Adventures in Smallholding

New Year

2024-12-31T11:36:00.003+00:00

Happy Birthday to Adhara, who is 11 today.

Happy New Year to the readers of my blog. I used to try to make a point of sending cards to everyone who has a pup, but with the number of pups over the years and the cost of postage and other commitments, it's become harder to keep on top of as time has gone on. So here's the card image for this year:

Making Stuff in a Shed with Antique Machines I Restored

2024-08-13T13:37:00.001+01:00

The Scottish Orwellian Friday 13th Loom -- overshot tea towels.

Adhara is 10

2023-12-31T13:09:00.000+00:00

Happy Birthday Adhara who is 10 today, and to her littermates (sadly Fleur has passed away). Happy New Year to everyone else.

Petito - available poodle puppy

2023-09-01T19:35:00.005+01:00

Edit: Petito has now found a person of his own. Best wishes to him and his new family.

Update September. Petito is 12 weeks old and has had both his core vaccinations and is looking for a person or family of his own. He was held for a bit longer than his littermates as he had what seemed to be digestive problems with his mother's milk, which resolved once he'd been weaned, and he's had a blood test and several vet checks which have all been normal. He will be sold with a health guarantee same as all my pups (refund of up to the price paid to help pay for vet treatment if a genetic or congenital problem develops). Please see the website for further information.

Petito is a 9-week-old poodle boy who has stayed here a bit longer than his littermates so we could monitor him and have some vet tests run on him (which have now come back normal) because he had some digestive issues when he was young that have resolved by themselves. Petito is now looking for a loving home.

Petito is people-oriented and a happy little bugger whose tail never stops, but also a fairly undemanding, quiet puppy. He would best fit with a couple, single person, or family with older sensible children. He would be ideal for a retired person or couple wanting a companion.

He can be seen with his brother and mother Saffi, and his halfsister can also be met here. Please see the website for details.

Saffi, who is recovering from being spayed

Petito with brother Buxton

Alpacas 2023

2023-07-19T14:54:00.004+01:00

I have four crias. The first three are female, so their names are Not On Your Nelly, Flaming Nora, and Sweet Fanny Adams:

The fourth is a boy, so his name is Gordon Bennett:

For unknown reasons, he doesn't seem to be able to get enough milk from his mother, so he comes over for breakfast lunch and dinner.

Spotted cria

2023-06-24T14:40:00.003+01:00

From a breeding perspective, as this is a fleece-producing livestock, I would prefer not to have this spotted pattern and for the gene to get lost and the alpacas just be solid. However, the pattern on each animal is unique and the crias are always appealing.

Yellow-shoulder turkeys

2023-06-03T12:23:00.001+01:00

I have some yellow-shoulder heritage turkey poults for sale. The yellow-shoulder colour morph (sometimes called calico or tricolour) wasn't available in the UK so it became a pet genetics project of mine, and after managing to breed them consistently for a couple of years I've decided to make them available to other breeders who want to enjoy them. I also possibly have a few of the 'pavement pastel' version with the blue gene. Please see the page on the website under 'smallholding' for more information.

Family Ties

2022-12-08T15:41:00.000+00:00

Hobson & daughter Tiffin

One of the challenges of breeding dogs and ending up with seven of them when most people would normally choose to have one or two is organising individual time with each dog. When it's possible, I like to take out a daughter with her mother alone. The younger bitch I find learns a lot from having time with her mother as well as me, and their interactions together are different than how they behave with other dogs. Not that I think animals and their behaviour should ever be romanticised or anthropormorphised as they are quite interesting and lovable enough just as they are.

Adhara with daughter Pandora

Poodle boy

2022-08-10T08:41:00.003+01:00

Edit: this puppy has now found his family.

As a result of a cancellation, I have one brown poodle boy available to a suitable loving person/family. Please see 2022 litter 'Sausage Party' under the poodles section of the site or contact me if you would like more information or to come and meet him and his parents, two grandmas, a grandad, a half-aunt, and a second-cousin-once-removed and ask any questions. He would enjoy doing a sport with his person but would also fit in well with an active family or couple.

Diverse Swards: 1 year on

2022-06-05T12:09:00.000+01:00

Last year, I decided to seed some new grazing areas with diverse forage species, to benefit both my stock and the environment. The areas we established were of two different types: land that had been used for arable pretty much for living memory, and land disturbed by groundworks that had to be reseeded. The establishment and species balance has developed rather differently in each environment, even though the seed mix used was identical.

Orchard Paddock

This is an area that previously had been taken up by a Nissen hut that had reached the end of its life and an ancient summer house that had collapsed. The buildings had over time become engulfed in the hedge and a stand of fruit trees that had self-seeded there, and the area surrounding them was covered with rubbish. The rubbish, the buildings, and the concrete slab they stood on were removed. The hedge was cut back and the fruit trees were pruned and the dead and damaged trees removed for firewood. The soil in the area was high in organic matter from the buildup of dead leaves and plant matter over the decades, so it was spread out evenly and seeded.

Here, chicory is the dominant plant, and has produced a dense stand of flower stems which attracts flocks of goldfinches. Part of the plans for this paddock were to use it to put alpaca mothers with young crias as it's easy to keep an eye on them there, but it's so overgrown at the moment that the crias would probably get lost. The sweet clover (the yellow-flowered thing) seems to like it here too.

My Sewer Runneth Over

This is a paddock reclaimed from an area that has been depleted by arable farming over many years. The soil is clayey brash that seems to contain little organic matter. The paddock was seeded with grass a few years ago, which performed poorly, with the exception of one small area that many years ago, a malfunctioning sewer used to regularly flood. Last year it was overseeded with the same seeds used elsewhere. The seeds established well considering they were broadcast on the existing sward just before heavy rain was due. Here, legumes dominate, with sainfoin and clovers beginning to bloom. There is very little chicory.

Wildflower Meadow

This ground is pretty much identical to the sewer paddock, which it lies next to. In addition to the same seed mix used in the other areas, wildflower seeds were scattered, and some of these are flowering. Wildflower meadows are not supposed to be grazed or cut during the spring and early summer, and the sainfoin and birdsfoot trefoil are doing well here.

The Trivers-Willard Hypothesis and How it Relates to Animal Breeding

2022-06-02T19:03:00.000+01:00

So far this year, two crias have been born. Both of them are male. In fact, in all the years we have been keeping alpacas here, there have been born 12 males and only 5 females.

Why is this? The most obvious answer to the question is that it's just Sod's Law. With most domestic animals, more females are kept for breeding than males. I only have space to keep three mature males, which means I have to sell the males born here unless one is intended to replace one of the incumbent males (whom I must then sell to make room). It just seems an ironic twist of nature that I get more of the sex least useful to my programme. Or is it? Anecdotally, a lot of animal breeders seem to report a dearth of females born in the early years of their breeding programme.

There is a little-known scientific theory to do with the ratios of males to females born, and that is the Trivers-Willard hypothesis.

The Trivers-Willard hypothesis applies chiefly to mammalian species who are uniparous, that is, whose females typically produce a single offspring per pregnancy. The logic behind it goes like this: uniparous mammals embody a reproductive strategy whereby most females who survive to adulthood will reproduce, but breeding for males is highly competitive and most males who survive to adulthood do not get to do it. This strategy is a compromise between the mutually exclusive goals of maximising evolutionary selection and maximising production of the next generation. If both sexes competed aggressively for the right to breed, the result would be a reduced but highly adapted population. If everyone bred indiscriminately, the result would be a large population that perhaps isn't adapted so well to its environment and to survival. Evolving one sex that invests heavily in the reproductive process and the other to invest little but to be exposed to aggressive natural selection provides some of the benefits of both.

For males, the pathway to reproductive success is clear: be the strongest and the best adapted to your environment, and leave the rest to the females to sort out. But females, it seems, may have evolved their own strategy which is rather more subtle. For a female, who is likely to produce offspring but can produce far fewer of them than a successful male can, the sex of the offspring she produces matters to her 'selfish genes'. If she produces sons and they are successful, her genetic material will be inherited by many grandchildren. If she produces daughters, as long as the daughters survive, the daughters will likely produce some grandchildren regardless of whether they are successful or not. Producing sons is a genetic high-risk, high-reward strategy, whereas producing daughters is more of a hedged bet.

So, if a female has the ability to raise a competitive son (bearing in mind that environment as well as genetic material play a big part in the son growing up to be competitive) the payoff for having a male offspring is likely to be high. If she doesn't have this ability, she is better off in terms of genetic survival having a daughter. In practical terms, the ability to produce a strong offspring depend on her ability to feed it, which is dictated by her ability to feed herself and hence her body condition, and in social animals, her social rank in her group.

It is not understood how females are able to influence the sex weighting of their offspring, but it's possibly to do with the conditions in the reproductive tract favouring one 'flavour' of sperm, as chromosomal weights on the cellular scale mean x-bearing and y-bearing sperm are quite different to each other.

Studies of the Trivers-Willard hypothesis produce mixed results, probably because these variables are complicated and some of them, in particular social rank, are difficult to measure. A lot of the research on it tries to apply it to humans, which isn't particularly helpful to animal breeders (humans are weird animals with weird social behaviour and findings in them probably aren't relevant to other animals). But if we assume the TWH does cause an effect and it is relevant to domestic animals like alpacas, how might this relate to breeders early and later in their breeding programme, and the anecdotal observation that a lot of breeders have a high ratio of males to females early in their programme?

First of all, breeders start with a number of animals they intend to increase, therefore a small breeding programme at its outset tends to be understocked for the land it has access to, and the animals tend to be well-nourished and at risk of being overnourished and getting fat. Well-nourished animals, according to the TWH, tend to have well-nourished offspring, which in an environment where natural selection occurs (rather than breeder selection based on fleece quality and other factors that are completely abstract to nature) means they can benefit from having sons.

Secondly, the TWH postulates that social rank of the mother is important, as her offspring's social rank benefits from her standing. Social rank in animals is greatly misunderstood, as many people anthropomorphise success relating to wealth or social castes and bullying in people, or assume it is to do with strength and fighting, which it might be to some extent in males, but in females it is not. A high-ranking female is simply an older or experienced one who has a calm and confident nature that inspires trust and cooperation in the younger ones. She knows the land where she lives, she knows how to survive and to support her herdmates, she has seen countless births, and knows just what she can do to encourage a new first-time mother. In stable, established groups of social animals as they occur in their most natural state, the high-ranking females are old matriarchs accompanied by their 'lower ranking' daughters and grand-daughters. This is quite the opposite from the social situation of a new breeding programme, which has likely obtained a small number of females who are probably not related and have no proper hierarchy whatsoever and just make friends and muddle along together as best they can.

So, while in a larger and more natural social group, the older experienced animals might be more likely to have sons and the younger ones more likely to have daughters, in a newer and less established group where everyone has plenty and everyone thinks they know everything, the Trivers-Willard hypothesis might go some way to explain why male offspring are more likely!

Spring at Last

2022-03-20T12:14:00.000+00:00

Every spring, I take a picture of the magnolia tree. A piece of plastic has been blown up it during the recent storms this year, which I need to get down before the leaves grow again.

Plant A Tree

2022-02-16T12:42:00.001+00:00

Plant a tree. Or, if your budget will stretch that far, plant two trees. If you really have more money than you know what to do with, you could plant a copse, spinney, wood, or forest.

Adhara & Pan

2022-01-30T12:00:00.001+00:00

Adhara has a ball on a rope. She brought it back to me and pulled it, and the rope detached from the ball.

So now it's two toys and Pan has the other part.

Sulcorebutia arenacea

2021-11-30T12:24:00.003+00:00

This is one of my favourite plants.

About 25 years ago, I first found seeds of Sulcorebutia arenacea for sale. I bought them and planted them, but without any success. Probably the seeds were old or had been stored in an unsuitable way. Availability of material to make appropriate composts was also terrible back then, which probably didn't help.

Those days were followed a succession of accommodation of varying unsuitabilty for growing cacti in. First I lived in a reasonably modern, well-heated apartment with a west-facing window with a radiator underneath it. Cacti like sun and they like cold, arid conditions in winter, and they never flowered nor grew well there. I developed more of an interest in critically endangered tropical cacti that don't have such a need for a cool winter. The next place was better, with a huge south-facing bay window and the radiator farther back in the room. They fared better here, but the room which functioned as both a sitting-room and a bedroom was miserable to live in during winter when the sun didn't shine.

Then I lived in an impossible to heat, ground-floor, mouldering flat with only north-facing windows whose facing onto the street necessitated having translucent curtains to obscure the view in. The cacti all died, tropical or otherwise.

Following this, I had an improvement in finance and fortune, and bought a house and built a greenhouse in the garden, and started again with new seeds and better compost. Perfect. But then I moved again, to a property that already had an old, heated greenhouse with a lot of old wood and masonry in the frame. The greenhouse, at least on paper, was fantastic. But it soon became apparent there was a problem. The greenhouse had become infested at some point during its previous ownership, and mealy bugs emerged from the cracks and crevices and proceeded to mutilate and destroy the plants I'd carefully nurtured.

Nothing worked. As a last resort, I went to the supermarket and bought up all their stock of tobacco and cheap vodka (I can only speculate upon what exactly the staff there thought I was doing with it, but I got some very funny looks that day). I soaked the former in the latter and doused everything with nicotine death tonic. I dug up all the plants, burned the worst affected, sprayed the plants and the roots with the poison and repotted them all. It worked for a few months, and then they were back. Some of the foul creatures must have survived dormant in deep crevices where they couldn't be reached.

At this point, I gave up and decided to stick with conserving animals instead of plants.

Then I moved somewhere with no greenhouses. Somewhere that was falling to pieces and had poky horrid little windows that didn't retain any heat. What it did have was a lean-to porch with a transparent plastic roof that received a reasonable amount of sun and remained barely above freezing and unpleasant to live in during most of the winter. Two years ago, I decided to start again and buy some more seeds, not tropical this time because I had no facilities for them, and lo and behold, S. arenacea and a number of other Sulcorebutia species caught my attention in the catalogue of a merchant abroad. This time, they germinated like mustard and cress, and this summer just passed, they flowered for the first time. It's been a long time coming, but it has been a satisfying conclusion.

Not the rarest species, but a plant close to my heart. There is some debate amongst people whose interest in plants probably oversteps healthy boundaries, about whether it should be called Sulcorebutia arenacea or Rebutia arenacea. I don't particularly care about this, but Rebutia are very different beasts in their growing habits. Sulcorebutia all have huge tap roots and will split the pots they grow in, whereas Rebutia doesn't have that root structure. Rebutia also flower like mad when only a year old and they're great beginners' plants. Just make sure you buy seed from a good supplier, and if you have an established collection and someone else gives you a cactus, no matter how much you care about and respect the person, you should probably burn it in case it is harbouring parasites.

Rebutia

Bonfire Night Pups

2021-11-05T11:36:00.002+00:00

Happy Birthday to Tiffin Pup and her siblings, the 'Bonfire Night' litter, one year old today!

Chillies

2021-10-12T19:04:00.001+01:00

Growing chillies at home is not only more sustainable than buying them from a shop, but enables you to find a variety of chilli at the right point on the Scoville scale for your individual pain threshold. These are 'Peruvian Purple' and for me they fall in the Goldilocks Zone. Chillies are too mild if you use three of them in a meal and still can't taste them; they are too hot if you have to dissect them individually into portions to stop them ruining your meal, and then 4 hours later and after washing your hands three times you absently stick your finger up your nose... I digress.

The hottest chilli in the world is contested between the breeders of 'Dragon's Breath' and 'Pepper X', both reputed to be in excess of two million Scovilles, which has led to some experts voicing concerns that eating such chillies could cause anaphylactic shock in addition to already documented side-effects. Why anyone would want to eat these is beyond me, but breeding exceedingly hot chillies has scientific and commercial value as the yield of the active component capsaicin is increased.

Most chilli varieties are genuine breeds, so by retaining seeds you can grow more chillies with exactly the same culinary attributes as the parent plants.

Pavement Pastel Poult

2021-10-01T16:13:00.008+01:00

To get this colour on a turkey requires cracking a genetic combination lock of four different loci. It's a yellow-shoulder with a single dilution gene (homozygous blackwing base, homozygous grey, and the absence of Narragansett alleles overlaid with heterozygous slate). I don't know if there's ever been an official name for it, but I'm going with Pavement Pastel Poult.

Gallows Humour and a Dead Cria

2021-10-01T14:57:00.007+01:00

I did earlier this year have three lovely crias. The cria in the foreground of this picture was female and I had taken to calling Treacle (young alpacas should not be given names and should at all times be referred to as 'it' until they are at least 6 months old for reasons that should become apparent).

This cria was born perfect, but at 4 weeks old, developed aspiration pneumonia. Off we went to the vets to get antibiotics, and for a few days it was touch and go and the cria slept on the floor in the porch, and then she rallied and was once again doing well. But then at 6 weeks old the cria developed ataxia which progressively developed into a paralysis of the base of the neck which can be seen in the above picture. We tried many things with the vets: blood tests to check for deficiencies, which there were none, painkillers and steroids, and finally I found a research paper that discovered discospondylitis in an alpaca (an abscess between the vertebrae of the spinal column) and we started antibiotics in case it was this.

Unfortunately this was too late and the symptoms progressed further into paralysis of the front limbs and scoliosis. The vets and I were in agreement that the cria did not have the quality of life to justify keeping her alive. Normally, when this has to happen, I would bring the animal concerned to a quiet place about the farm and have it humanely and instantly killed with a rifle shot to the head by a person with a firearms certificate. However, it was necessary to have a necropsy to try to find out what had happened, and as we couldn't rule out a brain problem, we decided to euthanise the cria in the vet's car park. Unfortunately alpacas have cardiopulmonary systems adapted to high altitude, and they do not go gently into that good night. After a few seconds the cria was unconscious and undoubtedly out of her misery; two bottles of pentobarbital later, the cria was finally dead.

I put the dead cria into the car and set off for Bristol University. As I was driving through Bristol city centre, the car suddenly lost all power. I managed to get it into a bus rank and called the RAC.

Now, I don't usually go into cities if I can avoid it. As I sat in a stuffy car on a torrid September Saturday, I found myself watching the buses. I wondered if I should just take the dead cria and get a bus to the university. But the people in the city dressed rather oddly and did not seem at all like people in the countryside, and it occurred to me that they might take great offence at me being on a bus with a dead alpaca slung over my shoulder or taking up a seat that should be given to someone pregnant or disabled.

The RAC man arrived, and he asked if I had been dropping someone off in the bus rank.

Well, I said, I can guarantee you won't have heard this story before, but I've a dead alpaca in my boot and I'm taking it to Bristol university to be studied in the name of science and closure.

Turns out, I was right and he had never heard that story before. He found out what was wrong with the car, but could not obtain the part to fix it. So my dead cria had to be towed back home in the car.

Fortunately, after much pesterment and badgering, Mr Brock-o-Dale Rare Breeds agreed to drive to Bristol, and my dead cria at last went to university (universities let in anyone these days), and the necropsy went ahead. We found out the cria did have a spinal abscess as we had suspected too late to effectively treat. I do feel it is important to do these things and to learn from them. Bacteria must have migrated following the initial infection to cause this, so any cria that gets aspiration pneumonia in future or has ataxia will be going on a longer course of antibiotics as a precaution, and I'm leaving this here in the hope it might help another alpaca breeder with a sick cria.

RIP cria 22/7/21-18/9/21

Some Plants My Animals Love -- and I do too!

2021-06-26T12:34:00.007+01:00

Lucerne, King of the Forage Legumes

Lucerne is called alfalfa in the USA and Canada, and sometimes in the UK products made from it are marketed under this name or 'lucie', particularly when aimed at the horse and pony market. Lucerne has been used to feed livestock since ancient times and is one of the most productive and highest protein forages that can be grown. It has an advanced deep-delving root structure and of course, as do all legumes, it fixes nitrogen as well as carbon.

If lucerne is king, it's a bit of a tyrannous monarch. For a start, it's autotoxic. 'Toxic' is one of those abused words that has a specific scientific meaning that has been corrupted by entering the common vernacular, and all this really means is that mature lucerne plants leach hormones into the soil that impede the germination and establishment of more lucerne close to the parent plants, which means new lucerne plants can't seed and get going in established stands. This has no effect on anything other than lucerne, and probably evolved to reduce the impact of the very large root systems of the plants competing with each other for space. It does mean that if you have a pasture in which lucerne is a component and you need to destroy it and reseed it for whatever reason, lucerne won't re-establish in it unless you use it for something else for several years.

Secondly, lucerne has rather an antisocial reproductive habit. Its pollen is deficient in some amino acids important to the diet of pollinating insects. This generally isn't a problem unless you plant acres and acres of lucerne with no other flowering plants, since bees can always make up for it by foraging other flowers. However, the flowers have an odd mechanism that hits the bees on the head to deposit pollen on them when they access the flowers. Bees don't like being banged on the bonce, same as everything else, and learn to either avoid the lucerne or eat through the side of the flowers to bypass its bee-bashing machinery.

Lastly, lucerne as grazing can be hazardous to some ruminants, in particular cows, as it ferments aggressively in them and can cause a buildup of foam that can blow up the animal's digestive tract and potentially kill it. This is less of a problem when lucerne is included in a diverse sward rather than used as a pure stand, and seems to be less of a problem in sheep and even less so in alpacas.

Like any king, lucerne has a crown. In this case it's a sort of woody knobbly thing visible at the soil surface from which the plant sprouts following its winter dormancy and after it's been eaten. The crown is the only visible part of the plant's enormous root structure which in mature plants is apparently anywhere from 2 m to a massive 15 m deep.

Sainfoin... Queen of the Forage Legumes...?

The sainfoin plants around here are not very big as they were only planted this year. At maturity they are impressive plants with lupin-like pink flowers. There is one growing wild by a roundabout nearby, which I haven't taken a picture of because I'm always driving when I see it. More and more I am noticing that roadsides and waste ground is being maintained in the same way as meadows these days, which is great for biodiversity and for motorists to enjoy.

Back when countries were ruled by kings, the king was determined arbitrarily by birth order, which meant the populace were stuck with whatever king they got, which could put the country in a dire situation if the king had serious flaws. To compensate for this, the king could marry someone who made up for his deficiencies, and would often pick a queen who was diplomatic or had other characteristics that appealed to the masses. While sainfoin isn't as well-known as lucerne, they complement each other in this way, and sainfoin can ameliorate the bee-bashing, cow-inflating tyranny of lucerne.

Sainfoin is not as rich in protein nor as high-yielding as lucerne, but it has some superpowers. It contains condensed tannins which when ingested by livestock have several remarkable benefits. First of all, they work to break down the foam that can develop in ruminants as a result of rapid fermentation, preventing gas bloating. Secondly, they bind to proteins in the rumen so they pass into the intestines without being broken down and make the animal digest them more efficiently, and the third effect is that as a direct result of this more efficient digestion, the animals produce less methane. It is also an antihelminthic, which means it can actually help to reduce and prevent intestinal worms in animals grazing on it.

Of all the legumes, sainfoin produces the highest quantity and quality of nectar. It is rocket fuel for bees and other pollinators. Like lucerne, it is deep-rooting and drought resistant. Despite being grown since ancient times and despite all its qualities, sainfoin has fallen from favour since the World Wars. Considering all its qualities, it is perplexing why anyone with livestock would not want to grow it.

A video of a huge area of sainfoin, probably for making hay, by Patrick Funk

Burnet and Chicory

Burnet and chicory are two herbs that seem to do rather well for themselves even in quite aggressive grazing conditions. I deliberately let a paddock get hammered this spring because I wanted to overseed it to make it more diverse. The animals ate everything to almost ground level. When I inspected the field to see if seedlings were growing, there was a burnet plant and a few chicories doing very well that clearly were not seedlings and must have arrived earlier by being carried in by animals. They are both deep-rooting plants and chicory also has antihelminthic properties for animals grazing on it. I almost feel bad writing this as so much snake oil is peddled claiming to 'reduce worms naturally' but there is real research on this that shows it is effective. Chicory has attractive blue flowers on it in late summer, this one not quite yet.

Ribgrass is another deep-rooting plant purported to have anthelminthic properties. It thrives anywhere, including on building sites in solid clay.

The Wildflowers

I must admit I get as much enjoyment from my wildflower meadow as I do my actual garden, and the wildflower meadow involves much less work.

Pyramidal orchid

Musk mallow

Various wildflowers: campions, oxeye daisy, and bedstraw

Birdsfoot trefoil and red clover, both legumes

The Scarlet Pimpernel

Bath Asparagus

Hogweed. Alpacas like eating it. Also good on a pizza.

Penny the Paca

2021-05-23T20:47:00.000+01:00

This is Penny. Poppy gave birth to Penny about a month ago, and they were both doing great. A couple of years ago, when Poppy had her last cria Trillian, she was remated and started rejecting Trillian after she ovulated, but then re-accepted Trillian and it turned out had not held her pregnancy. As it was late in the year and we weren't sure what was going on, we waited until the next spring before letting Poppy mate again, and the result a little under a year later was Penny.

Unfortunately, after Poppy was mated again, she has done the exact same thing and rejected Penny, and this time seems to have held her pregnancy and now wants nothing to do with her own cria, so now Penny is having to have cow milk four times a day. The weather has been awful recently and we had to move the pacas off the good grazing because it was so wet, so I'm hoping it will get better soon so they can go back.

The Ever-Present Risk of Bottleneck Events in Breeds

2021-05-04T12:33:00.006+01:00

A genetic bottleneck is a crisis in a species, subspecies, breed, or other population that permanently reduces the available gene pool of that population.

Pretty much all domestic breeds were affected by the two World Wars, when resources were taken over by the war effort and people were conscripted, and breeders were simply not there or could not afford to continue their bloodlines. The psychological scars of the wars also led to some breeds of Germanic origins being rebranded to obfuscate their associations, such as German Shepherd Dog to 'Alsatian', German Boarhound to 'Great Dane', and poodles to 'French poodles'.

Hitler was interested in German Shepherds not because Blondi (pictured) met her breed standard or by all accounts had a wonderful temperament, but because of an absurd Nazi philosophy that wild animals are 'pure' and that domestic animals who superficially resemble wild ones are 'purer' than ones who do not. Appallingly, Blondi was poisoned with cyanide and her perfectly healthy puppies shot shortly before Hitler committed suicide, adding crimes against the German Shepherd breed to the atrocities he had committed against humanity.

Bottlenecks due to wars and other outside influences are beyond the control of breeders, but some bottlenecks occur because of poor decisions by breeders themselves. The most obvious and notorious bottleneck event is the popular sire. This is a male who produces an inordinate number of offspring with a large proportion of the available females in the breed, to the point that it becomes difficult to find males who are not related to him a few generations later. Although popular sires and other bottleneck events are often not inbreeding events, they inevitably result in inbreeding and loss of overall heterosis downstream as it becomes extremely difficult to avoid having the popular sire on both sides of the pedigree, often multiple times. A poodle dog born in 1981 was successful at conformation shows, and as a result this dog produced in excess of 100 litters, and it is now impossible to find a black or brown poodle descended from British bloodlines that passed through that era that does not have this dog in the pedigree at least once. Fortunately people seem to have been more sensible since then, as no dog who has enjoyed success at conformation since then has been so overbred since. However, sires can sometimes be overused more insidiously, or for well-meaning reasons, such as many people using a dog because he has good health test results, or because an imported dog offers (or is thought to offer) the chance of an unrelated mate and low COI offspring, and ironically the problem is only realised two generations later.

Bottlenecks have always occurred in the wild as well as in domestic breeds, so they are to some extent unavoidable. What breeders need to strive to do is avoid what is avoidable, and mitigate the damage caused by what isn't avoidable.

Registration trends in Poodle (Standard)

Poodles as a breed and poodle breeders are living through what can probably be politely termed 'interesting times' in recent decades. Most recently, we have the pandemic, which has increased demand for puppies and it is thought may be attracting people into breeding dogs for the wrong reasons, while simultaneously perhaps putting a damper on more established breeders by making it difficult to travel to use a male, to go abroad, or to go to a vet for AI or accurate progesterone tests. Concern has also risen amongst careful breeders about the suitability of the sorts of people applying to buy a puppy. Similar concerns hit breeders in the early 2000s due to the emergence of the novelty mongrel fad which saw poodles attract puppy farmers and deadbeat breeders as components to produce mix-breed puppies to market as 'hypoallergenic'. Many older more established breeders decided at this point to cease breeding because of concerns about their puppies and bloodlines ending up in bad breeding establishments. Older breeders are always going to leave the breed at some point, but situations like this perhaps precipitate their departure and make it more likely they will not have a suitable protégé to leave their line with.

'Boom and bust' cycles of demand in any breed are harmful to the gene pool. At the start of the boom, the breed may experience an influx of 'bandwagon jumpers' with little serious interest in it, while at the same time suffering an exodus of jaded older breeders pushed into retirement after becoming frustrated with having to field enquiries from unsuitable buyers. When the cycle busts and the popularity of the breed declines, all the bandwagon jumpers jump off the bandwagon and the bloodlines they got hold of disappear, for better or worse. Bloodlines that have ended up in puppy farms tend to be viewed as contaminated despite how noble their origins might have been, and end up dying out. The dedicated breeders who stay with the breed are unlikely to have a proportional representation of all the bloodlines that were present before the boom started, so when the gene pool contracts, it does not do so evenly.

In addition to trends in popularity of whole breeds, breeds can sometimes experience internal trends, particularly if certain colours suddenly become either unpopular or popular. In poodles, there are two such trends that have occurred in recent years. Firstly, the colour red either didn't originally occur in standards as it did in the other sizes of poodle, or it was lost during one of the World Wars. Red was recovered or introduced to standards from the other varieties, in countries outside the UK because the KC considers the varieties of poodle to be separate breeds and won't register their offspring. Imported red poodles started to appear in the UK around the start of the 2010s and the colour wasn't available here prior to this. Since then, the number of puppies registered as red has quickly increased.

Graph showing the percentage of puppies registered as red and 'colour not recognised by KC' in the BRS, starting with the 4th quarter of 2014 (1) to the second quarter of 2020 (23)

Secondly, a similar trend has occurred with the registration of puppies recorded as 'colour not recognised by KC', with few, sporadic registrations occurring prior to the early 2010s and increasing numbers of litters that are largely or sometimes entirely registered with this description. These animals are most likely mainly S-locus and agouti mismarks (there is a contradiction in the breed standard in that it states all solid colours are acceptable, but doesn't allow silver beige and café au lait to be recorded when registering pups, but looking at the pedigrees I suspect they aren't SB or CAL). S-locus and agouti mismarks are produced by combinations of recessive genes that have always been present in the breed and have probably always occurred at a low level.

What is potentially concerning is the rapid increase in these registrations. The data suggest the trend may have plateaued and possibly be starting to decline. The pie chart above shows the distribution of colour registrations of the CNR peak in the 2nd quarter 2018, when 'CNR' was the second most frequent registered 'colour' after black. The records suggest that CNR puppies are produced largely from imported stock that despite its country of import, traces back to the same names originating from USA dogs. Red puppies seem to be produced mainly from a handful of imported dogs in combination with apricot lines bred in the UK. This may be in part because the gene pool of apricots is not large and using red dogs is seen as a valid outcross, but this could become problematic further downstream if the same lines are being used, and could lead to the loss of the British apricot bloodlines as a distinct subgroup of the breed. What is most concerning is that the boom could be followed by a bust, possibly during the future recovery from the pandemic, and that the traditional colours will be in greater demand, causing the bottom to fall out of the market and hit the demand for the recently trending colours hardest.

Some recent phenomena of note:

An imported dog registered as being an unrecognised colour with a hip score almost three times higher than the median for the breed produced a number of litters, not an extremely high number of litters, but many of the dog's offspring seem to be subsequently being used for breeding. This is one of the more insidious ways a dog can end up being a popular sire, even if the owner of the dog is cautious not to let him be overused. Several offspring of this dog have been hip scored, and not one of them has a result better than the median for the breed. This isn't a criticism of the merits of the careful use of dogs with not quite perfect attributes or a discussion about hip scoring, but it demonstrates how popular sires can have an effect on the distribution of genetics in the breed, in particular genetics that might not be beneficial.

Of the dogs who have sired the most litters in standard poodles in the past decade, the three highest-siring dogs produce large numbers of puppies registered as either red or CNR, and have produced 24, 17, and 14 litters respectively. All three dogs are relatively young, having only produced litters in the past 2-4 years. There are a number of dogs producing traditional-coloured puppies who have sired 10-13 litters and most of these are much older and have produced a number of litters more commensurate with their age.

Bottleneck Events in Alpacas

Surprisingly, alpacas seem to have not experienced any significant bottleneck events since they started being bred in the UK. This is quite unusual for a breed, particularly one that wasn't native and was thus reliant entirely on imports to start the population here. Alpaca pedigrees at most trace back up to around 8 generations before reaching animals imported from Peru and Chile on which no pedigree data is available. It's possible that bottleneck events occurred prior to this, and alpacas have a woeful genetic history since their heyday during the Inca empire, but I think it's likely that breeding practices were chaotic and serious bottleneck events probably didn't occur.

There are alpaca pedigrees on this image (with COIs written under the names), but you might have to zoom in to see them.

There are a couple of recurring ancestors that seem to be present in quite a lot of pedigrees, but none of them are so prevalent that they're likely to become a popular sire issue in future. Interestingly my best alpaca is the most inbred, with a negligible COI of 3% (which most breeders of other domestic species would be thrilled to achieve).

This does not, however, rule out bottleneck events occurring in future if alpaca breeders are not vigilant to them.

How to Avoid Bottleneck Events

In this post I've only talked about two species/breeds I'm familiar with, and I can't speak for those I'm not. Some bottleneck events occur because of circumstances outside of anyone's control (such as pandemics and wars) but there are general rules that should be capable of being applied to a person working with any population that will help.

Firstly, try to avoid using males who have already sired a large number of offspring. This unfortunately doesn't help if you were the first person to use a male who was subsequently overbred, or if a male was used once to produce a litter and all the offspring in the litter produced large numbers of grandchildren, but it does go a long way to impeding the emergence of a popular sire. An underutilised brother of a popular sire isn't as good from a genetic standpoint as an unrelated, unused male, but is still the better choice if he's the only realistic alternative.

Do not get involved in a breed and do not choose a male to use for any reason to do with 'popular' colours or trends. To get involved with breeding anything for the purpose of an easy way to make money is a bad idea. When you take on a breed, you are becoming a custodian of that breed and you are responsible for the bloodline you create and preserving it, and eventually for passing it on to someone you trust. All breeds need new breeders, but they need to be in it for the right reasons. Don't do it if you're not prepared to stick at it and carry that responsibility.

If you are coming into a breed, try to find a bloodline that is not being widely bred. Some of this is difficult because there's only so much legwork you can do and a knowledge ceiling you're going to hit before you have to take the plunge and obtain something and actually, well, breed, and continue your learning and your development as a breeder. Most people make mistakes with their first acquisitions, but hopefully with enough research it's something you can still improve on later. Most of this is deep pedigree analysis. There are some DNA analyses around but the development of this sort of technology is still at a level where it needs to be seen as a complement to accurate pedigree research and not a replacement.

If reproductive technology is available for your animal, THEN USE IT. Frozen semen can be a lifeline for a breed if mistakes get made or uncontrollable disasters occur, and in theory it can last indefinitely, meaning semen you store might benefit your breed centuries after your death. Hopefully specialist vets should be more accessible soon, if they're not sick of deadbeats asking them to reproduce dogs that can't mate naturally and pandemic puppy farmers requesting they inseminate Chihuahua semen into Bullmastiffs for the next novelty mutt fad.

Diverse Swards (What Is Grass?)

2021-04-24T13:47:00.005+01:00

Part 4 in a series of blog posts about grazing management. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3.

Cows and sheep eat grass. Even small children know this. But what actually is grass? Grasses are an evolutionary family called Poaceae which probably first evolved during the Cretaceous and contains around 10,000 species. That's twice the number of species of mammal that exist, so 'grass' could be almost anything. What's more is that what's in the pasture for animals to eat might contain species from many more different families of plants than just grasses, and that can be a really good thing not just for the grazing animals, but for the plants themselves and for wildlife and the environment.

PLANTS

Plants can be loosely divided in practical terms (rather than taxonomical ones) by their lifecycle. Annuals are plants that complete their entire lifecycle within one season and must reproduce in that timeframe in order to continue. Biennials last for two seasons, and perennials should last several years.

GRASSES

Grass species all photosynthesise, which removes carbon from the atmosphere by converting it into more grass, and they all have roots which helps to stabilise the soil structure and provide habitats for fungi and soil-dwelling insects and microorganisms. Poaceae in most cases reproduce by wind-borne pollen. This is the reason arable grass crops such as wheat are often criticised for being barren deserts in terms of supporting pollinating insects. Grasses are adapted to regrow after their foliage has been eaten, originally by dinosaurs and in more modern times by grazing mammals.

Ryegrasses are a group of grass species that has been associated with farming as it has been practised since around the time of the Second World War. They became popular because they are easy to make silage from and they grow well if you throw petrochemical fertilisers on them. Recently many people have raised concerns that ryegrass because of its shallow roots and fertiliser dependence and high sugar and low mineral content. However, ryegrass in itself isn't necessarily bad, and these characteristics only become problems when ryegrass is grown as the only species. Some ryegrasses are annuals or biennials such as Italian ryegrass, and others are perennials.

Grasses other than ryegrasses include species that have various common names such as cocksfoot, timothy, and fescue. These grasses usually have deeper roots than ryegrass and are more tolerant of drought. Because they have longer roots, they mine minerals from deeper in the soil and make them available to other plants and to animals grazing them.

LEGUMES

Legumes fix nitrogen. What this means is that, as well as doing everything that grass does, legumes have commensal bacteria living inside nodules on their roots, just as we have commensal bacteria living inside us that help us to digest what we eat. Legumes take nitrogen gas from the air and convert it into soluble nitrogen such as ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates. These forms of nitrogen are biochemically the same as what is found in fertilisers. Legumes thus fertilise the soil over time and benefit other plants without having to throw petrochemical fertilisers on it. Legumes are also high in protein because of their nitrogen fixing, and nutritious to animals, and a massively important component to a diverse sward. Legumes that may be found in swards include clover, vetch, lucerne, and sainfoin. Legumes are flowering plants that benefit pollinating insects.

HERBS

Herbs are probably to most people something you put in your food to make it smell nice. 'Herbs' as the word is used for plants found in swards doesn't seem to have any clear taxonomic definition, but refers to plants other than grasses or legumes that are nutritious for animals to eat and might have additional beneficial effects such as reducing parasites. Herbs include things like chicory and cow parsley. They are usually flowering plants and also benefit insects.

WILDFLOWERS

Wildflowers are flowering plants that are not particularly nutritious for animals to eat, but that are neither harmful. They are usually valued in grazing because the plants themselves are rare and because they are part of the ecosystem of a particular area and provide food or habitats for wildlife.

WEEDS

Plants that are poisonous to livestock such as hemlock, ragwort, and buttercup are not welcome in the sward for obvious reasons. Plants that are invasive and can end up dominating the sward and outcompeting other species are detrimental to biodiversity. Harmless native plants such as docks and dandelions in a pasture are not really weeds, but can apparently be problematic when making hay and some farmers don't like them. Most weeds can be controlled or to some extent avoided by careful pasture management.

DIVERSE SWARDS

A diverse sward contains multiple species of plants. Diverse swards benefit livestock and the environment, but interestingly growing different species together produces more biomass than growing the species individually. Some of this can be explained by plants with smaller root systems fitting between ones with larger roots efficiently and legumes producing nitrogen that benefits grasses, but the effect is far larger than could be expected and scientific understanding at the moment hasn't been able to fully account for this. There is a wonderful online lecture that discusses this and lots more about diverse swards in the video below by Ian Wilkinson of Cotswold Seeds.

NEXT TIME

Most people get into keeping livestock because they love the animals. However, if you love animals who eat plants, you have to learn to love plants too! Next time, some plants I particularly love and I hope you will love too.

Farming Ethics

2021-02-26T11:08:00.010+00:00

Part 3 in a series of blog posts about grazing management. Part 1 Part 2.

THE FORESTS OF ANTARCTICA

The poles were not always frozen year-round. Up until relatively recently (in the history of the planet, obviously not in human timescales) there were trees on Antarctica. Antarctica hasn't moved very much from where it is now (it was close to its current position at the time Pangaea still existed) so the trees and the ecosystem that came with them were able to survive despite the absence of sunlight for half the year. The trees all became extinct when the poles became permanently encased in ice.

Image by Robert A. Rohde / Global Warming Art

A map of Antarctica as it was thought to look before the poles froze. It's difficult to predict exactly how the coastline would look if the poles melted again. The increase in sea levels would affect mainly the equatorial regions and have minimal effect on the poles, and the weight of the ice as it currently is actually effects a force on the continent and pushes it down into the crust of the Earth, so it would gradually rise and sea levels would fall over many millennia.

Some day, the poles will melt and life will be able to live on Antarctica again. That could happen at a time when the human species still exists, if we fail to limit anthropogenic climate change. Or it could happen despite anything we do, because of something out of our control, or if it turns out climate change is a chain reaction that has already gone too far and reached a critical mass from which nothing we can now do will reverse.

If Antarctica becomes capable of supporting complex life, what will grow and live there? We could of course just leave it alone and an ecosystem will eventually evolve to fill that niche, but that would take a long time and the obvious and ethical solution would be to use it to provide homes for people displaced by coastal flooding due to rising ocean levels from the polar ice melting. What will the people be able to eat when it is dark for half the year?

LATITUDE AND GROWING SEASONS

In regions with long dark winters such as Scotland and the Scandinavian countries, there is a reason why traditional meals are usually things like fish or haggis with root vegetables. It is not possible at these latitudes for people to get sufficient nutrition from the sorts of crops that can grow in the climate there. People have to farm hardy livestock as well as crops if they are to survive without relying on imports.

GREENHOUSE GASES i.e. METHANE

The most common objection to grazing animals from an environmental perspective is that the animals themselves produce greenhouse gases (most commonly, that ruminants produce methane).

However, this is a simplistic and incomplete part of a complicated and not completely understood system.

Methane has a half-life in the atmosphere and will break down into carbon dioxide after about 8 years. As long as net emissions of methane remain roughly constant over time, and vegetation utilises the carbon dioxide, the environment can absorb them. Many natural and unnatural processes emit methane, some of them beneficial in other ways. Bogs and peatland are some of the few environments in existence today that can continue to capture carbon indefinitely due to the remains of plants and animals building up in conditions where decomposition can't properly occur -- rather like the vast swamp forests of the Carboniferous but on a smaller scale. The anaerobic processes that do affect this organic material emit methane, notoriously as the 'will-o'-the-wisp' swamp gas phenomenon. Methane produced from the decomposition of sewage and refuse, or indeed any non-fossil source of methane, if it could be collected, could be used as a renewable replacement for gas. There would be a small, but not insignificant, reduction in pollution from both agriculture and the funeral industry if we could stop incinerating dead people and animals and abattoir refuse, and biodegrade this material efficiently and hygienically into compost and captured methane.

Properly managed grazing land stores carbon and resists soil erosion. Using land for growing annual crops exacerbates soil erosion and emits carbon. It turns out to be rather difficult to measure and quantify the emission or storage of carbon in soils, however, and shockingly most of the calculations released to the public fail to take this into account. What stores the most carbon on land is situational as in some climates and soil types it's possible to create grassland where planting trees wouldn't work, and in some cases grasslands might actually be the best option for sequestering carbon. When it can be accounted for, grazing livestock is likely to look somewhat to a lot better compared to crops than how it is currently portrayed.

When it's considered that the carbon in grazing systems as well as in typical crops that people can eat isn't as simple as it might be presented, that grazing can be used to restore land depleted by crops, and that growing crops becomes more difficult if not ultimately unviable without livestock farming, and that a lot of land in the UK and other countries of similar latitude used for livestock grazing cannot grow crops suitable for people in any shape or form, it should be apparent that it is all part of a system and that no one part of it can be considered apart from the rest of it.

A conserved prairie in Texas. Prairies are natural grasslands found in the USA. They were originally grazed by large ruminants such as bison and were biodiverse habitats. As prairies are rich fertile soils, farmers ploughed them up to grow crops and unfortunately over many years soil erosion and carbon loss has meant the soils have become infertile. Restoring prairie to its natural state and properly managing it with grazing livestock instead of using it all for crops will store carbon.

image credit: Katy Prairie Conservacy

The carbon in the grazing 'cycle' (the animals and plants and the manure and carbon dioxide and methane and other pollutants they generate) is within the Earth's accessible resources, and does not add additional carbon to the system. On the other hand, pollution from industries heavily dependant on fossil fuels is exogenous and not part of the existing carbon cycle. That carbon has been locked out of the system for millions of years since it was fossilised and buried during the Carboniferous. If no additional carbon is being added to the ecosystem, even if there is a lot of pollution and poor and inefficient management in industries that emit carbon, it should in theory be possible to return the system to a similar point to how it was before the pollution started by being more efficient and restoring more carbon sinks. However, when significant amounts of fossil fuel continue to be used, this becomes less and less feasible as the amount of carbon in the system increases, and for better or worse any equilibrium that can be reached is not going to be the climate we were familiar with before the industrial revolution. It makes no sense to attack livestock farming before heavy fossil fuel industries such as transport.

BIODIVERSITY AND BALANCE

It can seem we are sometimes encouraged to think of things in terms of 'min/max'. For example, growing a particular crop might mean feeding the largest number of people on the smallest area of land, or using the same land to grow a particular species of tree would store the most carbon, or creating a tidal marsh on it would mean the most biodiversity. The reality is we need to use land in varying ways to achieve a compromise between feeding people and reducing emissions and sequestering carbon and promoting biodiversity.

A perennial crop such as an orchard is probably the best way to farm and store carbon, but orchards often are also planted with grass. The grass can include wildflowers to benefit nature and livestock can also graze it. The grazing of livestock means less energy needs to be used to cut the grass and prune the trees and keep in check plants that can become a nuisance like ivy and 'old man's beard'. Animals benefit trees by trampling undergrowth and breaking up debris and fallen branches, allowing light in and air to circulate. Hedges and copses for livestock to shelter provide habitats, and traditional hay meadows and leys can be havens of insect biodiversity. Ground damaged by crop-growing can be turned over to grazing and rejuvenated so in future it can grow crops for people to eat once more.

There are some people who think we should turn over as much land as possible to wildlife and reintroduce x and y large mammalian species because they once existed here and have been extinct for centuries. This exotic image of a 'perfect wilderness' is simply a romanticised snapshot of one particular point in time that is by no objective calculation better than any other point in time, and ignores the necessity of providing food for people. If species have become locally extinct, it means the native subpopulations or subspecies native to that locality are lost for good. Importing animals from other populations will not restore its unique genetics. Species should not be reintroduced unless their absence causes a problem with the ecosystem that can't be fulfilled by something else. Domestic goat and sheep breeds serve the same purpose on moors and mountains as their primitive wild ancestors, and there is no need to reintroduce wild boar in woodlands when domestic pig breeds can be used for the same ends. However, creating habitats to encourage pine martens to re-establish in England and Wales will benefit the ecosystem as they control the non-native grey squirrel population and the damage it does to trees, and nobody seems particularly interested in eating the squirrels and we don't have another predator that can fill that niche.

The Nazis did an experiment to try to recreate the extinct ancestor of modern cattle, the aurochs. They took over large swathes of forest in the countries the Nazis had invaded (presumably murdering or displacing the local farmers and the breeds of livestock unique to the areas) and filled them with cattle of various breeds which they believed had characteristics that would recombine to create the traits of the extinct species from which they evolved -- an enormous, aggressive wild animal. This was because of a quasireligious pseudoscience and absence of knowledge of genetics at the time, which caused the Nazis to believe enormousness and aggression to be more spiritually valuable than the useful traits instilled into livestock by generations of careful selective breeding such as docility, hardiness, production, and ease of management. The results of this experiment, although they were large and aggressive, failed to match the size and phenotype of the original aurochs, and of course failed to recreate the gene pool of the breed that the Nazis didn't have the science to understand. This is because the genetics of a species or breed cannot simply be reassembled once it is lost even if fragments of it survive in extant animals. The genome is so large and chromosomes recombine so randomly that it cannot be done. As for the cattle themselves, when the Nazis were defeated, the local people hunted and ate most of them. Ironically, although they weren't aurochs, they shared the same fate. A small number of them survive as a breed now called Heck cattle, which have little use compared to other cattle breeds because of their aggression.

Creating artificial nature is a vanity of the wealthy and powerful imposed upon the poor and the powerless.

WELFARE

No discussion of ethics would be complete without an assessment of the welfare of the animals being farmed.

To do that, we have to compare domestic animals to nature. That's not because of any misconception that nature is somehow perfect, because nothing is perfect and perfection and worlds in which nothing ever dies are a man-made fantasy, and it is impractical and unreasonable to compare anything in real life to this standard. Nature is what exists that we can't control, and has always existed and will continue to exist even if we no longer do, so in order for something to be ethically justifiable, it has to be at least as good as nature and preferably better. For this argument I'm considering animals used for grazing (typically ruminants) as they are kept in the UK, i.e. in pastures, because they can be used for conservation grazing and that's what this series of blog articles is about, and not animals that are factory farmed indoors such as pigs and poultry. Pigs and poultry can however be farmed in ways that are beneficial and higher welfare, but that is something to discuss in another post.

Link: The Five Freedoms

Mammals embody a specific evolutionary strategy. One sex competes amongst itself for a limited right to reproduce. The other faces no barrier to reproduction, but invests all of its resources into having and raising young. Both sexes of mammal risk starvation, predation, exposure, disease, and injury in the wild. Male mammals typically compete by fighting and can be harmed or killed in the process. Even the successful males tend to have limited tenure; a few breeding seasons at most in his prime before exhaustion and advancing age ensure his defeat and obsolescence. Wild female mammals typically face pregnancies too young, too old, or too frequent to permit full recovery. They face birth in dangerous situations with no medical recourse if something goes wrong. They experience the deaths of many of their young. Prey animals are typically chased, terrified, and subjected to violent and drawn-out deaths by predators, or swallowed and digested alive in the case of many insects and small fish. Predators frequently starve to death due to injury or simply not being competitive enough at hunting.

Conversely, if we consider domestic mammals such as sheep, it should be obvious they do not face these difficulties to anywhere near the same extent. Even the most money-motivated sheep farmer will ensure the sheep are properly fed and and treated if they get diseases, as malnourished and sickly animals are unsaleable and won't produce healthy offspring, and deadstock costs money to dispose of. Unwell animals are treated with veterinary medicine, or euthanised if this is impossible. Male animals are selected for breeding and those who are not selected are either castrated and kept as pets or taken to an abattoir and stunned before being slaughtered. The tups who are kept for breeding will be moved in with the ewes at the mating season and moved out afterwards and kept elsewhere. The tups will never have to fight for access to ewes. Any ewes who are not in suitable condition to be mated will be kept out of the breeding group for that year. When the ewes are due to lamb, most farmers will bring them into a shed and observe them carefully, summoning a vet if needed, and will ensure the lambs get the best possible chance of survival.

Therefore, even when taking into account that accidents sometimes happen and animals can't be supervised around the clock, and problematic exemptions such as religious slaughter without stunning, grazing livestock irrefutably has better welfare than wildlife, and farming grazing mammals such as sheep is ethically defensible.

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

One issue with promoting how we farm in developed countries is that people in developing countries often seek to emulate it, even when it's not suitable for the environment they live in, and might do things such as tear up rainforests so they can create swards of plants unsuited to their climate so they can graze Western breeds of sheep. Unfortunately, traditions which often developed over many centuries for good reasons are wrongly seen as irrelevant, unfashionable, or even (foolishly) politicised and derided as xenophobic. It's vital when discussing conservation that we stress the reasoning behind it, which is that sustainable farming is a system tailored to its environment and specific to that environment. In every part of the world, when seeking to farm sustainably, people must look at the breeds and crops that are traditional to the heritage in that particular place and the methods traditionally used there.

Because food has unfortunately become so politicised, I have spent the first three blog posts in this series doing groundwork that I hope will help readers to understand the complex science and reasons behind traditional mixed farming that are too often presented as facile, politicised arguments. In the next post in this series, I hope to finally get into the exciting matter of what grazing or 'grass' actually is in terms of plant species and biodiversity!

Research on Dog Harnesses

2021-02-24T13:09:00.018+00:00

For some time, one of the most popular pieces of misinformation doing the rounds on social media is a campaign about dog harnesses. Specifically, that some types of harness are 'restrictive' or 'harmful' and other types are beneficial. Such claims are usually accompanied by either a link to a textbook about dog anatomy, whose author so far as I can tell has never had any involvement with designing or researching dog harnesses, or a drawing on what looks like a child's exercise book with German writing on it that doesn't translate into any information to explain what it is supposed to show. When these posts are challenged, they often deteriorate into vehement passions with people claiming that science supports a particular viewpoint, when the facts of the matter are that very little scientific research has been undertaken on this subject.

A paper was published a few years ago that studied the movement of dogs wearing various harnesses, and found that all harnesses restricted measured movement in the dog compared to not wearing a harness, and that harnesses marketed as 'non restrictive' actually restrict movement the most. More recently, and perhaps in response to concerns over the misinformation campaign, a scientific review was published that discussed this paper amongst the few other papers in existence on this sort of thing. This research would seem not only to disprove, but to completely contradict the claims made by the armchair experts.

Here's a diagram of the front assembly in a poodle. A correct front assembly is hard to breed, and a dog with a good one is an asset to a breeding programme. The front assembly is actually not connected skeletally and is held in place entirely by muscle, as anyone who's ever butchered a deer or something similar will have noticed. Because of this there are concerns in working animals about injuries to the shoulders and how to avoid them.

In the review of the papers, the 'non restrictive' harnesses studied and found to be more restrictive than other harnesses were identified as having a 'y shaped' front. If you look at the drawing of the dog, the foremost point of the dog's body should be the prosternum, which should be slightly in front of the point of the shoulder. The dog's chest should have a rounded feel to it, with the areas between the bones filled in with muscle. Poodles with lousy fronts often have the point of shoulder in front of the prosternum and you can feel hollows either side of it. If you consider how a harness with a 'y shaped' front will fit on the dog, then as well as restricting the dog's movement as the study found, there is also some concern about what this is going to do to the dog if it pulls in it, as all the force from the pull is going to end up on the prosternum and neck and the soft tissue surrounding it. One of the other studies in the review found that in all types of harness, the highest force exerted on the dog was on the sternum area. Other places where harnesses tend to be a problem and interfere with the natural shape of the poodle are at the withers (things that come too far forward interfere with the dog's ability to hold up its head) and in the elbows (if the body strap is too far forward, it's likely to press into the armpit and interfere with the return of upper arm).

Harnesses are beneficial to dogs as safety seatbelts in cars and some sports or work require them. However, in light of the research that found harnesses restrict normal movement, the current promotion of harnesses as 'better' than a collar to attach a lead to is unfounded.

A good seatbelt harness looks something like a straightjacket! The ribs of the animal are the most resilient part of the body. The dog should only wear this harness in the car as it will restrict movement. A seatbelt will reduce the risk of injury from being thrown forward in an impact (to both the driver and the dog) and prevents the dog from running into the road if the boot door flies open or a window breaks in a low-speed collision.

If you have to attach a lead to your dog's harness because the dog has a medical condition, or you do a sport that requires one, do not use the same harness as your dog uses for a seatbelt. Choose a harness that seems to fit the dog well, is not too bulky, and that the dog looks comfortable in, and ideally try on a few harnesses to compare them. If you work for the police/the army or have a dog to assist you with a disability, use the harness your trainer recommends and ask them if there seems to be a problem with it or the dog doesn't like it. If your dog is doing a sport that requires it to pull, it might be best in light of the evidence to choose a harness that has a wide, padded strap to distribute the force of pulling over the whole chest. If your dog does not have to pull as part of its sport/work, you should do your best to teach it not to pull, whatever equipment you use. If you have to use a harness to attach a lead to, take off the entire harness when the dog is allowed off-lead activity.

I'm going to include a link to Julius K9 here, because I feel they've been unfairly maligned by this misinformation campaign, as propaganda frequently singles out their products as being harmful to dogs when there is absolutely no evidence to support this. I don't currently own any of their products, but from what I can see, they are well made and the company puts effort into research and testing them and deserves respect for that. JK9's statement 1, statement 2 in its own defence. It is unethical for armchair experts to spread false information to promote products from no-name businesses over businesses that invest this amount of effort into their products.

We do seem to have a problem with people's attitudes that began with probably justified objections to things like electric shock collars, but has progressed to a sanctimonious intolerance directed at all manner of training equipment and practices.

The way some people talk, you would think the worst thing that can ever happen to an animal or a person is to experience something uncomfortable, or even to be told 'no'. However, research by psychologists largely seems to suggest that it's not that, and the worst thing is probably something called learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is a psychological state that a person or animal comes to because bad things keep happening and there is nothing that individual can do to stop them. Animals in studies who have reached this state of mind do not try to escape the bad things even when they are given opportunities, and it's no doubt the cause of the frustration experienced by people who genuinely want to help other people who have been abused or have addictions when the person seems to self-sabotage every attempt. There is no evidence to suggest that a person or animal who experiences unpleasant things in life, but has autonomy and is able to make choices to avoid them, suffers any serious psychological damage, and a lot of psychologists would probably argue that never allowing a child to make a mistake or experience failure is psychologically unhealthy. What applies to a child may also be of relevance to a dog.

What research into learned helplessness suggests is that experiences that involve choices are more psychologically beneficial than those that don't. Dogs who are 'learned helpless' in experiments do not respond to either punishments or rewards to try to teach them to avoid unpleasant experiences! When we are training animals, we might do better to think more about how we can give animals choices and make things fun for them, rather than fretting that something might be 'negative'.

For this reason, it makes even less sense that the people who seem to be most in favour of harnesses, which research suggests are restrictive and possibly uncomfortable whether the dog is pulling in them or not, also seem to complain the most about collars, and in particular 'squeeze collars' such as martingales and choke chains. There's no reason to think that collars restrict dogs' movement or are uncomfortable when the dog is not pulling in them. When a dog does pull against a fixed collar, the shape of the collar changes and the force typically loads on the soft tissues at the front of the throat. A squeeze collar such as a martingale with a closed diameter smaller than its wearer's neck converts the pull into a squeeze and redistributes it around the neck. You can feel for yourself how this works by putting the collars on your arm and pulling them. I don't know of any research on this, but anecdotally people tend to feel that dogs don't pull as hard in squeeze collars, which would suggest they find them more uncomfortable to pull in. But there's no reason to think that this means they do more damage when dogs pull in them, and the physics of how they work would suggest they are less likely to damage the dog's throat. Although obviously the best solution would be to train the dog not to pull on whatever it is wearing, if a dog is pulling in a collar and is uncomfortable, the dog always has the choice not to pull and not be uncomfortable. The dog has autonomy in the situation. It is not that the act of pulling is unpleasant, but the opportunity to choose that matters most.

Distribution of the force of pulling in a 'squeeze collar' (martingale) compared to a fixed collar.

Martingales and choke chains are often chosen by handlers because they are easy to take on and off, but some people choose them as a training aid for dogs in the habit of pulling because they feel the dog doesn't pull as hard and to help teach it not to pull.

Many people today seem to think that tolerance is posting a platitude on Twitface that you support LGBTQ people, while at the same time posting discriminatory or hateful things about people who might have voted for a political party you don't approve of. It isn't. Tolerance is about respecting the choices of others even if you don't agree with them, and hopefully trying to understand the other people's reasons. Everyone has things they find deeply offensive, for example, I am offended by religious and animal rights fundamentalism because they do not make objective sense and seek to curtail individual liberty, and also by puppy farming and 'mutt propaganda' because I see it as harmful to conservation and welfare and based on distorted science and logical fallacy. I think we can all agree that someone who is offended by people because of a characteristic they can't help such as skin colour has an unacceptable prejudice and needs therapy or something to address this. However, being offended by somebody else's training tools is in the same sort of order as being offended by how someone else holds their knife and fork. Unless someone is doing something illegal, we should all mind our own business.