Quote:
Originally Posted by 4X4
Couple of things here... Is heat in the winter and closed barns really so outrageous? If my grandfather wasn't dead, I'd ask him. Somehow he managed to raise livestock, cows included. He literally put doors on the barn. Not sure if he ran a space heater, or fired up the John Deere, but somehow, that a-hole managed to farm the land here in Alberta, and keep the cows warm. Do the people in Texas A/C their barns in the summer? Is that a thing?
As far as raising chicks go, and I really don't want to sound flippant here, how necessary is clean hay? Do they need hay every day? Once a week? Just when they start to stink? Honestly, how often does hay need to be changed? Obviously, 'never' is the wrong answer. But you sound like you know the industry, so if you would elaborate on hay and the frequency that it needs to be changed, I might start to be a little bit convinced that it's reasonable for the farming industry to be all jacked up in Canada, and that a door stopper of dutch cheese should cost ~10-15 dollars. I listen to the news pretty regularly, and I'm not hearing alarming death tolls out of the States over Gouda nor milk. I like having higher standards, but paying double for something that isn't even in question just a couple hundred km away is stupid.
|
Something who is on top of things would always clean the barn with each rotation. Bringing in new chicks without doing so is a great way to create a disease problem. Of course, the hog industry is not under supply management, and most hog farmers I know always wash down the barn after each rotation. Like I said before, supply management isn't needed to do that.
As for raising cows in the winter, we never had heaters either, and like your grandfather, literally just put doors on the barn as well. Chickens, turkeys, etc, are a different breed, and there needs to be more climate control. Again, someone who is on top of things will do this or risk losing money.
The market is perfectly capable of dictating all of this. We need to get rid of the supply management side, and setup an independent organization to uphold standards for how our food should be raised.