Eight Acres

We generally try to avoid unnecessary chemicals , but one area in which we've been slow to find alternatives is with our animals. Until a few years ago, we were regularly drenching the cattle with ivermectin, dosing the dogs with flea treatments and wormers and occasionally had to dip all the chickens in malthison so get rid of lice. Since we got our milking cow , Bella, we became even more  reluctant to continue with the chemical treatments as we drink the milk everyday. Luckily we found Bel from Home Grown , who kindly answered my many house cow questions, including recommending Diatomaceous Earth for control of internal and external parasites in cows and cattle in general. I had also read about Diatomaceous Earth for chickens at Fowl Visions . Diatomaceous Earth, consists of the micro skeletons of fossilised remains of deceased diatoms, which are a type of algae found in both sea water and fresh water. They have sharp edges, which kills both internal and external parasi...

When we got our dairy cow Bella we decided to only use natural methods of parasite control because we wanted the milk to be as healthful as possible.  Before that, we had been using Ivermectin and Cydectin products to control both internal parasites and buffalo fly on the cattle. We had used Malthison on the chickens when they got invested with mites, and the dogs had regular flea and worm treatments. Fortunately I got some good advice from Bel at Home Grown to get me started.  She said to read Natural Cattle Care by Pat Coleby , and from there I also found Natural Pet Care , which helped me with the dogs ( I wrote more about not using chemicals on the the dogs here ).  For the chickens, I've used the ideas in  Backyard Poultry - Naturally by Alanna Moore , and more recently  The Small-Scale Poultry Flock , by Harvey Ussery .  Now that we have nearly had a full year without using chemicals on the cattle, I wanted to write a summary of the methods that...