If you have only one or two young trees that need protecting, installing trunk guards won’t take long. But if you’ve planted an orchard with a dozen or two young fruit trees, it’s a job that requires planning and a meaningful time commitment. (And if you have four dozen young fruit trees, like I do, you had better commit a couple of long afternoons to the job.)
After six years of installing trunk guards around my trees, I’ve learned a thing or three about pitfalls to avoid. Here are some best practices to keep in mind when installing trunk guards ahead of winter.
Don’t Wrap Your Trees Too Early
You might be tempted to get a head start on winter and install trunk guards in late summer or early fall. This can be a fine approach with some types of trunk guards (if they leave room for the trunk to grow). But if you’re wrapping anything tightly around trunks, resist the temptation to start early.
You want to wrap the trees when they’re dormant. If the tree is still growing and the trunk tries to expand while wrapped in cloth, you’ll damage the bark.
For the same reason, you’ll want to remove any tight guards in late winter or early spring, before the trees wake up.
Wrap Before It’s Unpleasantly Cold
The above advice notwithstanding, for your own comfort you’ll want to start getting your trees protected before warm weather has completely deserted your region. I remember a year when I waited too long to tackle the project and wound up installing tree trunk guards on a dreary winter day when the high temperature was in the low 30s. I was struggling to use waterproof electrical tape while wearing bulky winter gloves … definitely not so easy.
Wait until the trees are heading into dormancy, but pick a day that’s warm enough so you can work without bulky gloves and enjoy the process.
Make Sure You Have Enough Supplies
This is an important step, because you don’t want to start installing trunk guards on the perfect day and realize too late that you’re short of supplies. One year, I ran out of my preferred electrical tape and had to switch and use regular packaging tape instead. It turned out to be insufficiently waterproof, and by the time spring rolled around my trees were shedding their trunk guards.
Consider also that your trees will grow each year. So even if you had a sufficient quantity of suitably-sized guards/wraps last year, that might not be the case this year. I use corrugated plastic guards that measure 2 feet tall by 8 inches wide, and when my trees were young a single guard would wrap comfortably around each trunk. But now that the trees are older, their trunks are thicker and I have to tape two guards together to wrap around a single trunk.
Keep these three tips in mind, and the trunks of your young trees will be thoroughly guarded before you know it.
Hog butchering can be a family event that teaches essential skills while also making the process less stressful for the animal. Kate Debord of RG Prime Meats, a slaughterhouse in Bledsoe County, Tennessee, has been butchering the hogs of Sequatchie Valley farmers for about 15 years and shares her tips and best practices with anyone interested in learning more about processing a hog at home.
Before You Begin
Debord recommends familiarizing yourself with the slaughtering process by first viewing YouTube videos and, if the opportunity presents itself, even watching the slaughtering process in person. And, as the process can be time-consuming, she says that it should only be started on a day when you have plenty of time.
Opinions on the necessity of withholding feed, done to lessen the chances of contaminating the carcass with feces and to make gutting easier, before slaughtering vary. Debord doesn’t see this as necessary. Water can and should be offered regardless of your choice.
As you prepare for hog butchering day, you’ll need to make sure you have the following equipment ready and available.
Firearm—Debord recommends a .22 rifle.
Multiple sharp boning, skinning and fillet knives plus a knife sharpener. For safety’s sake, always try to work with your knife blade facing away from you.
Cleaver—For the skull
Gut hook
Bell scraper
Reciprocating saw or hand saw or both
Propane burner or other heat source capable of heating water to 150 degrees F. You may also choose to heat your water over an open wood fire.
Thermometers—For checking water and carcass temperature
100-gallon scalding tank or barrel—Barrels can be used upright, as is, or cut to fashion into a bath.
Rope capable of supporting the carcass, chain or meat hook to suspend the carcass. You may also choose to use a gambrel for hanging and dipping.
Tractor with frontend loader or another type of pully system suitable for a tree or barn rafters to suspend the carcass in the air. The tractor may also be useful in helping you to move the carcass to your processing area.
Table
Cooler or refrigerator
Buckets—These will be used to aid in a pour-over method of scalding should your barrel not be large enough to accommodate the entire hog. You will also need buckets for the inedible parts.
Weather & Location
Because you’ll need to cool the meat to a temperature of 40 degrees F as quickly as possible after slaughtering, the process is best left to days with cooler temperatures.
Next, at-home hog butchering requires a large amount of water for washing down the hog before the actual processing begins, during the processing itself and for cleanup afterward. Position yourself near a water source.
Your processing setup can be as simple as a barrel of water positioned on pallets over a fire in a clean, grassy area, for sanitation and ease of cleanup. Debord, however, recommends a concrete pad if one is available. She says that you’ll also need plenty of space to move around.
axentevlad/Adobe Stock
Step by Step
So that your water has ample opportunity to heat, you’ll need to begin the process of heating it even before you dispatch or kill your hog. To accommodate the hog and water, your drum or barrel for skinning the carcass should not be completely full.
Thoughts vary on whether or not hogs should be separated before killing the hog you intend to process, but both are acceptable methods. Regardless, Debord recommends shooting directly between the eyes. Immediately afterward, the carotid artery should be cut allowing the hog to bleed out. It’s important to complete this step while the heart is still beating.
This process can take several minutes. When movement ceases, check for any remaining signs of consciousness.
At this stage, the carcass can be suspended off the ground to help expedite the bleeding-out process. When preparing to suspend, position a rope or chain around the hocks and behind the dewclaws. Alternatively, you can use a knife to make a slit through the skin and the tendon in the hock (being careful not to sever it), running your rope, chain or another device through rather than around.
Regardless, you should test your work to make certain that your carcass doesn’t fall.
Once the carcass has bled out, you’re ready to scald it by lowering it into your now fully heated water inside a barrel or drum. Using a tractor for suspension during the bleed-out process as well as for lowering (and later raising) the carcass into and out of your hot water used for scraping can make the process easier. But a pully system also works well.
A water temperature of 150 degrees F ensures the ease of hair removal during the scraping process, as does keeping the carcass moving to ensure that all parts are being accessed by the hot water. After a few minutes, you should notice that the hair portion should easily begin to come off. This indicates that the carcass is ready to be removed from the water and scraped in the direction of the hair growth. You may find a bell scraper useful here as it pulls the hair out rather than just scraping it off.
If, due to cooling, the hair becomes difficult to scrape or remove, you can apply more hot water to reheat it. Debord says that a torch can be used to burn off any hair that did not come off during the scraping process. The carcass should be rinsed once the process is complete.
Debord prefers the process of skinning to scalding but when doing so recommends staying as close to the hide as possible to save all your bacon. Generally, the process of skinning is started by peeling off the skin between the hind legs and then moving to the anal cavity, and finally continuing to the center of the hog where the skin should then be opened down the middle.
If the hog was male, the penis is removed as part of the skinning process. It’s recommended that you thoroughly review a YouTube video to ensure that this process is done correctly, as failing to do so could lead to contaminating your meat with urine.
During skinning, use a sharp knife to cut between the skin and the fat until all the skin is removed. Be sure to change out dull knives for sharp ones throughout the process.
Once skinned, you can sever the head at its base with your reciprocating saw or hand saw. You may also find it useful to use a cleaver here. While your saw will be used to sever bone, you should use a sharp knife to sever the windpipe and esophagus. The feet can also be removed at this time.
After your carcass is skinned, you are ready to gut it. You should begin the process by making an incision between the two hind legs and working straight down, first in a narrow strip then slowly widening it.
Begin by cutting around the anus. Provide ample clearance around it to ensure that you don’t puncture it. You should also make sure that you’re cutting alongside rather than into the ham. At this stage, the tail can be removed.
Once you have removed the anus you can begin the process of opening the body cavity. During the process, avoid puncturing the intestines and the bladder with your knife or gut hook. Instead, use your clean hands for organ removal, pulling down and out of the carcass. While you may need to use a knife to loosen connective tissue, you must be careful not to cut into organs such as the intestines or the stomach.
As you near completion, you’ll see the diaphragm muscle that separates the digestive organs from the heart and lungs. By following the esophagus through the diaphragm, you’ll be able to separate it from the trachea, which will allow you to easily remove the remaining digestive organs. These can then be placed into one of your buckets.
Next, use one of your knives to sever the connective tissue of the diaphragm. Then, follow the vein that runs alongside the backbone cutting between the vein and the backbone toward what was the head of the carcass. You can then loosen the connective tissue necessary to remove the heart, lungs and trachea at one time.
Now you are ready to halve the carcass. Start by cutting between the hind legs, then split the sternum leaving the neck intact to hold the two halves together.
When finished, Debord says to spray the carcass down from top to bottom with 100-degree F water. It is now ready to be cooled to a temperature of 40 degrees F for 24 hours. This process should be started as quickly as possible. If you have refrigeration space, the carcass can be cooled in its entirety. If not, place the carcass on a table and cut it into the primal cuts of the shoulder, loin, belly and legs.
For sanitation, pieces should be wrapped in plastic during the cooling process. After 24 hours, the hog carcass will be ready for further butchering into cuts.
Finally, you are ready for cleanup, including the disposal of any parts of the hog you don’t intend to use. Debord says that while the hog butchering process is time-consuming, it isn’t terribly difficult to learn. When you’re finished you can look back on your day with a sense of pride and accomplishment.
More Information
Lard & Organs
The fat lining the abdominal cavity is used in making lard. If you wish to use it, your hand, rather than a knife, is the better choice to separate the fat from the muscle. Afterward, you can set it aside in one of your buckets for later processing.
Depending upon your needs, many hog organs can also be safely processed during butchering, including the liver, heart and kidneys. These, too, can be set aside into one of your buckets for later use.
Choosing Your Hog
Kate Debord of RG Prime Meats, a slaughterhouse in Bledsoe County, Tennessee, recommends a barrow (castrated male hog) or a sow rather than a boar for butchering as, in her opinion, boars tend to produce tougher meat.
For slaughtering she also prefers breeds such as Berkshires, Durocs and Yorkshire since, unlike some other breeds, these tend to produce more meat than fat. She says that the ideal live weight for a slaughter hog is 250 to 300 pounds.
Processing
Decide beforehand how you’ll ultimately want to your hog butchering to go once the initial processing is complete. Ask yourself whether you want mostly sausage, pulled pork, cuts or some combination of these. For example, for sausage, you’ll need a grinder, bags and seasoning. Kate Debord of RG Prime Meats recommends vacuum sealing for your cuts.
This article originally appeared in the Sept./Oct. 2023 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.
A national animal health goal in sight with a post-Halloween-twist? How perfect! Let’s take a closer look.
Scrapie is a fatal, degenerative neurologic disease that affects sheep and goats. It is one of a handful of diseases classified as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). TSE may ring a bell—these diseases are also known as prion diseases.
About Prions
Prions are thought to be the causative agent but are still little understood. They aren’t living infectious organisms like bacteria or viruses (although there is debate as to whether viruses are technically alive!) but rather abnormal pathologic agents that seem to induce abnormal folding in normal cells. This leads to holes in the tissue, which is usually the brain.
In severe cases, the tissue resembles a sponge, hence the term “spongiform”. Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is probably the most familiar prion disease. Chronic wasting disease of elk and deer is another prion disease.
The Scourge of Scrapie
But back to brains, specifically sheep and goat brains. Scrapie has impacted the U.S.’s small ruminant industry for several decades, first identified in a herd in 1947. The National Scrapie Eradication Program was developed by the USDA and its name says it all.
However, eradication is a tall order, and scrapie is a tricky disease.
For one, scrapie has a long incubation period. Animals typically show clinical signs two to five years after initial infection. Secondly, some animals can be infected and transmit the disease but don’t show signs themselves. Thirdly, diagnosing scrapie is done primarily by sampling the brain, which means the animal must be sacrificed (live animal sampling can be done via lymph node sampling, but this is also invasive).
These factors together make scrapie a challenge to identify and eradicate. To accomplish this, the USDA needs your help.
Clinical signs associated with scrapie are neurologic due to the damage within the central nervous system. Affected animals may progressively become nervous or aggressive. Some will intensely rub themselves on solid objects, as if they were extremely itchy. This is where the name “scrapie” comes from, since they rub so hard, they scrape and damage their wool and skin.
They may have tremors, press their heads on solid objects, or stare up at the sky, called “star-gazing.” Significant weight loss is also common.
There is no treatment for infected animals, so the progressive nature of these signs ends in the inability to move and subsequent death. The degenerative and untreatable nature of this disease illustrates why it’s important both for the health of the immediate flock and the small ruminant industry as a whole to eradicate it.
Help!
The current eradication program is based on identifying animals in order to ease tracing if needed and surveillance, mostly done at slaughter. Small ruminant farmers are strongly encouraged to participate in official identification and are required to do so if their animals cross state lines.
USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) provides the official tags (there is a small fee). Age of the animal and its ultimate use (sale, slaughter, etc.) should go into the decision whether to participate in this identification program. A handy decision tree is available here.
Surveillance is the second big part of the program, and here’s the most recent USDA push. If you have an animal showing possible signs of scrapie or you have an adult sheep or goat that dies or is euthanized from these signs or unknown causes, contact your veterinarian. She can then contact your local APHIS Veterinary Services vet who will be able to provide supplies for official sample collecting.
The annual sampling goal set for the U.S. is 40,000 samples collected from sheep and goats 18 months of age or older to help find the final cases of scrapie and stamp out this disease.
There is a lot more to scrapie than what we’ve gone over here. Check out this excellent overview from USDA for more detailed information.
Lacto-fermentation is a nutritious and low-energy way to preserve the harvest. Fermentation adds probiotics and taste to vegetables while preserving the vitamin content, making it far healthier than canning or freezing. In this article, I’ll share my recommendations for getting the tastiest and most reliable ferments.
Salt Choices
For best results, use a finely ground unrefined salt without additives. Himalayan salt, Celtic Sea Salt and Redmond Real Salt are good choices. If you can’t find any of these salts, choose an ordinary sea salt or rock salt. Make sure that “salt” is the only ingredient, though, and there aren’t any anticaking agents, iodine or other additives.
Most fermenting recipes call for unrefined salt, which has a higher amount of trace minerals and less sodium. If you are using a refined salt such as generic sea salt or rock salt, reduce the amount of salt to 3⁄4 teaspoon for every teaspoon of salt in the recipe.
Salt Amount
Most self-brining ferments such as sauerkraut call for between 2 and 3 percent of the vegetable weight in unrefined salt. While 2 percent is good if you prefer less salt and are going to use your ferment quickly or store it in the fridge, 3 percent can be a better choice if you’re fermenting in hot weather. It’s also better if you’ll be storing your ferment for many months in a root cellar or unheated room.
To get the correct weight, weigh the cabbage once the cores and outer leaves are removed.
For every pound of vegetables, use 1 tablespoon of salt for 2 percent or 1 1/2 tablespoons for 3 percent. For vegetables in a brine, such as pickles, around 3 percent salt is usually best, although peppers do best at 3 1/2 to 5 percent. To make a 3 percent fermenting brine, use 3 tablespoons salt for every quart of water.
Kate Downham
Choose the Correct Container
The ideal container for fermentation is something that allows gases to escape but doesn’t allow oxygen in. This can range from Fido jars to airlock fermenting lids on canning jars, through to European-style fermenting crocks with water-sealing lids. If all you have are regular canning jars, you can still ferment in them by “burping” the jar once a day during the active bubbly stage of fermentation by carefully lifting the lid slightly to allow excess gas to escape while minimizing the amount of air being allowed in.
For best results, no matter which container you are using, make sure you put enough vegetables in it so that it’s filled almost to the top but not too close. Excess air in the jar can cause the same problems as having a jar open to the air. I fill my jars up to where the jar starts to taper inward toward the lid.
Once the bubbling phase of the ferment is over within a couple of weeks, you can pack your ferments into smaller jars or change the airlock lids into regular lids.
Keep Things Clean
Follow rules of food hygiene when fermenting, such as having clean surfaces and clean hands. Before fermenting, make sure your jars are very clean, and if they’ve previously been used for kombucha or other yeasty ferments (or if you just want to be extra careful), heat sterilize them with very hot water, a dishwasher or in an oven at 230 degrees F until all surfaces are very hot.
Once you’ve opened your jar, always use a clean spoon for serving it, and don’t leave it open for any longer than you must. If you don’t go through your ferments very quickly, you can decant them from your larger fermenting jar into smaller jars that you will go through within a month.
Fermentation Stages
Within one day to one week of making your ferment, the bubbly active phase will begin. Some ferments are more active than others. For very active ferments, you’ll see bubbles coming up the jar, and through the airlock if you’re using one. This stage is best done at between 60 and 80 degrees F. Higher temperatures will mean much faster fermentation, and temperatures lower than 50 degrees F may struggle.
The bubbling will die down after a few days, but the fermentation is not over then. If you continue to ferment your vegetables in cool room temperature or cellar conditions of 46 to 60 degrees F, they’ll continue to develop more probiotics and flavor, with the highest amount of probiotics found at around six weeks.
Kate Downham
Sauerkraut Suggestions
For basic sauerkraut recipes (and variations), use the following guidelines.
For every quart jar:
2 pounds cabbage (weighed after cores and outer leaves removed)
2 to 3 tablespoons finely ground unrefined salt without additives
optional tablespoon whey or sauerkraut juice
Finely shred the cabbage with a knife, mix it in a large bowl with the salt and optional whey, mix well with your hands to allow the salt to cover all the cabbage pieces. Leave it to sit for at least 15 minutes to allow the salt to draw out moisture, then use your hands to squash up the cabbage, squeezing it to form more brine.
Taste, and add extra salt if it needs it. It should taste well-seasoned or slightly too salty (the sourness from fermenting will balance that out later). If there’s no saltiness to it, add more.
Pack into a fermenting jar, pressing down with each layer to help the brine rise to the top.
Place the jar on a towel or a tray to catch drips and keep at warm room temperature for a few days. Within one to three days in warm weather, the kraut should expand and bubble, and after a week or two, it’ll settle down. Once it’s settled down, move to larder or root cellar conditions, and keep for up to a year.
Variations
Salad-in-a-jar Kraut: Add a medium grated carrot, a few green onions and an optional handful of dried seaweed.
Caraway Kraut: Mix through a tablespoon of caraway seeds.
Apple & Caraway Kraut: This is great made with red cabbage. Mix through a finely sliced small apple and a tablespoon of caraway seeds.
Fermented Turnip or Daikon: Replace all or some of the cabbage with grated or very finely sliced turnip or daikon radish. This ferment is excellent with some ginger or caraway seeds added.
Whole Fermented Vegetables in Brine
This is my favorite way to preserve small tomatoes and can be used for any single vegetable or a combination of vegetables. Cucumber pickles can be a bit tricky to get right, so follow my instructions for the best fermented pickles.
Ingredients:
vegetables of your choice
filtered water
optional whey or sauerkraut juice
unrefined salt without additives
herbs or spices of your choice (around 1 tablespoon of spices of a handful of herbs for every quart jar)
For fermented whole cucumbers: Trim the blossom end (or both ends) off the cucumbers. (The blossom end contains enzymes that make the cucumbers go mushy.) Add your choice of tannin-containing plants to each quart jar—either half a teaspoon of black tea leaves, 2 or 3 bay leaves, or a leaf from an oak tree or horseradish. The tannins in this will help keep the cucumbers crispy.
If your cucumbers are large, pierce the skins with a fork a few times to help the brine get into them. Pack into fermenting jars, filling only up to the shoulders, then follow the directions below for the brine.
Add a tablespoon of mustard seeds to each jar, along with extra flavorings if you like, such as a handful of fresh dill flowers or leaves, a teaspoon of red pepper flakes and/or a clove of garlic.
For all other vegetables: Leave whole or cut into pieces. Add your choice of spices and herbs, and tannin-containing leaves (see cucumber instructions) if you wish, and pack it all into jars or a fermenting crock. Fill only to the ‘shoulders’ of the jar.
For the brine: Mix 1 quart water with 3 to 5 tablespoons of unrefined salt and an optional 2 tablespoons of whey or sauerkraut juice.
For short-term fermenting, 3 tablespoons of salt to each quart of water is fine. For fermenting in hot weather or for serious food preservation, 4 or 5 tablespoons can be a good idea.
Pour the brine over the vegetables, leaving at least 1 inch of headspace. If the veggies are floating above the level of the brine, use a fermenting weight, or press them down with a cabbage leaf and weigh it all down with a heat-sterilized rock. Make sure that the cabbage leaf is completely below the brine, too. If vegetables float above the brine level, then they may get mold or yeasts that will prevent them from preserving well.
Place the jars on a towel or a tray to catch drips and keep at warm room temperature for a few days. Depending on your choice of vegetables, you may notice bubbling, or it may not be very active. After a week, or once the bubbling has settled down, move to larder or root cellar conditions, or refrigerate.Vegetables to ferment in brine include: turnips, carrots, whole cabbages, radishes, beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, cucumber, zucchini, green beans, sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, onion and fresh herbs.
Other additions include fresh herbs (alone or in combination)—such as dill (flowers or leaves), parsley, oregano, thyme or cilantro—and spices (alone or in combination) such as mustard seeds, caraway seeds, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, cumin seeds and red pepper flakes.
Home-fermented foods are packed with probiotics that help to balance the gut microbiome, boost immunity and improve digestion. Regular consumption of fermented foods has also been linked to reduced inflammation and a lower risk of chronic diseases.
So what’s keeping you? Start fermenting your harvest today!
Kate Downham
More Information
Fresh Is Best
The fresher the vegetables are that you begin with, the better they’ll taste and contain more natural moisture to make their own brine. Ferments can be made with stored vegetables, too, but I find the reliability and taste of using fresh vegetables make it worthwhile to start fermenting shortly after harvest.
Wild Fermentation vs. Starter Cultures
Wild fermentation is using the natural bacteria on the vegetables to create their own probiotic cultures. This can often have excellent results, especially when using very fresh vegetables.
When using older vegetables, or if you’ve previously had trouble with wild fermentation, it can be helpful to use a starter, such as a couple of tablespoons of whey or brine from a successful batch of sauerkraut.
To make whey, strain some natural yogurt though cheesecloth, pour off any milky stuff that collects on the top, and the clear yellow liquid underneath can be used to add helpful bacteria to kick start your fermentations.
Brine Levels
Self-brining vegetables, when pressed in the jar, should ideally be covered with brine. If enough brine doesn’t form on its own for self-brining vegetables, make a little brine of your own by combining 1/4 teaspoon salt with 1/2 cup of water and a splash of optional whey.
This article originally appeared in the Sept./Oct. 2023 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.
Infused apple pie whiskey is the perfect after-dinner dessert drink for the many upcoming holiday gatherings. It also makes a special, unique and delicious homemade gift.
Yield: 1 pint
Ingredients
2 dehydrated apple slices
1 whole vanilla bean
1 cinnamon stick
2 cups whiskey of choice (as needed)
Instructions
To make this infused whiskey, you must first make dehydrated apple chips. You’ll only be using a couple apple chips for the recipe, so you only need to dry one apple’s worth. I do encourage you to slice up at least four apples, though, since apple chips make such delicious snacks.
Add dried apple slices and the vanilla bean to a clean pint jar. Pour whiskey over ingredients until the jar is filled. Wipe the rim of the jar with a clean towel, add the canning jar lid and tightly screw on the ring.
Keep at room temperature and out of direct sunlight. We store our infused liquors in the cupboard with the rest of our alcohol.
Tip the jar upside down every few days to blend the infusion.
Allow the fruit to infuse with the alcohol for at least two weeks before enjoying. The longer it infuses, the more flavorful it will be. Once infused, you can either strain out the solids or leave them in. It’s up to you.
To Serve
Just add 2 ounces of the infused whiskey to an ice-filled lowball and sip. Or chill the infusion before serving and drink without any ice at all—it’s that good.
This infusion isn’t one I typically mix, though you could create a cocktail out of it by topping it off with some apple juice or ginger ale, or even adding a couple ounces of it to hot cider.
“It’s so cool to understand the nuances of pigs and to be able to give them a truly good life based on what I know about them,” says Claudia Gutierrez, who runs the woman and Latina-owned High Desert Hogspastured pork venture in the city of Redmond, Oregon.
Gutierrez says that the initial instinct to start High Desert Hogs came as a reaction to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having moved from Seattle to Portland in late-2019, Gutierrez was job hunting when the pandemic struck. A combination of businesses shutting down, hiring freezes and food insecurity prompted Gutierrez to look for volunteer opportunities on local farms. This eventually inspired her to start High Desert Hogs in 2021.
Taking a moment away from hog duties, Gutierrez spoke with us about learning to communicate with the animals and the ethical basis of High Desert Hogs. We also got the scoop on how a pig named Dirty Dan helped Gutierrez fall in love with hogs.
“I found an internship program called Rogue Farm Corps that works with farms all over Oregon,” recalls Gutierrez, recapping her steps to starting High Desert Hogs.
“While participating in this internship, my host farm acquired a new boar for that season named Dirty Dan,” she continues. “At first I was terrified of getting near him for feeding and cleaning out his pen. But as the weeks and then months passed by, we developed a great friendship.”
“[Dirty Dan] came to recognize the sound of my voice when I called him. And I came to understand his moods and needs,” recalls Gutierrez. “Eventually he would come out to greet me and immediately roll over for belly rubs. I really fell in love with pigs then.”
After becoming smitten with pigs, Gutierrez began carrying out research into how commercially-raised pigs are treated. “It’s truly horrible. Pigs are the fifth smartest animal in the world—according to what I’ve read—and it’s sad to read about how poorly we humans treat them.
“So I decided I wanted to raise pigs as ethically as possible so they could have good lives and just ‘one bad moment.'”
When it comes to pig behavior, Gutierrez says the way they communicate is fascinating.
“At first, all of their grunts and snorts kind of sound the same. But as you get to know them better you start to differentiate the noises they make,” explains Gutierrez.
“When I scratch them on their backs, they make this high squealing noise that indicates pleasure or intense satisfaction,” she says. “When the mommas are ready to feed their babies, they make these short low grunting sounds and the piglets know the milk bar is open. When they are hungry, they basically sound like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. It’s just really cool to know I can speak pig!”
Reflecting on the High Desert Hogs journey to date, Gutierrez says that she feels a great connection to the pigs. Additionally, raising hogs in an ethical fashion brings about a rewarding feeling.
“Just the knowledge of where my food comes from and knowing that these pigs aren’t being fed crap and injected with hormones and unnecessary antibiotics,” says Gutierrez. “I know they’ve had a healthy and varied diet and have enjoyed their lives. And they really do taste so much better.”
Insecticides have historically been among the first tools we’ve reached for to save crops from insect damage. But integrated pest management experts stress that these should be considered only as a last line of defense. Fortunately, now more effective ways exist to wrangle insect pests and minimize the damage they can do.
To see how these big-picture pest management practices all fit together, it helps to first understand why it’s time to step away from the spray. Turns out, when pesticides are used routinely over long periods of time, they actually give problem pests an advantage over the beneficial insects that prey upon them.
That’s because insecticides kill indiscriminately, and it takes longer for some insect populations to bounce back.
“Herbivores typically grow much faster than predator insects,” says Jermaine Hinds, a technical review specialist with Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Outreach. (SARE is a USDA-funded organization hosted by the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland.)
“Predator insects are larger and they require protein, so, it’s harder to find food for them,” he says. “Meanwhile, the populations of plant-eating insects can rebound from a toxic spray event much more quickly.
“Doing that over and over again, it’s like you’re pushing the beneficial insects further back and giving the pest species a humongous head start. The pesticides inadvertently help [insect pests] to develop faster, and they often develop mutations to resist pesticides.”
But there is at least one thing crop-eating insects can’t easily get around. “Insects can’t really develop resistance to avoiding all of the predators out there,” Hinds says. That’s why attracting more of those natural predators is key. By developing a more robust ecosystem on your farm or in the garden, you can draw a wider variety of beneficial insects in greater numbers and put them to work for you.
Out & About
To get started, plan to add regular field scouting to your routine. “At least once a week, you want to get out of the truck and into the field. Take a look at your plants to see how they’re developing and see what pests or pest residues or evidence of pests may be developing,” Hinds says. “You want to do that so you can develop a relationship and a timeline of what’s happening in nature.”
In part, that means understanding when specific crops are coming in as well as which insects seem to be drawn to them and when. “You want to know what’s in your field,” Hinds says. “A lot of beneficial insects look like pests and vice versa. One of the examples I give a lot because we’re on the East Coast is the brown marmorated stink bug. It looks a lot like the spiny soldier bug, which is an important predator.”
The Mexican bean beetle, likewise, is sometimes confused with beneficial lady beetles.
(If you’re not sure just what kind of insects you have, snap some photos and send them to officials at your county or state extension office. They can help you to identify insect types as well as recommend effective pest-fighting strategies.)
As you make note of the various insects (friends and foes) you find, you should also examine their relationship to your crops and any other plants nearby.
Problems with specific insect pests are often a symptom of a greater ecological imbalance. “You want to think about why a pest is a pest and work to undermine [the pest], if you want long-term prevention,” Hinds says. “Is it because it’s a specialist on cucurbits? If your pests only go for cucurbits and there’s a huge density of cucurbits planted in one area undisturbed by any other plants, then that is screaming, ‘Hey, this is a buffet for others of my species!’ That will recruit more pests.”
Boosting Biodiversity
By adding more plant diversity to the mix, you can help to camouflage your crops from pest insects. For instance, eggplant interplanted with crimson clover can slow the movement of pests such as flea beetles. “If that clover vegetation is there, it’s much harder to find those eggplants in between the clover,” Hinds says. “So, you’re diluting the signal of your eggplant or your cash crop.”
During past field experiments, Hinds recalls, “The early season clover vegetation gave the eggplants space to get this later-season boom. The flea beetles, by the end of May or early June, weren’t really a concern anymore, and then the plants were big enough and could kind of take off from there.”
Including a more diverse grouping of plants also helps to attract predator insects that will eat the very pests plaguing your cash crops. “If I add clover, and clover attracts three bee species and two predator species, and then I add buckwheat and that adds another four species, you can see how multiple plant species can cover for the gaps in your system,” Hinds says.
Besides interplanting specific cover crops, you might also try planting some insectary borders—areas near your fields or individual garden plots intended to attract and support insects.
“Oftentimes those border areas are where the beneficial insects go to rest and recuperate, to spend the wintertime, to lay eggs and build up and then return to the field when pests are available,” Hinds says.
Of course, what plants you decide to add and where you’ll add them depends on which beneficial insects you hope to attract, which insects you already have in your habitat, and which cash crops you intend to protect. “This is a little bit experimental, because it requires knowledge of what plants grow in your area and what insects are attracted to those plants,” Hinds says.
Let’s say you want to attract the insidious flower bug. An effective predator of mites, aphids, thrips, insect eggs and more, that bug likes to lay its eggs on cowpea plants among others. “So, if you put cowpea in the field, you can be providing a reproductive host, so that they can breed there and build up their numbers and then go over, if your field is nearby, to forage, to look for pollen and look for any other insects,” Hinds says.
When these different plants will flower and go to seed should factor into your decisions, too. “You want to plan it in a way that the flowering plants are senescing and dying off around the time when your cash crop is going to need pest management or pollination services,” Hinds says. “Some of the ways that people have done that is by using a cover crop and rolling it under or by mowing it. The vegetation you leave behind can be used as well to feed the soil. You can form a nice healthy mat that a lot of ground-dwelling insects, like ground spiders, will use to get around and search for prey.”
Aside from actively choosing insectary border plants and cover crops, you should also be willing to leave some naturally weedy spots undisturbed for insects. (That doesn’t mean allowing invasive weeds to take hold and flourish. If you see purple loosestrife, Canada thistle or other aggressive weeds, yank those, since they can choke out native weeds that may attract a wider range of beneficial insects.)
Areas with lots of different native weeds give beneficial insects shelter and afford them with opportunities for mating and population build-up.
Putting It All Together
Adding organic matter to the soil and refraining from disruptive tilling will also help your crops sustain a greater degree of insect injury, since healthier soil—teeming with microbial fungi, bacteria and other forms of soil-dwelling life—means healthier plants.
“You want to create a plant-positive and pest-negative environment,” Hinds says. “So, for example, if the soil is improperly maintained with improper nutrients and poor drainage, that stresses the plants. That stressed plant is less defended, and, so, when insects attack those plants, the plants are less able to defend themselves.”
On the other hand? “Healthy soils have microorganisms, earthworms and things like that to aerate the soil or to create an overall healthier environment,” he says. “There’s going to be some pests, but you can introduce balance into the system by adding crop diversity, feeding the soil and creating that optimal environment for your cash crop, so that [plants] can tolerate some feeding or so that, if there are pests, there are beneficial insects around to deal with a lot of it.”
Hinds has seen it work time after time.
“I visited an organic farm last year,” he says. “[The farmer] said, ‘We never use pesticides.’ They had acres and acres of soybeans, and they created an ecosystem that works for them. That’s the aim of any kind of pest management plan. It’s a lot of things working together for a whole-farm regimen.”
This article originally appeared in the Sept./Oct. 2023 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.
The editors of Hobby Farms magazine are always on the hunt for great photos of livestock looking good while they say cheese.
In a recent print issue, we ran the best photos submitted by readers. Each one includes the name and city of residence of the person who submitted it.
Upload the very best digital images of your small- farm livestock toHobbyFarms.com/say_cheeseor email them directly tohobbyfarms@hobbyfarms.com, with “Say Cheese!” in the subject line. Include your name and address in the body of the email.
We hope to see your photos in an upcoming issue and on our Instagram account!
Ashley Lee | Pensacola, Florida
Judy Buchanan
Sheryl Troutman | El Paso, Arkansas
Lydia Sims | St. Cloud, Florida
Matt Straley | Paulding, Ohio
Amazing Grace Ranch | New Berlin, Texas
Janae Duryea | Western New York
John Mandra | Brooksville, Florida
Jonathan & Pamela Wagner | Stillwater, Pennsylvania
This “Say Cheese” gallery originally appeared in the Sept./Oct. 2023 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.
With shortages becoming a prominent condition in the grocery store, many people have started to become self-reliant, and an even larger homesteading movement is taking place right before our eyes. Many people have started to raise and process meat chickens for the many benefits and products that they offer while also being low-maintenance animals.
Before we look at the slaughtering process, you need to take a few things into consideration such as the type of chickens you’ll be raising. If you decide to go with a Cornish Cross, you’ll easily find them in many feed stores. Cornish Crosses are yellow chicks that grow rapidly and are ready for slaughter within eight to 10 weeks. Because the growth rate is expedited, this decreases their feed consumption required over time.
Cornish Crosses are the most popular breed when it comes to chickens people raise and process for meat production. However, if they go past 12 weeks of age, medical issues will arise, such as possible broken legs from weight gain and gout. You can’t keep this breed for an extended period because of how fast and easily they put on weight, without enforcing a strict feeding regiment.
I prefer heritage breeds and mixes on my farm. This way, if life gets in the way, I’m not on a strict slaughter timeline to ensure their health and welfare. There are tons of heritage breeds available that produce wonderful birds with a good amount of meat.
The breeds I have raised and slaughtered ranged over the years, but my favorite has been the Buckeye. The meat tastes amazing, and knowing I raised them myself provides an entirely new appreciation for the animal and what it gives me and my family.
We also must consider the cons of raising heritage breeds. They don’t grow quickly, for starters. So while a Cornish can be slaughtered at 8 to 10 weeks of age, a heritage breed will take 14 to 20 weeks.
With heritage breeds, you do get meat with a more distinctive flavor, though.
Once you’ve decided on your chickens and your timeline, it’s time to consider the actual slaughtering process. I’m not going to say processing chickens is the easiest thing you’ll ever do. You should take the time to prepare mentally before you harvest your first bird.
The first time I harvested my own meat chickens, I encountered many negative emotions and had to put my slaughtering day off. I was just not ready to do it. These is a normal response a lot of us go through when met with the intimidating task of culling our first animals.
Keep in mind that you’ve given your birds a great life, and, if you slaughter them correctly, they’ll pass peacefully. You must prepare for the slaughter, though. The day before, you’ll need to remove their food. You can leave water, but the crop and digestive tract should be as clear as possible.
Tools Needed
Tools you’ll need for slaughter are as follows.
a large pot that can hold a full chicken and be placed over a fire or burner
a boning knife
a rope
a kill cone (If you don’t have a kill cone, an upcycled traffic cone will work too!)
bleeding knife
cooler with ice or ice bath
storage bags
water hose
bacteria-resistant table for cleaning/quartering
thermometer
The day of slaughtering, you will need to set up everything before you start culling birds. You don’t want to be fumbling with equipment while trying to humanely dispatch birds. Make sure the equipment is in working order and ready to go.
Marissa King
Getting Ready
The first step you should take is lighting your fire or burner and setting your pot full of water over it. The water temperature in the pot needs to be between 140 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit to loosen the feathers without scalding the delicate skin. That can take a few hours if you’re using a fire (a gas burner will heat quicker, of course).
You don’t want to have a culled bird and be waiting on the water to heat up.
Once your water is heated up and you’ve hung your kill cone, you’re ready to begin. Catch the bird and turn it upside down, hanging it from your hands by its back feet. We don’t want the bird to go into tonic immobility but to relax. The bird should relax automatically and kind of spread out its wings.
Lift the bird up and into the kill cone. The head and neck should be exposed. This part is very important. Your knives must be extremely sharp to keep the bird from needlessly suffering. With the head exposed, feel for the bird’s jawbone, and visualize where the ear is. With swift and steady movement, make two cuts on either side of the neck, parallel to the jawbone, right under the ear on either side of the bird. This will sever the chicken’s arteries.
The bird shouldn’t struggle but rather slowly close its eyes (though, after death, the bird’s nervous system may react automatically with some movement). I use a bucket to catch the blood and make cleanup easier.
After around a minute, the bird should be completely bled out. Now it’s time to start the cleaning process. Take your bird out of the kill cone and dip it into the scalding pot for 45- to 60-second intervals, until the feathers are easy to pull off.
I’ve found that two to three minutes of dipping is ideal.
Marissa King
Feathers, Head & Gland Removal
Once you’ve reached the point where the flight feathers come out with ease, tie the bird up by the back legs with your rope. This isn’t a must, but I find it easier than laying it on a table. Pluck the bird by hand, until no feathers or feather shafts remain. The shafts can be stubborn, especially when you process heritage breed chickens. Some homesteaders bypass plucking by skinning the bird instead.
Once the plucking or skinning is done, move on to the head, innards and preening gland removal. Place your plucked bird on a clean surface. Stainless steel works best to keep bacteria at bay, but any nonporous surface can work. At this point, I remove the bird’s head. You’ll follow your initial cuts with a separate sharp knife, or you can cut with trauma shears right below the bird’s head to remove it.
Some people remove the head at different points, either before scalding it or during innards removal. It’s your choice. I don’t like the scalding water getting bogged down with blood from a headless bird, which is why I do it after scalding.
After removing the head, place the bird breast down and locate the preening gland where the bird’s tail feathers were before you plucked them. If you miss the oil gland, your meat could have a funny taste to it, so it’s imperative that this is removed. On a lot of birds, it has a yellowish tint to it.
Once the preening gland is removed, remove the legs. At the joint, you’re going to take a separate sharp knife—never your bleeding knife—and cut right at the bird’s joint. The first few times you do this, it’ll be trial and error until you find the sweet spot. Some people don’t keep the feet, but I dehydrate them and use them as dog treats. I’ve also had people tell me you can make the best chicken broth with them. Just make sure to clean them well first.
Marissa King
Next Steps
Now we’re going to loosen the windpipe and craw. Start at the head (my preference) or the back. Flip the bird breast up. There will be an indentation at the bottom of the neck and the top of the breast. Make a slit here with your knife, and you’ll see a large tendon. Hook your finger through it and pull it loose but not out of the bird.
Pull the windpipe loose next but not out of the bird.
After that step is complete, flip your bird around to where the back end is facing you. Locate the vent and carefully cut above the vent, taking care not to cut the intestines within. Slide your hand into and through that slit, scraping the inside of the bird along its ribs to loosen the organs.
Once everything is loose, cup your hand over the innards and pull them out in one swoop. They’ll still be attached by the bottom of the vent. Make a small V cut, and your intestines will drop down. A well-placed bucket is handy to catch the innards. Some people do keep the different parts of the chicken such as the heart and liver. Just make sure you can properly identify them, and set an area off to the side to rinse them. Keep them together.
If you’re by yourself, like I am most of the time, you’ll have to go bird by bird from start to finish. It’s a long process, especially if you have a lot of chickens. If possible, get another person or two to help so you can set up an assembly line to make the process run smoother and faster.
Now rinse the chicken under cold water. Once it’s rinsed, put it immediately into a cooler filled with ice water for at least two hours. You want the bird to reach 40 degrees Fahrenheit, as measured in the deepest part of the breast. Then, pat it dry and move on to packaging or quartering.
Packaging/Quartering
Quartering a chicken seems pretty intimidating the first time, but there are so many ways you can do it. The process of cutting up chickens is not difficult at all.
To remove the legs, turn the chicken breast up and pull the leg away from the body. With a sharp knife, cut where the body and thigh meet. You may have to rotate the leg around a little bit, but you’ll see the hip socket stick. Just like the legs, cut through that to separate the thigh from the body. Some people will pop it out by manual pressure, but I like a clean cut. Repeat with the other side and, boom, you have your thighs.
You can cut these down to only a leg and drumstick also by cutting the notch where the drumstick meets the thigh. You’re repeating the same process we used for the legs on the wings. Cut through where the wing meets the body and continue through the shoulder joint on both sides of the bird. Voila! You have your wings.
To get the chest pieces out, put the chicken breast-side down and cut along each side of the backbone. Once the backbone is removed, set this aside to make some awesome chicken stock. Cut through the ribs where the neck once sat. Once cut, the chicken breast will split in two. Remove the excess rib bones, and you have your fully quartered chicken!
After pulling the birds out of the ice bath, pat them as dry as possible. Our last step is to package our birds. You want them in the freezer or cans as soon as possible after the two-hour ice bath.
Can your chicken if you’d like, or store it in shrink bags. I personally store in shrink bags because it’s quickest and easiest! After packaging, leave the birds to rest for at least 48 hours before using them.
This article originally appeared in the Sept./Oct. 2023 issue of Hobby Farms magazine.
Remember the first time you butchered a chicken? Or put up your very first batch of canned tomatoes? What about the first apple pie you baked from apples that came from your very own homestead? These things are milestones—significant passages in our homestead journeys toward food independence. They’re really memorable, beautiful and significant.
These accomplishments aren’t just personal victories. They’re victories for your biological community, the sum of all the living things on your homestead. With your management and assistance, energy—solar energy, sunlight, the only source of life—has been captured and launched on its journey through the food web. Life is enhanced on your land, and you’ve taken a starring role.
Listening to the Land
Once we start homesteading, the adventure of partnering with Mother Nature just gets more exciting. We want to produce more of our own food. We want to eliminate the feed bill and replace those purchased calories with energy straight from our land. We find we want to do more, and bigger, things that will leverage our most important natural resources, sunlight and rainfall, for the renewal and regeneration of our farms.
And, sooner or later, we realize that we need to be harvesting our fields, lawns, meadows and pastures with grazing animals. Good, holistic grazing is the key to utilizing every drop of rain, and every photon, for the fertility and abundance of our homesteads.
But getting a good start in regenerative grazing doesn’t automatically happen when you buy some temporary fencing and an energizer! The very first step, even before you bring an animal onto your land, must be to study your environment and determine what kind of grazing animal your land really needs. Because for your farm to be regenerative, it needs to fit the landscape; it needs to listen to the land.
And grazing animals are not all alike.
Who Eats What?
This is obvious when we look at the most common homestead ruminants—cows, sheep and goats. These are the big players in a regenerative homestead, because they are the most efficient converters of plant material into food energy and soil improvement. If you want to harvest the most energy possible from your land, ruminants are going to be your first choice.
But the different ruminant species have different diets, different behavioral habits and different impacts when they graze. Knowing what kinds of plant foods each prefers, and the propensities of each, will help you select the proper ruminant to have the most positive impact—on your land, on your foodscape, on your diet and on your budget.
Susan/Adobe Stock
Caprine Cuisine
If your land is one solid mass of thorny plants—briars, berry canes, and thorny bushes—you’ve got a banquet for goats. Cheaper than a tractor/brush hog rig, a goat—or a whole herd of goats—can tame your thorny jungle and turn it into milk and meat for your table.
And no other species of domestic ruminant has quite the taste for woody, gnarly, spiny snacks that goats have. Maybe you’re thinking you want to raise something else—Babydoll Southdown sheep are cute, and a Jersey cow could give you a lot of butter cream. But if your homestead is presently saying it in briars, bring on the goats.
The great thing is, not only are goats the diners for your pasture’s dinner, they’re the fix for your forages. They’ll turn your briars into beautiful grassy meadows. That’s because the brushy plants that goats prefer don’t really benefit from grazing the way, say, grass and clover do. When we allow goats to browse heavily and often, our brushy perennials have to spend their stored energy on regrowth. Eventually they just give up. Then grasses and forbs—broadleaf plants like clovers and weeds—move in to cover the soil. Our thorny fields become pastures.
When that happens, it’s time to move the goats out. Yes, they can eat grass and clover, but what they really thrive on is woody, fibrous growth rich in phytochemicals such as tannins and glycoalcaloids. Further, goats are browsers, best suited to grazing at the height of their own shoulder or higher. They lack the instinct that makes other ruminants avoid grazing near their own manure, so goats that feed at ground level are apt to become pathologically infected with parasites.
So when the brush and briars are eradicated it’s time to move them on to a new patch of woody overgrowth. If you were thinking all along that you’d rather keep cows or sheep, your time has come. Now your pastures are cow and sheep-friendly.
And good grazing, that benefits the plants and the animals, only happens when we let the forages tell us what species of ruminant it is best to graze.
Sheep & Cows
Tall, weedy broadleafs—common weeds such as goldenrod, Queen Anne’s lace and ragweed—are perfect sheep food. While sheep will graze turf grasses, clovers and other short, dense ground covers, their real gift is for nibbling the leaves off of taller forages. Which is great, because this is a niche that fits right between goats, with their love of woody, thorny plants, and cows, who thrive on lush grasses and tender legumes.
Sheep love to bunch together and move as a group through patches of broadleaf plants, stripping off the foliage and leaving just the stems. This is especially valuable behavior when leveraged against an incurrence of invasive species such as kudzu or Japanese knotweed. Run a group of sheep through and strip the plants bare. Then, when the stems put on a second flush of foliage, bring the sheep back to denude them again. Impact of this kind, when repeated frequently, can whip the most persistent weed infestations.
Cow and sheep pastures look an awful lot alike—for good reason. Cows and sheep utilize a lot of the same plants and in similar ways. For really good utilization of forages, give us sheep and cows, together!
Both eat grass and legumes; both like broadleaf weeds. But where sheep concentrate their grazing on broadleafs when these are present, cows are more selective, harvesting specific plant parts at specific times, seldom stripping the whole plant.
Sheep utilize more of the broadleaf as food. What cows bring to weed management that sheep don’t is overall impact. Cows, with their larger bodies and feet, knock down and trample what they don’t eat. And both will eat some of everything—even spiny, thorny plants like briars—and make good use of it.
Positive Impacts
In fact, this matter of impact will play an equal role with forage type in determining what species of ruminant your land needs. Animal behavior in general is a factor in species appropriateness. An animal’s size and agility will have a lot to do with how well-suited it is to your pasture. Not only do heavy animals cause more compaction in wet soils—something that can be either beneficial or detrimental, depending on circumstance—but a larger, heavier animal is likely to do more damage if left too long on creek or pond banks, or navigating steep slopes.
In general, the wetter, steeper or less stable your land, the smaller the animal species that is appropriate to it. So after you ask yourself the questions “what is growing here?” and “who eats that?,” ask: “Which species of ruminant will be most suited to my topography?” Leave the steep, rocky slopes to the sheep and goats, and keep the cows on the more level ground.
Alexander/Adobe Stock
Good Grazing!
Maybe you’ve been on this path for a while, or maybe you’ve only just begun to see a bigger goal behind your garden and flock of chickens, but when you’re ready to take the next step, you’ll want to talk about grazing. Because grazing—harvesting whatever grass, forbs (weeds), shrubs and low-hanging tree branches your land grows—is the most effective and productive way we have to turn local sunlight into nutrients to feed us, our livestock and our soil.
Grazing animals harvest default forages—persistent volunteer plant communities, meaning the plants that want to be here, that belong here and will stay here. They then turn them into manure, to enrich the soil; meat and milk, to feed the hungry humans; and into more grazing animals, which keep the cycle going around.
Good, attentive, regenerative grazing is a soil-building, climate-improving miracle.
More Information
Toxic or Therapeutic?
We see it all the time in farm consultations and pasture visits: Homesteaders ready to purchase their first ruminant are suddenly set back by the discovery that among the many plant species in their pastures are some the extension officer, or the next door neighbor, or the plant field guide, identifies as toxic. Full of fear, they cancel their plans to bring in a cow, sheep or goat while they try to figure out how to eradicate the dangerous plant species.
If this is your experience, take heart! Most “toxic” species might more correctly be labeled “medicinal.” Or, since holistically grazed animals tend to enjoy the high levels of health that make medicines unnecessary, we might call these plants “therapeutic.”
By consuming nonforage plants with traces of phytochemicals (complex plant-constructed compounds) such as tannins, glycoalcaloids, phenols and other such compounds that, taken in large doses, could be toxic, grazing livestock access their best defense against parasites, deficiencies and diseases. Grazed animals learn to identify these species and know when, what parts and how much to consume for natural health.
In any case, most animals will avoid toxic plants, preferring to do most of their grazing among familiar, nutritious and tasty forage species.
Pigs & Poultry
Keeping poultry and pigs on pasture instead of in pens can be a great idea, but you should know what you’re doing and why. Pigs can knock down a weed patch, harvest fruit or nut windfalls, or do some serious surface alterations.
What a pig can’t do is convert cellulosic fiber into meat. Of the domestic animals, only the ruminants can break down coarse fiber and extract its energy for other uses. And because pasture plants are about 80 percent fiber, that’s a lot of energy.
Poultry can be managed on pasture in several ways. Tractored birds, and birds confined with poultry netting, can be moved gradually across pastures to de-bug and spread manure. Free-range birds have the run of the homestead, so they also are well-placed to harvest what is useful to them in the pasture—things such as seeds, tender leaves, bugs and worms. But, like pigs, poultry can’t digest fiber, so 80 percent of your pasture energy is unavailable to them.
Nonruminant livestock have important roles to play in forage harvest communities! Their scavenging, manure-spreading, dethatching, and aeration are valuable ecological services. But for harvesting pasture plants and converting them into forms that fuel the farmstead—things such as milk, meat and manure—ruminants rule.
This article appeared in Hobby Farm Home, a 2024 specialty publication produced by the editors and writers of Hobby Farms magazine. In addition to this piece, Hobby Farm Home includes recipes, crafting projects, preservation tips and more. You can purchase this volume, Hobby Farms back issues as well as special editions such as Healing Herbs and Goats 101 by following this link.
