[Patrick]

Like many other things that we do to our animals, the use of nose pegs in camels can be misunderstood by those who are unfamiliar with them. Like bits, goads, whips, hobbles and many other devices, they can be harmful if used improperly. When use by knowledgeable, experienced people, they can have many benefits for both the owner and the camel. Here’s what the leading camel veterinarian in the US has to say about them:
http://www.allcamels.com/articles/nosepegs.html

[Patrick]

Can they be propogated from shoots?

Just take some cuttings and stick them in the ground. Especially in a damp area, they’ll root.

[Patrick]

One yoke maker here in US advertizes $40 per inch for a single, $60 per inch for a double. That’s measured in size, not in overall length, so a 10 inch single would be $400, a double $600 US. I don’t imagine that shipping costs to Germany would be too prohibitive for even a large single. A double may be another matter. http://www.berrybrookoxsupply.com/index.htm

[Patrick]

I think that Matt is on the right track, but as far as I know, the emerald ash borer hasn’t made it that far east, yet, but that’s not to say that it just hasn’t been detected yet. Along the highways in OH and PA I saw plenty of the sticky traps used as sentinels to detect them, on a trip last summer back from Michigan to NH. I’m wondering if ash yellows or ash dieback is not what’s killing your trees. That disease has been known in NY for some time. It’s been implicated in killing a lot of the trees in Ashland, Massachusetts, named for the large stands of the trees which once stood there. Supposedly, a fair number of witches brooms result from infestation of the disease. If you have noticed any deformed branching on the still living trees, I’d suspect Ash yellows.

[Patrick]

I’d be interested to hear more to. I’ve casually researched on the internet the one forest fire that I’m especially interested in, that in the pine barrens of Ossipee, back in either 1953 or 54, but I’ve come up with very little. I started looking into it after finding evidence of burns on large red and/or pitch pines which I’d noticed on my brother’s property in Freedom. Pine barren habitats actually require occasional fires to remain healthy, but we mostly put a stop to that now due to public safety. What will be the results?

I understand that the Nature Conservancy is hoping to do a prescribed burn on some of their property in the area, but it requires quite a few regulatory hurdles that are taking some time to overcome. I know how much the area has built up in the last 20 years. I can’t image how much it’s been since the 50’s. Possibly we don’t hear much about that fire, because there presumably was little loss of life or property back then. That would be different today.

Interestingly, they say that pitch pine needs or at least benefits from burns in several ways, but one is that it helps to open the cones, releasing seeds to germinate. I don’t know where this comes from, because there are plenty of young seedlings that continue to sprout in that area, and we haven’t had any fires.

Any old timers here who know anything about the Ossipee pine barrens fire?

[Patrick]

Check with the New Hampshire Llama Assn. They have a few shots on their website of someone driving one. About 7 or 8 years ago, a llama show on or near the UNH campus had a guy just with a display who was driving a stunning black team.

[Patrick]

And this economy isn’t helping either. Most horsey people are able to pay for care. Many small animal owners think of their pets as their children, and will do anything for them, but often livestock owners already have financial limitations, and are unwilling or unable to pay a veterinarian what they need to charge for services. There’s also the practicality of providing house call services. Why would someone travel long distances to see X number of patients a day, when they could see the same number per hour coming to them in their hospital, unless the owners of the animals which the vets are seeing are willing to make up the difference? It’s the same with any traveling service providers. In my area I have a difficult time finding good tradesmen to work on my home. They tend to concentrate in the more populated areas, where they can get more jobs in a smaller area. Who can blame them?

[Patrick]

I agree that it depends on the management objectives. On various areas of my property, I use any of the above methods, depending on what I want to do with it. In one area, I’m creating a park like setting, so I stack and burn. Mostly I stack and leave it, mainly due to my concern for forest fires. I don’t want to leave a continuous carpet of slash to fuel a fire and cause it to spread easier. The interrupted piles at least somewhat reduce that. Only rarely do I cut and leave, despite the ecological benefits.
IMO, we in New England have become complacent about both forest fires and hurricanes, because we don’t often experience either. Since the last big ones, we’ve built up areas which are now at high risk, and I worry what will happen when we finally get hit badly again.

[Patrick]

I work in the veterinary industry, in MA, but my farm is in NH. I deal mostly with small animals, but we of course touch base with other areas within the profession. Kat, tell that young lady that she would most likely be welcomed with open arms in most parts of central and northern New England. In central and northern NH, things are very much like the others describe in ME and NY. Large animal veterinarians are in very short supply, and I often hear similar stories about long waits or distances traveled to get care. Cattle people in particular have a hard time, as some large animal vets specialize in horses. The NH Dept of Agriculture has been talking about some incentives for getting more large animal vets up here, but it’s been nothing more than bureaucratic BS so far, from what I’ve seen. Western MA has a shortage too. So does eastern MA, but it’s not quite as bad, especially if you’re a horse person. Overall, there is a severe shortage of qualified doctors and technicians within veterinary medicine, in both large and small animal practices. It’s getting worse, as the population grows, but vet schools don’t increase their enrollment capacity. As older LA vets retire, there are fewer and fewer to take their place. In some ways you can’t blame them really. Who wants to work in cold, wet, filthy conditions, when you could make the same or often much more money in a nice comfy modern indoor animal hospital, only dodging the occasional bite rather than a 1000 lb animal which can put you in the hospital easily if you’re not careful? The new grads have school loans to think about too, often well over 100K by the time they even start their first job.

[Patrick]

Awesome photos, but a few corrections:

There are two species of camels. Each has their own breeds. There are a few breeds of Bactrians, and many breeds of Dromedaries. There are draft breeds, riding breeds, racing breeds and even dairy breeds in each species. There are even fighting breeds of Bactrians. In some middle eastern countries, racing camels and their breeding is taken as seriously, and is as expensive as thoroughbred horse breeding is in the US. Dromedaries are completely domesticated. They are no longer found in the wild state, and researchers still don’t agree just where the original wild species was from. They are found in feral herds in some places, such as Australia. Some researchers believe that the hump was not found in the wild ancestor of dromedaries, and is strictly a product of domestication. Hybrids are still extensively bred in some areas, and like mules, hybrid vigor and some positive attributes of both parents are used to advantage. Selective breeding of 3/4 and other percentages is intentional, depending on the desired outcome,
and some sources claim that hybrids are more tractable than either parent.

Bactrians are still found in very small numbers in the wild, mostly in the Gobi desert. They endure both extreme cold of their northern range, but also extreme heat during the summer. The domesticated Bactrian is as different from it’s wild relatives as the domestic yak or reindeer are from theirs. Both species are found in numerous colors, as a product of domestication. They range from white to black, pinto or piebald, to the common tan or brown.

[Patrick]

The tortoise is not attacking, he’s attempting to breed. Male tortoises have a high sex drive. In the wild, they encounter females so infrequently, that they usually try to breed anything that does not try to eat them or does not run away. Imagine a captive male that has never seen a female, that is tame and has never known an attack by any animal. The open mouth gesture that you see in one shot, is common when a male tortoise vocalizes while courting. But what does any of this have to do with draft animals?

[Patrick]

Pre Civil War & maybe post as well camels were imported to be used as pack / draft animals by the US Army in the desert southwest. I’ve heard that the experiment failed, because it turns out that the sand that they were familiar with was of a different texture than what they were asked to navigate here. I think there were other issues as well, but bottom line is they were turned loose to fend for themselves.

The experiment failed because the camel trainers and handlers never bothered to learn the differences in behavior between camels and horses and mules, or were never provided with the information. They never learned how to tailor their training techniques based on these differences in behavior, and so applied only what they knew; horse and mule training techniques. The camels didn’t respond like they had hoped, because camels think differently. One they were released, they were often shot for sport, or by ignorant people who didn’t know what this strange beast was, so of course they had to kill it. Today, camels are kept in many parts of the country, on all kinds of surfaces. I’ve never heard anyone report that their animals have any problems. I’ve worked with a few on rocky New England soils, and never noticed any problems with them getting around.

I know that it’s not the best idea, from an environmental point of view, but sometimes I think that it would have been neat if they had established feral herds here, like they have in Australia, or like our own mustangs. Can you imagine a BLM camel adoption program?

[Patrick]

http://www.berrybrookoxsupply.com/index.htm

[Patrick]

How did it go? I was hoping to attend, but had a conflict that weekend.

[Patrick]

You could check with Tim Huppe at Berry Brook Ox Supply. He makes neck yokes, but if there’s anyone in the region who makes head yokes, Tim’s likley to know about it.

[Author]

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