RamdomChances

grew up in spain, where your door is open all day and your neighbours and everyone walks in and out as they wish, no matter in what social class you live in. ....

western men, except in southern nations (spain, italy, etc), are used to have "closed doors" to everyone except themselves and their partner.

Not so in thai culture.. 

I do not agree with this one, Rainman.

Thai society is not an open door society with everybody or anybody, no matter what social class you live in,...

I have to dissagree BC, I think it depends where you live here I'm in a very rural enviroment, and it very much "open door", well open house would be better cos nobody really spends much time indoors here.

You may have a point with the social class thing, I dont think the "open door" is as prevalent with high "class thais".

Off topic a bit, what defines "class". I live in a rural area of thailand, its not a poor area, but mainly farming, shugar, corn, dairy, chickens. Most people have their own land, cars and there is generally plenty of work here, but being farmers most people here would be percived as "lower class", When in reallity they often make more money than say bank workers, teachers ect.

Mabye a new topic?

grew up in spain, where your door is open all day and your neighbours and everyone walks in and out as they wish, no matter in what social class you live in. ....

western men, except in southern nations (spain, italy, etc), are used to have "closed doors" to everyone except themselves and their partner.

Not so in thai culture.. 

I do not agree with this one, Rainman.

Thai society is not an open door society with everybody or anybody, no matter what social class you live in,...

I have to dissagree BC, I think it depends where you live here I'm in a very rural enviroment, and it very much "open door", well open house would be better cos nobody really spends much time indoors here.

You may have a point with the social class thing, I dont think the "open door" is as prevalent with high "class thais".

Off topic a bit, what defines "class". I live in a rural area of thailand, its not a poor area, but mainly farming, shugar, corn, dairy, chickens. Most people have their own land, cars and there is generally plenty of work here, but being farmers most people here would be percived as "lower class", When in reallity they often make more money than say bank workers, teachers ect.

Mabye a new topic?

I have been accused by some of my "friends" of posting too much.

Or at least posting with a know all attitude.

And that I was scaring off newbies.

I usually try to post an opinion, not always what I think.

And I do not know much.

And I'm not the only one, we're quite a few frequent posters.

Does it bother you?

I dont think you post to much.

Or post with a know all attitude.

I dont think newbies mind.

hmmmm ???

I think you do.

Yes there are.

No.

Posted in "Bluecat" style, (a poor imatation though)

Ok Rainy season and parasites.

Its not the raining on the cows thats the prob, but the farm does get very muddy, and the increased humidity, makes ideal conditions for bacteria to grow, the rate of mastitis in cows is much higher in the rainy season. The wet conditions also lead to many more probs with things like hoof rot ect

Also rainy season is bug season so you get much more probs from parasitic infections.

Ok types of parasite,

Lung worm

Intestinal worms

Liver / kidney flukes

Blood flukes

Ticks

Fleas

Eye flukes

The worse are the blood, liver, lung. The blood and liver ones are usually caught from bitting insects, ticks mainly which love the wet weather and long grass!! if not treated they can be fatal, in the case of lung worms I still dont know an effective treatment.

Fortunatly there is a lot of preventitive medicens, Iformec F is really good but expensive and you cant sell the milk for 45 days, its effective against virtually all of the parasites and we now inject every cow when we dry off prior to calfing.

For the various blood flukes, a drug called Berinil is really good (prevention and treatment) as is Imizol for liver flucks, although we dont use Imizol as a preventitive as it destroyes any natural imunity that the cow has developed. Both of these drugs have a withdrawal period of only about 4 days, but the major prob is that they can cause the cow to abort if pregnant, if we suspect a cow has a problem we inject post calfing.

There are vaccines avalible for lung worm but I've never seen them on sale here.

One of the probs is that these drugs are relitivly expensive so most farms dont bother, most of the probs we have had are with new cows bought in. Its seams that once we get into the cycle of injections, we dont have so many probs. We also inject our calfes every 4 months.

Was chatting to some people about goats last night, apparently they are quite easy to sell, from what I can gather you get someone like an agent to come to your farm, and they buy them and ship them off, a mature goat goes for about 4000bht aparently, the milk is not usually sold, but I'm told that you can buy it and its expensive and seen as a health drink.

mmm good question, since you started it ,what do you think BC??

I would like to ask some members, anybody, if there is something about the size of postings in their mind, when reading other people comments, or when posting themselves.

mmm the eternal question, "does size matter"

well its not about how big but how you use it

Seriously if i'm interested in a topic i read it all, if you go on and on you run the risk of people getting bored and just skiping what you have to say.

Some posts are light hearted and one liners are fine, some posts ask for info and if you want to post anything meaningful, you have to post long.

You need to use your own judgment, see how the thread is going, but at the end of the day post what you want, if its not offensive then let people read it or not, if they dont like it dont rise to the occasion and post an even longer rebutal, just let it go!!

If you read the thread about long postings you will see that most people where on your side even if they did not agree with you.

Any way good to see you back

ok thanks, I suspected there was no direct translation. So could is a bit like past tence of "can" , any one know about would, or would off??

I have thought about if I really need this and probably I dont, but was just curious.

Thanks anyway

Why do'nt you just post what you feel is right, if people dont want to read it up to them, if they are bored with your postings they wont reply to you.

Dont try to over analyes it.

Wht dont you stop irratating the mods and get back to irratating the rest of us instead

If anyones interested just posted a photo album in the members photos section, lots of picks of the farm and stuff.

I'll take being called a "tree hugger" as a complement

I was talking with the boss from our co-op today he said that the gov did not sudsidise milk, I dont know if this has always been the case, or even if its true. I do know that the gov supports the dariy farmer in a number of ways, we are tax exempt, and they offer loans to buy cows, upgrade farms ect, these are only avalible to the small farmer though, I've never qualified for one!!

The gov is currently bringing in farm standerds, that apparently are going to be enforced, although there is financial aid to small farmers i think this my be the end of them, some of the regs state that you cant have a farm within 50 meters of a road, and you have to milk at least 50 metere away from where people live, most small farms have milking palours next to the house. When the new farm is finnished we should be fully compliant, but I think that we will be the only one in Nakhon that is!! (there is a grace period of 2-3 years).

At the moment milk consumption far outstrips production in thailand, and around 50% of internal production is used to make "fresh" milk.

Hence, it became possible to see in dairies everywhere bags of EU powdered milk being poured into "100 % Fresh milk" supplies. This outsourcing from abroad then lowered the demand for local milk and the price started to fall. There was a time about 6-8 years ago, when local producers around Muak Lek (major centre of the dairy industry) and other towns in Isaan were forced to pour their milk away

As for the quality control in dairies goes, I dont know, I'm a farmer, but our milk is checked for bacteria (stomatic cell count), quality and antibiotic residues every time we send milk (2 a day), the co-op then send milk in a refrigerated tanker to the factory every day, where it is checked again. If I was to send suspect milk that ended up in the main holding tank I would be liable to pay for the entire days collection about 4 ton or 45,000 bht, it pays to be cautious!! if in dout check!!

As for the Issan story, I just dont get it, I know that around that time the price of milk was low, but If you just pour it away you gat nothing, I've never know a thai pour money down the drain!!.

The school milk probs were the creation of greedy corupt officials not farmers!!

1/ nearly every farmer that has tried dairy cows has sold every last drop of milk and given none to the wife and kids; 2/ most small farmers were given bad advice and ended up failing in the operation, with now most dairy farms being in the hands of medium- large farmers; 3/ most milk is processed into unhealthy milk products, esp. those laden with artificial colours, flavours and loads of sugar; 4/ The industry still can't operate by itself without the govt. subsidies and interventions (i.e. it is still heavily protected. This last point is maybe not something that most dairy farmers are aware of, but was brought home recently by the reports that dairy farmers are preparing to protest against including dairy products in the Free Trade Agreement with Australia, as they know well that they could not compete with the cheaper foreign imported milk from Oz.

2/mccweb.agri.cmu.ac.th/research/ Ag-sustain/rural_res_mng/dairy.html

The above link is a study carried out in Northen Thailand, one of the observations was that 82% of dairy farmers thought they had a better standerd of living through dairy farming.

As for most of the farms being medium to large, this simply is not true. There are about 130 farms in my area, mine is in the top 3 for size and I'm only medium, large is classed as over 100 head of milkers, and outside of khorat i've never heard of any!!.

Our co-op collects about 4000kg of milk a day from about 70 farms, mines the biggest, and I contribute about 10 % 400kg that means that the other 69 farms send on ave 3400 kg between them 3400 which averages out at about 50kg a farm, so no way could they be described as even medium (usually they have between 5-25 head)

3/ 50% of internal milk production is usde for making fresh milk

http://sunsite.au.ac.th/thailand/agriculture/Livestock.html

4/ The very fact that the thai gov are signing freee trade agreements negates your whole argument, if it was so protected why would the gov sign the agreement, and they are'nt " preparing to protest" they already have.

Anyway enough of this I'm not here to defend the dairy industry, but the farmers are'nt the industry.

All the goat stuff i think would apply as well to the "thai" beef cattle, as long as you only keep a few.

Too many Mekong and Singh hangovers

Mekong is bad, try Sang Som it's no where near as bad, with soda or water not coke.

For a really memerable hangover try Chang with LaoChow chasers, did this oncc with some thai friends, when i woke up i thought I had someone elses head!!

Where you at plachon, pm me mabey get together for a beer

Hi every one

Bina thanks for the, about goats, I think that they would be good for a small hobby farm, there are quite a few around here, I just dont know what the market for them is, down south they eat a lot of goat meat, but never seen it on sale up here.

You'r right about thai's not liking it cos it smells a lot have said that to me as well, me I love it, goat curry mmm. Do you drink the milk yourself?? do you do anything to it first i.e pasturise, I dont drink ours but have been looking into small scale pasturisation, just for personell use, maybe sell some in the shop if there is a demand (if there is'nt maybe I'll find a way to artifialy create one )

Most of the deaths of our cattle have been parisite related, but the weather does play a part as well, rainy season in BAD.

When I opened the farm I did'nt know anything about farming (i'm an ex aircraft enginere), and my thai was'nt that good, but we started small, the vets here are'nt that good, usually you have to tell them whats wrong with the cow and what treatment to give. Fortunatly I can do most stuff myself now, still cant put a drip in though.

Most of the medicens for parisites, have probs, ie cant send the milk for 45 days, and some cause abortions, but now we have a system of injections, i.e when you dry the cow off (2 months before birth) give one injection, cos you are'nt going to be milking for 2 months, then just after its given birth, do the others.

Most of the medicens are imported, but some times if a cow is really sick and your not sure why, we use a bit of a shot gun approach and inject for everything, but provention is much better, that trying to cure, it takes me about a week to get a blood samlpe done, which is usually to late!!

At the moment we artifiacialy insminate (AI), but I've got 5 bull's in various stages of maturity, so later we will try to use them. We run one bull thats about 15months old with the cows now, but he's not up to it yet (literaly), hes really good though a spotting the one's that are on heat.

To get a loan from a bank you have to prove beyond a dout that you dont need it !!

will try to answer tomarrow, when I'm not drunk, but you're so much cleverer than me!! give me a chance!!

From GS's post Ideal woman, you have to look at the original 12 your self.

If there is a God then he may log onto this site, and he may even like me judging by who I met last night. She's got 7 out of 12 plus some I hadn't thought of.

Where the qualities that you had'nt thought of skint, psycotic, druggy, suicidal, attention seaking bar girl ??

(please no one start on the BG stuff, its relitive to this thread)

Just looked at that villa, plush !! but 20,000!! a night and if its where i think it is you have to drive eveywhere.

You can rent a good appartment on Nani road for 10-15,000 a month.

How about you all joining C.U.N.T

Conglomerated Union of Nationalistic Tw_ts

THEY DONT LIKE US.

We are living in a racist country

Personally, I spend a few months a year here, then go back to reality. The number one reason I choose not to live here is, THEY DONT LIKE US. Wake up!

Hmm a bit at odds with yourself there, anyway a few months is just an extended holiday!!

Just found the link

http://www.stephenleather.com/unpub.html

If you have'nt read it you should, not saying everything is like that but it's a good read.

I read Private Dancer by Stephen Leather last night, fotgot what the link is, anyway you could of cut big chunks out of that and just pasted them together to form your story!!!

Its worth a read.

Whats the Thai equivelent of Could i.e I could go to the market and would, not as in I would like a coffee, but I would do that but...., or I would off gone to the market but......

I know how to get accross what I'm trying to say in thai, like I would use "yesterday i wanted to go to the market but.....

Just wondering, I've asked a few thai friends, but either their english is not good enough to explain, or my thai is'nt good enough to ask, or usually a bit off both.

Thanks

Ture true

Just read this thread, I hope I get this right,

Some of you are whinging about whingers.

Some of you are whingers who are whinging about people whinging about whingers

Please correct me if I made a mistake

Me again

Just checking KK Kong Kean right?? If anyone remembers and is living in the area could you PM me close to the date the AU show is on would love to go, thanks.

Just a thought, you were talking about pestisides on fruit/veg, what really gets me is meat, the controls on selling meat here are virtually no existant/not enforced.

We have had a few cow's dye since opening the farm and usually sell the carcus. What do you think happens to it, yep usually it find's its way to the local markets, and this is from sick (very cos their dead) animals, that usually have been pumped full of various antibiotics/medicens in an attemt to save them.

I know chicken farms also sell off thier sick, lame, injoured, grade B animals. (I'm glad I never went into chickens I'd wouldnt stand a chance to justify myself to plachon )

Any one know anything about goat/sheep farming here??

I think that if you were looking for a hobby farm a few goat's might be a good way to go. For me if i was to do a hobby farm I'd look at market garden type things, hard to get fruit n veg, small ammount of land required but high maintanance, I'd also get a few cows (mabye goats) bye a couple of about 3/4 month beef cows (bramas), then all the waste can be fed to them and you have instant fertaliser.

Thats all for now, as you might guess have'nt got much on today!!

good luck with lowering your "footprint" on the earth.

I think you're pretty well-tuned to some of the dangers that can exist from stepping up the scale of production on a limited piece of land and then relying more on external resources for profitability

Thanks, but to be honest thats prob because this is a buissiness for me and cutting out the middle man (especially when they are unreliable) just maximises my profits and ensures a regular supply.

I dont really accept that my farm's foot print is bigger, but hopfully in the future that will change.

I'll explain we have 65 rai, about 12 of that is given over to cattle, which I dont think exeeds my "carrying capacity" the rest of the land 50 odd rai. I could prob grow enought grass and feed if it was the right type of land, so although I am reliying on external resorses, theoreticaly if a farmer was useing his land to grow say corn, but it was sutible for grass we could swap, the point that I'm badly trying to make is that I could be vertually self sufficent.

The reason that I say that hopefully that will change is that from an ecomomic point of view, growing "crops" is not a very efficent way of maximising your profits from the land, but it have the advantage of requiring very little initial investment. I think that we will eventually peak out at about 120 milkers, with around the same number of calves. The Idea being that when you reach a comftable number of milkers you breed your calfs, and start selling cattle as well, obviously starting with the dross, therbye raising the quality of your heard. Its wortt bearing that in mind if any of you want to buy livestock always ask why they are selling, espesially milkers (if they are good why get rid of them). If they are average or have some problem thats OK if the price reflects that.

extremely specialised animals bred by societies like the Dutch

However, the fact remains that they are here thanks to massive govt. support and subsidies

there is a domestic dairy industry artificially created in a non-dairy consumption society

As far as I know the start of dairy farming was back in the 50's with a gift from the King and Queen of Denmark to the King of Thailand of a herd of dairy cattle.

How was the dairy industry artificially created, Ok th thai gov brought in a policy of giving school children free milk, is that bad? It is true that most thais dont drink much fresh milk and it is viewed as a bit of a health drink, but look at all the milk products, Condensed milk, yougot, ice cream, cheese (the Pizza company make all their own cheese in thailand) if the demand for these products was artifitually created, it would of been throught advertising rather than gov intervention, which is no different from creating a demand for any product!!

You asked me about the gov subsidies before, I still dont know if they exist, as far as I'm aware the selling price is dependant on market forces, I know different areas sell for different ammounts, we have a choice to sell to the local co-op, or a private company, belive it or not the co-op sells the milk comercially (Mali) and the company sells it to the Gov for schools. If you do know of any subsidies, please let me know. Dairy farming is supported bye the goverment, we are tax exempt, get some free vacineations and there is vetenarian support( of dubious quality).

Looked at the Biogas site In PLok (on internet not person!!) and a few others it was interesting, did you see the one with the indian village, who basically rent their animal dung to the Biogas thing. Anyway its a good idea and i will keep it in mind for the future ( I'm honestly not big enough yet to justify the cost and have'nt thought about how to use the gas yet) I was more interested in the sand filtration beds they were using I may have to put something simular in soon.

I understand you concerns on polution and the enviroment, but to get any comercial farms to make changes in my view takes one of two things to happen.

Goverment Legislation (which is also enforced!!) or you have to show that any measures are either cost neutral or even better increase profits, and let be honest even big multi national companies that go "above and beyond" only do so in the attempt to increase peoples awarness/respect for the brand and therefore increase profits.

Anyway prehaps we should have a beer sometime would make an interesting conversation!! How about a farming/gardenig sub forum?