower handle, the shop vise, you can't move them far enough away from that to uh to keep them constrained to where you want them to be.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: And wherever they be, wherever they are, they leave a calling card.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And very few people want to go outside our porch swing and sit in chicken manure or you know, grab their grab their lawnmower handle and it's got chicken manure on it.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, go put something in a vise to cut a board, and the vice has manure on it.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, you know, the table saw, boy, that's a good one.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they love the table saw.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: They'll sit on the edge of that table saw, you know, and then they poop on the table saw.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: You want to go out and cut a board on your table saw, you got poop there, right?
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: So so the the way to stop that is to only give them access to your, you know, let them free range only like one day a week.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: One day a week, and then they don't get familiar enough to to find those places that they like to sit, roost, and sleep on.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so so that way you get the best of both worlds.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: You get the you get the chicken to do to do what she's what you like her to do, which is debug the place, keep the insects down, you know, all that sort of sort of thing.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't get the negative of the chickens that are you know up in your grill every day, and oh, why are they pooping on the windowsill?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they come up and they look in the, you know, they look in the porch window at you, and next thing you know, they turn around, they poop right on the you know, the steps, and then the kids track the poop in the house, and it's just not a good thing.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the chickens are like everything else, you know, they have a place, they have a purpose, uh, but if they get out of their place and out of their purpose, uh they can become you know frustrating rather than positive.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna pretend that the chickens jump up on the porch swing and swing, like because that's cute.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: I want that chicken.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, they won't, they won't swing.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: They won't swing.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: They'll just they'll just sit there, they'll just look at you and um and one one and and think, oh, this is a really nice, this is a really nice perch.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Really nice perch.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's so it's so nice a perch.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so relaxed, I think I'll just poop here because that's what I do when I get relaxed.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: See, I would feel bad.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: See, I don't know if I can be a chicken person because I would feel bad if they're staring in the window.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be like, oh, they want to come inside, and then I'd want to bring them inside.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's a oh no, and I sit there and pet them.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're just curious, they're just curious.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I think I think we got through these two, and that's about all we're gonna have time for today.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that was a record.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: We did three questions this time, so we are improving, Joel.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're getting better.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: All right, yes, okay.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we loved your questions, so please keep sending the questions in.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're trying to go through all of them and get them all answered.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we love them.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Keep coming, keep bringing in.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Joel, thank you as always for all your wisdom.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: And now I am seriously considering adding chickens once I get into my homestead.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: So Donnie's gonna love you for that one.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he will.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: He'll love eating the eggs with the saw with uh with our sausage.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's where that's where it really pays off.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, everybody.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us, and we will see you next week.