Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[Lacy Blues]

It also depends on how your dog grows up. My dogs are both 40-60lb sled dogs and have gotten bones since they were bitty itty puppies. Typically I give my dogs chunk beef marrow bones that I boil for just long enough to kill any surface bacteria. But I have certainly fed other bones to my dogs, both cooked and uncooked. My dogs eat whole rabbit skulls, skull and all raw, and they will get the leg bones from chickens too, cooked. The only problem they have ever had is when they eat too many bones and the next day their poo looks yellow and is hard as a rock from all the sudden bone they get. :/ Can't be pleasant to pass so I try to avoid that.

If I want one of the beef bones to last forever I boil them through BTW. My dogs can't even put a dent in a fully boiled beef bone; it's too hard. The softer ones my big girl will just eat. She will break of chunks and chew them and eat them. It drives my sister nuts cause all her dogs are prissy and not very dog-like because of how she raised them and they never got bones as pups so try to swallow things like that whole and choke on 'em. My dogs have had bones since about 10 weeks old so they know not to. I have more bones in my house as toys than I can count.

People who don't generally gives bones to their dogs should give them bones that are WAY to big to swallow. After they chew on it for a while, the excitement will die down and they probably won't swallow the bones whole. Even if they did, if they're a good healthy DOG, their stomach and intestines can take are of it.

Could be. Most outside dogs around these parts scavenge whatever bones that come their way, from deer bones to turkey and chicken carcass bones~cooked or raw~from the time they are pups. My dogs get whatever bones that are processed through here and those that they catch~possum and coon are let rot until easily eaten. They don't gnaw on bones, they consume them entirely. Jake once consumed the entire head of a 6 mo. heifer in two days....bones, teeth, hair and all. He loves the heads of animals the most and will let his deer heads get really rotten and gamey before consuming them but will lap out the brain matter before it gets entirely liquid.

When we get a deer, the carcass is just given to the dog and he will work constantly until he gets it whittled away to just the lumbar spine and then will often bury that for later on in the year. The legs and hooves are consumed like candy. It often looks like the African veld here in the fall with carcasses being chawed upon and defended from the scavenger birds(the chickens) and it keeps the dog engaged and active, arousing many of those base instincts. He's up all night defending his "kill" from the wildlife and sleeping next to it in the day to keep the chickens from stealing his best bits. He will even rob the coyote's caches when we are out walking and bring home what he's found...in the spring he's scored a few fawn parts in that manner. I think he takes a particular delight in stealing another pred's kill.

It's a wonderful life for a dog!

My dog only gnawed on them when he didn't get them that often. The rest of the time, he would eat the whole thing. Had beautiful white teeth too, no tartar.

I also want to thank you for the liquid brains comment. It's a good thing my stomach is fairly strong. I was just starting to eat my lunch!

heck if they went on strike after a year of laying, I'd say I need a different type of chicken.. Where I come from you need seniority to go on strike! I don't care if they lay every day but this is just wrong.Maybe I should just buy fresh eggs from someone around here lol...I'll check the FF out later.

They don't go on strike after a year of laying, they go through a period of molting where their bodies change out all the old feathers for new ones and that takes a lot of energy and nutrition. The save energy by not laying eggs for a few months while they grow new feathers. Single minded these beasts are. They'll start up again before too long.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Have any of you seen a good rabbit processing video on YouTube? If so, please post it if you would.

How do you wanna process your rabbit? Gunshot? Rabbit wringer? I, personally, use broomsticking. It is REALLY hard to mess up.

I learned to do it entirely from this video. I followed the directions exactly and it went really well but there were some incidents where people didn't pull hard enough or long enough and it was sad. So I wrote an article/my experience on it for reference.

http://quarteracrehome.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/the-moment-of-truth/

I love this video because it's SOOOOOOO simple and easy and safe. You do NOT need a nice knife like you do with a chicken, you will most assuredly not pop anything you don't mean to it will be fast and easy and once you get the hand of it each rabbit takes less than ten minutes.

Each day I appreciate raising rabbits more and more.

I butchered the dead chicken all the way. Skinned it and gutted it and gave it a good wash. They were feeding them nothing but scratch it it's crop was SUPER full of scratch... I actually cut it open and gave it back to the other meaties because it was all so fresh and there was over a cup of it. They were clearly free fed and they are fat and fat and lazy. Lots of fat. The liver and other organs were AWFUL. The liver was YELLOW and the whole lot stunk quite badly. This could be partially because the digestive tract was still working hard until it died but it was just gross. I didn't save any of it for my dogs or birds. Yuck. Hopefully when I process the other three in a few days it won't be so bad. D:

 

[Beekissed]

heck if they went on strike after a year of laying, I'd say I need a different type of chicken.. Where I come from you need seniority to go on strike! I don't care if they lay every day but this is just wrong.Maybe I should just buy fresh eggs from someone around here lol...I'll check the FF out later.

Hormones change in the winter, giving the chickens a much needed down time so that nutrition can be diverted to keeping warm, feather growth and maintaining good health. There are breeds that will lay through the winter but they burn out around the second year anyway. Each chicken is born with a certain number of eggs..like us gals...and, depending upon the breed, some have more, some less, some lay them all as quickly as possible and some go through peak seasons and then seasons of dormancy. Some birds are not known for having very many total eggs and they lay in seasons, but are not known for being good layers or dual purpose breeds...Cochins, EE, etc.

Most layer breeds will be the ones that have a lot of total ova and they lay them through all the seasons and take a little break for molting but they won't be your birds with really nice feathering or high meat yields...they will lay well for 2-3 yrs and then taper off a good bit. They usually will not go broody and reproduce their own replacements.

Dual purpose breeds have a little less total eggs per bird than layers, will lay them in seasonal rhythms and most will take a little break in the fall/winter and their feathering will be much nicer than a layer and they will also have a nice, meaty carcass...they are the slow but steady layers and can lay well clear up to 4-5 yrs of age. They can and will go broody and replace their numbers and provide good meaty roosters in that process and can also yield good carcass when they are done laying. (When I process this next pen of roosters I'll show the difference between carcasses of layer roosters and dual purpose roosters...it's significant.)

Sex link birds have been bred from layer/dual purpose genetics(RIR, WR, BR, NH) will have many eggs, will lay them straight through, have scruffy feathering and a little lower carcass weights than the parent genetics, are not real hardy and usually burn out in the second year, may have laying issues, etc. They are usually not known for going broody nor for their foraging abilities.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Bee- ironically my heritage Australorps forage worse than my production reds. The production reds LOVE their grass and greens. The australorps could not care less sometimes.

 

[Triple Willow]

@Chocolate Mouse... I'll probably shoot them. I think the big thing will be to get a little station set up with hooks to hang them on, a table, etc.

Thanks for the video.

...I watched the video. It is a nice quick demonstration. Thanks.

 

[Beekissed]

Bee- ironically my heritage Australorps forage worse than my production reds. The production reds LOVE their grass and greens. The australorps could not care less sometimes.

Here's a question for you...do you find your heritage breeds will lay in the winter months without the aid of lighting them up?

 

[BCMaraniac]

That 6"-10" they were predicting turned out to be 13" ! And now it has warmed up a bit and raining cats and dogs here ! Crazy weather !

Yikes! No wonder the hens don't know whether to poop or lay!

 

[hellbender]

Good score!!!!

For cheap meats! Think of how much feed was used to get those birds to an adult size and now you get them so cheaply...how can folks afford that?

It's weird, isn't it...to go to some other place and see how they keep their chickens. I always leave sick to my stomach and wondering where those folks learned to keep chickens, how they can walk into that coop/run each day to feed and not see how wrong it all looks, and why don't they care to make it better. I've only ever been to two places that kept chickens where the chickens were clean, fully feathered and kept in good, healthy looking places...and that's out of many, many places I've been that keep chickens. Two only. It's an eye opener and it explains why towns and HOAs are dead set against people keeping chickens.

Hi Bee. You don't live all that far from me...You have an open invitation to visit me and bring a video cam. Would love to sit down and talk shop with you Anyhow!

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Bee, this is my first winter with them.so I wouldn't know completely but currently only one of my four hens is laying and it's my production red. My Australorps stopped laying when they started molting just before the snows hit. They finished feathering in right before the real cold set in and they haven't started up laying again yet. I have no supplemental light.

 

[hellbender]

I posted this on another thread and decided to post it here and one other place...

Wish me luck!!!

My family and I have been breeding Turkens and Australorps for decades but strictly for production and have managed to do so with considerable success if I may say so.

I have recently considered taking one of my breeds and using an extra building and acreage I have on hand, and begin to try to breed to the SOP. Still haven't decided which of my two breeds to chose but I'm leaning strongly toward the Turken/Naked Necks. There seems to be enough people working with Australorps so the challenge of Turkens is very strong.

Thanks for reading...Any help will be appreciated. I suppose the first thing I need to do is acquire a copy of the Breed Standards, visit a few shows (never been to one) and just get the feel of things.

This is not something that I have just jumped into....been considering it for some time...the hardest part is trying to figure out which of my breeds I want to concentrate on. I appreciate both breeds and actually thought of going with another breed that I really like but realize that might complicate things...

RON