AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes: It is the time of the big change-over at Turkana Farms. Last week our veteran prize ram, Suleyman the Magnificent left for his new home at Pine Hills Farm in Pennsylvania, where he will rule over a new harem of karakul sheep, and be cared for by a very kind, knowledgeable “shepherdess,” Karen Moss. It is from Karen that over ten years ago we bought our first ewes: Marina (Mark’s beloved), Myra, Brigit, and Kybele (my beloved). And it is from them that our herd descends. So, by sending our herd’s current progenitor to Pine Hill Farms, we have, in a sense, come full circle.
Like Suleyman, our gentle bull Tommy (above) has come to the end of his tenure at the farm since, if he remains he would be breeding with his daughters. So we have worked out an even trade with Jerry Peele at Herondale Farm (right) in Ancram, whereby we exchange Tommy for Trojan, a registered bull from another line. Trojan is also a smaller bull, better for our purposes, meaning that our heifers will, literally, have less to bear. For Tommy, unfortunately, it means separation from his cows and calves, to whom he is extremely devoted. But, on the positive side, he is returning to the farm where he was born. So once again, we come full circle. On a sadder note, yesterday five of our lambs, four castrated rams and one barren ewe, were loaded onto our pick up, and I drove them to a nearby slaughter house for “processing.” On a brighter note, this weekend another half dozen lambs, this time all ewes, will be driven off to join a karakul herd in the Catskills, two of them in trade for our new ram. On our return trip, we will be carrying our new ram, a very fancy one from New Zealand, who will introduce all kinds of new genes to our herd. We cross our fingers that he will be as peaceable as Suleyman. While a necessary aspect of farming, all of this buying and selling of creatures and the dislocations and separations that result have the unfortunate effect of bringing to my mind the horrible institution of slavery. If in the paragraphs above, we transposed humans for animals, all of these sales, barters, dislocations, and separations I have described would, of course, take on a very different cast. As a result of the experience of farming, I now understand the full horrors of slavery in a way I never have before.
I also have flashes of this as one-by-one, a matter of days after they are born, we castrate the ramlings. A sheep herd of our size requires only one ram—indeed, having more than one will only lead to trouble and a certain amount of danger to us. While castration was never really a practice in the American version of slavery, it was a major feature of slavery in other parts of the world—the Ottoman Empire being the one I am most familiar with. There the harems of the palaces and the homes of the grandees required a steady supply of eunuchs to serve as servants and guards. And so as I hold the ramlings still as Mark maneuvers the elastic bands over their scrotums, cutting off the blood supply (resulting ultimately in the atrophying of their testicles), I have a certain historical flash of recognition. Obviously, we are not simple beings living in transparent situations. Instead, I realize, we are immensely compartmentalized and compromised. The demands of a farm economy necessitate that we think and act in certain ways (some of which go against our nature) to ensure that inbreeding is avoided, that the herds not be allowed to grow in numbers beyond what the pastures can support and our feed budget allows, and that a certain farm income be taken in to provide the hay, grains, and veterinarian care that the humane raising of livestock requires.
Annually, non-productive animals must be sacrificed to ensure the necessary resources for the productive animals. Annually, a certain percentage of the productive animals must be sacrificed to ensure the well-being of the rest, ourselves included. The dilemma is that our care for the well-being of our livestock exists within this larger framework of necessity. We know from the beginning that our livestock can never be allowed to live out the full course of their lives, so we can only, in recompense, endeavor to make their abbreviated lives as fully happy and natural as possible. —Peter DaviesFor the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
