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I really like the Co-Op feeds.
And so do the chickens.
The scratch we give them is designed not only with the health but also of the pleasure of the chicken in scratching. These chickens are getting lots of exercise which is one of the keys to good health.
The texture of the nutrition balanced feed is very important to the chicken and Co-Op has found the technique.
The feed is also in 50 kg heavy duty paper bags. You know the feed is dry!!!
The gateway to the choicest of agricultural products...
is in your own garden...
 
Farming is our lifestyle, not our business. We pride ourselves on attempting ot be independent and self-sufficient. We know that no man is an island but if we all produce more than we consume, we will have a surplus. We also try to only take what we consume.
So the food we grow is for ourselves and we like to think we are fussy about what we eat. At the same time we have a bit of extra so we share that with our friends and neighbours and they share in the cost of production.
We also appreciate the fact that the fancy tractor pictured above, a tool no small subsistence farm should be without, is only affordable because some guy in India or Asia is working for a dollar a day and a some point the money thing has to balance out. We may be going back to hand tools and whatever it was that sustained humanity for thousands of years before the industrial "revolution".
And now people are being told that if you are good in a casino, you can live a long and prosperous life. I do not believe that to be a sustainable lifestyle.
I believe that if you can feed yourself, cloth yourself, and house yourself, you can life a long and prosperous life.
Whoever controls your food, controls your life.
Another lifestyle habit we have is discovery and communication. Thence the farm and website(s).
Communication is a discipline, and an art, and a science, but most of all it is an instinct that demands to be exercised.
It is the need to paint on the wall of the cave.
So if you want to join in the great dialogue of the internet, click hereto find out how easy and reasonable it is to set up a personalized social network around yourself on the internet. There is no cost or release of personal information to create an account and check out the many options.
We have four goats. They are pets. All they do is live a good life and interact with us in a pleasing way.
We have about 100 Chickens:
The fence you see is there only to try to keep the chickens away from the garden shown below but it does not work...they fly over it.
They do have lots of pastureland and bush to run around on but they like to stay around the chicken house.
They have free choice of food and during the summer they get a constant supply of weeds from the garden plus all the bugs they can catch.
Along with grit and oyster shell we give them a constant choice of feed from a trusted manufacturer that can supply a guaranteed analysis.
It must be understood that chickens did not originally naturally habitatethis area so by the same token this area cannot naturally support them. They need husbandry.
The American government has done some studies on behalf of small producers. Small independent producers cannot afford scientific analysis by a lab to substantiate the quality and ingredients in their product as large companies do. Protein content, fat content, and vitamin and mineral content,
What it boils down to is a healthy chicken produces a healthy egg and the contingent factor is exercise. Chickens that are pastured run around, those in a shed do not. Pasturing chickens does not mean that you do not supply them with a guaranteed analysis feed.
It also means that you do not push them with lights and allow them to go into natural molts.
Then there is stress. A caged chicken is a stressed chicken. Our chickens are a stress free as you are going to get.
First of all they are managed by hand. They are fed by hand, they are cleaned by hand and the eggs are gathered by hand from a variety of nesting places.
Happy hens with lots of attention from roosters hanging around in the heat of the summer have this habit of plucking out feathers to make themselves more attractive, not unlike ladies plucking their eyebrows. Hens are more direct and to the point.
As soon as an egg producer gets to a certain size, they have to automate and standardize.
The best eggs are going to come from the smallest producers, depending upon their standards. A lot of people are starving their chickens out of ignorance by not ensuring they have proper nutrition.
These people kill off their chickens at one or two years of age. Where you really find out about healthy chickens versus staring ones is in a custom processing plant. All chickens look alike with feathers on but when they are defeathered and being cleaned, many of these chickens are so skinny they are not worth the effort.
For the producer it is good because he has made the same on eggs as everyone else, mayber even pushed his production with confinement and extended days using lights, saved on the cost of feed.
The consumer has to get to know their supplier. Just because it is off the farm does not mean it is good.
Of course, you can always grow your own and one day you may have to.
But back to our chickens. They are not all of the same breed. There is a wide variety and many are "combination" birds, well balanced for egg laying and meat quality.
Sustainability lies in diversity so the wider the gene pool, the better the product.
There is a good balance of hens and roosters which is good for the chickens but is an extra cost in housing and in lost production but the chickens are happier so the egg is healthier.
Much of their time in the summer is spent burrowing in the dirt. They like to do this to cool as well as it is their natural way of cleaning themselves.
They develop into small groups of hens around each rooster. Because they have lots of space to roam in, the less dominant roosters manage to collect a few hens and still keep away from the more powerful roosters.
The Garden:
We grow onions, potatoes, garlic, raspberrys, red currents, apples, tomatoes, zuccini, carrots, etc. We share these with our friends and neighbours.
For me to sell the potatoes pictured above, harvested from my garden, grown by myself, to a store without belonging to Peak of the Market is illegal. Peak of the Market is a very few private individuals who control vegetable growing in Manitoba.
I could, however, legally bring in potatoes from BC, Alberta, P.E.I, or even China and India and sell them to the stores.
This law is seriously flawed!!!
We have Bees:
We are currently taking very little honey off the hives than we could be but we have more than enough for ourselves and the more the bees work the honey, the better it gets.
This year we started with two purchased hives and we successfully spit one and captured a swarm from somewhere else so we have ended up with four hives.
The plan is to overwinter them in a controlled environment that will allow them to increase in brood size.
Get to know where your food comes from. You are what you eat.
Beyond Omega 3 Eggs - gate sales by appointment - as we build our flock we are slowly able to add customers but you have to get on the list.
- Ungraded eggs from pastured free run high Omega 3 fed happy chickens
- High rooster to hen ration...most eggs will be fertile
- Variety of hens and roosters left to live a natural healthy life
What it boils down to is a healthy chicken lays a healthy egg and you cannot have a healthy chicken if it is caged.
You also have to treat it well.
You can only manage small flocks on a year round basis without putting them in cages.
Most small producers cannot afford to have their eggs analysed but thanks to the US Government, these people managed to analyze their pastured chickens and eggs:
Barb Gorski raises pastured poultry. She believes the meat and eggs from pastured poultry are healthier than those of chickens raised in confinement, but she had no proof. This project involved running chemical and microbial analyses on samples of pasture-raised chickens and eggs, in the hope of obtaining objective validation for her belief.
Barb and two other farmers collected samples of the eggs and meat of their pastured chickens, and sent these for laboratory testing. Composite samples were made, and these were tested for their nutritional value, and content of fat, cholesterol, and conjugated linoleic acids. Unprocessed chicken carcasses from one farm, Ms. Gorski’s, were washed with sterile phosphate buffer solution, and the rinsate analyzed for microbial activity.
Meat of the pastured chickens was found to display 21% less fat, 30% less saturated fat, and 50% more vitamin A than the USDA standard for chicken meat. Skinless meat displayed no significant differences from the standard; it consequently appears that these healthy attributes of pasture-raised chickens are wholly to be found in the skin.
Eggs of the pastured chickens contained 34% less cholesterol, 10% less fat, 40% more vitamin A, twice as much omega-6 fatty acid, and four times as much omega-3 fatty acid as the USDA standard.
No samples were found to contain any conjugated linoleic acids. These acids, desirable for their anti-carcinogenic properties, do occur in turkey meat; however, according to Dr. Michael Pariza of the Univ. of Wisconsin, they are not generally found in chicken products.
Microbial examination revealed no Salmonella, Campylobacter, or Listeria monocytogenes in samples of surface rinsate. Escherichia coli was however present at unacceptable levels in two samples, and at marginal levels in the remaining three. These high levels may however have resulted from the delay of some 48 hours that elapsed between slaughter and sampling.
Ms. Gorski has made use of these data by putting them on nutrition labels, which she now attaches to her pastured poultry products. - Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education
Undercover footage of battery cage hens in the UK can be found on U-Tube.
Battery cage eggs come from hens kept in small cages where their natural behaviours cannot be expressed.
They are prevented from foraging for food, nesting, roosting and dust-bathing.
This causes hens extreme physical and psychological discomfort.
Honey - get on the list in order to not get left out.
We currently are feeding most of the honey back to the bees so what we have is at a premium.
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