Recent Posts

Glad to hear that KFC arrived so fast. Better read fast now before you get that cow and have no more time.

Joann

Thanks, Selden, I will look for the Moody book.
And I do entirely agree with you about Thumbs Up or Down.

Joann

Together we'll work thihs out!

On the Isle of Jersey last I heard virtually all cows are tethered. They certainly can learn how to live with a tether just like they can learn to lead on a halter.

How far in the pipe must be driven depends on the soil but usually about 2 feet. Because your tether is not fastened at the top of the stake but has a ring which lies on the ground the cow cannot get much traction. Entanglement on the stake won't happen and she will soon learn to keep her feet free. She could wrap herself around a nearby tree. Another approach involves running a line betwween two stakes and attaching her lead to this the same way dog runs are designed.

Stephanie, can you offer some suggestions for halter training a mature cow without a round pen? I have not had a whole lot of luck halter training a cow. They certainly will learn to give to a lead rope if you leave one dragging from a halter so that they can be hitched to something but that is not the same thing as docile leading.

The long lead line could be 15 or even 20 feet.

You could get this rope work underway in your close-up pasture while you further contemplate the staking problem.

Joann

I am not sure if Pollan was foremerly vegan or a laco-ovo vegetarian. He is no longer a vegetarian. But he definitely does not consider meat to be important.

Joann

I am in agreement with Mercyme - Joanne, regarding the use of corn (and other grains). It is not corn per se, but its overuse which burns out the rumen and leads to liver damage. A grass-only diet should not become an ideology, in my opinion. The cow's condition is of first importance.

Dear Michael Pollan has done a great deal of good in advancing awareness of food issues in thhe USA. He did a lot of reading in nutrition to prepare for his book however I find a great deal of his nutrition advice to be thin and watery. The guidance he offers in human nutrition is funded by his many years as a vegetarian. His experience with feeding cows is non existant. He comes across most convinceingly when he is directly quoting experienced people such as Joel Salatin. Sally Fallon gives him a Thumbs Down because of his dismissive posture regarding nutrient dense foods.

I haven't read the Voisan book but it sounds more in line with my position.
I am fortunate in having a grain merchant who orders his feed from Canada so it is non GMO.

Joann

Most of my ideas have already been mentioned. Do make the mineral available freee choice and separate from ther salt.

If the pasture is poor cows will eat perennial weeds some of which are toxic (buttercup and goldenrod) and may well affect the milk.

I don't believe you mentioned her water. Does she have constant access to good quality water?

Something to bear in mind, although slightly off topic, it rarely works out well to pasture a cow with a horse. The horses will, in very subtle ways, block the cow from feed and water and the best pasture. IF your cow's production drops unexpectedly I would blame the horse rather than the feed.

Joann

Whatever the outcome, the story of you and Camellia will remain an inspiration.

Strong wellness thought still coming your way from me.

Joann

Now another nail in the coffin for HFCS.
This just in:
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090826110118.htm

I watched the whole lecture last night which took close to an hour by which time I was too zonked to write. The speaker was Dr. Robert H. Lustig, a distinguished and highly respected pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF med school.

He did indeed make the point that all sugar is harmful including that found in fruit juice, because it is divested of its fiber. The molecule of sucrose (white table sugar) is made up of half glucose and half fructose. This is quickly split when metabolized. The glucose fraction induces the insulin response and if not in great excess is utilized as energy or may be stored as fat. Fructose does not prompt the insulin response. It goes directly to the liver where it is shipped off to body cells to be stored as fat. He emphatically made the point that fructose, with which the world is now swamped in the form of HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) is the culprit in the obesity epidemic. Virtually all HFCS is stored as fat and you cannot escape this with excersize. Food companies which have now launched an insidioua advertizing campaign in support of HFCS are scamming us. Chemically it differs from ethanol (the alcohol people drink) only in that it does not cross the blood/brain barrier so dos not make you drunk. Its effects are ultimately devastating to health. It does cross the placenta and as a result babies are now being born with Type 2 diabetes.

Lustig has little use for Ancel Keyes, principal instigator of the so-called lipid hypothesis (which blames saturated fat and cholesterol for everything)

I did have one quibble with Lustig. He is a great believer in fiber, and eating foods in their natural state without the fiber removed, but he kept referring to it as a nutrient. It is not a nutrient for humans, in other words it has no nutritional/food value for humans. Fiber is cellulose, It has mechanical properties in our guts. It hustles food along so that it does not stagnate but it has nutrient value only for bacteria, especially that fine population in a cow's rumen.

Here is a little discussion on fructose that I wrote a couple of years ago following a mini lecture on the subject from my son Bret who has a PhD in nutrition from U of Oregon at Corvallis and is now Nutrition Specialist for USDA Extension in Alaska. It was he who first told me that Inuit babies are now being born with diabetes.

Fructose and obesity (

Another reason to avoid soft drinks: high fructose corn syrup. You’ve heard of it. It has now replaced sugar either partially or completely in processed foods but its most significant presence is in soft drinks. The greatest epidemic of obesity the world has ever seen has occurred in parallel with the switch to high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener. We have a synchronous epidemic of diabetes. Michael Pollan, writing for the New York Times, states, “Some researchers now predict that today’s children will be the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will be shorter than that of their parents.”

Why worry about high fructose corn syrup? Aren’t we busy enough worrying about trans fats? Definitely avoid trans fats. But if you know somebody who is a daily consumer of soft drinks, they should know that fructose makes a sneaky end run in the obesity and diabetes game.

Fructose is invisible to the body's normal metabolism for handling sugar. It does not induce the normal, healthy insulin response met by glucose. The brain does not know that calories have entered the system. Fructose goes straight to body cells and they accept it. Within the cell, fructose is metabolized differently than glucose, the energy source with which cells are designed to deal. It goes through the pentose phosphate shunt (PPS), skipping the regulatory enzyme PFK*. The energy balance within the cell, ATP/ADP*, is flooded by the fructose and loses its ability to regulate energy. It breaks down fructose into the precursors for fat synthesis, NADPH (niacin or a phosphorolated form of niacin), then turns on lipogenesis (fat synthesis).

Fructose delivers a triple whammy to the body.
1) There are no fructose receptors (on the cell) so there is no insulin response.

2) It is taken up by cells but evades the regulatory steps within the cell. It breaks down into components, small carbon chains, NAD or NADPH, which induce lipogenesis (builds fat).

3) Thus, the products of fructose catabolism are the necessary precursors of fat synthesis (lipogenesis). In other words, there is nothing your body knows to do with high fructose corn syrup except to turn it into fat.

This is the probable cause of the diabetes epidemic. The epidemic of Type II Diabetes, formerly called adult onset diabetes, has reached down into early childhood and even occurs prenatally in infants of mothers who consume soft drinks. The baby is born with diabetes.

But wait! There’s more!

Several recent studies have shown that liquid calorie sources such as soft drinks do not induce a satiety response. Despite having consumed 100 calories during the preceding 1 hour period, subjects who had consumed a sweetened drink had a normal appetite and ate a full meal. The appetite of those whose calories were consumed in the form of a bar had a suppressed appetite and ate less of the meal than those who received the sweetened beverage.

Mom to Bret: I need an explanation for why lipogenesis induces diabetes. The connection is not clear to me.
Bret’s answer was, “You hit on the question that nobody knows the answer to.”