The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: SallyintNorth on October 24, 2011, 02:18:54 am
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Here's the thing.
There are a lot of woodland margins and so on getting fenced off from livestock under environmental schemes. The theory being that the livestock eat the understory and by excluding them the habitat becomes more diverse and supports a greater variety of flora and fauna.
Sounds great, but a lot of such ground near me is becoming choked with bracken. Environmental schemes do not think bracken is a good idea, and neither does anyone else. However, on steep, craggy and/or wooded slopes it is nigh-on impossible to control the bracken once it gets a hold.
There are two problems with the bracken. Firstly, it chokes everything, resulting in the habitat becoming less diverse and supporting a lesser variety of flora and fauna. Secondly, bracken is a really great environment for ticks to multiply and spread. Deer ticks can carry Lyme Disease, which affects humans, and sheep and deer ticks can spread a variety of diseases to dogs and livestock.
Our vet and others are reporting an increase in tick-borne diseases in sheep.
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Apparently one of the answers is to use animals as 'tick-mops' - sheep being one of them. Good news if you are looking for grazing, bad news if you don't like getting sheep in to treat them. It does seem to defeat the object though, but then, isn't that environmental schemes all over?
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get some gleanies :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
they eat ticks and sound ridiculous enough to make you laugh every time you hear them.
ooh and they taste great, a very underrated birdy is the guinea fowl ;)