When you eat meat, you might imagine that animal living happily on a sunny farm, eating grass in the fields. Ideally, that’s what farming would always look like. This kind of environment promotes healthy soil and healthy animals. Farms depend on healthy environments. Air, soil, and water are all important for producing quality livestock and crops to feed people.
As the world’s population grows, the majority of people don’t raise their own food anymore. Large food companies make more and more of our products. Many of these companies turn to commercial farming. That’s when animals are raised in controlled and often uncomfortable areas such as cages or very tight pens.
WORDS to KNOW
livestock: animals raised for food and other products.
commercial: large businesses that produce large quantities of something.
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
How does the health of farm animals affect you and your family?
As you learned earlier, healthy bacteria live in the soil. When animals eat grains that grow from healthy soil, they have a better chance to be healthy. But when animals are raised in unnatural conditions, their chances of being naturally healthy are not very good.
Animals in uncomfortable living conditions are stressed. And a stressed animal, just like a stressed person, is at greater risk of getting sick. Large commercial farmers often give their livestock antibiotics to prevent the animals from getting sick.
One problem with giving animals antibiotics is they cause problems farther down the food chain. All animals naturally have good and bad bacteria in their intestines. When animals are given antibiotics, it kills most of those bacteria. But some bacteria successfully fight and survive. Then those bacteria go on to multiply, and all the new bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic. That means the antibiotic doesn’t work on the new bacteria.
WHY SHOULDN’T YOU TELL SECRETS ON A FARM?
Because the potatoes have eyes and the corn has ears!
When animals with these resistant bacteria become food for humans, some of those bacteria are passed along to the people eating the food. If those people get sick, antibiotics that should help them get better don’t work, because those bacteria have already “learned” how to fight off the antibiotic!
LIFE ON A FARM
Some farmers try to keep things as natural as possible by practicing organic farming. Organic livestock are fed a natural, healthy diet. They have access to fields where they are free to walk around and graze. These animals aren’t given drugs unless they’re sick. Once they are given antibiotics, they can’t be called organic for a certain period of time. Sometimes, organic farmers might wait too long to treat sick animals. This can be one of the problems of organic farming.
On healthy farms, animals are allowed to roam a fenced area of land called a pasture or range. They are not crowded in. Cattle will graze on the grasses and plants. Pigs like to dig their snouts into the ground and push around in the soil, called rooting. And chickens scratch at the soil, pecking around for insects. They often give themselves dust baths to clean their feathers and help prevent insects from clinging to their bodies.
WORDS to KNOW
organic farming: raising livestock and crops in a natural way.
graze: to eat grass.
rooting: when pigs push around the soil with their snouts.
Animals have an impact on their pastures when they graze and root around. So it’s healthiest for the soil if they regularly rotate to different pastures. That gives the soil a chance to replace its nutrients naturally through time and helps maintain a healthy environment.
MAGNIFICENT MANURE
If you’ve ever seen animals in a field, you’ve definitely seen lumpy piles of manure all over, too. That manure is very important to keeping the soil healthy!
WORDS to KNOW
manure: animal waste.
When animals such as cows and horses eat grains and grasses, their bodies take in some of the nutrients from what they’ve eaten. The rest gets pooped out onto the ground. Slowly, the soil absorbs the nutrients in the manure. These nutrients are important for healthy plants to grow.
Sometimes people with gardens but no animals will buy manure to spread on their plants for that reason. Manure also increases the carbon in the soil, which is an important source of energy for plants.
In ancient Rome, Marcus Cato, also known as Cato the Elder, was one of the first people to talk about using manure to improve the soil. He made the first recorded reference to what we now call compost.
You can see a picture of ancient youth gathering olives from olive trees on the surface of this pot.
KEYWORD PROMPTS
Amphora olive gathering 
Another benefit of manure is that it helps make the soil a good consistency. Sandy soils can use manure to help hold in moisture that would otherwise run off. Manure helps prevent the leaching of nutrients. Tight soils, such as those with a lot of clay, can be loosened up a bit with manure so plants can push their roots into it.
THE SOIL FOOD WEB
Food chains are everywhere in nature. That’s when, for example, a grasshopper eats grass. Then a frog eats the grasshopper, and a snake eats the frog, and an eagle eats the snake. Each species eats an organism from the group below it to form a food chain.
Many food chains combine into a food web. Sunlight and rain give plants the energy and fuel they need to grow. The bacteria in the soil help plants grow, too. The microscopic organisms in soil feed the small creatures, which feed the larger creatures. The creatures return to the soil when they die and rot, feeding the bacteria that help the plants.
Farm animals benefit by feeding on these healthy plants. Then they deposit their manure to return nutrients to the soil to keep the web going.
Soil is at the bottom of the food web, but it’s critical to life on Earth. Without soil, we’d have no plants and no animals.
ESSENTIAL QUESTION
Now it’s time to consider and discuss the Essential Question: How does the health of farm animals affect you and your family?
COW PATTIES
Serve these edible “cow pies” and tell your friends and family about how manure helps the soil!
SUPPLIES
microwave
bowl and mixing spoon
2 cups chocolate chips
1 tablespoon shortening
1 cup mix-ins: raisins, almonds, or crispy cereal
waxed paper
candy corn
chocolate cookies
shredded coconut
green food coloring
1 In the microwave, melt the chocolate chips and shortening together in the bowl. Keep checking and stirring—you don’t want to burn your cow pies. The mixture should be very smooth.
2 Stir in your mix-ins. Drop the melted mixture into circular piles on the waxed paper. Gently press in some candy corn. Let the cow pies harden in the refrigerator for two hours.
3 Crush the chocolate cookies and spread them out on a plate. This is your “soil.”
4 Put the coconut in a plastic bag. Squirt in a couple drops of green food coloring, and shake it until the color is mixed through. Shake your coconut grass out onto your crushed cookies and set the cow pies on top. Share with your friends and family!
THINK ABOUT IT: What would be different on a farm if cows ate different food? How would their manure or “cow patties” be different, and how would that affect the soil?
SOIL BACTERIA CREATION
There are thousands of different kinds of bacteria in a single spoonful of soil. If you were to look at them under a microscope, you’d see they each had different shapes. With this game, you can create your own “bacteria”!
SUPPLIES
science journal
colored pencils
dice
paper or cardstock
1 Draw a grid in your science journal with seven rows and six columns. This is going to be your master game list.
2 Label your grid. Start with the example below or make your own.
3 Each player takes a turn rolling the die. For each turn, players add the trait that matches the number they roll from the next column in the sequence. For example, if you roll a three on your first turn, your bacteria will be yellow. If you roll a one on your second turn, your bacteria will be oval shaped. Draw your bacteria. Who has the funniest looking one?
THINK ABOUT IT: Why do bacteria come in different shapes? What do you know about the shapes of other living things, such as dogs? A dachshund is shaped very differently from a greyhound. What can each of them do differently? Does this help you think of reasons bacteria have different shapes and features?
