Homeopathy Helps Piglets!

Are they telling porkies?

E-Coli diarrhoea amongst newborn piglets is a major problem within the agricultural industry. The antibiotic cure is often labour-intensive to administer to large numbers of sows, and subsequently costly. Therefore when research was undertaken to investigate the effect of homeopathic remedies on pigs in the last month of gestation, many farmers were eager to find out the results.

The study was conducted on a commercial farm in the Netherlands by The Biological Farming Systems Group at the Wageningen University. It included assigning fifty-two sows (none of which had been vaccinated against E.Coli) to either a placebo group, or homeopathic treatment group, for the investigation. The 525 piglets that were born from these sows were monitored for frequency and duration of diarrhoea.

The results published in the journal Homeopathy in January 2010, showed that the placebo group suffered over 6 times more diarrhoea than the homeopathic group. Moreover, within the homeopathic treatment group, the diarrhoea was less severe, there was less transmission and the duration appeared shorter.

Since a high use of antibiotics can cause problems within animal health, and, in the organic sector the amount of antibiotics given to livestock is restricted, this investigation provides farmers with a safer and less expensive alternative to conventional treatment.

This article was first published in an ARH Newsletter in May 2010

How Homeopathy helps dairy calves overcome diarrhoea

Homeopathy denialists continue to proclaim that homeopathic medicine is “no better than placebo” and believe that any positive effects individuals gain from the remedies are “all in their mind”. 

In order to investigate this notion further researchers have been exploring the relationship between homeopathy and animals, since it is generally regarded that animals cannot ‘fabricate’ the situation; they either get better or they don’t!

A study, undertaken by the Louis Bolk Insituut in the Netherlands, aimed to investigate homeopathy’s effect in newborn dairy calves. A common ailment, amongst dairy calves, is diarrhoea and is one which many Dutch farmers regularly treat using homeopathy, so a study involving this particular disorder was especially relevant.

Calves were divided into two categories: half were prescribed a homeopathic remedy and half pre- scribed placebo. The findings proved overwhelming in favour of homeopathic medicine. On one farm for example, where the investigation took place, not a single calf who received homeopathic treatment developed diarrhoea while every calf given placebo succumbed to it.

It is interesting to note that the researcher’s main hurdle when undertaking the study was persuading farmers to give their livestock the placebo instead of homeopathy “because they know homeopathy works”.

http://odewire.com/61567/the-controversial-cure.html

This article was first published by the ARH in the Septemeber 2011 issue 16 of 'Homeopathy Healthy Medicine'. 

The ARH regularly publish these newsletters to provide information about homeopathy to the public that is not usually available through our mainstream media. ARH makes them available to everyone as free downloads (go to www.a-r-h.org), and they can be used for information, marketing and publicity purposes.

Homeopathy for Livestock

"Homeopathy at Wellie Level" is a group for farmers. It began when a group of farmers, homoeopaths and homeopathic vets realised they had a common concern about the lack of support offered to farmers who want to use homoeopathy on their farm.

They decided the best support was a basic, properly constructed, teaching course that would introduce the farmer to the subject as a whole, giving the student the building blocks of knowledge and confidence. After this they decided to offer what they called "lego days" when students could return to discuss specific problems and advance their understanding of this complex and fascinating subject.

For more information, look at their website, http://www.hawl.co.uk/homoeopathic-vets/. In particular, have a look at the 'testimonials' left by farmers who have found homeopathy to be helpful to their business, and of course, their livestock.

Homeopathy for animals is, of course, an important area for the development of homeopathy. Animals don't lie (not that anyone treated successfully with homeopathy needs to 'lie' - but our detractors often accuse us of doing so) and when homeopathic remedies overcome sickness and disease in farm animals, the impact cannot be explained away as 'placebo'.

And for farmers, of course, it gives them access to an entirely safe, very inexpensive, and highly effective method of treating their animals.