songbird wrote:
FarmI wrote:
Billy wrote:

Well, in this case, it would be prairie grass (reflecting Salatin's
pasture),

What sort of species are you talking about when you say 'prairie
grass'? The reason why I ask is that the You-tube clips of Salatin's
place doesn't look like anything I'd call a 'prairie'. He looks like
he's got a farm on quite rich land in a well protected area.
'Prairies' to me suggest very open and exposed locations and the
grasses there would, TMWOT, be much tougher and less nutritious than
in good pasture land. I might be talking through my hat 'cos I
haven't got a clue about US farms, but that's what I'd expect here in
Oz if we were looking at farms of differing capacities.

right, anyone talking about grassland production in
the eastern seaboard of the USA being equivalent
to what happens on the prairies is full of it. the time
scale difference isn't minor and probably heavily
depends upon the average annual rainfall.

the soil of the prairies was probably produced over
the period of time after the last ice-age. it isn't that
thick. if it could accumulate at a rate of an inch a
year it would be much deeper...

ok, so let's return to the eastern seaboard and
wonder why the topsoil in unmolested places isn't
deeper? if it can be so productive why isn't it?
because it is woodland and not grassland and
unmanaged woodlands cycle carbon but do not
sequester once it's reached maturity. very little
is sequestered and that would be because of fires
that char and thus turn the carbon into a form not
easily consumed...

if trees and forests were so good for carbon
gathering and keeping the soils of the Amazon would
be deep and fertile, but they are not unless you
find the places that were altered by the natives in
prehistorical times.


Tropical rainforest is often on leached soil where most of the nutrients are
actually in the trees. Saying that this environment doesn't accumulated
soil and therefore no forest will do so does not necessarily follow.
Particularly where temperate forests were cleared for crop land you can
certainly increase the amount of carbon stored by converting them to pasture
or back to forest. But your point about reaching a maximum and then not
storing any more is correct. Evan so I don't think carbon sequestration is
anything more than a side show when it comes to managing climate change.

so this says that reforestation is barking up the
wrong tree when it comes to CO2 sequestration
and rebuilding topsoil. (but i won't argue that
it's bad for species preservation and diversity
because that's needed too in many places -- so
there has to be the tradeoff there).



You are right that it is not a panacea but wrong in saying we cannot build
soil or sequester carbon by altering land use.

David

In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

songbird wrote:
FarmI wrote:
Billy wrote:

Well, in this case, it would be prairie grass (reflecting Salatin's
pasture),

What sort of species are you talking about when you say 'prairie
grass'? The reason why I ask is that the You-tube clips of Salatin's
place doesn't look like anything I'd call a 'prairie'. He looks like
he's got a farm on quite rich land in a well protected area.
'Prairies' to me suggest very open and exposed locations and the
grasses there would, TMWOT, be much tougher and less nutritious than
in good pasture land.
It worked for the buffalo and those that tended them.
I might be talking through my hat 'cos I
haven't got a clue about US farms, but that's what I'd expect here in
Oz if we were looking at farms of differing capacities.

right, anyone talking about grassland production in
the eastern seaboard of the USA being equivalent
to what happens on the prairies is full of it. the time
scale difference isn't minor and probably heavily
depends upon the average annual rainfall.

the soil of the prairies was probably produced over
the period of time after the last ice-age. it isn't that
thick. if it could accumulate at a rate of an inch a
year it would be much deeper...

ok, so let's return to the eastern seaboard and
wonder why the topsoil in unmolested places isn't
deeper? if it can be so productive why isn't it?
because it is woodland and not grassland and
unmanaged woodlands cycle carbon but do not
sequester once it's reached maturity. very little
is sequestered and that would be because of fires
that char and thus turn the carbon into a form not
easily consumed...

if trees and forests were so good for carbon
gathering and keeping the soils of the Amazon would
be deep and fertile, but they are not unless you
find the places that were altered by the natives in
prehistorical times.


Tropical rainforest is often on leached soil where most of the nutrients are
actually in the trees. Saying that this environment doesn't accumulated
soil and therefore no forest will do so does not necessarily follow.
Particularly where temperate forests were cleared for crop land you can
certainly increase the amount of carbon stored by converting them to pasture
or back to forest. But your point about reaching a maximum and then not
storing any more is correct.

Citation, please.

Evan so I don't think carbon sequestration is
anything more than a side show when it comes to managing climate change.

All fixes are temporary, and all analogies fall apart somewhere.
Still, it is something that we could do right now, and have an impact on
environmental, and human health.


so this says that reforestation is barking up the
wrong tree when it comes to CO2 sequestration
and rebuilding topsoil. (but i won't argue that
it's bad for species preservation and diversity
because that's needed too in many places -- so
there has to be the tradeoff there).



You are right that it is not a panacea but wrong in saying we cannot build
soil or sequester carbon by altering land use.

David
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/m...515308172.html

In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

Dan L wrote:
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:
Dan L wrote:
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:
"Dan L." wrote in message

Why I have my own chickens and a Jersey milk cow.

Mmmmmm.. A Jersey. How much does she produce a day?

Nothing yet, impregnated the cow last week.

How was it for you? At least she wouldn't want to share your
cigarette afterwards.
No smoker here, however the vet was up to his armpit and cost me $80



Did you ever read the books or see the TV series "All creatures great and
small"? It's about country vets in the UK and quite delighful. In it the
chief vet declares (truthfully) "there is much good information to be had up
a cow's arse".

But do you think people would look? Oh no, too busy, too self-absorbed,
too self-conscious to even take the tiniest little peek. Harumph.

This was on prime-time TV about 30 years ago, I nearly fell
off my chair laughing.

She should produce more
than I can drink. Will learn to make my own cheese products with the
extra. The cheese making equipment is not cheap. I read, not done it
yet, it takes 17 pounds of milk and one year to make one pound of
parmesan cheese. Bessy plays like a dog, wants to be petted and
runs and romps around. Sometimes I get a little nervous around her
with her playfulness and hope I do not get hurt.

I have the same worry when Mootilda bangs her face into the feed
bucket I am holding. Cows seem very rough compared to horses. I
am pretty sure she won't deliberately hurt me but the horns come
close.

David
HORNS!!!!!! Bessy was dehorned from day one! The holes filled in
within a week. The feed buckets are next to the summer shelter. She
does not see me put feed in the bucket. If she sees me she runs at
full speed to me. She has a two acre pasture to play in. I will
create another two acre pasture by next spring next to it. Same
feeling here, if I get hurt it was not intentional. I do not want her
to be afraid when it comes time for milking. She has a good friend, a
chocolate labrador that comes over and plays and romp together.

Currently she is milking me for money like there is tomorrow. Which
worries me a little. I call this the infrastructure cost that should
last a long time. One major cost is concerning me. I would love to
get a mini hay bailer, but they are extremely expensive. Right now my
neighbor bails hay for me.

Many people find it cost effective to pay a contractor to cut and bail hay
instead of owning the machinery.

David
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/m...515308172.html

"David Hare-Scott" wrote:
Dan L wrote:
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:
Dan L wrote:
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:
"Dan L." wrote in message

Why I have my own chickens and a Jersey milk cow.

Mmmmmm.. A Jersey. How much does she produce a day?

Nothing yet, impregnated the cow last week.

How was it for you? At least she wouldn't want to share your
cigarette afterwards.
No smoker here, however the vet was up to his armpit and cost me $80
)


Did you ever read the books or see the TV series "All creatures great
and small"? It's about country vets in the UK and quite delighful.
In it the chief vet declares (truthfully) "there is much good
information to be had up a cow's arse". This was on prime-time TV
about 30 years ago, I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

She should produce more
than I can drink. Will learn to make my own cheese products with
the
extra. The cheese making equipment is not cheap. I read, not done
it
yet, it takes 17 pounds of milk and one year to make one pound of
parmesan cheese. Bessy plays like a dog, wants to be petted and
runs and romps around. Sometimes I get a little nervous around her
with her playfulness and hope I do not get hurt.

I have the same worry when Mootilda bangs her face into the feed
bucket I am holding. Cows seem very rough compared to horses. I
am pretty sure she won't deliberately hurt me but the horns come
close.

David
HORNS!!!!!! Bessy was dehorned from day one! The holes filled in
within a week. The feed buckets are next to the summer shelter. She
does not see me put feed in the bucket. If she sees me she runs at
full speed to me. She has a two acre pasture to play in. I will
create another two acre pasture by next spring next to it. Same
feeling here, if I get hurt it was not intentional. I do not want her
to be afraid when it comes time for milking. She has a good friend, a
chocolate labrador that comes over and plays and romp together.

Currently she is milking me for money like there is tomorrow. Which
worries me a little. I call this the infrastructure cost that should
last a long time. One major cost is concerning me. I would love to
get a mini hay bailer, but they are extremely expensive. Right now my
neighbor bails hay for me.

Many people find it cost effective to pay a contractor to cut and bail
hay instead of owning the machinery.

David
That is me because cost.
--
Enjoy Life... Dan L

Tropical rainforest is often on leached soil where most of the
nutrients are actually in the trees. Saying that this environment
doesn't accumulated soil and therefore no forest will do so does not
necessarily follow. Particularly where temperate forests were
cleared for crop land you can certainly increase the amount of
carbon stored by converting them to pasture or back to forest. But
your point about reaching a maximum and then not storing any more is
correct.

Citation, please.


Note that we were talking about changes to land use not sequestering carbon
in less decomposable forms. I was told the amount that can be stored has
limits in a course by Dr Judi Earl who put me on to Dr Christine Jones. The
latter is the local guru on agricultural carbon sequestration. The reason
given is that as decomposable carbon builds up the microbes that break it
down also build up until the rate they are breaking down reaches the rate of
build-up, in other words an equilibrium is reached. The position of the
equilibrium depends on the land use and methods but you will still get one
sooner or later. This is ignoring the carbon stored above ground in forests
etc but you can see that it also has a maximum value depending on what is
grown.

Here is one quote:

"The capacity of soil to store decomposable organic carbon by
physical protection within micro-aggregates or other organomineral
complexes seems to be finite.
Once these complexes are saturated any added decomposable
organic carbon cannot be protected from decomposition.
Even if this capacity has been severely depleted it can be resaturated
rapidly (e.g. within 30 years by growing pasture)."

Which is from he

http://www.amazingcarbon.com/PDF/Lei...N_ARMIDALE.pdf

This site

http://www.amazingcarbon.com

has a huge amount of material on this topic. I haven't read it all. If you
also google on:

carbon sequestration "christine jones" site:.au

you will get much more. She is of the view that paying farmers to do
sequestration is a solution to climate change. I think we must try many
solutions because until you try you don't know for sure what the effect will
be and also there are political, economic and social limits on the extent
that any given solution can be adopted thus we are likely to need a
multi-pronged approach to succeed.

Also I would not want to push only sequestration solutions because the
fossil fuel industry will try to seize on any method of dealing with climate
change (eg "clean coal") as long as it allows them to keep on burning and
that is very undesirable for many reasons apart from the increase in
atmospheric CO2.

David

In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:


Tropical rainforest is often on leached soil where most of the
nutrients are actually in the trees. Saying that this environment
doesn't accumulated soil and therefore no forest will do so does not
necessarily follow. Particularly where temperate forests were
cleared for crop land you can certainly increase the amount of
carbon stored by converting them to pasture or back to forest. But
your point about reaching a maximum and then not storing any more is
correct.

Citation, please.


Note that we were talking about changes to land use not sequestering carbon
in less decomposable forms. I was told the amount that can be stored has
limits in a course by Dr Judi Earl who put me on to Dr Christine Jones. The
latter is the local guru on agricultural carbon sequestration. The reason
given is that as decomposable carbon builds up the microbes that break it
down also build up until the rate they are breaking down reaches the rate of
build-up, in other words an equilibrium is reached. The position of the
equilibrium depends on the land use and methods but you will still get one
sooner or later. This is ignoring the carbon stored above ground in forests
etc but you can see that it also has a maximum value depending on what is
grown.

Here is one quote:

"The capacity of soil to store decomposable organic carbon by
physical protection within micro-aggregates or other organomineral
complexes seems to be finite.
Once these complexes are saturated any added decomposable
organic carbon cannot be protected from decomposition.
Even if this capacity has been severely depleted it can be resaturated
rapidly (e.g. within 30 years by growing pasture)."

Which is from he

http://www.amazingcarbon.com/PDF/Lei...N_ARMIDALE.pdf

This site

http://www.amazingcarbon.com

has a huge amount of material on this topic. I haven't read it all. If you
also google on:

carbon sequestration "christine jones" site:.au

you will get much more. She is of the view that paying farmers to do
sequestration is a solution to climate change. I think we must try many
solutions because until you try you don't know for sure what the effect will
be and also there are political, economic and social limits on the extent
that any given solution can be adopted thus we are likely to need a
multi-pronged approach to succeed.

Also I would not want to push only sequestration solutions because the
fossil fuel industry will try to seize on any method of dealing with climate
change (eg "clean coal") as long as it allows them to keep on burning and
that is very undesirable for many reasons apart from the increase in
atmospheric CO2.

David
The pdf was a good romp with soil "C" saturation rates varing from 30
years to 20,000. Part of Salatin's putative success with topsoil
building would have to be that he is returning more "C" to the soil than
"N", so it would seem that this isn't a rudderless enterprise.

I share your concern about coal, and since we have already breached the
Rubicon for the CO2 greenhouse effect at 450 ppm, if you factor in the
influences of the other greenhouse gasses (CH4, NO2, O3, H2O). If our
politicians weren't such whores, it would be a simple matter of
maximizing those activities that ameliorate greenhouse gases, and the
continuous reduction of those activities that aggravate it (fossil
fuel). Of course this would need to factor in, transitioning those
employed in fossil fuel extraction into different employment, and the
screams of "socialism" from the lunatic fringe.

Building topsoil would still have the salubrious effects of:

1) cessation of the use of chemical fertilizers, which encourage some
bacteria to devour the organic material in the soil (topsoil)
2) stops the release of NO2 from the fertilizer, which is a greenhouse
gas.
3) stops the pollution of ground and run off water, thus improving
the quality of drinking water, and cutting off the cause of ocean
dead zones.
4) At the very least, what remaining topsoil would be protected by the
permanent ground cover, and there is the expectation that we may add
to it.
5) Additional topsoil (because there is more of it, and it is made from
organic material) would effectively sequester CO2 to some extent.
Again the question is where to put the decimal point, not "if one is
needed". Peter Bane (google the name) puts the sequestration
potential at being equivalent to the US production of CO2.
6) Increased topsoil leads to increased absorption of rain fall,
recharging aquifers, and reducing chances of flooding.
7) Increased meat production on grassland instead of in CAFOs, means that
70% of antibiotics in this country won't go into meat animals,
thereby creating antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.
8) Less grain will be needed to divert into CAFOs
9) Fewer CAFOs means fewer stinking lagoons of animal excrement, that
won't be dumped into public water ways, or find its way into ground
water.
10) Gives us a good source of complete proteins (beef and chickens), for
healthy, growing kids.

Hopefully the above would also inspire more small farmers to return to
mixed use farms as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

This is the first time that I have heard of "Phytolith Occluded Carbon".
Unless we can grow sugarcane it in Ohio, to make methanol as a
replacement for fossil fuel, it sounds as it it is of limited utility. I
don't think the plant is suited to the weather in most of this country,
and I would hate to see farmland given over to just CO2 sequestration.
It seem to me that fast growing forests that can be converted to
charcoal would give both habitat, clean water and air, and sequestration.

Anyway, thanks for the citation.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/m...515308172.html

Billy wrote:
In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

Billy wrote:
In article ,
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:

"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
FarmI wrote:
"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message

Salatin does not claim this level of productivity because there
is 450ac of woods as well as the 100ac of pasture. The woods
make a sizeable contribution to the farm, it produces much pig
feed and biomass that is used for a variety of purposes and
assists in other ways. So to be more accurate the above
production is from 550ac.

I would be interested to know what can be done by conventional
means. The comparison would be very difficult to make fair I
think because the conventional system uses many external inputs
and would have trouble matching that diversity of outputs. I
suspect that just measured in calories per acre the intensive
monoculture might win. The whole point of this is that you can
only do that for a limited amount of time with many inputs and
many unwanted side effects. Not to mention that man does not
live by bread (or high fructose corn syrup) alone.

Fair comment David, but then there is a much higher cost to the
quality of life for the animals? I'm sure that you, like me,
have seen intensive operations such a feed lots and caged chooks.


That was one of the side effects I had in mind. We have chook
sheds for meat birds in the district. Ten thousand or twenty in a
shed with a dirt floor with just enough room to move between the
feed and the water. Lights on half the night to get them to eat
more. The workers wear breathing apparatus to clean out the sheds
and it will make you puke at 400m on a hot night. The eagles dine
well on those who get trodden under. Nuff said.


Indeed. I've been to a feed lot and I had the same reaction
although this was probably one of the better run ones. I'd turn
vegetarian if our local buthcer sourced his meat at places like
that but I can see his 'feed lot' (for want of a better
description as it's jsut his farm) from the road and his cattle
have quite a nice spot for the final finish on feed before they
take the trip to the abattoir. (sp?)

I grew up on a poultry farm and my mother refused to have any
cages on the place with the exception of a row of 10 where she
used to put birds that were off colour and needed to be taken
away from the bullying tactics of the rest of the flock. In the
50s and 60s when other poultry farmers were moving to cages and
proud of it, we were free ranging. We once had a city person
come back to us and complain about the eggs they bought off us.
According to them, the eggs were 'off' and had to be thrown out
because they had 'very yellow yolks'.

In those days it meant the chooks had a varied diet not just
pellet chook food. A question that you would know, is the yellow
yolk still such an indicator or is it emulated these days by diet
additives?

That is one of those 'it depends' answers as in, it depends ont he
feed.

If you feed them on kitchen scraps (not recommended as that isn't
nutritious enough) then free ranging (as opposed to keeping
confined) will change the colour of the yolk. Pellets contain a
yellowing agent, but apparently that yellow isn't carried through
so that in baked goods show up the yellowing. Yolks that are
yellow as a result of the feed they find outside does hang on
through the baking process so that the baked goods (like say a
butter cake) will appear more yellow. I've not done these tests
myself but there was a long article on it (with comparative pics)
in one of the 'Australasian Poultry' mags a couple of years ago.
A great little magazine and as cheap as chips.


My food books say the yellow of the yolk is due to xanthophylls
which come from plants, typically lucerne and corn. Not having
chook books I do this backwards. Apparently corn feed is also
responsible for the yellow skin and fat found in some "organic" meat
birds.

Besides having a yoke that looks like an apricot, instead of a
lemon, real eggs have a viscosity to them that factory produced
eggs don't.

Is the height and viscosity of the egg contents a result of diet and
health of the chook or a sign of freshness, or both? The same ref
(McGee 'On Food and Cooking') says freshness has much to do with it.

Come on chook people - give me the scoop before I build the chook
house.

David

Xanthophylls come from plants to be sure, but typically lucerne and
corn? That seems like more of a production setting. They should get
the same thing just scratching on a meadow.


No doubt they would, this was from a food book not an agriculture book.

How much land do you have? Does the mobile chicken coop offer you any
advantages? It seems that if you can build top soil à la Salatin, it
would be worth your while, since it would be better at holding water.


I have toyed with the mobile coop idea. I am quite attracted to the mandala
garden where the coop move around a series of beds but I can't see how to
make it work with the succession of seasonal planting, nor how to make it
fox proof.

All I know from eggs is that we get our eggs from a friend who turns
her chickens out to pasture during the day. They get a supplement to
replace calcium, and to my understanding that is all they get. The
eggs are fresh, and as I said, the yolks are the color of apricots.
My biggest surprise was when I had my blood work done (at least once
a year) while I was eating the eggs, my cholesterol had dropped. The
eggs were the only variable that came to mind.


I will allow my chooks to range over the pasture during the day but first I
have to build a secure coop for them at night or the fox will have them.

Anyway, if you look at p.265 in Omnivore's Dilemma, you'll see a
description of "real" eggs, and it is what I'm used to. If we can't
get out friend's eggs, I stop eating eggs.


I am a serious cook that's why I read books like McGee. My understanding is
that the qualities that he praises are mainly from freshness.

I don't know what it is with Garden Banter, either. I'm used to Brits
in other groups, and they aren't nearly as, . . uh, rustic as the
ones that we attract.


Rustic people are smarter than this lot. It's a puzzle.

David

FarmI wrote:
"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
Billy wrote:
In article ,
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:

"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
FarmI wrote:
"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message

Salatin does not claim this level of productivity because there
is 450ac of woods as well as the 100ac of pasture. The woods
make a sizeable contribution to the farm, it produces much pig
feed and biomass that is used for a variety of purposes and
assists in other ways. So to be more accurate the above
production is from 550ac.

I would be interested to know what can be done by conventional
means. The comparison would be very difficult to make fair I
think because the conventional system uses many external inputs
and would have trouble matching that diversity of outputs. I
suspect that just measured in calories per acre the intensive
monoculture might win. The whole point of this is that you can
only do that for a limited amount of time with many inputs and
many unwanted side effects. Not to mention that man does not
live by bread (or high fructose corn syrup) alone.

Fair comment David, but then there is a much higher cost to the
quality of life for the animals? I'm sure that you, like me,
have seen intensive operations such a feed lots and caged chooks.


That was one of the side effects I had in mind. We have chook
sheds for meat birds in the district. Ten thousand or twenty in a
shed with a dirt floor with just enough room to move between the
feed and the water. Lights on half the night to get them to eat
more. The workers wear breathing apparatus to clean out the sheds
and it will make you puke at 400m on a hot night. The eagles dine
well on those who get trodden under. Nuff said.


Indeed. I've been to a feed lot and I had the same reaction
although this was probably one of the better run ones. I'd turn
vegetarian if our local buthcer sourced his meat at places like
that but I can see his 'feed lot' (for want of a better
description as it's jsut his farm) from the road and his cattle
have quite a nice spot for the final finish on feed before they
take the trip to the abattoir. (sp?)

I grew up on a poultry farm and my mother refused to have any
cages on the place with the exception of a row of 10 where she
used to put birds that were off colour and needed to be taken
away from the bullying tactics of the rest of the flock. In the
50s and 60s when other poultry farmers were moving to cages and
proud of it, we were free ranging. We once had a city person
come back to us and complain about the eggs they bought off us.
According to them, the eggs were 'off' and had to be thrown out
because they had 'very yellow yolks'.

In those days it meant the chooks had a varied diet not just
pellet chook food. A question that you would know, is the yellow
yolk still such an indicator or is it emulated these days by diet
additives?

That is one of those 'it depends' answers as in, it depends ont he
feed.

If you feed them on kitchen scraps (not recommended as that isn't
nutritious enough) then free ranging (as opposed to keeping
confined) will change the colour of the yolk. Pellets contain a
yellowing agent, but apparently that yellow isn't carried through
so that in baked goods show up the yellowing. Yolks that are
yellow as a result of the feed they find outside does hang on
through the baking process so that the baked goods (like say a
butter cake) will appear more yellow. I've not done these tests
myself but there was a long article on it (with comparative pics)
in one of the 'Australasian Poultry' mags a couple of years ago. A
great little magazine and as cheap as chips.


My food books say the yellow of the yolk is due to xanthophylls
which come from plants, typically lucerne and corn. Not having
chook books I do this backwards. Apparently corn feed is also
responsible for the yellow skin and fat found in some "organic" meat
birds.

Yep, corn does give yellow fat. dunno what gives the yoldk it's
yellow colour in pellets though. do you want me to dig out my
A'Asian Poultry mag with that article in it about yolk colour and
give you a precis?

I am interested but don't go to too much trouble.


Besides having a yoke that looks like an apricot, instead of a
lemon, real eggs have a viscosity to them that factory produced
eggs don't.

Is the height and viscosity of the egg contents a result of diet and
health of the chook or a sign of freshness, or both?

I'd say it's more freshness than anything. Duck eggs are even more
so of both.

The same ref (McGee 'On Food
and Cooking') says freshness has much to do with it.

Come on chook people - give me the scoop before I build the chook
house.

Before you even start that, pay strict attention to rats and how to
control and exclude them. But really chooks are easy.

I already have a master plan for the erradication of the rodents since they
ate the weather seal off my shed door to get in and they attack the produce
on the verandah. It doesn't work of course but I do fight them to a draw.
People comment on how generous I am with feed for them. Them pellets ain't
chook food.

Keep the foxes
away and wild birds out of the night yard/feed area. Keep the
pullets confined when you get them till they get used to their night
house and yard and then let them out to range (Ours range in an
orchard which is prolly about a quarter of an acre). I wouldn't
fully free range if you want to have veg though or toehrwise you
wont' have veg. They will do a good job of spreading horse plops.

Foxes are a real problem, such destructive buggers, the chook house will be
metal with buried barriers, the yard will have a loop off the electric fence
around it as well.

How do you stop them scratching all the mulch off your fruit trees?

David

In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

Billy wrote:
In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

Billy wrote:
In article ,
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:

"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
FarmI wrote:
"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message

Salatin does not claim this level of productivity because there
is 450ac of woods as well as the 100ac of pasture. The woods
make a sizeable contribution to the farm, it produces much pig
feed and biomass that is used for a variety of purposes and
assists in other ways. So to be more accurate the above
production is from 550ac.

I would be interested to know what can be done by conventional
means. The comparison would be very difficult to make fair I
think because the conventional system uses many external inputs
and would have trouble matching that diversity of outputs. I
suspect that just measured in calories per acre the intensive
monoculture might win. The whole point of this is that you can
only do that for a limited amount of time with many inputs and
many unwanted side effects. Not to mention that man does not
live by bread (or high fructose corn syrup) alone.

Fair comment David, but then there is a much higher cost to the
quality of life for the animals? I'm sure that you, like me,
have seen intensive operations such a feed lots and caged chooks.


That was one of the side effects I had in mind. We have chook
sheds for meat birds in the district. Ten thousand or twenty in a
shed with a dirt floor with just enough room to move between the
feed and the water. Lights on half the night to get them to eat
more. The workers wear breathing apparatus to clean out the sheds
and it will make you puke at 400m on a hot night. The eagles dine
well on those who get trodden under. Nuff said.


Indeed. I've been to a feed lot and I had the same reaction
although this was probably one of the better run ones. I'd turn
vegetarian if our local buthcer sourced his meat at places like
that but I can see his 'feed lot' (for want of a better
description as it's jsut his farm) from the road and his cattle
have quite a nice spot for the final finish on feed before they
take the trip to the abattoir. (sp?)

I grew up on a poultry farm and my mother refused to have any
cages on the place with the exception of a row of 10 where she
used to put birds that were off colour and needed to be taken
away from the bullying tactics of the rest of the flock. In the
50s and 60s when other poultry farmers were moving to cages and
proud of it, we were free ranging. We once had a city person
come back to us and complain about the eggs they bought off us.
According to them, the eggs were 'off' and had to be thrown out
because they had 'very yellow yolks'.

In those days it meant the chooks had a varied diet not just
pellet chook food. A question that you would know, is the yellow
yolk still such an indicator or is it emulated these days by diet
additives?

That is one of those 'it depends' answers as in, it depends ont he
feed.

If you feed them on kitchen scraps (not recommended as that isn't
nutritious enough) then free ranging (as opposed to keeping
confined) will change the colour of the yolk. Pellets contain a
yellowing agent, but apparently that yellow isn't carried through
so that in baked goods show up the yellowing. Yolks that are
yellow as a result of the feed they find outside does hang on
through the baking process so that the baked goods (like say a
butter cake) will appear more yellow. I've not done these tests
myself but there was a long article on it (with comparative pics)
in one of the 'Australasian Poultry' mags a couple of years ago.
A great little magazine and as cheap as chips.


My food books say the yellow of the yolk is due to xanthophylls
which come from plants, typically lucerne and corn. Not having
chook books I do this backwards. Apparently corn feed is also
responsible for the yellow skin and fat found in some "organic" meat
birds.

Besides having a yoke that looks like an apricot, instead of a
lemon, real eggs have a viscosity to them that factory produced
eggs don't.

Is the height and viscosity of the egg contents a result of diet and
health of the chook or a sign of freshness, or both? The same ref
(McGee 'On Food and Cooking') says freshness has much to do with it.

Come on chook people - give me the scoop before I build the chook
house.

David

Xanthophylls come from plants to be sure, but typically lucerne and
corn? That seems like more of a production setting. They should get
the same thing just scratching on a meadow.


No doubt they would, this was from a food book not an agriculture book.

How much land do you have? Does the mobile chicken coop offer you any
advantages? It seems that if you can build top soil à la Salatin, it
would be worth your while, since it would be better at holding water.


I have toyed with the mobile coop idea. I am quite attracted to the mandala
garden where the coop move around a series of beds but I can't see how to
make it work with the succession of seasonal planting, nor how to make it
fox proof.

All I know from eggs is that we get our eggs from a friend who turns
her chickens out to pasture during the day. They get a supplement to
replace calcium, and to my understanding that is all they get. The
eggs are fresh, and as I said, the yolks are the color of apricots.
My biggest surprise was when I had my blood work done (at least once
a year) while I was eating the eggs, my cholesterol had dropped. The
eggs were the only variable that came to mind.


I will allow my chooks to range over the pasture during the day but first I
have to build a secure coop for them at night or the fox will have them.

Anyway, if you look at p.265 in Omnivore's Dilemma, you'll see a
description of "real" eggs, and it is what I'm used to. If we can't
get out friend's eggs, I stop eating eggs.


I am a serious cook that's why I read books like McGee. My understanding is
that the qualities that he praises are mainly from freshness.

Must be quite a good book. It has held its price. Shame it's not
available from our local library.

The following is a bit of over kill, but to the subject at hand.
Omnivor's Dilemma
http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dile...als/dp/0143038
583/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815576&sr=1-1

pg. 266 - 269

I had made pretty much the same meal on several occasions at home, using
the same basic foodstuffs, yet in certain invisible ways this wasn't the
same food at all. Apart from the high color of the egg yolks, these eggs
looked pretty much like any other eggs, the chicken like chicken, but
the fact that the animals in question had spent their lives outdoors on
pastures rather than in a shed eating grain distinguished their flesh
and eggs in important, measurable ways. A growing body of scientific
research indicates that pasture substantially changes the nutritional
profile of chicken and eggs, as well as of beef and milk. The question
we asked about organic food‹is it any better than the conventional
kind?‹turns out to be much easier to answer in the case of grass-farmed
food.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the large quantities of beta-carotene, vitamin
E, and folic acid present in green grass find their way into the flesh
of the animals that eat that grass. (It's the carotenoids that give
these egg yolks their carroty color.) That flesh will also have
considerably less fat in it than the flesh of animals fed exclusively on
grain‹also no surprise, in light of what we know about diets high in
carbohydrates. (And about exercise, something pastured animals actually
get.) But all fats are not created equal‹polyunsaturated fats are better
for us than saturated ones, and certain unsaturated fats are better than
others. As it turns out, the fats created in the flesh of grass eaters
are the best kind for us to eat.

This is no accident. Taking the long view of human nutrition, we evolved
to eat the sort of foods available to hunter-gatherers, most of whose
genes we've inherited and whose bodies we still (more or less) inhabit.
Humans have had less than ten thousand years‹an evolutionary blink‹to
accustom our bodies to agricultural food, and as far as our bodies are
concerned, industrial agricultural food‹a diet based largely on a small
handful of staple grains, like corn‹is still a biological novelty.
Animals raised outdoors on grass have a diet much more like that of the
wild animals humans have been eating at least since the Paleolithic era
than that of the grain-fed animals we only recently began to eat.

So it makes evolutionary sense that pastured meals, the nutritional
profile of which closely resembles that of wild game, would be better
for us. Grass-fed meat, milk, and eggs contain less total fat and less
saturated fats than the same foods from grain-fed animals. Pastured
animals also contain conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a fatly acid dial.
some recent studies indicate may help reduce weight and prevent cancer,
and which is absent from feedlot animals. But perhaps most important,
meat, eggs, and milk from pastured animals also contain higher levels of
omega-3s, essential fatty acids created in the cells of green plants and
algae that play an indispensable role in human health, and especially in
the growth and health of neurons‹brain cells. (It's important to note
that fish contain higher levels of the most valuable omega-3s than land
animals, yet grass-fed animals do offer significant amounts of such
important omega-3s as alpha linolenic acid‹ALA.) Much research into the
role of omega-3s in the human diet remains to be done, but the
preliminary findings are suggestive: Researchers report that pregnant
women who receive supplements of omega-3s give birth to babies with
higher IQs, children with diets low in omega-3s exhibit more behavioral
and learning problems at
school, and puppies eating diets high in omega-3s prove easier to train.
(All these claims come from papers presented at a 2004 meeting of the
International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids.)

One of the most important yet unnoticed changes to the human diet in
modern times has been in the ratio between omega-3 and omega-6, the
other essential fatty acid in our food. Omega-6 is produced in the seeds
of plants; omega-3 in the leaves. As the name indicates, both kinds of
fat are essential, but problems arise when they fall out of balance. (In
fact, there's research to suggest that the ratio of these fats in our
diet may be more important than the amounts.) Too high a ratio of
omega-6 to omega-3 can contribute to heart disease, probably because
omega-6 helps blood clot, while omega-3 helps it flow. (Omega-6 is an
inflammatory; omega-3 an anti-innammatory.) As our diet‹and the diet of
the animals we eat‹shifted from one based on green plants to one based
on grain (from grass to corn), the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 has gone
from roughly one to one (in the diet of hunter-gatherers) to more than
ten to one. (The process of hydrogenadng oil also eliminates omega-3s.)
We may one day come to regard this shift as one of the most deleterious
dietary changes wrought by the industrialization of our food chain. It
was a change we never noticed, since the importance of omega-3s was not
recognized until the 1970s. As in the case of our imperfect knowledge of
soil, the limits of our knowledge of nutrition have obscured what the
industrialization of the food chain is doing to our health. But changes
in the composition of fats in our diet may account for many of the
diseases of civilization‹cardiac, diabetes, obesity, etc.‹that have long
been linked to modern eating habits, as well as for learning and
behavioral problems in children and depression in adults.

Research in this area promises to turn a lot of conventional nutritional
thinking on its head. It suggests, for example, that the problem with
eating red meat‹long associated with cardiovascular disease‹ may owe
less to the animal in question than to that animal's diet. (This might
explain why there are hunter-gatherer populations today who eat far more
red meat than we do without suffering the cardiovascular consequences.)
These days farmed salmon are being fed like feedlot cattle, on grain,
with the predictable result that their omega- 3 levels fall well below
those of wild fish. (Wild fish have especially high levels of omega-3
because the fat concentrates as it moves up the food chain from the
algae and phytoplankton that create it.) Conventional nutritional wisdom
holds that salmon is automatically better for us than beef, but that
judgment assumes the beef has been grain fed and the salmon krill fed;
if the steer is fattened on grass and the salmon on grain, we might
actually be better off eating the beef. (Grass-finished beef has a
two-to-one ratio of omega-6 to -3 compared to more than ten to one in
corn-fed beef.) The species of animal you eat may matter less than what
the animal you're eating has itself eaten.

The fact that the nutritional quality of a given food (and of that
food's food) can vary not just in degree but in kind throws a big wrench
into an industrial food chain, the very premise of which is that beef is
beef and salmon salmon. It also throws a new light on the whole question
of cost, for if quality matters so much more than quantity, then the
price of a food may bear little relation to the value of the nutrients
in it. If units of omega-3s and beta carotene and vitamin E are what an
egg shopper is really after, then Joel's $2.20 a dozen pastured eggs
actually represent a much better deal than the $0.79 a dozen industrial
eggs at the supermarket. As long as one egg looks pretty much like
another, all the chickens like chicken, and beef beef, the substitution
of quantity for quality will go on unnoticed by most consumers, but it
is becoming increasingly apparent to anyone with an electron microscope
or a mass spectrometer that, truly, this is not the same food.




I don't know what it is with Garden Banter, either. I'm used to Brits
in other groups, and they aren't nearly as, . . uh, rustic as the
ones that we attract.


Rustic people are smarter than this lot. It's a puzzle.

David
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/m...515308172.html

Dan L wrote:
songbird wrote:
Dan L wrote:
FarmI wrote:
Dan L.wrote:
Why I have my own chickens and a Jersey milk cow.
Mmmmmm.. A Jersey. How much does she produce a day?
Nothing yet, impregnated the cow last week. She should produce more
than I can drink. Will learn to make my own cheese products with the
extra. The cheese making equipment is not cheap. I read, not done it
yet, it takes 17 pounds of milk and one year to make one pound of
parmesan cheese.

sterilized buckets, cheese-cloth and a culture of some kind.
none of these are majorly expensive. some heat source during
the cooler months if your place of production is not insulated
well... the most expensive part is the time it takes to finish or
age and that means storage space. the people who use caves have it
right. mmm!

Soft cheeses are low cost and can be made in short time, from what i
read.

yeah! and whole milk yogurt from raw milk is
wonderful too. i can imagine what a good raw
cream cheese, brie, camembert, etc. would
be like.


Hard cheeses are not, price a cheese press? Might modify a
fridge for storage.

how large a press are you talking here?

gravity, water in buckets and the right
surfaces, forms and inserts are not that
tough to figure out nor horribly
expensive, what am i missing here?

sure, if you go all stainless steel
with a hydraulic press and all sorts
of gizmos you'll be out some major
bucks, but improvise with some
woodworking skills and i think you
can get by for much less.


you gotta show her who's boss. physics, otherwise,
will not be your friend, in this equation.

Physics is my friend along with his sidekick calculus.

that derivative use of a sliderule wasn't covered!


songbird

Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
FarmI wrote:
Billy wrote:

Well, in this case, it would be prairie grass (reflecting Salatin's
pasture),

What sort of species are you talking about when you say 'prairie
grass'? The reason why I ask is that the You-tube clips of Salatin's
place doesn't look like anything I'd call a 'prairie'. He looks
like he's got a farm on quite rich land in a well protected area.
'Prairies' to me suggest very open and exposed locations and the
grasses there would, TMWOT, be much tougher and less nutritious than
in good pasture land. I might be talking through my hat 'cos I
haven't got a clue about US farms, but that's what I'd expect here
in Oz if we were looking at farms of differing capacities.

Having another bi-polar day? I just loves the way you flog that
strawman.

that wasn't me (FarmI is quote level not me, i
am quote level )


right, anyone talking about grassland production in
the eastern seaboard of the USA being equivalent
to what happens on the prairies is full of it.

If you take the time to read the quote, you will notice that it says,
"similar enough". That takes us from "equals" to "approximates"
which, a sane person would agree, don't mean the same thing.

yea, but i'm pretty sure the difference between
growth on the prairie vs. eastern grassland
is closer to an order of magnitude which to me
is a significant difference not so easily ignored.


the time
scale difference isn't minor and probably heavily
depends upon the average annual rainfall.
Time scale for what?

for building topsoil. one inch a year on the eastern
grassland (reasonably heavily managed otherwise
it converts to woodland) as compared to how
much per year on the prairie.


the soil of the prairies was probably produced over
the period of time after the last ice-age. it isn't that
thick. if it could accumulate at a rate of an inch a
year it would be much deeper...

Best guess is 500 years/inch to produce prairie topsoil which was
approximately 10" thick when Europeans showed up..

wow, that's 5x worse than what i thought it
was. but i'd not looked into that specific
detail yet. i'm just noodling about numbers
and wondering why some things don't seem
to add up right about certain claims.


ok, so let's return to the eastern seaboard and
wonder why the topsoil in unmolested places isn't
deeper? if it can be so productive why isn't it?
because it is woodland and not grassland and
unmanaged woodlands cycle carbon but do not
sequester once it's reached maturity.

Actually, it takes a pine forest, roughly, 50 years to develop 1/16"
of topsoil.

i wonder if anyone has broken down how
much of that is char.


very little
is sequestered and that would be because of fires
that char and thus turn the carbon into a form not
easily consumed...

The sequestered CO2 in eastern forests is charcoal?

if we're talking carbon effectively removed from
the atmosphere and not easily returned via rot
then yes. didn't you say something like 55,000
years? that's sequestered.

a forest at maturity is not sequestering much in
the way of carbon, it's cycling it (i.e. i agree with
DHS).


if trees and forests were so good for carbon
gathering and keeping the soils of the Amazon would
be deep and fertile, but they are not unless you
find the places that were altered by the natives in
prehistorical times.

And don't forget the warm weather, and heavy rains that wash the
quickly decomposing organics out of the laterite soils, unless you
find the places that were altered by the indigenous prior to 1492.

not forgotten, it just seems that if
the forests were so good at sequestering
carbon in the soil (that is what we were
talking about was soil building) then the
Amazon would be much different than it
is and the eastern USoA would have
much thicker soils too than it has.


so this says that reforestation is barking up the
wrong tree when it comes to CO2 sequestration
and rebuilding topsoil.

Ah . . . hmmmm? Who said anything about reforestation? Not that it's a
bad idea, and we do need to stop cutting them down. You silly goose,
the proposition was returning the farm soil to permanent ground
cover, like you might use to graze cattle on, and then run out some
hypothetical mobile chicken coops (hypothetical chickens included) to
do clean up duty on the cow flops from the hypothetical cattle.

reforestation is what happens to eastern land when
left alone. so to keep it from turning to forest means
some kind of management (which means energy
expenditure of some type to keep it clear of trees
be that via grazing or mechanical means the effort
is the same no matter what). grazing unfortunately
does not keep land clear.


So we got our farmers switching from grain crops to meat production.
This in turn leads to:

i'd say that the stats say we don't need more meat, we
need more exercise and more fruits and veggies.


1) cessation of the use of chemical fertilizers, which encourage some
bacteria to devour the organic material in the soil (topsoil)

yes, this is good to do, 100% with ya on this one.


2) stops the release of NO2 from the fertilizer, which is a greenhouse
gas.

in addition to the energy taken to produce the fertilizer to
begin with.


3) stops the pollution of ground and run off water, thus improving
the quality of drinking water, and cutting off the cause of ocean
dead zones.

i think those are not eliminated with our current river
management, wastewater and drainage systems.
reduced would be nice though -- i agree as it would
return large areas of the Gulf to productive use.


4) At the very least, what remaining topsoil would be protected by the
permanent ground cover, and the is the expectation that we may add
to it.

this is good and i'm all for it, but i don't see how
you get from point A to B without a massive labor
shift. not many of the kids today have any plans of
working on the farm at minimum wage with no
benefits. only some small percent of the people
have the dedication this type of change takes.

even for me to go all organic would be
tough here, but i'm doing better each year.
that's all i can do and try to get people
around me to see easy things they can do
to improve.


5) Additional topsoil (because there is more of it, and it is made
from organic material) would effectively sequester CO2 to some
extent. Again the question is where to put the decimal point, not
"if one is needed". Peter Bane (google the name) puts the
sequestration potential at being equivalent to the US production of
CO2. 6) Increased topsoil leads to increased absorption of rain fall,
recharging aquifers, and reducing chances of flooding.

this is only partially true. large sections of agricultural land
is ditched, drained, drain tubed and trenched. to restore it
to the previous state would involve a lot more than letting it
go back to green and then putting livestock on it to keep
it short and having chickens pick their piles apart. for
mosquito control too. you're not going to get people
back to where they'll want more mosquitoes (even if i
think the current spraying program is poisonous, dangerous
and wasteful -- i'm not going to get many others around
here to agree with me as it is very flat and swampy with
a lot of mosquitoes if left alone).

add to that the runoff troubles from streets, parking
lots, storm sewers, rooftops, and then add the waste
from treatment plants and then make it even worse
by draining all the lowlands and farming them, building
levees so the rivers cannot flood, etc. well, we're nowhere
near getting a handle on groundwater restoration.

getting the farmers to stop dumping nitrogen is only
a small part of the problem. getting people to stop
burning ditches would do a lot too (stopping erosion),
getting people to stop using pesticides would accomplish
a lot more for the long term health, nitrogen is quite
simple a poison in comparison to the others. we've
got timebombs ticking on a long slow fuse. at least
we are looking now, but so many years from now
it will take to fix and trillions of dollars. instead we
will spend them on wars in far off places to support
criminally insane or corrupt gov'ts, etc.


7) Increased meat production on grassland instead of in CAFOs, means
that 70% of antibiotics in this country won't go into meat animals,
thereby creating antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.

i know, once i heard about that use of antibiotics
i got sick to my stomach. f'n idiots. it should be
banned outright immediately (along with feeding
chickens arsenic, feeding cattle bubble gum or
any other animal byproducts, etc.).

but i disagree about meat production needing to be
increased.


8) Less grain will be needed to divert into CAFOs

fine by me.


9) Fewer CAFOs means fewer stinking lagoons of animal excrement, that
won't be dumped into public water ways, or find its way into ground
water.

yea, we had someone doing a feedlot down the road
a ways. luckily we are miles away and not downwind.
but i felt sorry for any neighbors. a dairy farm smells
good when run correctly. a CAFO smells nasty.

there is a bison farmer on the opposite corner
and the CAFO is now returned to corn and soybeans
so i'm thinking the corn and soybeans are a better
tradeoff.


10) Gives us a good source of complete proteins (beef and chickens),
for healthy, growing kids.

too much protein already for most people.
the kids (who don't usually eat it anyways)
they like hotdogs, macaroni and cheese
and ice-cream -- nothing green please.


So to summarize; permanent ground cover on existing farms,

won't work for many crops, they don't do well
with any competition -- variety in diet being important
and i like some of those grains. if they can eventually
come up with perennial versions that would be great.
i know that is being worked on. that would go a
long ways towards stablising the soils and improving
the soil community/structure and it would also reduce
weed troubles if you could get a field going full of
mixed grains and legumes which could fruit at
different times and thus be harvested at different
times using different means. we're only starting on
this sort of figuring.

so while i agree that bare soil can be troublesome,
it can be worked around in some ways and at
other times it's necessary (to switch crops or to
deal with certain types of weeds -- beans and
sow thistle being specific examples) and then
there are certain perennials and annuals that only
get going in disturbed soils. do you suddenly
want to remove that type of plant from the
diversity of life?


which is
used to raise beef, more or less along the lines of Joel Salatin's
paradigm, results in clean food, clean air, clean water, and just
might save the world.

no, probably won't. it would help some things for sure,
but it is only scratching the surface.


Other than the above points, I think you made a very cogent response,
where you had your facts straight ;O)




songbird

"David Hare-Scott" wrote:
Billy wrote:
In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

Billy wrote:
In article ,
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:

"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
FarmI wrote:
"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message

Salatin does not claim this level of productivity because
there
is 450ac of woods as well as the 100ac of pasture. The woods
make a sizeable contribution to the farm, it produces much pig
feed and biomass that is used for a variety of purposes and
assists in other ways. So to be more accurate the above
production is from 550ac.

I would be interested to know what can be done by conventional
means. The comparison would be very difficult to make fair I
think because the conventional system uses many external inputs
and would have trouble matching that diversity of outputs. I
suspect that just measured in calories per acre the intensive
monoculture might win. The whole point of this is that you can
only do that for a limited amount of time with many inputs and
many unwanted side effects. Not to mention that man does not
live by bread (or high fructose corn syrup) alone.

Fair comment David, but then there is a much higher cost to the
quality of life for the animals? I'm sure that you, like me,
have seen intensive operations such a feed lots and caged
chooks.


That was one of the side effects I had in mind. We have chook
sheds for meat birds in the district. Ten thousand or twenty in
a
shed with a dirt floor with just enough room to move between the
feed and the water. Lights on half the night to get them to eat
more. The workers wear breathing apparatus to clean out the
sheds
and it will make you puke at 400m on a hot night. The eagles
dine
well on those who get trodden under. Nuff said.


Indeed. I've been to a feed lot and I had the same reaction
although this was probably one of the better run ones. I'd turn
vegetarian if our local buthcer sourced his meat at places like
that but I can see his 'feed lot' (for want of a better
description as it's jsut his farm) from the road and his cattle
have quite a nice spot for the final finish on feed before they
take the trip to the abattoir. (sp?)

I grew up on a poultry farm and my mother refused to have any
cages on the place with the exception of a row of 10 where she
used to put birds that were off colour and needed to be taken
away from the bullying tactics of the rest of the flock. In the
50s and 60s when other poultry farmers were moving to cages and
proud of it, we were free ranging. We once had a city person
come back to us and complain about the eggs they bought off us.
According to them, the eggs were 'off' and had to be thrown out
because they had 'very yellow yolks'.

In those days it meant the chooks had a varied diet not just
pellet chook food. A question that you would know, is the yellow
yolk still such an indicator or is it emulated these days by diet
additives?

That is one of those 'it depends' answers as in, it depends ont he
feed.

If you feed them on kitchen scraps (not recommended as that isn't
nutritious enough) then free ranging (as opposed to keeping
confined) will change the colour of the yolk. Pellets contain a
yellowing agent, but apparently that yellow isn't carried through
so that in baked goods show up the yellowing. Yolks that are
yellow as a result of the feed they find outside does hang on
through the baking process so that the baked goods (like say a
butter cake) will appear more yellow. I've not done these tests
myself but there was a long article on it (with comparative pics)
in one of the 'Australasian Poultry' mags a couple of years ago.
A great little magazine and as cheap as chips.


My food books say the yellow of the yolk is due to xanthophylls
which come from plants, typically lucerne and corn. Not having
chook books I do this backwards. Apparently corn feed is also
responsible for the yellow skin and fat found in some "organic" meat
birds.

Besides having a yoke that looks like an apricot, instead of a
lemon, real eggs have a viscosity to them that factory produced
eggs don't.

Is the height and viscosity of the egg contents a result of diet and
health of the chook or a sign of freshness, or both? The same ref
(McGee 'On Food and Cooking') says freshness has much to do with it.

Come on chook people - give me the scoop before I build the chook
house.

David

Xanthophylls come from plants to be sure, but typically lucerne and
corn? That seems like more of a production setting. They should get
the same thing just scratching on a meadow.


No doubt they would, this was from a food book not an agriculture
book.

How much land do you have? Does the mobile chicken coop offer you any
advantages? It seems that if you can build top soil Ã* la Salatin, it
would be worth your while, since it would be better at holding water.


I have toyed with the mobile coop idea. I am quite attracted to the
mandala garden where the coop move around a series of beds but I can't
see how to make it work with the succession of seasonal planting, nor
how to make it fox proof.

All I know from eggs is that we get our eggs from a friend who turns
her chickens out to pasture during the day. They get a supplement to
replace calcium, and to my understanding that is all they get. The
eggs are fresh, and as I said, the yolks are the color of apricots.
My biggest surprise was when I had my blood work done (at least once
a year) while I was eating the eggs, my cholesterol had dropped. The
eggs were the only variable that came to mind.


I will allow my chooks to range over the pasture during the day but
first I have to build a secure coop for them at night or the fox will
have them.

Anyway, if you look at p.265 in Omnivore's Dilemma, you'll see a
description of "real" eggs, and it is what I'm used to. If we can't
get out friend's eggs, I stop eating eggs.


I am a serious cook that's why I read books like McGee. My
understanding is that the qualities that he praises are mainly from
freshness.

I don't know what it is with Garden Banter, either. I'm used to Brits
in other groups, and they aren't nearly as, . . uh, rustic as the
ones that we attract.


Rustic people are smarter than this lot. It's a puzzle.

David
My eggs have an deep orange yolk, the shells are thick and the eggs have
a rich taste. I have dropped them to the floor and have not cracked
enough to leak out.
Also I have to keep the eggs in the fridge for a week if I want to hard
boil them.
Fresh eggs out of the henhouse are great for frying and other uses.
Except hard boiling them, the shells are like glued to egg whites. After
a week in the fridge the shell comes off easily after hard boiling. It
has do with PH levels, eggs are porous and lose some of their carbon
dioxide. I learned about waiting a week from the book "Cookwise by
Shirley O. Corriher" page 198. Book is on the science of
cooking.ISBN-10: 0688102298
http://www.amazon.com/CookWise-Succe...3057470&sr=1-1

--
Enjoy Life... Dan L

In article ,
"songbird" wrote:

Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
FarmI wrote:
Billy wrote:

Well, in this case, it would be prairie grass (reflecting Salatin's
pasture),

What sort of species are you talking about when you say 'prairie
grass'? The reason why I ask is that the You-tube clips of Salatin's
place doesn't look like anything I'd call a 'prairie'. He looks
like he's got a farm on quite rich land in a well protected area.
'Prairies' to me suggest very open and exposed locations and the
grasses there would, TMWOT, be much tougher and less nutritious than
in good pasture land. I might be talking through my hat 'cos I
haven't got a clue about US farms, but that's what I'd expect here
in Oz if we were looking at farms of differing capacities.

Having another bi-polar day? I just loves the way you flog that
strawman.

that wasn't me (FarmI is quote level not me, i
am quote level )


right, anyone talking about grassland production in
the eastern seaboard of the USA being equivalent
to what happens on the prairies is full of it.

If you take the time to read the quote, you will notice that it says,
"similar enough". That takes us from "equals" to "approximates"
which, a sane person would agree, don't mean the same thing.

yea, but i'm pretty sure the difference between
growth on the prairie vs. eastern grassland
is closer to an order of magnitude which to me
is a significant difference not so easily ignored.


the time
scale difference isn't minor and probably heavily
depends upon the average annual rainfall.
Time scale for what?

for building topsoil. one inch a year on the eastern
grassland (reasonably heavily managed otherwise
it converts to woodland) as compared to how
much per year on the prairie.


the soil of the prairies was probably produced over
the period of time after the last ice-age. it isn't that
thick. if it could accumulate at a rate of an inch a
year it would be much deeper...

Best guess is 500 years/inch to produce prairie topsoil which was
approximately 10" thick when Europeans showed up..

wow, that's 5x worse than what i thought it
was. but i'd not looked into that specific
detail yet. i'm just noodling about numbers
and wondering why some things don't seem
to add up right about certain claims.


ok, so let's return to the eastern seaboard and
wonder why the topsoil in unmolested places isn't
deeper? if it can be so productive why isn't it?
because it is woodland and not grassland and
unmanaged woodlands cycle carbon but do not
sequester once it's reached maturity.

Actually, it takes a pine forest, roughly, 50 years to develop 1/16"
of topsoil.

i wonder if anyone has broken down how
much of that is char.


very little
is sequestered and that would be because of fires
that char and thus turn the carbon into a form not
easily consumed...

The sequestered CO2 in eastern forests is charcoal?

if we're talking carbon effectively removed from
the atmosphere and not easily returned via rot
then yes. didn't you say something like 55,000
years? that's sequestered.

a forest at maturity is not sequestering much in
the way of carbon, it's cycling it (i.e. i agree with
DHS).


if trees and forests were so good for carbon
gathering and keeping the soils of the Amazon would
be deep and fertile, but they are not unless you
find the places that were altered by the natives in
prehistorical times.

And don't forget the warm weather, and heavy rains that wash the
quickly decomposing organics out of the laterite soils, unless you
find the places that were altered by the indigenous prior to 1492.

not forgotten, it just seems that if
the forests were so good at sequestering
carbon in the soil (that is what we were
talking about was soil building) then the
Amazon would be much different than it
is and the eastern USoA would have
much thicker soils too than it has.


so this says that reforestation is barking up the
wrong tree when it comes to CO2 sequestration
and rebuilding topsoil.

Ah . . . hmmmm? Who said anything about reforestation? Not that it's a
bad idea, and we do need to stop cutting them down. You silly goose,
the proposition was returning the farm soil to permanent ground
cover, like you might use to graze cattle on, and then run out some
hypothetical mobile chicken coops (hypothetical chickens included) to
do clean up duty on the cow flops from the hypothetical cattle.

reforestation is what happens to eastern land when
left alone. so to keep it from turning to forest means
some kind of management (which means energy
expenditure of some type to keep it clear of trees
be that via grazing or mechanical means the effort
is the same no matter what). grazing unfortunately
does not keep land clear.


So we got our farmers switching from grain crops to meat production.
This in turn leads to:

i'd say that the stats say we don't need more meat, we
need more exercise and more fruits and veggies.


1) cessation of the use of chemical fertilizers, which encourage some
bacteria to devour the organic material in the soil (topsoil)

yes, this is good to do, 100% with ya on this one.


2) stops the release of NO2 from the fertilizer, which is a greenhouse
gas.

in addition to the energy taken to produce the fertilizer to
begin with.


3) stops the pollution of ground and run off water, thus improving
the quality of drinking water, and cutting off the cause of ocean
dead zones.

i think those are not eliminated with our current river
management, wastewater and drainage systems.
reduced would be nice though -- i agree as it would
return large areas of the Gulf to productive use.


4) At the very least, what remaining topsoil would be protected by the
permanent ground cover, and the is the expectation that we may add
to it.

this is good and i'm all for it, but i don't see how
you get from point A to B without a massive labor
shift. not many of the kids today have any plans of
working on the farm at minimum wage with no
benefits. only some small percent of the people
have the dedication this type of change takes.

even for me to go all organic would be
tough here, but i'm doing better each year.
that's all i can do and try to get people
around me to see easy things they can do
to improve.


5) Additional topsoil (because there is more of it, and it is made
from organic material) would effectively sequester CO2 to some
extent. Again the question is where to put the decimal point, not
"if one is needed". Peter Bane (google the name) puts the
sequestration potential at being equivalent to the US production of
CO2. 6) Increased topsoil leads to increased absorption of rain fall,
recharging aquifers, and reducing chances of flooding.

this is only partially true. large sections of agricultural land
is ditched, drained, drain tubed and trenched. to restore it
to the previous state would involve a lot more than letting it
go back to green and then putting livestock on it to keep
it short and having chickens pick their piles apart. for
mosquito control too. you're not going to get people
back to where they'll want more mosquitoes (even if i
think the current spraying program is poisonous, dangerous
and wasteful -- i'm not going to get many others around
here to agree with me as it is very flat and swampy with
a lot of mosquitoes if left alone).

add to that the runoff troubles from streets, parking
lots, storm sewers, rooftops, and then add the waste
from treatment plants and then make it even worse
by draining all the lowlands and farming them, building
levees so the rivers cannot flood, etc. well, we're nowhere
near getting a handle on groundwater restoration.

getting the farmers to stop dumping nitrogen is only
a small part of the problem. getting people to stop
burning ditches would do a lot too (stopping erosion),
getting people to stop using pesticides would accomplish
a lot more for the long term health, nitrogen is quite
simple a poison in comparison to the others. we've
got timebombs ticking on a long slow fuse. at least
we are looking now, but so many years from now
it will take to fix and trillions of dollars. instead we
will spend them on wars in far off places to support
criminally insane or corrupt gov'ts, etc.


7) Increased meat production on grassland instead of in CAFOs, means
that 70% of antibiotics in this country won't go into meat animals,
thereby creating antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.

i know, once i heard about that use of antibiotics
i got sick to my stomach. f'n idiots. it should be
banned outright immediately (along with feeding
chickens arsenic, feeding cattle bubble gum or
any other animal byproducts, etc.).

but i disagree about meat production needing to be
increased.


8) Less grain will be needed to divert into CAFOs

fine by me.


9) Fewer CAFOs means fewer stinking lagoons of animal excrement, that
won't be dumped into public water ways, or find its way into ground
water.

yea, we had someone doing a feedlot down the road
a ways. luckily we are miles away and not downwind.
but i felt sorry for any neighbors. a dairy farm smells
good when run correctly. a CAFO smells nasty.

there is a bison farmer on the opposite corner
and the CAFO is now returned to corn and soybeans
so i'm thinking the corn and soybeans are a better
tradeoff.


10) Gives us a good source of complete proteins (beef and chickens),
for healthy, growing kids.

too much protein already for most people.
the kids (who don't usually eat it anyways)
they like hotdogs, macaroni and cheese
and ice-cream -- nothing green please.


So to summarize; permanent ground cover on existing farms,

won't work for many crops, they don't do well
with any competition -- variety in diet being important
and i like some of those grains. if they can eventually
come up with perennial versions that would be great.
i know that is being worked on. that would go a
long ways towards stablising the soils and improving
the soil community/structure and it would also reduce
weed troubles if you could get a field going full of
mixed grains and legumes which could fruit at
different times and thus be harvested at different
times using different means. we're only starting on
this sort of figuring.

so while i agree that bare soil can be troublesome,
it can be worked around in some ways and at
other times it's necessary (to switch crops or to
deal with certain types of weeds -- beans and
sow thistle being specific examples) and then
there are certain perennials and annuals that only
get going in disturbed soils. do you suddenly
want to remove that type of plant from the
diversity of life?


which is
used to raise beef, more or less along the lines of Joel Salatin's
paradigm, results in clean food, clean air, clean water, and just
might save the world.

no, probably won't. it would help some things for sure,
but it is only scratching the surface.


Other than the above points, I think you made a very cogent response,
where you had your facts straight ;O)




songbird

Too much lack of content to deal with tonight, back at you in the AM.

Save the Forest Litter.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/m...515308172.html

"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message

I have toyed with the mobile coop idea. I am quite attracted to the
mandala garden where the coop move around a series of beds but I can't see
how to make it work with the succession of seasonal planting, nor how to
make it fox proof.

David you might find this site of interest:
http://permaculturewest.org.au/ipc6/...ers/index.html

All I know from eggs is that we get our eggs from a friend who turns
her chickens out to pasture during the day. They get a supplement to
replace calcium, and to my understanding that is all they get. The
eggs are fresh, and as I said, the yolks are the color of apricots.
My biggest surprise was when I had my blood work done (at least once
a year) while I was eating the eggs, my cholesterol had dropped. The
eggs were the only variable that came to mind.


I will allow my chooks to range over the pasture during the day but first
I have to build a secure coop for them at night or the fox will have them.

The ******* foxes will also take chooks during the day so don't be too
convinced that a night house will be all you need.

"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
FarmI wrote:
Yep, corn does give yellow fat. dunno what gives the yoldk it's
yellow colour in pellets though. do you want me to dig out my
A'Asian Poultry mag with that article in it about yolk colour and
give you a precis?

I am interested but don't go to too much trouble.

OK. I have to dig through them to let someone on another ng know aobut why
lime is used in the henhouse so when I do that for her, I'll look for the
article for you.

Before you even start that, pay strict attention to rats and how to
control and exclude them. But really chooks are easy.

I already have a master plan for the erradication of the rodents since
they ate the weather seal off my shed door to get in and they attack the
produce on the verandah. It doesn't work of course but I do fight them to
a draw. People comment on how generous I am with feed for them. Them
pellets ain't chook food.

Unlike mice, rats are much harder to kill off. We've done the hose pipe
from the car exhaust down the tunnels, the Jack Russells and a shovel and
posion but the sods keep coming back. I'm advised by the chooky people I
know that traps don't work like they do for mice. I think far more concrete
might be the next strategy.

Keep the foxes
away and wild birds out of the night yard/feed area. Keep the
pullets confined when you get them till they get used to their night
house and yard and then let them out to range (Ours range in an
orchard which is prolly about a quarter of an acre). I wouldn't
fully free range if you want to have veg though or toehrwise you
wont' have veg. They will do a good job of spreading horse plops.

Foxes are a real problem, such destructive buggers, the chook house will
be metal with buried barriers, the yard will have a loop off the electric
fence around it as well.

Also lay about 30 cm of wire out from the fence towards where the foxes
would be coming from. They don't think to step back and then to burrow
under so it's more efficient than burying it. Also use a heavy guage
netting on the bottom part of the pen. The idiot who built ours used a very
light guage and the foxes worry at it till they get a hole and you'd be
surprised at how tiny a hole is needed to let a fox through. I've had to
progressively go round that blasted orchard and add new wire in addition to
the old stuff.

How do you stop them scratching all the mulch off your fruit trees?

I don't. I chuck piles of weeds under the fruit trees and the chooks go in
and forage and scratch it around and while they're doing that they're
leaving droppings and getting rid of excess grass growth. My garden is not
a pristine, neat place but it is productive. Me and the willing but
ignorant undergardener have 2 farms to look after and 2 houses and 2 gardens
so there is not a lot of time for 'neat'.