Sanderson Farms is a bad boy

[raw-al]

Not that raw chicken is particularly taste tempting and not that anyone here would eat stuff from a grocery store anyways, but just to let you know what is happening….
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/08/16/antibiotic-use-in-poultry.aspx?utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20160816Z1_C&et_cid=DM113985&et_rid=1621824037

[cherimoya_kid]

This is related to why I never eat raw chicken. Everybody over feeds grains to them, even if they're not using antibiotics.

[raw-al]

I think we tried it once and it was disgusting. Maybe the grains part is part of the reason.

Before our chickens went to that great coop in the sky courtesy of some predators, I was trying sprouting seeds for them to eat. They were not interested.

They were big fans of worms insects etc. which of course meant that I had to close off the gardens or there wouldn't be anything left.

[van]

I raised chickens and ducks on trays or green spouted grains and seeds for years,, lots of work.  The ideal scenario would be do find a way, an Easy way, to raise bugs for them.     You can cover moist ground and discover all sorts of bugs that move in,, however everything I could think of is toxic, like plastic, and plywood, etc..

[cherimoya_kid]

I raised chickens and ducks on trays or green spouted grains and seeds for years,, lots of work.  The ideal scenario would be do find a way, an Easy way, to raise bugs for them.     You can cover moist ground and discover all sorts of bugs that move in,, however everything I could think of is toxic, like plastic, and plywood, etc..

I think the black soldier fly larvae method is probably the easiest. Wasn't Eve doing that at one point? And Dorothy was talking about doing it.

[raw-al]

I raised chickens and ducks on trays or green spouted grains and seeds for years,, lots of work.  The ideal scenario would be do find a way, an Easy way, to raise bugs for them.     You can cover moist ground and discover all sorts of bugs that move in,, however everything I could think of is toxic, like plastic, and plywood, etc..

How did you do the sprouting? Did you just put it on a large tray with water?
I filled yogurt containers but it tends to get moldy fairly fast.

I think the black soldier fly larvae method is probably the easiest. Wasn't Eve doing that at one point? And Dorothy was talking about doing it.

Where do you get the BSF?

[eveheart]

I never got the hang of black soldier fly larvae. The problem was that I wasn't attracting BSF adults to lay the eggs. I got some young BSFL from someone else, hoping that their presence would attract adults, but nothing happened.

I did get a windfall of housefly larvae - maggots - and I prefer them. BSFL take 2 - 3 weeks to the full-grown larval stage; housefly larvae are plump in less than a week in summer temperatures. If I were raising bugs to feed chickens, I would be happy with a maggot self-feeder, in which the maggots that are ready to pupate crawl out of a suspended bucket and get gobbled up by chickens. Youtube has lots of videos with good, cheap set-ups for chicken. I used glass mason jars for my maggots, to avoid plastic. I live in a very dry climate, so I had to keep the whole thing covered with air vents, or else the bait and the maggots would just dry out.

Often, permaculture farms (I think that's what they call themselves) "raise" maggots on cattle dung, where the hens feed after the cattle rotates to a fresh patch of pasture. I'm purely an "urban homesteader" who squeezes food out of a tiny backyard.

[van]

I soaked the grain, beans, seeds in a five gallon food grade plastic pail over night, then would dump into another five gallon pail that I had drilled a hundred or more quarter inch or smaller holes into. I would riinse daily for about two to three days, then when tails had appeared I would dump into trays  20 by 30 inches by six inches tall, which also had holes in the bottom and sides.  Four or five or six days later, depending on temp. there would be a lawn.    But now I would look into the bug scenarios...

[van]

Or even geese where they simply mow the lawn and need no other feeds unless there's no rain and only browned out grass.  But, they lay only seasonally.

[raw-al]

Thanks Eve and Van,

Good ideas.

Van;,
When my friends who have a larger setup for their commune, started using a similar setup to yours, they noticed significantly less eggs which was also my experience.

Eve,
I am a somewhat urban (just on the edge of a small city) with ? of an acre. We have lost the chickens for now and will get some again next year, but have a greenhouse just about completed, as well as a garden and fruit trees.

[Projectile Vomit]

When my friends who have a larger setup for their commune, started using a similar setup to yours, they noticed significantly less eggs which was also my experience.

Brings up a huge quandary in the livestock world: the tradeoff between quality and quantity. Yes, if you feed animals food that allows them to make higher quality eggs or meat, odds are they will make less of it. On the flip side, if you feed them so as to maximize egg (or meat, or milk) production, you won't end up with as high quality an end product.

Reminds me of a grass farmer I worked with a few years ago in the US northeast who ran a purportedly 100% grass fed dairy. After a few years I asked to see his production rates, and saw his herd of ~70 milkers was producing on average about 19,000 pounds of milk per cow per year, which is good for a grain fed dairy in this area but so high as to be nearly unheard of for a grass-based dairy. Needless to say, after a few conversations with him he finally let on that he wasn't really 100% grass fed and was feeding his cows grain every day to supplement their forage. He kept his stash of grain hidden so that when the buyer (I think he was selling to Horizon's 100% grass fed label) visited they wouldn't see it and so he was always able to pass his inspections.

[raw-al]

I hear ya Eric, Nowadays @ the butcher I have noticed a grassfed sign. Difficulty is whether to believe it. Butcher may be honest but…..

Initially I fed my chickens what I got at the animal feed store and then I switched to one that didn't have corn (GMO) and then I thought I would try sprouted grain, then they died at the mouth of a predator. They always had access to the backyard and our food scraps.

I can tell the difference between our eggs and the farmer's market eggs. Ours were much better.

One interesting thing I found out along the way, was when I started learning about Bach Flower Remedies, I started giving them 1 drop per ounce of Rescue remedy in their drinking water.

Literally overnight the one hen that was 'henpecked' started laying daily. Previously she had layed maybe ½ dozen in the past year.

Egg production immediately increased. After awhile I added some other remedies into the mix and there seemed to be less aggression. (henpecking)

I've told others about this, but no idea if they tried it.

Here is the recipe.

Get a dropper bottle and put 2 drops of Rescue Remedy in it per 1 ounce. Then top the bottle off with very clean water (so it doesn't get scummy).

Then put one drop of the diluted RR in the dropper bottle into the drinking water for every ounce in the drinking water container.

The resultant mixture is homeopathic in action.

[cherimoya_kid]

Brings up a huge quandary in the livestock world: the tradeoff between quality and quantity. Yes, if you feed animals food that allows them to make higher quality eggs or meat, odds are they will make less of it. On the flip side, if you feed them so as to maximize egg (or meat, or milk) production, you won't end up with as high quality an end product.

Reminds me of a grass farmer I worked with a few years ago in the US northeast who ran a purportedly 100% grass fed dairy. After a few years I asked to see his production rates, and saw his herd of ~70 milkers was producing on average about 19,000 pounds of milk per cow per year, which is good for a grain fed dairy in this area but so high as to be nearly unheard of for a grass-based dairy. Needless to say, after a few conversations with him he finally let on that he wasn't really 100% grass fed and was feeding his cows grain every day to supplement their forage. He kept his stash of grain hidden so that when the buyer (I think he was selling to Horizon's 100% grass fed label) visited they wouldn't see it and so he was always able to pass his inspections.

And the more extreme the profit motive, the more extreme the deceptions will be. Farmers aren't exactly rich, and our society is not exactly going out of its way to help them survive. *shrug*

[eveheart]

And the more extreme the profit motive, the more extreme the deceptions will be. Farmers aren't exactly rich, and our society is not exactly going out of its way to help them survive. *shrug*

Hereabouts, farmers are rich in land, which makes people think that the farmers live on easy street. Their reality is that they live in wealth on the edge of a bottomless pit. Boom or bust.

That's another reason I look at how the farm is supported (i.e., who are the consumers). My thinking is that a community farm, such as Garden to Table http://www.garden2table.org/ is more likely to be on the up-and-up than the farmer who trucks produce into the city's big "organic" farmer's market. I never know when organic loses to  aphid-infested unless I can actually see what's happening.

That's what makes halal sheep farmers so good in my area: they have to operate under watchful eyes in their community. It's not perfect, but it sure beats dealing with big corporate buyers who care more about the dollar than the quality.

[raw-al]

Just found this: Look towards the bottom section.
http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/new-ways-to-keep-a-flock-while-learning-some-tips-and-tricks-for-reducing-your-feed-cost?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email

[raw-al]

Thanks for the link Eve. That takes community garden to a different level.

[TylerDurden]

That's what makes halal sheep farmers so good in my area: they have to operate under watchful eyes in their community. It's not perfect, but it sure beats dealing with big corporate buyers who care more about the dollar than the quality.

Can sheep be fed on grains? It is just that halal has all sorts of religious restrictions which are no use to an RPDer, such as removing all the blood etc., but, afaik, there are no halal commands for certain animals to be grassfed or antibiotic-free etc. I once went around London asking for grassfed halal meat, they looked at me like I was a moron.

[eveheart]

Can sheep be fed on grains? It is just that halal has all sorts of religious restrictions which are no use to an RPDer, such as removing all the blood etc., but, afaik, there are no halal commands for certain animals to be grassfed or antibiotic-free etc. I once went around London asking for grassfed halal meat, they looked at me like I was a moron.

Yes, sheep can be fed on grains.

Muslims, at least in California, are not robots of their scriptures. They are regular people with customs and habits, like all people in all cultures.

The typical consumer at the ranch I go to expects grassfed because he knows that the meat is no good from a grain fed lamb. There's a taste difference, plus he is close enough to the slaughter process to have seen grass vs grain innards. At the ranch, being it's the dry summer season, they expect to see mountains of hay and no bags of grain. Anyway, that's what I get told when I ask, even though I probably look like a moron.

Really knowing your meat is pretty typical of a nose-to-tail consumer. I've read that the religious custom of offering the blood to a god was practiced in the Middle East by the early tribal religions, long before it became incorporated in the Hebrew law, then the Islamic law. Oftentimes, a food sacrifice was eaten by the priest, so maybe the custom started when some blood-loving priest demanded all the fresh blood be offered on his god's altar. Sluuurp!