BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

[bnjrob]

You haven't had proper chicken soup unless the feet and head are in it.

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

You haven't had proper chicken soup unless the feet and head are in it.

Out of ovations, apparently (how does that work, anyhow). But I wanted to say that I completely agree. Even before having chickens, I've always made sure that I had a good source of feet for soup/stock, and that I never run out.

- Ant Farm

 

[napdognewfie]

Feet yes, but I don't want anything looking back at me when I take the lid off. lol

Love the livers and my cats and dog get the rest. Bones are for soup.

 

[AnthNDacula]

I'm not squeemish about eating odd chicken parts, but I am lazy. Picking meat off a chicken foot or stuffing tiny little intestines to make tiny little sausages is more work than I can manage. The pigs eat all that stuff for me, and I call it recycling. Has anyone tried crushing or composting the bones for the garden?

 

[hellbender]

FYI...My daughter just called me an old f##t....because I've complained relentlessly about the constant thunderstorms and drizzle. I guess when you're in love,walking in the warm rain is romantic but I just son't remember it that way when I was a young man (kid). I used the rain as an excuse to talk a 'girlfriend' to make for an old barn to check for eggs...even we all knew that barn hadn't had a chicken in in decades.

I know Ariel uses those words as terms of endearment. While I'm holding her passport for security reasons, I doubt she'd care if I go home and leave her right here.

 

[dfr1973]

Has anyone tried crushing or composting the bones for the garden?

I just chuck them into the compost heaps, when I am motivated enough to rake them up after the chickens have picked them cleaner than I get them.

 

[bnjrob]

FYI...My daughter just called me an old f##t....because I've complained relentlessly about the constant thunderstorms and drizzle. I guess when you're in love,walking in the warm rain is romantic but I just son't remember it that way when I was a young man (kid). I used the rain as an excuse to talk a 'girlfriend' to make for an old barn to check for eggs...even we all knew that barn hadn't had a chicken in in decades.

I know Ariel uses those words as terms of endearment. While I'm holding her passport for security reasons, I doubt she'd care if I go home and leave her right here.

HAHAHA - she must be in love.

 

[Beekissed]

I was thinking on this issue while I was outside doing chores.

We have a very wasteful society. We can't seem to be happy unless we have not only enough to satisfy us, but enough to throw away too. And I'm guilty of it too. We slaughtered some turkeys this week and I threw away the heads, feet, heart, gizzard, and lungs - because those parts still gross me out. The free range chickens ate the livers and testicles but they won't eat the rest. I understand the enormity of the need to feed the masses who live in the cities, but reality is that we throw away a ton of food. And people expect to have an enormous variety of the same type of product to choose from - they want to be able to choose which brand, which color. That alone causes the commercial industries to produce far more than is actually needed. North America could feed a good portion of the rest of the world just with what we throw away in our homes, our restaurants - not to mention what goes bad on cargo ships and in warehouses when there are fights over money. I heard on the news about tons and tons of apples rotting in the Pacific Northwest in the last couple of years after they were harvested. We actually produce far more than necessary.

I was at Walmart yesterday and looked at egg prices. They have come down some. But the sheer amount of eggs, not to mention the variety of brands available, was huge. How many of those eggs actually get eaten? How many people actually eat 200-300 eggs in a year - which is what folks want their modern hen to lay? I'm talking the average city/town dwelling person.

People generally eat eggs for breakfast and use an occasional egg when making a cake. Now I can use a lot of eggs, but I also make things like pasta, biscuits/breads, pie crusts and other ready-made items that most people buy premade at the store in boxes and cans. And we eat a lot of quiche to use up eggs. I purposely use more eggs than other people because I have them and want to decrease waste. Yet even with feeding eggs back to our birds, I still end up throwing away a lot of eggs that wind up so old that it's too hard to get the sticky dry yolks out of the shells so I can use the shells. And my old fashioned birds molt for about 4 months, they go broody all the time, and even when they are laying consistently, they lay every other to every few days unlike modern birds. Yet I still was throwing away eggs when we only had a handful of hens. If our society were more temperate in their habits and did not demand to have more than enough eggs to feed themselves and still have eggs to throw away, the commercial poultry industry would not need to operate in the manner that they do.

Meat is the same way. How much of it gets thrown away or goes bad before it is eaten? How many people turn up their noses at meat that have the *sell quick* tags on them? People now believe that the government mandated/encouraged *sell by* dates means that a product is suddenly rotten and they have to throw it away. I have a sneaky suspicion that much of those sell by dates and friends that way.

Most people don't have any idea how much they eat of different items because they no longer have to produce it themselves. They believe what the commercial industry tells them because they don't know any better. And these large corporations are making a killing on the ignorance of the buying public. There's a guy out in California that I read about who was changing his commercial laying operation over to free ranging, heritage birds. Last I saw, things were going ok for him. He had to change his business model some but it was worth it to him to have a more sustainable flock. Should be interesting to see how he does as time goes on. I believe that if there were not huge monopolistic corporations that were paying outrageous executive salaries and dividends to stockholders - to people not even actively involved in the growing of poultry products - small family farms could produce enough food for everyone and not have to rely on the genetically patented birds that commercial growers are required to use by contract.

When I look at people complaining that the old breeds don't do it for them production wise, I think their expectations have been tainted by the commercial industry's propaganda. But I also think part of it may be that even the old bloodlines aren't producing like they did 100 years ago because of people's mistakes. These old breeds were barely kept alive after commercial poultry took over. And the folks keeping the birds alive were show people that were more interested in pretty feathers than continuing their ancestor's tradition of making sure the birds were thrifty and lived up to their utility purpose because they no longer had to worry about growing their own meat and eggs anymore. So we're having to improve the old breeds to get them back to where they used to be at. The research I've done and learning from Bee and some others how they feed them and their families with their old fashioned birds - I think we're the problem, not the birds.

In regards to an edible cockerel before he crows - for my breed that is not possible - for the fact that my cockerels often start crowing at 1 month old. Now that I've spent a few years selectively breeding for production and not just SOP, I'm getting more meat at 5 months old. Enough for a meal for two people and depending on how we use it, sometimes leftovers too. My Javas also generally start laying at 5 months.

I agree with all of this...waste and huge, unrealistic expectations abound. And, I like a chicken that lays and lays well and has a meaty carcass but expecting that bird to lay at 4 mo. of age or be big as a CX before it crows is crazy, to say the least. Trying to invent the super bird might be an all absorbing hobby but it's not realistic expectations at all. There's something to be said for average maturity...I do believe studies done indicate that birds maturing at 6 mo. do better all the way around for laying longevity and production, as well as for hardiness.

I also agree that the colossal waste in this country is fueling the cruelty to the animals and long term destruction of the soils by the commercial agriculture system.

Though I can't see myself eating chicken heads or stuffing chicken intestines with some kind of sausage, there are many parts of the chicken that are not being used and being thrown away...some folks won't even feed them back to the chickens or dogs. I'm trying to do better on this myself and intend to start saving the underfeathers of these WRs for stuffing pillows and comforters and trying to do more towards storing eggs when production is good so we have them when egg production falls off. What we don't put in the jar or stock, the dogs consume and that saves me on commercially derived nutrition for them. I'm hoping to score some free or really cheap rabbits out of the locals for supplementing/growing my own dog food this year as well.

I'm also going to start treating my garden as an all year round salad bar and finally start cultivating fall/winter crops so we can eat fresh all year. Why am I wasting that space all winter long when I could be growing fresh food for my family and for the chickens? Why in the world am I buying that nutritional deficient lettuce in the store? I've got to get back to producing more of my own food, storing more, growing more all year round.

 

[bnjrob]

Quote:
Man, I've got to completely rethink my composting. Now that we have donkeys, I can't compost until I come up with a more secure composting area. I've caught those darn things pulling paper bags full of poopy chicken bedding out of the compost pile to dig through it. They have equine metabolic syndrome and take medication a couple of times a day and eating kitchen scraps from the compost pile would really mess them up. Farm life - never boring.

 

[angry rooster]

Angry rooster I've reached the age where I've finally learned that those self- induced types of headaches can be avoided altogether!

I am a proud daddy of a one year old and I can get a headache by looking at a bottle of beer but I can still drink like a sailor but the lack of sleep that I am going through will kill me if I try to drink it has been a year and a half since I really drank
Too much to do to waste time on drinking