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Idaho bill restricts use of drones to spy on farmers, ranchers

By Farms.com, Farms.com

Last week, Farms.com produced a story on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA's) plans to purchase drones to watch hunters and farmers to advance their mission of saving animals from cruelty. An Idaho law, which takes effect July 1, will prevent such actions by animal activist groups like PETA or others from using drones to snoop on farmers and ranchers.

Idaho Senate’s assistant majority leader says the new law is meant "to protect the agricultural community from unreasonable searches." The new law prevents any person or group the use of a drone to monitor private property without a warrant from law enforcement. However, the law doesn’t limit an individual’s right to take images or video footage of their own property – something that has become an important tool for some farmers who use it for monitoring crop progress or livestock.

This law seeks to uphold private property rights, especially as devices like drones are becoming more widely used.


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Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.