Search Results for: label/animals

64 results

Urban Livestock and Bikes!

Mr. Homegrown
Events
1 Comment
...n’ chicken, permaculturist Joan Stevens will be rapping about rabbits and Leonardo Chalupowicz will share his recent experience of becoming a “backwards” beekeeper. We’ll discuss how to integrate these animals into your backyard and how they can serve multiple purposes beyond just being pets. Suggested donation: $10 to $20. Space is limited, so please RSVP by sending an email to [email protected] LA Bike Su...

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Thoughts on Samhain

Mrs. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
...July–they’re my favorite holidays.) So I save Oct. 31st for trick o’ treaters and parties and celebrate Samhain on the 1st, quietly, with a just a few simple gestures. I don’t plan on slaughtering any animals (Did I just hear our chickens breath a sigh of relief?) so I clean the house instead, and attack one drawer or closet, and shed things I don’t need anymore, both as sort of a psychological purge and in preparat...

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Without Merit: poison in your compost

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening
7 Comments
...lid, sold by Dow Chemical under the brand names Merit and Forefront. This herbicide is used to control weeds such as thistle, knapweed and yellow starthistle. The problem is that aminopyralid survives the digestive systems of animals pastured on land sprayed with it, as well as compost piles made from their manure. Most other herbicides break down eventually, but this stuff sticks around. An organic farmer using compost contaminated by aminopyral...

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Thoughts On the Egg Recall

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
11 Comments
An AP reporter just called to ask for my comment on the recent egg recall. He asked if I thought more people would start backyard chicken flocks. I said yes, adding that I believed that a “distributed” form of agriculture, i.e. many more people keeping small numbers of animals rather than small numbers of professionals in charge of tens of thousands of birds, would lead to greater food safety. Backyard flocks can get infected with s...

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Deadly Nightshade vs. Black Nightshade

Mr. Homegrown
Foraging
16 Comments
...s. Shilling et al. (1992) therefore concluded that the plants are probably only poisonous to indiscriminate feeders such as livestock who might consume the whole plant. However, these plants are browsed and used as fodder for animals without any detrimental effect in some areas, and Rogers and Ogg (1981) suggested that the development of toxic levels of these alkaloids is dependent on their growth under certain conditions or in certain localities...

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Author and Urban Farmer Novella Carpenter Rocks Los Angeles

Mr. Homegrown
Resources, Urban Farming
3 Comments
...ak, make sure to go! We’ve read excerpts from Farm City and Carpenter is a terrific writer. In addition to her books and articles she blogs at ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com and offers workshops on raising and slaughtering animals for meat in the city. And like Carpenter, we also fantasize about trading the bicycle for a mule. Time to print up the “one less bike” saddle stickers . . ....

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Picture Sundays: Your Livestock Can Survive Fallout from Nuclear Attack

Mr. Homegrown
Picture Sundays
1 Comment
The US Department of Agriculture published this handy pamplett circa 1962. The USDA’s main recommendation? Get yourself a “two-story, basement-type barn with a hay-filled loft,  to “reduce radiation exposure [to your animals by] as much as 80 percent.” Thanks to the interwebs you can download your own copy here. And, something for the kids. There’s a film version–featuring marionettes!...

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Radical Beekeeper Michael Thiele Ventures Into New Territory

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees
9 Comments
...ither side. Thiele believes that we should look at what feral colonies prefer rather than keep them in Langstroth hive boxes. Intuitive communication is just as important when approaching bees as it is when working with other animals. But bees are different. Thiele said that bees don’t “have a face like a cat or dog,” thus our communication with the bien comes from, as Thiele put it, “a different place.” The hive is...

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Bird Flu and Industrial Agriculture

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
2 Comments
While I have not seen this new documentary, Shall We Gather at the River, its website contains three provocative interview clips with Michael Greger M.D., the U.S. Humane Society’s Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture. In these excerpts Dr. Greger asserts that industrial agriculture’s penchant for cramming thousands of animals into sheds is the most likely vector for a host of scary diseases such as bird flu and mad cow d...

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Rats

Mr. Homegrown
Pests
RLeave a comment
...can think of some real estate agents we would like to give them to, but the rats would probably just run into some other poor sucker’s house. Rat poison is a really bad idea. First of all it is deadly to pets and native animals that might find it. Secondly it can kill a predator such as a hawk or owl, that might prey on a poisoned rat. Lastly, poisoned rats have a bad tendency to climb into a wall and die leaving an inaccessible, stinky mes...

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