July 10, 2008
We've got another hundred broiler chicks started. We bought cornish cross chicks though we are thinking about using a more 'heritage' type of meat bird. As a group, our family does not care too much for 'white meat' on chicken. So, the cornish cross breed that is the American standard meat chicken is a bit of a waste for us.
The true heritage breed chickens grow much more slowly than the cornish cross. The catalogue for our chick supplier said these cornish cross birds will typically reach a market weight of 5lbs in 5 weeks. A heritage breed like the buff orpington takes more like 5 months to reach 5lbs.
In addition to fast growth, the standard broiler chicks are "designed" to use a minimum amount of feed in order to reach market weight. Last year, it took 4.28lbs of feed to produce each pound of chicken. We used a standard organic poultry feed so that our feed cost per chicken was $5.03. Feed prices are higher this year and we have moved to a non-soy organic feed though we did use a soy containing organic feed for the first weeks. Even though the non-soy feed is a custom grind, it was cheaper than a soy based mix.
A heritage breed would probably require considerably more pounds of feed to produce each pound of chicken meat. There are some 'in between' varities of meat chicks available. Some that grow out in about 12 weeks seem as though they might better fullfill our goals.
The slower growing chicken results in a finished chicken with heavier thighs and legs and a more elongated, lighter breast. I've been interested in the French 'Label Rouge' style of chicken.
I am experimenting this year with pasturing some chickens in forest areas. Last year we had our chickens in a chicken tractor that we moved across grassy areas eash day. This year, I'm going to try putting 50 of our chicks into a 40ftx40ft pasture area that is about half forest and half open grassland. There are other aspects of the 'label rouge' ideals that I hope to try out in the future, including air chill processing.
We are not yet back to the farm due to business in the city. I have a telecomutting job that will allow me to work from where-ever I want and we got a satelite internet connection that works for that, though it tends to be pretty lagged.
I have been reading dietary literature related to primative diets. I'm currently interested in Vonderplanitz's 'Primal Diet'. It is a raw food plan that incorporates a lot of animal products. It includes raw, unheated honey, raw meat, raw milk, raw eggs, raw poultry and raw fish. There are is also raw veggie juices and other elements.
The most difficult, in the city, is getting the quality of meat and poultry that I would be willing to eat raw. It is also diffccult to get raw dairy. On the farm, none of that is a problem. I have a couple of cows,some chickens and even some goats and plenty of land to grow more of those. There is a guy who lives nearby where I can buy raw (unheated) honey.
I am now interested in producing honey. I thought it kicked people's blood sugar around such that I would never be able to eat it. And, indeed, ordinary honey does do that. But the truly raw stuff does not. I am amazed to discover that. It is something I found out from Vonderplanitz.
I also, however, agree with some of the notions put forward by Vinny Pinto at his Raw Paleo Diet web site. He espouses the idea that being dogmatic or fundamentalist about this stuff is not desireable. I tend to agree. While it would be nice to have easily followed prescriptives that say eat X and eat Y and you'll have eternal life, I don't believe that sort of thing. I want to leave my own mind open, at least a crack and I certainly don't want to criticise anyone for their own dietary habits or values.
That said, I intend to give the Primal diet a 'college try'. I am also going to investigate producing food suited to a raw diet. If I feel I can do it approriately, I'll work on supplying other people who are into raw meat.
May 16,2007 - RW: We have a new steer coming this weekend. Our cow is pregnant, but she is not happy being alone. We want to try to keep 3 cattle, at least, on our farm most of the time. That would allow us to send one off for processing without isolating another as we did last fall.
I'm still looking into chickens. I found a plucker and scalding tank I think we could afford and I got a lot more information about the legal situation for marketing and processing on the farm. We are thinking of doing 50 or so pastured broilers this summer for our own consumption in order to learn about the production requirements.
Another thing I have been researching is meat goats. It seems there is a good market for live goats. As far as I know, there are no intersate shipment rules for live goats and they are reasonably easy to work with. In fact, some are very amusing and friendly creatures. I'm not sure that getting attached to a meat goat is a good idea!
Tom and I have been working on the old case backhoe. It is a 530CK Case contruction king from sometime in the 1960s. We were trying to replace the engine with one that I picked up. However, the cylinder sleeves gave us a lot of trouble this past week.
My heart is at the farm, rather than in the city where I work. I am especially taken with my baby girls, 'Riah and Sissy.
In the summer they come up to the house and wind up on the sundeck as well as in any sort of garden we try to have. They have even occasionally made it into the house when we weren't looking!
They are a mixture of Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpingtons. The reds are great layers buy they never seem to raise chicks from their eggs. The Buffs also lay pretty well and they will brood a clutch of eggs into a buch of chicks. that's what we got 'em for. However, when we got them last year, we didn't realize what we were in for. The Buffs will hide their eggs. They hide eggs among the hay bales, behind some scrap wood in the barn and just about any place else they can find. I stumbled upon a roosting hen who was behind some old engine parts sitting on 25 eggs. She actually produced and raised a dozen chicks from those eggs and one of her buddies raised another 5 chicks last fall.
We have a pregnant herford cow as well. We got her in May of 2005 along with a steer. Both had just been weaned. We wanted grass fed beef and I wanted to find out if we could handle keeping the cattle. Things went very well and in Sept of 2006 we harvested the steer. We got 440 lbs of meat and we are still eating it.
However, the cow did not do well. Cows are herd animals. They do NOT like to be alone. Not only that, this cow went into heat. Our lusty little pie maker just would not be restrained by fencing. She kept running away to the neighbor's dairy farm. There were no bulls there, but she was much happier hanging out with the other cows. We arranged for her to go visit a bull in December and in Febuary she came back. She's getting very wide and she is very much calmer now. Still, we are re-thinking our cow farming.
We plan to buy a couple of Angus steers this spring. They mature in about 1 year, while the Herfords take closer to 18 months. I don't want our exisiting cow, even though she is pregnant, to be alone in the field. She needs other cattle to hang out with. She should have her calf in Sept or so and it should wean around Xmas. After that weaning is complete, I plan to harvest the cow.
The Angus steers should be ready early in 2008. At that point we will have way more grass fed beef than we can eat. We will be making meat available.
I went with our fellow farmer and friend Jo Clearwater to a grazier's conference on direct marketing at Bradford in Susquehanna County, PA. Now, I'm all jazzed up to do some pastured chickens in chicken tractors. That happens to me. I get excited about stuff. I decide I must immediatly quit my day job and run into the fields to farm. I have a semi-pychotic need to give up my high income and shovel shit! Lucia, fortunately, doesn't usually have these sorts of fits, at least not at the same time that I do.