Tag Archives: winter

Winter Babies & Farm Fun

Late Winter Update

It seems like it gets busier at the farm every year! I suppose I should consider the fact that we’re growing, both in our farming ventures and in our family size, so of course it follows that we ought to be busier! In fact, we’re counting down the days until Cad-baby #5 arrives! I’m officially due in about 3 weeks, so it won’t be long! Unless this baby follows the pattern and comes 10 days late like all his/her siblings, ha! We’ll definitely keep you posted!

Tevka practicing her silly faces!

Calving Season Begins

Speaking of babies, it’s certainly that time of year! As our local fans know, it’s been a particularly brutal winter this year. It got down to 8 degrees here in January, which is certainly a record for us! Matt has been diligent doing his cow-midwife duties, but thankfully no one has had trouble calving so far this season, in spite of the fact that most of the mommas so far have been heifers (first-timers).

Newborn calf being cared for by momma!

We did lose one calf, sadly. She just got too cold with all the wind and rain. We tried to warm her and bottle feed her, but she was too weak to recover.

Doing our best to warm this unfortunate little heifer calf.

An Unusual Chore

On a lighter note, I just wanted to share this next photo that shows the wide variety of daily tasks a farmer might encounter. We have a small clowder of cats to help with mouse and mole control. They add joy to our lives with their silly antics. Sassy, here, decided to get a better view of the farm, but couldn’t figure out how to get down on her own! Matt, being a softie at heart, and being very tall as well, attempted a rescue, but Sassy wouldn’t have it. She eventually found her way down, but it made for a sweet picture!

Matt tries to rescue Sassy from the roof!

New Puppies!

Meeka (the Pyrenees guardian dog) had puppies in early January, and they are doing great! They have begun exploring outside their nest and will be ready for new homes within a couple of weeks. We will be rehoming 3 of them, so let us know if you want more information! Their parents (Zeke and Meeka) are fabulous guardians for any type of livestock (we use them mostly for poultry), and we are excited to have a little from a set of parents so well-suited to their jobs.

Meet Meeka, a young female Pyrenees who just became a mom!

Here is Zeke, a faithful guardian of farm poultry!

Meet Snowball, a future farm guardian!

Farm Store Construction Progress

Most of Matt’s time these days is spent fixing stuff, coordinating production schedules, and working on the farm store! It’s really coming along now that the weather is warming up and days are getting longer. The wood is all being harvested from the farm. Many of our big pine trees were damaged during the drought in 2011 and are dying, but they are perfectly salvageable for the giant columns and beams we need for construction. It’s pretty exciting to see things coming together out there! We don’t have an opening date scheduled yet because it’s hard to predict progress rate with such a dynamic task load otherwise, but our hope is to open it sometime in early summer.

Every good felled tree needs a little climbing!

[Naturally I don’t have any photos of the actual store construction… but you can visit our YouTube channel to watch some cool videos of Matt’s mad engineering skills as he figures out how to work with really huge beams made from really heavy trees!]

A New Toy… I mean, Tool!

I have always remarked that it is neat to be in an industry where the whole family is really involved, and so many of you regularly ask after the children, so of course, I wanted to share a little about them as well. The kiddos were excited about a new tool we purchased to help efficientize egg packaging a bit. It’s nothing fancy—just a date label gun, but it sure beats the wet-ink stamp pad and hand-cut stickers we were using before! At least a few times a week, all the kids help collect the eggs. Well… baby Matthew usually practices “driving” the ATV. But it won’t be long before he’s out there with his own little egg collection basket!

The “old” system was labor-intensive, messy, and the kids couldn’t do it alone!

Such a simple machine… and yet so life-changing!

The new date stickers–ink, cut, and attach, all in one motion!

They even stick on noses!

Success!

Matthew Jr. practicing his driving while the other kids help Dadda collect eggs.

Order Easter Ham early this year!

Just an early reminder: Easter falls really early this year (April 1!), so if you’re looking for a special centerpiece meat or some real farm eggs, be sure to nab them during our March deliveries. Smoked hams (quarters, halves, and wholes) are available to order now. We’re well-stocked on eggs, particularly larger sizes (better value per ounce!). And we have some yummy lamb cuts if you want to try something different this Easter.

Try one of our delightful smoked hams this Easter. So simple and so clean-tasting!

That’s our update for now! Thanks for your support and encouragement. We really work for a fabulous group of folks and it is our pleasure to provide you with the high-quality food you need and expect.

Hope to see you soon!

High Density Pasture Management

Matt has been researching and experimenting with a new cattle management technique called High Density Pasture Management. The strategy changes throughout the year depending upon seasons and the types of cows being grazed (momma cows nursing calves versus finishing steers versus pregnant dry cows), and is quite complex in strategy, so we won’t attempt to describe the entire method here and now. However, we can share what we’re doing right now during the winter season (i.e. hay-feeding season) to sustain our grass-fed cattle.

Pastureland likes to be disturbed for a brief period, and then left alone to recover and grow. The disturbance method we use is livestock and manure because it involves no chemicals and it works so well to restore the soil’s health. Our soil at Shady Grove Ranch was in pretty poor condition when we arrived 4 years ago. But we’ve already seen tremendous improvement in many areas, despite a 3-year-long drought that may or may not have actually ended. 

The grass is dormant at this time of year, so we feed hay (stored grass) to the cattle. This is a critical time for the pasture–it can receive the nutrients from the “recycled hay” (aka manure) but it also needs time to grow and get established without hungry bovine mouths nipping off the baby grasses and legumes just as they emerge from the seeds. 

This is where High-Density Pasture Management comes in. Simply put, we spread out just enough hay to last the cows one day, let them eat and poop to their hearts’ content, and then move them to a new section of ground and repeat. They can’t be allowed to return to the newly “fertilized” but immature, growing pasture until it has established enough underground energy storage to bounce back from the grazing that will come later. This can take as long as 120 days, but after that initial waiting period, we can graze the land multiple times with just short periods of rest between grazings. The end result is more cow-food produced in a season when using strategic pasture access, rather than allowing cows to free-range constantly over an entire pasture.

Why does this work? By allowing the grasses to mature, we take full advantage of the balance between root energy storage and photosynthesis, and so the grass-based system becomes much more efficient and can feed more cattle on a fixed size pasture, even without chemical inputs or concentrated feeds (i.e. grain). It just takes patience and a watchful eye to judge when a paddock is ready for cattle pressure and how much pressure it can take. 

So here we are in Phase 1, the winter season, feeding the cows with stored hay and the ground with evenly-distributed manure, getting ready for the spring flush. The first video shows Matt’s nifty homemade hay-unroller. The second video shows Matt moving the fence so the cows can eat their breakfast.

What happened to my dark-yolked eggs?

What happened to my dark-yolked eggs?

201309 eggs color

 

I have seen lots of conversation online about consumers’ local, pasture-based egg source selling them pale eggs in the summertime—even paler than what is found at the supermarket!

Naturally the reaction is, “Why am I paying more and going to greater lengths to get what appears to be an inferior product?

Good question.

Eggs, like all seasonal foods, change in appearance, quality, and even taste according to environmental factors. Here in east Texas, the animals’ biggest challenges are keeping cool during our long, hot sunny summer days. In fact, our hot, dry summers are almost like northern winters in the sense that the plants and animals go into survival mode and don’t produce as much or as well as they do during the rest of the year.

But back to the question. How do you know that your locally-sourced pasture-raised eggs are better than supermarket or health food store “cage-free,” “organic,” and “free-range?”

Let’s not go too far into what “they” are doing wrong—let’s just talk about what “right things” you should look for when sourcing eggs and the reasons for doing so.

What to look for in an egg source

1. Exposure to sunshine.

Being in the sun allows chickens to naturally produce vitamin D. It also helps their environment to be cleaner because of the sun’s sanitizing ability. Pathogens cannot take hold in a UV-washed environment. Of course, the chickens tend to hunker down in the shade during the hottest part of the day, but they still get plenty of sunshine exposure.

2. Exposure to growing vegetation.

Real vegetation is one of the main sources of the detoxifying agents like chlorophyll and beneficial polyunsaturated oils in pasture-raised eggs, such as CLA and omega-3 fatty acids. Sure, those can be artificially supplemented in conventional chickens’ diets, but doesn’t that defeat the purpose? Perhaps the natural seasonal change from lush spring green to fibrous summer forage plays a role in producing healthy chickens, eggs, and egg-eaters. It is certainly something to consider!

3. Exposure to real bugs.

Eating insects is where chickens get their vitamin K as well as other hard-to-find nutrients. Plus chickens have fun chasing the bugs and chasing each other when somebody finally catches one. Thank goodness for chickens so we don’t have to eat bugs ourselves just to get vitamin K! Eggs are much tastier than grasshoppers. 

Pro tip: “Cage-Free,” “Free-Range,” and “Organic” labels DO NOT indicate that the chickens were actually raised outdoors. It can simply mean that they “have access” to outdoors, which can be a tiny enclosed concrete pen with screen walls. No grass. No bugs. No sunshine. Better to look for “Pasture-Raised.” Better still to visit the actual farm!

4. Avoiding Genetically-Modified Feeds (GMOs).

Genetically-modified organisms come in a variety of forms, but the primary ones you’ll see is soy, corn, cottonseed, rapeseed (aka canola), and alfalfa, and the primary use for these kinds of crops is for livestock feed. If your farmer doesn’t know whether the feed contains GMOs, it PROBABLY DOES. It can be extremely difficult to source non-GMO feed at typical farm supply stores, as livestock feed is one of the top outlets for GMO products.

GMOs haven’t been required to be tested for safety AT ALL, and the few trial feeding experiments that have been done indicate that feeding animals GMOs results in stomach and intestinal problems and development of tumors. Thanks but no thanks.

5. Avoiding soy.

Soy contains lots of nasties, including estrogenic compounds, high levels of phytic acids, and goitrogenic phytochemicals. Soy is cheap and high in protein. Soy also happens to be a plant and so has become extremely popular among chicken feed producers because the necessary protein levels for healthy hens can be attained while still using a “vegetarian-based” feed. Newsflash: chickens aren’t vegetarians. They need bugs! But when you put 80,000 of them under one roof, there aren’t enough bugs to go around. Thus the “need” for high-protein soy. 

Chickens do need some supplemental protein, but there are better alternatives that are lower in those bad phytochemicals and are not genetically modified (yet), like field peas, sesame, peanuts, milk, meat, and bugs! There are those bugs again… 

6. Avoiding antibiotics.

There are three ways antibiotics might be used in a laying chicken’s life. First it is when the birds are young and it takes the form of “medicated” feed.

The second is similar, when adult chickens are fed “medicated” feed to prevent disease and reduce stress. The problem with long-term use of low-level antibiotics is that evidence suggests this is where your superbug pathogens come from. Bacteria always exist in food and among animals, and when exposed to non-therapeutic antibiotics, they grow resistant and become extremely dangerous. Antibiotic use like this necessitates bigger and badder guns to provide food safety such as chlorine or ammonia washing, pasteurization, and irradiation.

The third use is the occasional, therapeutic use of antibiotics for emergencies. When a chicken is sick and the antibiotics would save her life, ok. At Shady Grove Ranch, we prefer simply to “do the chicken in,” but we rarely have sick birds to begin with. 

7. Avoiding arsenic and other growth stimulants.

Arsenic is (surprisingly) widely used among poultry growers to help the birds to grow and remain productive in a stressful environment. It acts as a appetite stimulant and helps the birds to ward off certain confinement-related diseases. In meat chickens, it produces a nice “healthy-looking” pinkish flesh in the chicken. But it’s a poison and we feel it really has no place in food production if there is a better way to produce the food, such as using strategies that allow the animal to naturally detoxify and live in an environment that is appropriate and therefore very low stress.

Pro tip: “All-Natural” labels are basically meaningless and don’t refer to the way the animal was raised. So if your eggs claim to be “all natural,” they may still have come from chickens that were fed antibiotics, GMOs, and arsenic. Yuck!

8. Rotational Management.

Rotational Management is key to good chicken health, good soil health, tasty eggs, and sustainable production. When any animal is left too long living in its manure, it will get sick. Just like humans. Animals should be rotated across pasture so their manure has time to be digested by the soil and rendered safe and useful to the land. In other words, chickens shouldn’t have to live in their own toilet. This should be common sense, but we’ll be the first to tell you that it takes a lot of work and ingenuity to actually put it into practice. Many backyard chicken operations employ the use of permanent pens that ultimately lead to the chickens having health problems. Thankfully the use of “chicken tractors,” or small mobile pens, is on the rise! Why is rotation so hard? Because everything LOVES to eat chicken and lots of protection and planning are required to keep predation under control while still allowing the chickens to forage freely. Chicken tractors are a nice small-scale solution to both problems.

What about “confinement?”

Notice “avoid confinement” isn’t on this list. What does “non-confined” mean, anyway? Whether it’s a tiny cage or a perimeter fence around 100 acres, the chickens have to be confined somehow. This term takes a bit of common sense to interpret, just as with “cage-free,” or “free-range.”

Chickens don’t really need a huge amount of space if they are managed well. If you find a local farmer who keeps his chickens in a small pen, but who is dedicated to moving them frequently, that’s fine! Even farmers that lock their chickens in at night but allow them forage time during the day are doing great. After all, a farmer has to protect his flock from predators and there are lots of ways to do that while still allowing for a healthful, sustainable way to raise them.

The main thing to look for is not whether the chickens live “in a cage,” but rather, whether that cage contains these elements that are important for the birds’ health. Of course at some point even a regularly rotated cage can be so small that it causes the birds undue stress, which will be obvious by the emergence of missing feathers and bodily injury. All the more reason to go SEE where your food comes from!

Does it matter what color the yolks are?

We started this conversation talking about yolk color. There are diverse opinions about what the color of the yolk means regarding nutritional value. But there are plenty of ways to boost the color of an egg yolk, whether naturally or unnaturally. For example, it is known that if a chicken is fed mostly yellow corn, the yolk will be fairly dark. That same chicken on a white-corn diet will have much paler yolks. And chickens who have never even seen real grass may be fed ground marigold petals which lend a beautiful golden hue to the yolk. Maybe the color isn’t as important as some make it out to be…

All we know is that we raise our chickens as healthfully as possible, and here is what happens seasonally with their eggs:

The Seasonality of Eggs

Spring: Eggs are small, whites are dense and very jelly-like, shells are very hard, and yolks are dark, sometimes almost so orange they are red.

Summer: Eggs are larger, whites become more watery, shells get thin, sometimes too thin, and yolks are large and pale and break easily.

Fall: After the rains start, the eggs return to spring-like characteristics.

Winter: When it gets cold enough that the grass stops growing, the eggs return to summer-like characteristics.

This article is already really long, but if you care to consider why this happens, here is our hypothesis:

Spring/Fall

When the grass is growing rapidly and very lush, it is easy for the chickens to eat. The phytochemicals in the grass lend an orange tone to the yolk and the chickens eat much more forage than feed, yielding a smaller, tastier egg. The grass is in its protein stage, so the hen can produce better quality proteins for a denser, more jelly-like egg white. The combination of cool weather (i.e. low stress on the hen’s body) and high mineral content of the grass allows the hen to utilize all the calcium she is eating and make a strong shell. Yes, the yolk is darker and very likely has a different nutritional profile than a summer egg, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the egg is more nutritious. It is just different.

Summer/Winter

When the grasses mature (i.e. go to seed) in hot or very cold weather, the available forage is considerably lower in protein and more difficult to eat and the hen must rely more on her feed ration than on the grasses. In summer, she drinks lots of water to keep cool and the egg white ends up more watery in texture and less dense. The heat makes her body less apt to utilize calcium and her shells get thinner. When it rains, there is a noticeable difference in the shell and yolk quality, but it only lasts for a day or so. Yes, the yolks are lighter in color than spring eggs, and maybe even lighter than store-bought eggs (where the chickens are likely fed a highly controlled diet so the yolk is the same color all year long).

Perhaps it is good to embrace the seasonal changes in our food. Don’t be afraid to ask questions about changes in quality of your farm-raised foods. But don’t be afraid to eat with the seasons, either!

 201309 eggs