Holistic Herd Care

One of the most interesting presentations I went to at the Practical Farmers of Iowa Annual Conference was the workshop by Will Winter called, "The Art of Raising Drug-Free and Healthy Livestock". Mr. Winters had about three hours with us on Friday afternoon, but I'm thinking thirty hours would have been better for me! He had lots of great information ... some of which I caught and lots that flew over my head while I was digesting other information. I took lots of notes about things to look up later though, and I'm beginning to work my way through them. Here are some of the homeopathic/holistic medicines (I'm not sure what they call them) and other things that he spoke about:

• Rescue Remedy: If you go to this website you will find that Rescue Remedy is like "yoga in a bottle". I'm not sure what exactly that means, but Mr. Winter uses it when he is shipping or working livestock, trying to calm livestock, and even to help lower stress in people. Sometimes these things sound too good to be true, but there was a lot of positive feedback about this one ... maybe I'll check it out.
• Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide: This is one that he recommended for livestock suffering from shipping fever. He said it needs to be the strong stuff (35%), but that you only add 8 ounces to every 1,000 gallons of water. Should be interesting to look into this one a little more.
• Apple Cider Vinegar: I know a lot of different people that add ACV to their livestock water tanks and to their own diets. I'm not exactly sure what it is all about, but there is a book that tells a lot of the story titled, "Folk Medicine". It is also supposed to help lower cholesterol ... do you think it does that for bovine also? :)
• Desert Dyna-Min: One of the commenters mentioned that they keep this one around at all times and Mr. Winter spoke very highly of it. They described it as the bouillon cube of minerals for cattle. We are talking about 2 to 4 ounces per day, but I'm not sure how they feed this ... maybe someone can chime in.
• Hemocel 100: This is a product by Agri-Dynamics (same as Desert Dyna-Min) that he likes to give to sick animals as a rumen starter. The companies website touts this one as a dairy supplement as well.

Of course most of those things are something that you add when there is trouble or to prevent trouble. The biggest thing that I got out of this workshop was that holistic herd care has as much or more to do with preventation as it does with treatment. Mr. Winter spoke a lot about soil health and forage quality being key to a holistic approach to care ... but, that does take time.

I would be interested in hearing anyones thoughts on the ideas of holistic vet care and herd health as it is something that is really starting to interest me.