The Front Porch Swing

[vehve]

Quote: I'd ship you some Finnish meat, but by the time it would get there, I don't think even your chickens would eat it (except for maybe the fly larvae on it).

One interesting thought that occurs to me though, is comparing the taste in animals you can get both hunted wild and grown.

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote:
Me too but I am constantly comparing food that I consumed as a young person before the factory farms became the major meat producers here in the US... Back then Mom and I would think nothing of eating a couple of tablespoons full of raw hamburger meat before cooking hamburgers. These days Naww...

deb

 

[Tomtommom]

Me too but I am constantly comparing food that I consumed as a young person before the factory farms became the major meat producers here in the US... Back then Mom and I would think nothing of eating a couple of tablespoons full of raw hamburger meat before cooking hamburgers. These days Naww...

deb

Yup, we would buy this stuff called 'filet Americain'.. raw ground beef mixed with spices, eat it on some toast... heaven! You could buy it in the store like that. Imagine that in the US

I love my steak and burgers medium rare. Gotta be warm, but red..

I don't eat it that way from grocery store meat. You're better off grinding your own, safer.

 

[lazy gardener]

That's a beautiful olive egg! I need an olive egger hen. I tried making some this past spring but they turned out as boys.

I have five non-keep roosters right now. We moved their enclosure today to give them more space. Found some cheap chicken wire rolls, and made an extra run area for them. We let them out to free range while we worked on it, but now they aren't coming back to it!

They are infatuated with the hen pen area, won't leave it, though they can't find a way in, probably a sign they are reaching maturity, or at least the randy teenage boy phase. I've never seen the wingtip dragging dance so much in one day. I keep trying to catch them, but are they ever fast runners!

Lady Cluck: You need a little butterfly net. You chase the bird into a corner set up with chicken wire, and drop the net over his head. He'll never know what hit him!!!

I'm hoping that some of this year's hatch will lay olive eggs. They are black sex links produced from EE x PBR. Pretty little birds with dainty little combs.

 

[LindaB220]

I'd ship you some Finnish meat, but by the time it would get there, I don't think even your chickens would eat it (except for maybe the fly larvae on it).

One interesting thought that occurs to me though, is comparing the taste in animals you can get both hunted wild and grown.

I love to see what the meat looked like when it got here. I don't really eat wild meat. I think it's because we aren't hunters and never had much of an opportunity to get any or how to cook wild game. Someone gave us some deer sausage the other day. I was the only one that ate it because it was so different in texture than Jimmy Dean's sausage. No fat added at all.

 

[Blooie]

Well, seems Karin really has a magical ability of making firsts happen by going away. Now we'e had two new layers come online this weekend. Got a lovely 48g olive egg today, I can't believe that little bird pushed out such a huge egg.

She did crack it though, as she exited the nest about half a minute too early and dropped it on the edge of the pop door to the coop.

What a beauty!

In Europe cattle gets fed sugar beet. Like we make sugar out of corn or sugarcane, they make sugar from beets, because it grows better there. There's some corn being grown, but it's flint corn, the kind used to feed animals... not the eating kind. My mom used to grow her own, we loved corn on the cob which was really unusual back in the 80s and 90s in Holland

A lot of cattle is grassfed too, because grass grows abundantly in the moderate temperatures in Holland. Wheat grows really well too.

Here in the west we grow sugar beets.....acres and acres of them, and we have a Western Sugar plant where the beets are processed into sugar. The farmers take truckloads of beet pulp away from the factory to feed livestock.. Kenny (our son) has worked at Western Sugar for the last 5 years. He works the sugar beet campaign from about September until February, until the plant shuts down for the season. Then he works the summer as watchman. This year it got all messed up because of a terrible accident there. I won't go into it but if you Google Western Sugar accident at the plant in Lovell Wyoming you'll find out about it. Because the EPA, OSHA and several other federal agencies were involved the investigation and subsequent fines, they juggled the few guys they keep on all year 'round and gave the summer jobs to the guys who were involved in the clean-up. So Kenny ended up going to Denver and trying to find work. He came home after a month. He got a job there, but he said that's no place to raise two little girls. I was so relieved, even though he left that job, because the thought of losing my girls was killing me. But the Good Lord works in mysterious ways. Less than a week after he got back the factory called - he's back to watchman for the summer until the campaign kicks off again. There's still a question about whether the factory will shut down after this beet season, but the farmers here all grow beets for Western Sugar and the contracts for the 2014/2015 campaign had been completed long before the accident.

Lady Cluck: You need a little butterfly net. You chase the bird into a corner set up with chicken wire, and drop the net over his head. He'll never know what hit him!!!

I'm hoping that some of this year's hatch will lay olive eggs. They are black sex links produced from EE x PBR. Pretty little birds with dainty little combs.

Where was the butterfly net idea when we were trying to catch Speckles? <sigh>

 

[Blooie]

Oh, I forgot to show you my eggs!


Tam got this big one earlier in the week - she was overcome with curiosity and she cooked it and ate it! It was, of course, a double yolker.

She gathered 9 eggs today, but when I got home and went out to check the girls I found this tenth one, still warm, in one of the nests. WOW!

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote:
Grass is really dependant on how good your soils are. I just looked up AIV grass or fodder.... VERY interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIV_fodder

me needs to read more....

there is a product here they call Chaffhaye... called a hay bale in a bag... its Alfalfa processed in the field and bagged. Ideally at the optiomum nutreint level. But Mann,.... $$$$ Here we have a 365 day a year growing season for fodder... so Alfalfa and Grass hays are easily obtained year round... good for us because we dont have to store a winters worth... Yet we pay higher prices for it because of our location...

deb

http://www.chaffhaye.com/knowledge-center/

 

[vehve]

 

 
Here is what I found out about SV2 Wheat

http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/3233/1/P154.pdf

SV2 is a genetic modification to make the wheat rust resistant.... Rust being a fungus which attacks wheat.


For what its worth you don't need corn to feed chickens. 

Or livestock.  To feed horses in work you can use a number of energy sources.  But for the most part plain old grasses or Legumes like Alfalfa, Or Lucern as its called in Europe.  can be used.   After I bought my horse she has never been fed grain except as a treat.  She keeps her weight right at around 1800-2000 lbs.    Horses can even eat seaweed so can livestock. 

Oats Barley Wheat and other grains can also be used for livestock....  even rice.   Barley for chickens is an issue but I dont know all the specifics.  Fermenting it is probably the best way to go. 

A friend of mine who has been building a farm in the Philippines mixes his own feed using what is local.... 

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...t-of-here-a-diary-of-a-crazy-chicken-man/8550

http://www.cocopoultryfarm.com/Nutrition.html

We in the US have a kind of a sensory overload with all the feed manufacturers out there....  Gotto feed this Gotto feed that.... Ours is best No Ours is best.... 

Simply stated....  If you look at the needs of your livestock....  and look at what is available in your area...  for the most part you can feed your animals on what is locally available.   With maybe a source of vitimines and minerals that may be deficient in your area.

deb

Horses, to my understanding, are mainly kept on a diet of grass, with oats as a treat. In winter they eat AIV grass. Some people use some supplements, but that's what's mainly used. Dairy cows are probably the biggest consumer of livestock feed here, but I have no idea what they feed them. In part the same AIV grass in winter, and in summer they are kept in pastures in many places. "Pihatto" is a more and more popular way of keeping cows, don't know what the English term might be. I tried translating it, but "cowshed where the cows are kept unchained" doesn't really roll off your tongue. Anyway, robot feeders, scratchers and milkers, where the cows can just wonder in as they wish. I can ask Karin about the feed once she gets home from bicycling with the labs, as I'm too lazy to ask google at the moment.

Grass is really dependant on how good your soils are.  I just looked up AIV grass  or fodder.... VERY interesting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIV_fodder

me needs to read more....  

there is a product here they call Chaffhaye... called a hay bale in a bag... its Alfalfa processed in the field and bagged.  Ideally at the optiomum nutreint level.   But Mann,....  $$$$    Here we have a 365 day a year growing season for fodder...  so Alfalfa and Grass hays are easily obtained year round... good for us because we dont have to store a winters worth... Yet we pay higher prices for it because of our location... 

deb

http://www.chaffhaye.com/knowledge-center/

Mr. A.I.Virtanen got a Nobel price in chemistry for coming up with AIV. He did a lot of research on bettering Finnish milk. He ran the lab for Valio, our biggest milk collective, for decades. Fascinating stuff.

 

[vehve]

Deb, you seem to have a firm grasp on these feed issues. What are your thoughts on collecting leaves in summertime, and drying them to use as a source of greens in winter? Karin read about this, and we decided to try it out. We just gathered half an Ikea bag full of mainly birch leaves straight off the trees. The idea is to utilize this heatwave for drying them quickly, gathering more each day, and then store them for winter in plastic trash sacks. We could of course do the AIV treatment on them as well, but that seems a bit too hardcore for a flock of 8.