A lot of little things are needed to do the job

By Hue Karreman
Flies happen. And controlling them on organic farms is an ongoing challenge. There are lots of spray products that help, but none seem to work as well as farmers would like.

Flies are parasites, and thus make the most of any situation. Almost all common parasites, external and internal, thrive in warm and moist conditions, so we need to keep those two factors front and center when thinking about fly control.

Dr. Hubert Karreman practices veterinary medicine from his farm near Saxapahaw, North Carolina.

Thank you for visiting the Graze magazine website. We offer a few sample articles online, but to see the full content, order a subscription of the print magazine or order the specific back issue you are interested in. This article appeared in the August-September 2019 issue of Graze.

But sprouting carries plenty of costs, complications and labor

Whitesville, NY—For centuries farmers around the world have been sprouting grains and feeding the green material to their stock, usually with spotty success. The 1959 edition of Frank B. Morrison’s venerable publication Feeds and Feeding referred to “clever promoters” making “extravagant claims” about the benefits of various hydroponic systems for growing green fodder from seeds. U.S. livestock nutrition experts are generally skeptical about the potential benefits of sprouted fodder, although most withhold official judgment because almost no studies have been done here due to its rarity.

Or at least until now it was rare. The onset of high grain and forage prices and growing interest in no-grain feeding programs has produced at least a mini-boom of interest in producing green fodder from the seeds of small grains. Articles about farmers employing fodder systems to produce greenery for everything from chickens and geese to beef steers and dairy cows are showing up in alternative agricultural outlets — often with accompanying advertising from companies selling such systems. Some farmers have reported spending a few hundred bucks to provide greens to their poultry, while others have paid six figures for commercial fodder production systems capable of producing much bigger volumes for larger dairy herds. Continue reading “Fodder interest sprouting all over”