TWISTED HORNS DIARY
‘All natural’ remedies may deserve a second look
It seems that lately you cannot turn on the news without hearing something about the toxic chemicals and additives that are in our food supply, our water and our medicines. The amount of poison that we, as Americans, consume on a weekly basis from products that we have been told to trust is not only terrifying, but it is astonishing that we have given the keys to our health to the pharmaceutical com- panies, government funded programs and agencies and to hundreds of food processing companies — all of whom are the ones that only make money if we are sick!
I promise that this is not a political article nor is it an article that is against modern medicine as a whole, but all of the talk about what we are consuming made me start thinking and changing my perspec- tive — not only about how to be more healthy without the interven- tion of big pharma and turning to more natural foods and medicines — but how to raise my livestock and the program that I run with my all animals.
I’m not going to lie, in the past when I would see article titles or Facebook pages that had words like “holistic”, “homeopathic” or “all natural” remedies for goats or livestock, I would generally skip over them. With the “Whole Foods” movement and so many people starting to move towards being “Vegan”, I would generally imagine
BY TESS FETTERLY
hippies with no shoes on, taking care of the animals, singing to them while picking wild plants and rubbing them on the goats rejoicing that they were cured. Now, while that is an exaggeration, the truth is we farmers are
cut from a different cloth than those who live in cities and drive their electric cars to the natural food stores and buy mushroom coffee. We are all natural but in a different way — self-sustaining and farming our land to produce fruits, veggies, poultry, beef, goat and more. Fast forward to present day and I do believe that there may be something to the “all natural” remedies that I was quick to dismiss because I did not grasp the bigger picture. And, honestly, if you can cure conditions in humans with adjusting the foods we eat and re- moving the toxic chemicals, then it must be the same in goats. As I have told you, I raise 100% New Zealand Kiko goats. These goats are known to be more parasite resistant than other breeds and they are generally one of the more hardier goats over all. I will preface my next thought with this because goat breeders, Kiko breeders in particular, profess to not deworm their goats unless ab- solutely necessary. It is not just because we do not want the parasites to build up a resistance to the dewormers but it is also because if a goat cannot naturally defend itself against parasites then the goat will
April 2025 | Goat Rancher
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