We finished the weekend's chicken processing with only one major issue. We struggled to get started and keep up both Friday and Saturday because we couldn't keep our scalder up to temp. We had lots of help and Nancy kept us going on the scalder, but on Saturday it caused us to come to an almost complete stop. It turned out that the element had failed. Sharon ended up running up to town about 20 miles away to buy another LP turkey fryer to scald in on Saturday morning which caused us to fall pretty far behind, but without it we would have been in even more trouble. We kept up pretty well on Saturday even though we didn't have any help. I'm always surprised by the number of chickens that our 4 kids, Sharon and I can process. I called the scalder retailer this morning and they'll be sending a new element to replace the one that failed. We still have one more light day of processing, mainly to put up our own chickens for the winter. Pasture raised chickens take a HUGE amount of work, but we know that they are really worth it. Since raising our own chickens I can taste the difference and also taste the chlorine in store bought chickens. So I decided to do some research into the chlorine use in chicken processing, and no, I didn't go to anti-mass production sites either. I used information that is for the chicken processors and from the USDA. If you want to know about NaOCl use in poultry processing read on.
In the mass production processing of chicken, chlorine bleach (NaOCl) (at a much higher concentration than consumer store bought bleach) is the most used chemical in mass production poultry processing. Here's how chlorine works - chlorine oxidizes and is used up when it contacts organic material (blood, fecal matter, fat, etc.). It is believed to break cell processes and oxygen use in cells and organisms. So chlorine is used in almost all stages of mass processing chickens. Mass production processors continually face the challenge of choosing between too much chlorine and too little throughout their processes. Too much chlorine and the processor wastes money. Too little and the huge amount of organic load doesn't get treated. As organic loads increase in the production of chickens more chlorine is needed to keep up with the amount of chlorine being used up. If you've ever seen pictures of chiller tanks that mass production chickens "soak/pass" through, you'll understand why processors need to use so much chlorine. But of course there is a down side to chlorine in chicken processing besides the taste of chlorine in your chicken right? Right! If the processors add enough chlorine to the process to stay ahead of the organic load there is what is called free available chlorine (FAC). FAC is able to be absorbed into foods. It is especially easily absorbed into unsaturated fat. Chickens are very high in unsaturated fat. Also absorbed into the food is Trihalomethane which is a byproduct of chlorine's contact with organic material. And guess what, chlorine incorporated into food animals and trihalomethane are known carcinogens. So do we use chlorine bleach? Yes, but only as a disinfectant for our equipment BEFORE and AFTER we process our chickens. Our chickens never soak in a chlorine solution as they do in mass production. You will never taste bleach in our chickens but you can be sure our tools and equipment are clean. So the next time you eat a store bought chicken, see if you can taste or smell that bleach, and when you enjoy one of ours you'll have one more reason to love ours.

Fall Chickens

The first day of the last batch of chickens is now in the books. The last person to pick up chickens is here and that will end the last of today's customers. We got off to a rough and slow start. We changed the way the customers pickup chickens and had them staggered throughout the day. That wouldn't have been so bad, but the scalder had to be supplied with additional hot water which I stole from the bag shrinking water. This meant that finished chickens couldn't be bagged and labeled until they had enough water heated to the correct temperature to replace what I had taken. Next time we'll have to have another propane heater to heat supplemental water for the scalder. We had additional help from friends who process chickens themselves for their customers and another who wanted to learn how to process chickens. It's hard work and takes a lot of time and commitment to grow and process chickens, especially pasture raised chickens. But when it's all done you know you have sold and kept great chicken to enjoy when the weather is cold outside and the warmth of a chicken in the oven brings a deep warmth of comfort to home. Or my favorite, barbecued chicken on the grill. We have 2 more days of processing. One tomorrow for customers, and the remaining ones for ourselves some time next week.

Twins

We are still bottle feeding our twin heifers. They have survived the initial infection and fever and seem to be doing well, but they are still not as active as other calves their age. These calves should be running around the pasture and following their mother, but these two spend most of their time laying in the pasture waiting for us to come down with a bottle. Once in a while they'll wander up the main gate, but that is rare. It will be nice when these two are weaned and are eating hay and grass with the rest of them. Until then, we feed them by bottle twice a day.

We still have broiler chickens that are to be processed and sold next weekend. These are the last batch of broilers for the year. Sharon is going down twice a day, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon to move them across the pasture and to make sure that food and water is full and all is well and also goes down throughout the day to check on "her" birds. Yesterday I had been cleaning up the hay mower that my neighbor had lent me and I had a pile of alfalfa leaves that had been on the back of the mower. So I gathered up the leaves and put them in a bucket to take down to the broilers. I took the bucket of leaves down and spread them in the broiler pens for the birds to eat. In one of the pens I noticed a chicken that had a spot of blood on it. We carry radios on the farm so I called up to Sharon and let her know. She was coming down to check on the chickens and would be right down. I went back up to the yard to work on the mower. It wasn't long and I heard on the radio a frantic Sharon saying that there is a predator in one of the pens and it's eating a chicken alive! George rushed to the house for a shotgun and I wasn't far behind him for a rifle. We ended up dispatching the predator while still in the pen, still eating on the chicken! Turns out it was a mink. Even with all of the commotion the mink just kept on chewing on the chicken to the end. When we looked up information on mink we found that this mink didn't act the way a mink should. It was much further away from water than usual, was out during the day, and it had only been working on the one chicken rather than killing many chickens. There's always something new and exciting on the farm, even if it's sometimes stressful.

Neighbor's Mower

I took the last cutting of alfalfa yesterday evening. My neighbor Russ let me do a "try before I buy" on his cutter conditioner. A cutter conditioner cuts and conditions. By conditioning it means that two rollers smash the plant as it exits the mower. This splits the stems and allows for a quicker drying time which was a major issue this year. The mower is a hydra swing type. Hydra swing means that it moves from side to side behind the tractor by hydraulics which allows you to cross the field rather than doing decreasing circles around the field. The mower moves from side to side by a lever. When you reach the end of the field you have to lift the mower with the standard tractor hydraulics and then move the lever to the side which starts the mower moving to the other side as you turn. It is more of a complicated move than I thought. If you turn too sharply you hit the tire with the mower arm, and when you come around if you aren't lined up right you miss some of the alfalfa as the mower gets lined up. Russ also let me use his tractor. I liked them both. Just as I was about finished the field however the mower stopped running like I had picked up a rock or something. I checked the mower but I can't find anything... Sooo I have to call him and tell him that his mower is down and I can't figure out why! I'm sure he won't be happy, and I'm not too happy about having to call him and give him the bad news. Oh well, guess it's time to pickup the phone and give him a call.

Farm Tour

Sara and I saddled the horses and toured every corner of the farm today after church. We looked at all the alfalfa fields. The new alfalfa field looks really good with only a little bit of regrowth from the oats. The field that has had only 2 cuttings taken off of it looks fair. It has an average height of about 7 or 8 inches with highs of over 12" and lows as low as 3" and sparse. I'm assuming that I'll cut it in the next 7 days if the weather looks good just because it is getting late and alfalfa doesn't dry in cool weather. The lower field that we call the food plot, was surveyed for its fence. The fence looks pretty good in most spots. The west side fence is the worst, but the east side is bad and is longer. I'd like to graze the cows down there just before they go up to the winter paddock but I don't want to take a chance that the cows get out into the neighbors corn, so I'm a little timid about putting them behind a single strand of electric while the corn is still up. We were really amazed at the growth of the willow trees down in the lower wetland. They have grown into large flowing trees in just a few years. The upper wetland has quite a few nice poplar trees starting on the dike. I think that these will have to be cut down since tall trees and prairie wetlands are not really compatible from a native wildlife ecosystem standpoint. Tall trees are not a natural plant on the open prairie potholes and are vantage points for the hawks and other birds of prey to perch. They would be perfectly positioned to allow birds of prey to pick-off the waterfowl and their chicks that would use the wetlands. I often wonder how amazing the landscape must have been before all of the potholes were drained from this area for crop fields. Where the wetlands have been restored, it is an amazing complex ecosystem that can't be appreciated without venturing out into them. With our wetlands on our farm and by hunting many off of our farm in the fall and winter, we have the opportunity to really get close to the wildlife all the way down to the bugs and plants that live there. We're very pleased to have restored wetlands and native prairies on our farm and it's part of our farming philosophy to be conservationists and stewards of the land not just users of the land. The wildlife that these areas produce, feed and shelter is amazing. The bounty reaches all of the way to our table in the form of healthy and truly organic food that is rich and distinct in local flavor. We harvest deer, rabbit and pheasant with the occasional duck and partridge on our farm. Many of our neighbors have also set aside parts of their farms for wildlife and it has paid dividends in the abundant wildlife that lives in our part of the county. The geese that feed in our alfalfa field rest on the 70 acre wetland/pond that my neighbor restored set aside. And the hen pheasant that is leading a brood of chicks from my neighbor's set aside into my CRP shrub borders and into the prairie grasses that borders my pastures has literally miles of cover thanks to the farmers who care enough to take ground out of production for the sake of wildlife and nature. We are truly blessed in Dickinson County Iowa to have some of the most conservation minded farmers and active wildlife management resources like Iowa DNR and USFW.

Second Twin

The second twin (#28) does have a fever. A REALLY high fever. Her temp is 105. That's very high. I gave her a shot of Nuflur on Friday and then called the vet for more antibiotic. #28 is really the most active and seems the most well of the two. They're both still drinking from the bottle and nursing so they're still progressing or at least hanging on. Cool mornings really seam to give them the most energy. George was down doing chicken chores this morning and the twins thought he had bottles, so they ran after him. Then they ran to their mother and latched on when he didn't have anything for them. That is a great sign, but as the heat of the day - heat today was in the 70's - they tend to just lay around. We're still hopeful.

Trials of Joy

Sometimes little joys carry their own trials. Our last set of twins may be in trouble. One of them has a fever for sure and the other may but I'll have to check once I finish writing this. One of the twins - ear tag # 27 - is running a temp of 103. 101 - 101.5 is okay. Anything higher is a fever. We talked to the vet and he said he thought that it may have been that they didn't get the colostrum from the heifer because the calves were born to a heifer which generally produces a smaller amount of colostrum, and then adding on that they were twins. Without colostrum, as with any animal that breast feeds, there is only a limited amount of time to get the colostrum to he baby that contains the antibodies that give newborns their immunity boost. We're giving #27 antibiotics but the vet doesn't have much confidence that it will pull through. As long as the twins are taking bottles, and they are, we're still holding out hope. We've never really gotten the opportunity to work that closely with the calves other than bucket feeding Holsteins for a couple of years. The Angus calves are very bonded with their mothers and don't want to get too close to the great predator (us humans). It's still a joy to care for a small calf, even if the outcome won't be recovery for the calf. It reminds us as with everything in life, that we are stewards and we try our best with the abilities we're give and technologies at hand, but the outcome ultimately isn't really up to us.

New Family Member?

Sharon and I take a little different approach to animal husbandry. She is a much more nurturing type and I'm much more of a wait and see type. We have had a couple sets of twins in the past couple of weeks. The first set of twin heifers were dropped by a very experienced cow who has an udder like a milk cow. Huge udder = lots of milk. The second set of twin heifers that we had on Sunday was by a heifer who is very gentle and has a large udder but doesn't have much experience with calves yet. One of the twins has been less than active and hasn't been running to its mama for milk which isn't unusual for the first day or 2 of a calf's life. Newborn calves seem to have a built in instinct to find a nice place to lay down and soak up the sun and to stay away from hoof traffic. Because we have high tensile electric at different heights and electric string fences throughout the pasture, calves are able to go under the fences to where the cows can't go. So it's not unusual to find calves outside of the pasture in the tall grasses that surround our pastures or tucked in with our broiler pens. I'll admit that it's unusual to have a calf that seems to spend all of its time away from the cow even for the first couple of days. The two new twins are ear tag # 27 and 28. #27 is always with the cow but #28 seems to always be where we left her. So Sharon's nurturing style has won the day and we're now bottle feeding #28 goats milk. I think that this calf will cut into our goat's milk that we use for the table as it's milk requirements grow. This heifer is going to get a name - the first of our cattle to get an actual name rather than being called by a tag # or some other obvious physical attribute. I think we're about to see one of the cattle go from one of dad's calves to a new member of the family!