Failure to Thrive
Some lessons we have to learn and relearn, over and over again, and one of them is when we’re buying livestock. Certain animals simply do not thrive. Sometimes the underlying cause is some elemental weakness so elusive that it can escape even the most observant eye. Other times it stems from a defect not obvious until months later—like an abdominal hernia on a weanling piglet that first appears as an insignificant bump but that with the pig’s rapid growth becomes a large protrusion of necrotic bowel that results in an untimely death.
For us, the pig-in-a-poke effect happens most frequently with sheep. Many farms in our area keep small flocks. A good percentage are maintained for the children to exhibit in 4-H into their late teens. Once the season ends or the participants are no longer eligible to show, the flocks are dispersed. In practical terms, any females of the show stock we purchase have an outsized impact on the genetics of our own flock. Coming, as show stock inevitably do, from a life of conditioning on expensive grains and coddling in a stall, the animals being sold are not bred or raised to thrive in high heat and humidity, out in rain or snow, and sadly not even on pastures where the grass has to be walked to for the getting.
Animals that win ribbons are often very different than production animals. While it is not always easy to tell the differences, identifying them usually begins with asking detailed questions of the seller, who in our experience either may not really understand that there’s a significant difference or who may downplay any possible differences in order to make a sale. For those of us involved in meat production, it is a twin threat of bringing in ill-suited genetics and buying into stock who have lost the ability to thrive. In the latter case, like the kids who have only ever played video games and are sent out to weed the garden in a Tennessee summer, failure to thrive is less about breeding and more about how they have been raised.
We have brought home former show lambs that, though twice as big at the same age as our own production lambs, once on the farm, tellingly, would never leave the barn. We’ve purchased lambs who keeled over dead from heat (our barn provides shade, but we don’t run huge fans 24/7). While breeding for an appearance that a certain judge likes—and judging preferences can vary wildly—may bring awards, in a few short generations it may also confer a host of other problems: Last year we bought four maiden Dorset ewes from (we were told) a cross of show and production stock. We were impressed with their height, but their bulky wool coats also covered super-slim hips and a general lack of muscling. Those factors, coupled with tails docked extremely short for the show ring, resulted in 75 percent mortality due to vaginal and rectal prolapses during lambing.
This misjudging of attributes that comes with purchasing show over production is only one of the mistakes we have made in our never-ending search for ways to improve the frame and muscling of our animals and to develop a flock that thrives on our hill pastures. The availability of good production stock regionally has been tainted by this coddling and the selection for traits that simply are not useful in the real world of grass and sun. The production sheep we seek are out there, but we have learned (mostly, and at a cost) that they have to be carefully sought out.
Fortunately raising sheep provides a built-in benefit that helps mitigate mistakes: a quick generational turnaround. Each year we have an opportunity to assess our breeding program during lambing season, noting those that thrive—that is, have the best weight gains with the least input, the best conformation, and the fewest issues with parasites and other livestock scourges. We practice the adage that breeders should “always look for a reason to cull.” The alternative is the expensive and burdensome option of keeping animals that are economically or otherwise a poor fit. Practically speaking, any animal brought onto the farm that refuses to graze and is habituated to lying about in the barn, has chronic hoof issues, or shows any negative attributes that affect its health or production value or causes other undue problems (jumping fences, for example) gets culled.
As for those screen-absorbed children? Time will tell whether within a few more generations habit becomes genetic, marking them as ill-suited for meaningful work. Then the question of nature vs. nurture will become indistinguishable and moot. So, my farmer’s advice to parents is be proactive and kick the kids outside today before they become barn lazy and willingly starve in full view of an edible landscape.