You filthy swine!

[stavebuyer]

There really isn't anything growing in my garden i couldn't buy cheaper at the store if you consider all the inputs including labor. 

At the same time there is very little at the store that resembles "real" food. Grown and packaged to maximize appearance and minimize waste. Taste and quality no longer figure into the equation.

You want the real deal you better plan on producing it yourself. Even the majority of the roadside stands are somebody peddling boxed crap underneath a pop-up canopy to people who never had fresh from the farm.

[mike_belben]

Youve got to do something with your time and tilling the earth is probably more righteous than trolling tik tok all day on the welfare.  Gardening gets more and more satisfying as i get better at it.  

Just finished making sauce, 1st really good batch ive ever made. The extra got a plop of sour cream and we ate it like salsa.  Thanks for the motivation swampdonkey.  Economically stupid at this time, yet exceptionally satisfying.  






And a protein smoothie to boost my vitality. 





This little blender doesnt like cob chunks too much but it worked and got even more meat off the bone.  Birds annihilate it.  Gimpy 2 got quarantined to protect him from his now much bigger sibblings.  Hes got a weak passenger side leg but is otherwise a strong bird so im making him or her do squats on my chest and manually feeding.  Maple tube and a pencil makes a pretty good cottage cheese injector. 

[HemlockKing]

You must be planning a big grow for next spring. 

[Southside]

Was given a jar of home made salsa last year, first time she had made it. Well, something wasn't quite right. We opened the jar and instant VOLCANO! Got a good chuckle out of it! 

[Tacotodd]

And mess as well  :D

[WDH]

Mike, you are a kind and compassionate man to give Gimpy 2 such care.  I would like to stay undated on Gimpy's progress and prognosis. 

[thecfarm]

Now that's a smoothie.

For a chicken!!!!  ;D

[mike_belben]

Thanks WDH, i will keep you posted.  Im learning as i go, hopefully not to Gimpys  detriment.   Funny story, yersterday while im trying to get gimpy to exercise those weak legs by letting him push off my chest and straighten them, he fires off a ripe plop right down my shirt.  

[mike_belben]

so me using the blender gave the wife plausible deniability to go out and buy a ninja blender cuz it was on sale.  i was not pleased with the cost despite said discount at all, but man, it is a beast. it absolutely facilitated making an excellent jar of sauce with onion and pepper into an easy job on its first day.  and today it has eaten chopped up corn blocks, cob and all, like a tire shredder.  

no larvae smoothies in this one.  


this thread is helping me remember my steps for later to look back at what was good or bad.  i made about a half gallon batch of feed slop that was very high in yard greens, mostly curly dock.  plus tomato and maybe 3 full ears of corn with cob.  using rainwater, no chlorine.  the mix was very green and theyre not too into it.  i also have a batch in rainwater fermenting to try that. really want to minimize the crumbles or any purchased feed into just a nutritional supplement to prevent deficiencies, rather than a primary food. 

 i made a new elevated feeder by screwing a slit 2" pvc pipe onto a 2x4 to make them step up to the trough, get some exercise and limit how much wood chip and plops land in the feed. that part is working pretty well. 

they did eat todays green goo mix, but mostly picking for corn.  not the ferocious piranha attack that you get by putting straight tomato seed pulp down. so i put some crumbles on one side of the green goo and a sprinkle of my deer mineral mix (dical 18.5 and trace mineral salt 50/50) on the other and they dont have a preference that i can detect.  

for bedding i have been building up a deep litter.  started with planer shavings and then fresh grass from the mower bagger, then more shavings ontop.  they seem very happy with that mix comfort wise.  when they go outside i will empty it out and compost it.  soon i will start putting soldier fly larvae in there for them to dig after.  too young to eat one now but they do like scratching.  im told these birds just eat and sleep which cant be any better for their health than it is for ours. i want to see a little more cardio in there.  

when they go in the pen outside, theyre gonna be doing the labor to enrich, mix and till my lasagna compost into new garden sites as i creep the pen along a sunny lane. 

[Southside]

Wait until you start messing with cows - they give nice surprises!!   :D

[HemlockKing]

Wait until you start messing with cows - they give nice surprises!!   :D

South side, you run a dairy farm right? I assume you never half to pay for milk lol do you pasteurize yours 

[Southside]

Our milk is bottled raw. It's a niche market. 

[HemlockKing]

Our milk is bottled raw. It's a niche market.

That's awesome. That's the way I want it for myself some day soon. 

[mike_belben]

i figured out how to get a gimpy chick to eat.





gimpy still has stupid legs and doesnt balance right but his light duty days are over.  i have kicked him back to gen pop for exercise. the other birds walk all over him and he runs around a lot more that way. lets just assume hes a he.  theres a lot of fight in this bird, i think he will live.  just a little more handicapped than he'd like.

also figured out how to get a dog not to eat a chick. this will only work if your dogs are deathly afraid of your wrath.  like shaking scared when you point the who did this finger.  thats how all dogs should be IMO.









fermenting the slop (with rainwater, not chlorinated) has shown a big increase in palatability despite having an awful lot of greens.  there are more than they want to eat when just blended and poured out.   more tomato would help them eat the straight run but lets face it, those are my tomatoes. if theres no blems today, too bad so sad little chicken.  theyre tearing up the fermented stuff.  im using this elevated trough to force some stair master exercise, then after thats gone pouring more into a bowl.  they drink down the water then get to the mash.  lots of water being consumed, good plops, very energetic crowd, growing fast. 





have started rationing down to a pretty small quantity of daily crumbles to maintain whatever trace elements i might be missing. but at the end of week one, these pigs can eat you out of some cash pretty quick.  they still have free choice of probiotic grit and eat a lot of it, especially since the greens started going in, and theyre on grassy bedding too.  i added in a small lid of the same mineral mix i give to the deer. dical 18.5 + trace mineral salt @50/50.  i marked the first taker with a magic marker on his head and observed for the day.  that one is fine so let them all have access, they take a few pecks and walk away.  seem to know how to regulate so thats good so far.



one week is also the threshold where they are large enough to gag down a mature soldier fly larvae whole.  its hilarious.. toss in a maggot and it turns into a football game.  theyre all chasing each other in circles for that grub. i expect to see them pack on the meat once they start loading up on BSFL proteins and fat.

[Roxie]

Stair master.  :D :D

[Southside]

So interesting tidbits about milk these days.  For reference I built and licensed a Grade A creamery for some folks who became friends a few years back, so I learned a whole lot about the downstream processing of the dairy world.  

Not sure about in Canada but here in the US most of the milk you buy in a store has been pasteurized via a HTST system.  There are different temperature and time durations which milk is legally considered to be pasteurized and the HTST is the highest temp and shortest time system - it's a continuous flow system, so it's fast and efficient. High Temperature Short Time is the acronym.  These systems can, and in big plants do, heat milk up to 212°F for .01 seconds and be legal.  

This "milk" actually becomes shelf stable, but the PMO (Pasteurized Milk Ordinance) has standards for storage so it is still kept refrigerated, that and too many consumers would really balk at seeing milk in the paper goods section.  Ironically this same PMO also states the guidelines for restrooms on a Grade A dairy farm, and they allow a "pit privy" while strongly encouraging the use of cast iron pipe for the vent - so yea, not exactly up with the times.  

If you want to make good, thick, Greek style yogurt then you heat the milk to above 195°F.  This is necessary to fracture the protein structure of the milk which allows the culture a greater surface area to adhere to during incubation, resulting in a thicker yogurt.  

So at 195°F the molecular structure of milk is altered, and most commodity store "milk" has exceeded that temperature in the process - so what is in that jug really isn't milk anymore.  Personally, I think that has added greatly to the whole lactose intolerance issue that we see.  Our bodies don't recognize the product as milk, and don't recognize it as a cultured product either, so it gets rejected, and folks look to things like "Almond Milk" and "Soy Milk" - which is just a solvent wash of the base ingredient.  

Yup - the dairy industry and the "check off" program sure have done wonders for themselves.  The above, combined with the internet and more and more folks desire to have real food has led to an increase in raw milk demand - and that is where the dairy side of our operation fits in.  Raw milk that the cream will separate from in the bottle.  Shelf life, one week.  Makes the whole milk in the store taste like skim.  

We are looking at building a very small, Grade A creamery as part of the operation to get a few products onto retail shelf space, but again these will be niche products, not going to try to compete with the commodity world.  The biggest obstacle to this - finding help we can count on that the regulators won't freak out over.  

[mike_belben]

Didnt know any of that. Interesting. 

And i have been wondering why everyone is suddenly Lactose intolerant.  Didnt mom give you milk on day 1?

[HemlockKing]

Thanks for sharing SS. Interesting

[mike_belben]

so today is turning into an interesting episode of Crops and Plops.  i was getting concerned that some of these massive crops were impacted.  the huge shoulder bulge where its pink skin showing between the downy fuzz because the crop is so swollen.  i figured i would be administering olive oil injections this morning.  

another issue is that even though gimpy is getting a little stronger.. he is getting pecked at a bit too much and has some very minor sores that he is also pecking himself and i know that can go south fast and get him pecked to death.  ive been finger flicking any bully who takes a taste of the gimpster pretty hard.  so i put the cardboard quarantine back up to give gimp a chance to rest last night, except with new wings all these idiots are trying to fly onto things, including the partition.  so i taped it to the wall.  


this morning all the crops were back down to normal which is a relief.  except one bird has a big wad of duct tape from the arm pit to the wingtip, one the underside of the wing.  great.  im gonna be soaking him in olive oil instead and hopefully can get it off without any exacto knife work.


meanwhile, there is a really big difference in plop consistency between a very grassy green diet, and a corn diet.  the finely shredded and fermented greens have some corn and tomato in them and the birds are bonkers for it, but its just a smoothie puree, theres hardly a fleck in there. those plops come up as a green paste.  not dry, not runny, a really great moisture level but with an obvious amount of granulated green,, i dunno.. fiber i guess. finely chopped wet fiber.  a green turd that has a good concrete slump to it without being runny. the fiber is what they cant break down i suppose. and they do have tons of grit so thats not an issue.


now on the fermented ground corn ears.. theyre just as ferocious in consuming the vingary yellow mash.. and the plops are almost entirely liquid.  a lot of clear liquid.  to me that means this corn is almost 100% digestible in fermented form because there is no yellow passing through.  and overnight,, the ones that are really epic eaters, have jumped up a size. as if they are 3 or 4 days older than the ones that diddle around. so fermented corn mash grows a bird very fast, right before your eyes.

[Southside]

I suspect their gizzards are not developed enough yet to digest the larger green pieces, cows are the same way, takes time for the rumen to get fully functional.  

As to Gimpy - get some Blue Kote or Alushield.  Chicks are incredibly cannibalistic and will peck an open wound without any mercy.  The Blue Kote has antiseptic value to it in addition to covering the wound.  The Alushield is basically a bandage in a can and it works awesome. They will heal up much faster treated and removed from the flock, as in just a couple of days, than they will un-treated.  Left in with the others once a tiny speck of blood appears, well it gets ugly fast.  

[mike_belben]

true.  maybe they are too young for it.  i ran the greens through a food processor on high for a few minutes, until it was liquified.  but the corn they got this morning was only woodchipper'd.. it is much coarser, some is whole kernel which are left behind after the feather frenzy. yet no sign of butt corn.


will look into those products, thanks for the suggestion. now if you got a magic eraser for duct tape on fur... 

[Southside]

Corn kernels are starch based - much easier to break down than the lignin in the greens.  

[thecfarm]

If you have chickens, you should have Blue Kote. Don't get it on your hands!! 

[mike_belben]

10-4 ray, thanks for the tip. 

[newoodguy78]

Good stuff to have around, used it on myself a time or three ;D