Animal Welfare

The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Epic Gardening

Home & Garden, Education, Leisure, How To

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In regenerative animal husbandry, like Will Harris’s White Oak Pastures, animals live according to their nature. This model is an expansion of the industrial one, where meeting basic needs is the only concern. He can tell from their expression that his animals are happy, and that is because of his focus on their welfare. Epic Gardening Shop Homepage: https://growepic.co/3LrrcFo Botanical Interests Shop Homepage: https://growepic.co/3sZNdVD Book Collection Page: https://growepic.co/3RlaE5O EG Homesteading Book: https://growepic.co/3Pqb4W0 Connect With Will Harris: Will Harris is a fourth-generation cattleman, who tends the same land that his great-grandfather settled in 1866. Born and raised at White Oak Pastures, Will left home to attend the University of Georgia's School of Agriculture, where he was trained in the industrial farming methods that had taken hold after World War II. Will graduated in 1976 and returned to Bluffton where he and his father continued to raise cattle using pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and antibiotics. They also fed their herd a high-carbohydrate diet of corn and soy. In the mid-1990s Will became disenchanted with the excesses of these industrialized methods. They had created a monoculture for their cattle, and, as Will says, "nature abhors a monoculture." In 1995, Will made the audacious decision to return to the farming methods his great-grandfather had used 130 years before. Instagram Website Facebook YouTube Twitter Shop the Store As an exclusive for listeners, use code THEBEET for 5% off your entire order on our store, featuring our flagship Birdies Raised Beds. These are the original metal raised beds, lasting up to 5-10x longer than wooden beds, are ethically made in Australia, and have a customizable modular design. Shop now and get 5% off your first order. Get Our Books Looking for a beginner's guide to growing food in small spaces? Kevin’s book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, explains the core, essential information that you'll need to grow plants, no matter where you live! He also wrote Grow Bag Gardening to provide you with specialized knowledge that can bring you success when growing in fabric pots. Preorder Kevin’s newest book Epic Homesteading if you are looking to turn your home into a thriving homestead! Order signed copies of Kevin’s books, plus more of his favorite titles in our store. More Resources Looking for more information? Follow us:... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're back on with Will Harris, fourth generation cattle man and the owner of White Oak
0:07.9	pastures, and Will, we've actually talked quite a bit about rural America, soil health,
0:15.0	the switch from industrial to regenerative, but we haven't talked about the animals too
0:19.6	much themselves, and I don't really know much about a cattle rancher.
0:24.4	Animal welfare, I think you hear a lot about the dangers of the industrial model and what
0:29.5	it does, the animals, in fact, you even share a pretty powerful story of carting the
0:33.7	heifers to a different area of the country and the sort of conditions they'd be subjected
0:38.1	to in that truck or trailer, what in your old model, I guess, like what's the animals
0:45.3	life actually like?
0:47.5	Well, when I was an industrial cattle producer before I decided to change some of the things,
0:54.8	I believe that my animal welfare was above the poach, I thought it was great, you know,
1:02.2	I have been raised to believe by my father, he was a fairly legendary cattle man and by
1:09.9	my former education, University of Georgia College of Agriculture, that good animal welfare
1:16.4	meat, you kept the animal well-fed, well-watered, you know, comfortable texture range, and you
1:24.9	didn't intentionally inflict pain or suffering.
1:28.2	And if you did that, you know, that's good animal welfare, it's a well-approach, you're
1:33.9	fine, you have to go check that box.
1:37.7	And it wasn't until I started on this journey that I really decided that, that yeah, all
1:45.1	those are important, but equally important is to give the animal the opportunity to express
1:51.8	its instinctive behavior.
1:53.6	You know, cows are meant to roam and graze, hogs are meant to rope, root and wallow, chickens
2:04.2	are meant to scratch and peck, but in the industrial model, they don't get to do that, none of
	...

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