I hear the call of a fox through my window this morning as the sun rises. I wish you could hear it too. It’s a gritty, two-toned bark-howl with 3 syllables, if a call can have syllables.
There’s a whole skulk (pretty descriptive term for a pack of them, huh?) of them living in the canyon east of our house. They feed on ground squirrels, which I dig, and give us little glimpses of their playfulness early in the morning and at sunset.
Mama’s probably calling to her pups this morning. Which this mama needs to do soon, as well.
But first…we were talking about the loveliness of freedom through husbandry. Today our focus is on husbandry’s graceful way of getting us out of panic mode and giving us the jump on issues before they become unmanageable.
Freedom #2: from constant management by emergency.
Husbandry is a great listener, a keen observer, a sensor of subtlety.
As anyone who has raised animals can attest to, time flies in the life (and disease processes) of animals. Too often, by the time an animal (especially livestock), or a tree for that matter, is exhibiting obvious signs of illness, it is too late to intervene in a meaningful way that is likely to change the dirt-ward trajectory of that creature.
Husbandry picks up on quiet, smoldering signs that allow for embers to be stomped out before they turn into a raging wildfire. It also anticipates those first sparks, and helps to put fire lines in place to prevent problems (like disease) from ever gaining any ground.
Yesterday, my little AvaLynne came out to meet me while I was feeding the big piglets - “biglets” we call them. In riotous fashion, those 60 pound torpedoes had upturned their water troughs and efficiently churned the entire floor of their current enclosure into a massive mudpie.
Typical.
They’re Tim’s pigs when they pull their destructive nonsense. It’s this behavior that causes me to love my sheep all the more. And bacon. Anyway, back to AvaLynne.
What made me smile in this moment was the little comment my daughter made under her breath as the frustration on her face mirrored her mother’s. She mumbled, “Look at what you’ve done. You’re going to give yourselves hoof rot.”
I high-fived her, much to her confusion. I was proud of that little observation! No, pigs aren’t prone to hoof rot (an infection that dissects between the hoof and underlying tissues that causes lameness and potentially sloughing of the entire hoof wall) in moist conditions the way sheep are - our pigs live like hippos through the triple digit days of summer and do fine.
But what made me smile was that she saw the problem just created by the naughty beasts, and anticipated its potential repercussions upon the animals’ well being. That’s husbandry! The next step would be remedying the issue by either moving them or depositing sufficient carbon (straw, wood chips, etc.) into the enclosure so as to absorb the sloppiness and prevent the flies from moving in.
Freedom #3: from keeping the vet on your phone’s favorite contacts list.
Now y’all, I’m a vet. Sick animals make up the lion’s share of my practice. But I cannot express to you the number of diseases I treat that would have been prevented by proper husbandry.
In vet school, the head of the Exotic Animal Department (seeing everything from gerbils to iguanas to lions at the Denver Zoo) catechized us with the following:
Question: “What is the number one problem to consider when you are presented with a sick _________ (insert species)?”
Answer: “HUSBANDRY!”, we would all chant in unison.
And yet, somehow in the realm of small animal medicine, and even large animal med to a great extent, this principle is almost universally ignored. But that makes it no less true. It just makes us…well…ignorant.
How an animal (or plant or child or household) is cared for on a regular, day-in-day-out, maintenance basis makes a massive impact on prevalence of disease.
Of course, stuff happens. It happens to me. We are fallible creatures and things we should pick up on slip through the cracks, other priorities take precedent, and animals get sick.
So you still need your vet.
But maybe not quite as often.
Well, the mama fox has stopped calling - her pups must’ve finally obeyed. Time to bestir my own.
May you and yours have a most wonderfully blessed day. I look forward to another sunrise here tomorrow with you!
Thank you for being here.
You are the best😘😍🥰😻🤟🏽😽