“The three pillars of regenerative agriculture as I see it are: regeneration through monogastrics, so it’s releasing the food waste in the food system and allowing it to be used (to feed farm animals) regeneration through rotational grazing from ruminants, like cows and sheep or even bison and food freedom, the ability for farmers to sell directly to consumers,” Nancy Starek, who owns Golden Hoof Farm with her Husband Karel Starek, told Reps. Joe Neguse talks with Karel Starek at The Golden Hoof on Monday. We built a wooden frame for two of the hurdles to slot into with cross timbers positioned to hold a large robust plastic tray bought from Amazon and sold for seed propagation.Photo by Matthew Jonas/Staff PhotographerAlice Starek shows food that will be fed to pigs as U.S. Our home-made system is very simple, based as it is on our 4ft galvanised hurdles that we already have for handling and making lambing pens. The problem, at least for a small flock like us, is that these systems are very expensive (typically over a thousand pounds). In practice sheep, as you can probably imagine, are less than keen on standing in a footbath for the requisite minimum of two minutes without putting them through a purpose designed handling system which removes choice. Zinc Sulphate, to quote the advertising copy, is lethal to footrot bacteria and is a healing agent which promotes the growth of new healthy tissue. We opted for Zinc Sulphate, specifically Golden Hoof, which is simple to use and avoids some of the potential toxicity issues that have been linked to formalin use. There are several options for bathing sheep feet, the most common being formalin or Zinc Sulphate based. That said we are constantly looking for issues and have adopted a preventative programme based on regular foot bathing when we have the sheep penned for other treatments (worming for example). We have been fairly lucky in that the problems we've had have been treatable and relatively short lived. Anyone who keeps sheep and claims to never have foot problems is either exceptionally lucky or being somewhat conservative with the truth.
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