The Mighty Mite

More Adventures in Things I Didn't Know About!

My mom is an avid reader, always has been, ever since she was a baby. Her love of reading filled the bookshelves in my childhood homes with Star Trek novels, Louis L'Amour, Box Car Kids, Hardy Boys, JRR Tolkien, and a plethora of medical books and Britannica-like encyclopedias. I quite vividly remember certain pages of the terrifying book called “Where There is No Doctor”; an endlessly fascinating dive into all the things bush medicine. I am certain there were some mathematics, art, and probably science that were taught in the actual class, but I never gave classical education much attention…sorry Mom!

No way Geometry and its cursedly unattainable answer to the meaning of Y could compete against the chapter about fecal coloration and the medical meanings behind each one! Right!?

I can also tell you about Lockjaw, the different types of Hepatitis, Ringworm, Malaria, Scabies…wait, Scabies is something related to scurvy right? Pirates often had it?

Nope, that is still just scurvy.

YES they really do come with little satan horns and pitchforks that are red!

Scabies are the thing that looks like your dairy cow is shedding as the warmer months start to arrive until you realize she isn’t shedding, but suffering from one of the animal kingdom’s most ancient enemies, the mighty mite. These nasty microscopic buggers burrow deeper than intrusive thoughts, working their way into the upper layer of skin to lay little hellspawn in the holes that they burrowed. Once they are in a warm body they are notoriously hard to get rid of without injections that kill off the adults, followed by a second or third round of injections to catch the eggs that hatched, and then the last generation, if one is lucky enough to get them all on the same timeline.

I am thrilled this is an ancient problem though, and not a new one created by man’s hubris. Our ancestors tried many different things to manage scabies, ranging from alcohol tonics to poultices and ointments, and because the lack of a microscope really prevented the understanding that it was tiny, skin burrowing demons causing all the problems, they never sought to try and tackle it from the reproductive cycle. I am going to try and manage it with a concoction that has scientific backing at killing mite eggs using sulfur as a base, followed by several different ingredients that are potentially harmful to the larvae and are known to disrupt the egg cycle. It will definitely not be as easy as setting a reminder on my phone to dose the cow up, but in the long run I believe it is a better option.

The adventure of Bella and Freya just a little over a month and a half ago has faded into a distant memory as life goes on. We don’t have any other calves to compare her to, but she is sweet and headstrong, playful and energetic. It is super cool to see the herd loving on her too, just a bunch of mamas. When in her little pen she is often very willing to get scratches and affection from the bipeds, but when she is on the pasture she’s got places to go that don’t involve your opinion or presence. Fast little thing too! Kayla has been halter training her and we were able to finagle a sheep halter to fit her little calf head. I believe the training just involves keeping her tied up in one place for a short period of time so that she learns that pulling at the halter doesn’t yield any results.

The plan moving forward this year is to acquire another jersey calf to keep Freya company and to not acquire any more adult cattle until we have the cement pad poured and a milking parlor for Kayla. Unfortunately for our waiting milkshare people this will likely push ya’ll out a little ways, and I truly am sorry. Raising milk cows and meeting new people who are interested in their health and forming their own opinions about traditional food has been the highlight of this whole new chapter in our lives. I don’t have a concrete date, but I know I need the rain to stop for a while so the ground can dry and we can have enough time to compact the earth and pour the pad, which means likely sometime in July or August for the cement pour.

Outside of our cows and future milking parlor, the first batch of Cornish are just about ready to be processed, and these little nuggets are all looking superb too! Letting them out to roam during the day has been really beneficial to their overall cleanliness and health, although during rainy days if they aren’t put away they just stand in the rain. Thankfully they don’t look up. One of the changes we made his year was opting to try slower-growing Red Broilers, who are looking phenomenal, and they have a little bit longer at life than their white cousins do merely based on genetic design.

In terms of niche farming and tackling the American consumer, we are just about ready to put the yard signs out in test neighborhoods, and I made some flyers I will be printing out and placing around town. Substack has been an awesome way to connect with our customers and herd share members, but it is not a platform meant to sell anything other than reading subscriptions and that has left us trying to figure out the best way to capture people interested in reserving chicken online without having to contact us directly. We don’t mind direct conversation, but we understand the world is used to immediacy and nothing out there really seems to offer a direct way to reserve a product for pickup. We have considered Etsy, Facebook, and Ebay, but all of them fall short in multiple ways, and we just are not to the point where we feel the need to build a website.

If you do want to reserve chickens, I can be reached by email at Andrew@lastbastionhomestead, Zach can be reach at jhpasturedpoultry@gmail.com, and the file for the flyer is here if you want to forward it to anyone in your friends and family circle. The flyer does contain a QR code that will take the recipient to a hidden page on my Substack describing why we raise our chickens.

Everyone eats chicken but very few places raise them in a manner that is both beneficial to the bird’s nature, and with consumer health in mind. We do both because we eat ‘em, and raising them with dignity is just the right way to do it.