Cattle, sheep,pig, chicken, goat farmers/keepers

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Ranyhyn

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Think I covered all of you!

If you breed or keep any of the above animals I would dearly love to have a breif overview of your livestocks life, from breeding to (presumably) abbatoir. And also a brief description of how they are killed, I have some knowledge (are cows still captive bolt? Pigs get stuck and drained, chickens electrocuted and exsanguanted?sp)

I am applying for a job where I will be working closely with these types of animals and being able to show a good working knowledge of their breeding and production process would be great.

Shameless asking for help, but I know you guys are the ones to ask!

Kitty
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4 pigs, 3 sheep, 1 goat, about 25 hens, 3 geese and 6 ducks
Haven't had any ailments with any of them though tbh. Sheep's raison d'etre is to die though...we lost 4 lambs to scour last year.

Hens can suffer from red mites unless you powder them, of course there is the salmonella issue which I'm sure you know about. Basically I keep up good husbandry and they all seem ok
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We've got sheep. You have to watch out for maggots in warm, damp weather and there's always one what's lame. They need worming and spraying with some blue stuff to keep the flies off them. We always keep the lambs for a year before they go to market. They spend all summer on grass and winter on stubble turnips. We trim and spray their feet. We put the tup in with the ewes in October.

I can try and be a bit more technical tonight when I get home (so I can ask my OH) if you have any specific questions you need answering.
 
Thanks Indy thats great, I notice sheep seem to limp a lot - is this down to footrot (dont know where Ive got this from) and how do they get it? I would imagine from my horsey knowledge its from the warm wet weather as you describe?
 
We have Beltex sheep, we have a ram and 3 ewes. All their off spring are sold as breeding sheep as they are well bred, although we have mature twin boys who only have one doodah each, so they will go to auction this year to be sold fat.

We have way to many cattle, one Limousin bull (Cuddles one) and his girls, the ginger bitches, all male and some female offspring are sold fat to Marks and Spencers, some females are sold as breeders and some are sold with a calf at foot as breeders.

We also have an Angus bull (Cuddles two) and his girls are Belgian Blue X dairy, much nicer to be around. All the off spring go to Marks and Spencers.

We buy cows with calves at foot, not ginger bitches as we're trying to cut down on the suicidal lunatics. If the calves are female and nice they may stay to make friends with Cuddles two.

How do they die? I'm not sure, but Marks and Spencers do a farm check every year, if they are as thorough at the abbatoir then it will be correctly done.
 
Sheep - foot rot is caused by bacteria in the ground and develops in wet conditions (mainly), to treat it you need to cut out as much of infected foot as possible and treat with antibacterial spray (like Footmaster) and move treated sheep to new pasture.
They also tend to limp if they damage their feet, so regular trimming is important.
We lamb at Christmas and in early march, keep ewe lambs as replacements and all the ram lambs go to abattoir in summer/early autumn. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that although I do take them personally, I have never seen them slaughtered.
We breed pedigree cattle, so not many of ours go for slaughter - we have Dexters and British White, they calve in early summer outdoors and the heifer calves are kept as replacements, bull calves are reared and sold as breeding bulls if good enough.
We also rear commercial calves over winter, buy in 2-3 days old ones, rear them on calf milk indoors through the winter, turn out to pasture in early spring and sell as stores in the autumn - we don't finish our beef cattle, so we very rarely have our own beef.
Our chickens are layers, so no slaughtering chickens here.
Don't have pigs.
Any other info you would like?
 
Chickens can get an awful illness that causes bubbles to come out of nostrils and eyes.
Some of my ex bats had this when they arrived. Hefty antibiotics needed to kill it off too!
 
Bought our first sheep in lamb, lambed them, grew the lams on, killed the boys, got a tup in to cover the sheep and new ewe lambs. We kill the tup and any boy lambs each year plus any small or weakly ewe lambs so that we don't interbreed and do improve the quality of our stock.


Our sheep never leave our property. I feel that it is unfair to put them in a scary trailer and take them to an abattoir. I used to have a professional come in to slaughter them but legally that is not now allowed, we have to do it ourselves. The same professional comes in with his captive bolt to oversee in case of error. There has been none so far.



*graphic content - don't read if it's likely to offend you*
Process for us is to catch sheep to be dealt with, calm them by voice and attitude and then remove one at a time out of sight of the others, sheep is then shot in the head, put onto the "stool" and it's throat is cut to ensure that there is swift loss of blood to the brain. After that the carcase is hung up, skinned, guts removed, split down the spine and left for the meat to set overnight. Then we get the next one in and start all over again. The exception to this is the last two where as they panic when on their own someone will stand in with the last whilst the penultimate one is done and immediately after that one is shot and bled the last will be done. This is to make sure that the last animal is distressed as little as possible. It makes the skinning etc slightly less easy but we'd rather ensure that the animals have as little worry as possible.

The next day the professional butcher returns and the sheep are taken down one by one and butchered on the kitchen table to my specification. Some we eat immediately but for the most part it goes straight into the freezer.

Pigs we buy in at around 8 weeks and slaughter when they have reached an appropriate size. Same process.
*graphic content ended*

We spray for flies every six weeks through the warmer weather and trim feet at the same time. We vaccinate for bluetongue as soon as the vaccine is available each year. Sheep are shorn when it's our turn on the shearers rota. We don't worm as our sheep were wormed when we got them and put on to new pasture, there are no worms present on our land. Every part of the animal is inspected during the processing and there are no worms evident.

I used also to keep geese, free range, and sell the eggs as well as grow birds on for eating. These too were processed at home.
 
Mycoplasma is the bubbly nose and eyes. Its a respiratory illness, endemic in all flocks in England that live outside (so my vet says). Tend to only develop symptoms when run down or stressed.
Chickens also get a progressive paralysis called mareks that is a type of cancer of the nervous system. Hybrids are innoculated against it but most backyard birds aren't. Once innoculated they shed the disease forever and can infect not innoculated birds. Its best, IMO, to only breed from mareks resiliant strains as its hereditary.
Red mite don't live on the birds so you need to treat their housing as much/more than the birds. In my experience its the biggest killer of domestic birds.
I breed rare breed bantams and cull the excess males at 6 weeks old by breaking their necks.
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Thats it Clodagh!
Wonder why my ex bats had it then? They were stressed obviously, (but if I had lived my life in one of those pathetic crates I dare say I would have been a tad stressed too!)
 
We keep sheep and send lambs to abbatoir Sept/Oct time. We make sure lambs are dagged out (fleece round back end trimmed) when ewes are sheared. This helps keep away fly strike as their bottoms stay cleaner. The pigs pretty much eat and sleep. They go to abbatoir at 26 weeks. We have turkeys this year for first time. Very ugly birds and quite messy so will talk OH into not bothering next year (unless they're really tasty). Hens , they suffered coxidosis earlier in the year and we had to dispatch a few. This gives them the runs and they don't do well. OH uses the broom handle technique to break their necks. It's all over very quickly. We didn't eat them as they weren't healthy. Other than to say everything needs fresh water, clean environment and regular worming to try to keep as healthy as poss.
 
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