You’re back! Yyyyaaaaas! (Insert happy dance).
41 today. So there’s that. So thankful. The Lord has been so good to me.
I’ve been reading and re-reading James A LOT lately. And this verse came to mind this morning…
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning." James 1:17 NKJV
I have Him to thank and praise and worship. For every good and perfect gift in my life. Every one.
And one of those gifts is having you here right now! So let’s get into it.
This installment addresses an issue that may sound a little abstract initially, but I’ve run into it over and over from Chihuahua owners to pig farmers.
Another ageless benefit we can achieve by cultivating our senses and practices (habits) of husbandry is:
Freedom #4: from ignorance of suffering.
There is a ditch on either side of this husbandry path.
One ditch is on the side of too much intervention — mucking around (and causing greater harm) with what should be managed more naturally.
An example of sliding off into this ditch is the all too common practice of frequent deworming of livestock. This misuse of anthelmintic drugs has led to a parasite resistance problem that we are growing less and less equipped to deal with. All the while, proper pasture rotation and multi-species grazing, mirroring nature’s template, has proven more effective and safe, healthier for the animals and consumers, and less expensive than pharmaceutical treatments.
(I could go on for pages on that one…but that’s for another post.)
The other ditch is on the side of too little intervention — ignorance of suffering. Falling off here occurs either from a lack of knowledge (honestly not recognizing animal pain/suffering), lack of observational skills, or from a conscious decision to be inactive on behalf of that creature for one reason or another.
We can fix the “not knowing” part, no problem. Teaching someone to recognize discomfort, overt pain or early signs of disease in an animal is easy if they care to learn, and it’s something I love to do. And we will dig into it down the road, for sure!
But now I am going to use the ever controversial subject of antibiotics to illustrate intentional ignorance - neglect - of animal suffering, which is much more challenging to address. There are dozens of other reasons for it I’ve observed over the years. This particular example can be found in the camp of unconditional refusal of their use, often in the name of being organic.
Now slow down…before you start shelling me with empty essential oil bottles (of which I myself have boxes full), let me elaborate.
My first encounter with this kind of willful neglect was on a USDA certified organic dairy in Northern Colorado (I won’t name the mammoth company to which this poor farm was in servitude, but you can find it if you look where the sky meets the earth). This dairy operated 100% like a conventional, Holsteins-laying-on-manure-mounds, hold-your-nose-when-you-drive-by dairy. With one exception. No antibiotics. A bottle was not even allowed on the premises, USDA rules.
The image of that dairy’s “sick pen” is one that is still with me since my first year of vet school, and not one I care to paint for you this lovely day. Just know that mastitis is an incredibly painful, fever-causing, appetite-cancelling, necrosis-inducing, life-sucking infection of the mammary tissue.
Mastitis is rampant in confinement dairy operations, there’s no way around it - the cows live in their manure, their udders drag through it, get splashed by it, lay in it. And it wasn’t being treated. If the cows failed their mastitis test, they went to the sick pen and awaited transport off the farm. Some of those girls had to wait far too long.
This was not stewardship. And though it had to pain the farmer to do it, it was intentional neglect necessitated by a warped administration of a good ideal.
Antibiotics have been misused and abused to a potentially irreparable level on a global scale, across species, humans included. And there are too many cases where they are prescribed, but are utterly unnecessary, and probably harmful on multiple levels, over the long run.
However, there are circumstances in which interventions like antibiotics are life saving, and the only humane choice to ameliorate the suffering of an animal.
Animals can and should be managed without antibiotics if possible, and it is quite doable as a general rule. But the prerequisite for their disuse is good husbandry on the front end, preventing disease before it gets a foothold.
Husbandry provides necessary perspective in evaluating the plight of the creatures we’ve been charged to steward - helping us to properly measure the weight of our preconceived notions against the real need of the moment. It frees us from the little boxes we build ourselves into, and unties our hands to simply do what’s right, at the right time.
Tomorrow’s edition will be the final “foundation” post, and from there we’ll launch into the nitty gritty of it all.
What an exciting time! I’m so looking forward to where this will lead.
Thank you for hanging with me.
Woo hoo great job💜💗😁