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...

Recently I picked up one of our hens to check her for parasites and found her to be crawling with them.  So many that when I put her down, they were crawling on me too! Read what we did to treat our chickens naturally over on my chicken tractor ebook site . clue: we dunked the chickens in a natural oil, and they didn't like it! By the way, my chicken eBook is now available if you want to know more about backyard chickens and using chicken tractors.  More information over at the  chicken tractor ebook blog .  Or you can get it directly from my shop on  Etsy  (.pdf format), or  Amazon Kindle  or just send me an email eight.acres.liz {at} gmail.com. What's the eBook about? Chickens in a confined coop can end up living in an unpleasant dust-bowl, but allowing chickens to free-range can result in chickens getting into gardens and expose them to predators.  A movable cage or “chicken tractor” is the best of ...

** Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... I also make neem soap, neem insect repellent and neem salve, all available in my Etsy shop .** A few weeks ago now I was watering the garden just after dark, torch in one hand, hose in the other, when I was attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes (mozzies).  I could feel them biting me, but there wasn’t much I could do with both hands in use and I really needed to finish watering.  When I came inside I found that I had several bites on each leg between the top of my gumboots and the bottom of my shorts.  These proceeded to itch, swell and annoy me for several days. At this time of year, when the mozzies start biting, as I do have such a terrible reaction to the bites, I usually reach for my bottle of conventional insect repellent, typically containing DEET (N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamid...

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...