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Jeash
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Hey Smous, do the dairies in South Africa have problems losing
cattle to wildlife, i.e the large cats? I am just curious to see what issues you have to deal with. We have coyotes and fox (our dogs killed a fox in our yard this summer). However, we don't have too many predator issues. We are starting to get courgars in the area and a few years ago we had a wolf killed on the road two hours south of me. The wolf had a tracking collar and was originally from western Wisconsin (Black River State Forest), it was a male that left the pack and went traveling.
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31/10/2008, 1:26
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smous
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Re: Hey Smous, do the dairies in South Africa have problems losing
Jeash, you gave me a good laugh. We have predators deluxe, they are generally nocturnal, operate in packs, target of choice is often fat dry cows, but they are opportunist hunters and will prey on anything they come across. A mate of mine nearly lost ten three month old heifers to them just last week. They don't belong to the cat family but are actually hominids, and in the employ of Harry's Midnight Meat Supply. Cattle theft is actually beyond a joke, heartless barstards they are not above stealing two cows, taking them to a secluded spot, slaughtering one and removing the meat, hamstringing the other and leaving it still alive and unable to get away, until they can come back to slaughter her and remove her meat. They hamstring rather than kill her, because that way the meat doesn't go off, they may come back days later or if they are scared off never come back and the cow dies a slow agonising death. There is a lot of small scale theft of a cow at a time, but there are also big syndicates that have transport, build pens and loading chutes deep in some plantation, load them in the middle of the night and they can be hundreds of miles away by morning.
As far as animal predation goes jackals (our version of coyotes) are a big problem in calving camps, lured there by the smells, they feast on afterbirth, but are known to prey on calves and eat the complete vulva out of calving cows that can't get up. There has been an absolute explosion of them in recent years.
Leopard is the one big cat that has survived in close proximity to man. They are very elusive and hard to spot, hide up in the indigenous bush during the day and hunt at night, mostly on small game, but now and again you hear stories of guys losing sheep or calves, ussually beef calves, their other prey of choice is dogs.
Colleague of mine works the far north of the country, has a Jersey client right on the border of Kruger National Park, the Limpopo river is one of the farms other boundaries. He tells the story of a crocodile grabbing a Jersey cow by the muzzle and pulling it into the river. The other cows hear her bellows and instead of running away, all rushed over to have a look. His story never reveals if she ended up inside the croc or not. I do know that a lot of local farmers call up the croc farms to come and fetch dead cows, beats burying them.
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WWS-SA
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31/10/2008, 15:57
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LRG
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Re: Hey Smous, do the dairies in South Africa have problems losing
I know its not near as bad here, but a couple of years ago we had people plant marijuana in our corn field. Not knowing at the time, we ended up spraying and calling the police. The police watched for a few days and didn't see anything. This turned into a war that we had no defence against. They drove trucks all through our corn field, and threw rocks in our highdump, (we didn't figure that out until we found an abundance of rocks in the upright silo as it was being unloaded. That's the only way they could have got in, because they wouldn't have gone through the chopper, and there was no other logical way for them to enter the silo.
Later that fall, we had one of our best Ayrshire bred heifers shot. She was left there as well.
This spring, a fella up the road had 4 beef animals shot and slaughtered in the pasture in a 4 week time span. One cow per week. They must have gotten there fill, because that was all they ended up taking. Some people don't appreciate hard work.. They just don't understand what a farmer goes through.
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Farm's Holstein Herd: 25 milking and dry. Classification: 10VG 12GP 2G 1F.
My Holstein Herd: 1VG (by Dundee) and 2 Calves (by Fortune and Goldwyn)
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31/10/2008, 16:10
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Eryl Vet
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Re: Hey Smous, do the dairies in South Africa have problems losing
Smous,
Your post reminded me of the time I spent in one of the countries neighbouring you in 1992. I used to have some second cousins farming in Zimbabwe. Although they were not dairy farmers, I spent some time as the guest of the Zimbabwe Holstein Federation (and wrote an article for the Holstein Journal on my return). I was amazed at the quality of imported Holsteins that guys like Tommy Smith, Derek Hind and especially a Scotsman called Hamish(?) had. Hamish's members of the Eric-Dew Mars Marcy and Eric-Dew Conductor Peggy family stand out in my memory. Goodness knows what fate has befallen these cattle and their owners since then ... it even makes the largest gangs in Harrys Midnight Meat Supply chain look like small fry.
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31/10/2008, 18:36
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errolston
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Eryl, the Hamish you mentioned is Hamish Smith and he is back in the UK, living in Campbeltown. Hamish fled Zimbabwe a few years back when Mugabe started the land reclaim. Hamish did a talk for our local Holstein breeders club a couple of years ago and it was fascinating.
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31/10/2008, 19:09
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Jeash
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Re: …
One of my best friends in highschool moved to Zimbabwe in 99. His parents moved the family over there to run an aids orphanage. I was going to go over and help some that summer, my parents put a stop to it when they heard the stories. It sounded like the old western stories with shootouts and stuff. My friend died in a freak accident, but his parents still run the orphanage.
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31/10/2008, 19:17
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smous
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Biggest problem for local farmers right now are monkeys and bush pig. The monkeys wait for the maize to germinate then walk down the row plucking out the seedlings and eating them. Bushpig eat mature maize and can do incredible damage in just one night of feeding. Essentialy vegeterian you don't want to run into a boar on foot, as long as a domestic pig, they are built for speed and and have a powerful pair of tusks, mama pig is pretty damn antsy if she thinks you are going to do her brood harm. Back in the early nineties when I was still farm managing I worked on a big mixed farm set up that also grew a lot of sugar cane, Boss's two huge Rottweillers always used to run ahead of his vehicle, one day he turned a corner and the Rotties were coming back, hell for leather, they jumped onto the hood, over the cab and into the back of the pickup, they were being chased by a bushpig the size of a Duroc!
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WWS-SA
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31/10/2008, 20:02
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Jeash
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Re: …
Two years ago we had problems with our cows stampeding. They would go absolutely nuts and run through fences. We suspected a cat was the culprit but we werent sure. One night between christmas and new years our next door neighbor calls saying that he heard a cat screech in our field behind his house. We called my cousin who has hounds and he brought them over and the chase was on. In a period of an hour and a half we chased whatever trail they were on around our neighborhood covering several miles. We ended up with the dogs up IN A TREE that leaned over a creek. Apperantly they treed whatever they were chasing and it jumped into the creek, leaving the dogs bewildered. We never did see the animal. The stampeding contiued until the summer when a bobcat was killed on the road a mile south of my farm. Then the stampeding quit, my guess is the sound or smell of the bobcat scared the cows. Because Bobcats are only twice or three times the size of a large barncat. They don't go after calves or cows.
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31/10/2008, 22:48
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FiringOnAllFour
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Re: …
quote:
smous wrote:
Biggest problem for local farmers right now are monkeys and bush pig. The monkeys wait for the maize to germinate then walk down the row plucking out the seedlings and eating them. Bushpig eat mature maize and can do incredible damage in just one night of feeding.
Obviously, we don't have major predators here any more. Mind you, crows can do an awful damage to a cereal field that is just peeping, and you just can't kill enough of them to do any good.
Badgers are a new problem for our new crop - maize - they will pull the cobs off and flatten areas, usually at the far side of a field that you tend not to get to. And of course, we aren't allowed to do away with them.
Greyback crows, less common but aggressive, will attack new born lambs in the field and pick their eyes out.
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1/11/2008, 10:50
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