Livestock husbandry

Choose animals for the land and the labour available, not for what the group used to eat. Goats and sheep on rough hill ground; cattle where grass is good; pigs and chickens beside a settlement, eating what people throw away.

Grass does not grow in a northern winter or a tropical dry season, and animals eat roughly the same every day regardless. The herd a group can keep is set by the feed it can store, not by the summer grazing.

The rule of thumb: ruminants eat about 2.5–3% of their body weight in dry matter a day. Hay is roughly 85% dry matter.

Worked example. A 550 kg cow eats about 14 kg of dry matter a day — about 16 kg of hay. A 180-day winter is 2.9 tonnes. A good hay meadow cut once yields perhaps 4–6 tonnes per hectare, so each cow needs roughly half a hectare of hay meadow — land that cannot also be grazed while the hay grows.

Make the calculation before the herd grows, not after. Then:

• Cut hay when grass is flowering, not after it seeds — nutrient value falls fast once it seeds.
• Dry it to below about 20% moisture before stacking. Damp hay moulds, and a damp hay stack can heat itself until it bursts into flame days or weeks later. If the inside of a stack feels hot to an arm pushed in, pull it apart.
• Cull before winter. Animals that will not breed, the old, and surplus males go to slaughter in autumn, when they are fat and before they eat the hay the breeding stock needs.
• Water freezes. Break ice twice a day. An animal without water stops eating.

Livestock kill by crushing against walls, trampling, goring and kicking — rarely by intent, usually because an animal was frightened, cornered, or protecting young.

• Flight zone. Every animal has a personal space. Step into it and the animal moves away; step deeper and it panics. Work at the edge of the zone.
• Point of balance — the shoulder. Stand behind the shoulder and the animal moves forward; in front of it and the animal backs up. Driving cattle is done from behind the shoulder, to one side, never directly behind.
• Never stand directly behind a horse or a cow, and never in a narrow space between an animal and a wall with no way out.
• Bulls are never trusted, however quiet. Dairy-breed bulls are the most dangerous. Never enter a field or pen with a bull alone, and always have an escape route and a barrier to get behind.
• Cows with new calves, sows with litters and ewes with lambs attack. Approach the young last, with a barrier or a second person.
• Move slowly, speak before you touch, and never shout or wave. Cattle see poorly in contrast and startle at shadows, flapping cloth and sudden noise.
• Build a race and a crush before you need them — a narrow corridor and a restraining stall — so that treatment, hoof care and loading happen with a barrier between you and the animal.

None of these needs a laboratory to prevent. Each has one or two habits that stop it.

Bloat (cattle, sheep, goats). Gas trapped in the rumen, most often after turning out onto lush clover or lucerne, or a sudden change of feed. The left side of the abdomen swells high up behind the ribs and becomes drum-tight; the animal is distressed, then goes down. It can die within hours. Get it walking. Drench with about 250 ml of vegetable oil for a cow (proportionally less for sheep and goats) to break foam. A stomach tube passed down the throat releases free gas. As a last resort in an animal about to die, a trocar or a clean narrow knife pushed into the highest point of the left flank, in the hollow behind the last rib and below the spine, releases the gas — this saves animals that would otherwise die, and it causes peritonitis that needs care afterwards. Prevent it by introducing lush legume pasture gradually, after feeding hay.

Foot rot (sheep, goats). Lameness, grazing on their knees, a foul smell between the claws. Worst on warm wet ground. Trim the overgrown hoof back to healthy tissue, walk them through a footbath of zinc sulphate or copper sulphate solution, and move them to dry ground. Cull animals that keep getting it; it is partly heritable.

Difficult births. The normal presentation is two front feet, soles down, with the nose lying on them. Anything else — one leg, head back, hind feet first, tail only — needs correcting before pulling. Wash hands and arms, use plenty of lubricant, push the calf or lamb back between contractions to correct the position, and pull only with the mother's contractions, downward toward her hocks.

Humane first. An animal that is calm when it dies gives better meat, and an animal that suffers is a failure of the person doing it.

1. No food for 12–24 hours before (water always), so the gut is emptier and less likely to be cut.
2. Handle quietly to the place of slaughter, out of sight of other animals.
3. Stun or kill instantly, then bleed within about a minute: a sharp knife across the throat severing both carotid arteries and jugular veins for sheep and goats; for cattle and pigs, a cut into the chest opening to the major vessels. Unconsciousness must come before the cut is felt.
4. Hang the carcass by the hind legs to bleed out fully.

Clean second.

• Open the belly without puncturing the gut — cut with the blade edge up, two fingers guarding the tip. Tie off the rectum and the gullet before removing the viscera. Gut contents on meat is how carcasses carry E. coli and Salmonella.
• Inspect as you go. Discard the whole carcass if there are abscesses throughout, yellow jaundiced fat, or dark unclotted blood — and never butcher an animal found dead. Discard the liver if it holds flukes (flat leaf-shaped worms in the bile ducts) or cysts. Discard lungs with cheesy yellow nodules — a sign of tuberculosis — and treat that animal's herd-mates as suspect.
• Chill it. Hang in cool, fly-proof air — below 7 °C if possible — within hours. Warm meat spoils within a day.
• Pigs are scalded at about 60–65 °C for a few minutes to loosen bristles; hotter sets the hair.
• Save the hide, fat, blood, bones and sinew. Hides go to tanning, fat renders to tallow for soap and light, sinew makes cordage and bowstring.