Weeds/Disease/Insect Case Studies from Trautman Family Farm
Weeds
1st years:
- Plenty of them
- low fertility weeds such as dandelion
- lots of Canadian thistle
- Foxtail in my new ground
Now:
- Not very many at all
- High fertility weeds such as lambsquarters
- Conditions/mistakes weeds
Control methods:
- haying/mowing
- hand pulled a whole bunch of Canadian thistle while wet
- stuck some bull thistle/burdock
- cover crops/good fieldwork timing
- most important of all: investment in fertility program
Crop Diseases:
- None really to report;
- Luck?
- Fertility program
- Diversity
- Not compounding stress factors such as dry/hot conditions
Crop Insects
- Generally been pretty few issues
- As usual, more issues on land early in the fertility program
- Crop insects generally are weather stress related or very common in a year
- Noticed some clover leaf yellowing; maybe 10% of crop
-
Hay/pastures
- Some leafhoppers
- Some aphids
- Some grasshoppers
- Usually in hot/dry times
- One crop in one field aphids were a significant issue; had as much to do with late cutting as anything
Corn/other non-hay crops
- Lime green ladybug like things with black stripe: Noticed them in a corner of a sorghum
- Some rootworm damage in corn (with so much GMO….)
- Some very bad earworm damage in late planted sweet-corn (also GMO related I think)
- No rusts or other funguses
- I generally do not expect significant problems
- A good rotation really helps against disease/pests; breaks the cycles
Animal Diseases
- General health has improved every year; currently excellent
- General farm infestation of ringworm
o Pretty harmless; looks like crap
o A very good window into immune systems:
§ Some never get it, though surely exposed (excellent immune systems)
§ Some get it, but recover within 30 days (excellent)
§ A very few get it bad, and it stays quite awhile (poor immunity; watch closely, expect poorer performance)
- Tendency towards pink-eye
o Management issue!!!
§ Lack of discipline
· Fly control
· Keeping cattle in kelp
o Necessity of bringing “unknown” animals to the farm
- Dis-ease is an anomaly
o We take responsibility and ask ourselves:
§ What stresses have we put our animals under?
· Controllable/uncontrollable; most controllable
§ Never assume “these things happen”; disease is failure
§ We get one stress factor at a time. Any more and we are begging for a disease problem
- Treatments for sick animals
o Few that we have used as intensively as they need to be to effect cures quickly
o Some animals treated with antibiotics, so made “not organic”
o With dairy, we will need to be more diligent
o React more quickly; drag our feet and create bigger problems
o Profound differences in reactions to organic medicines/general recovery from disease from animals from good organic farms vs. bad organic or any conventional farms
