Costco has fabulous 3 pound birds at $4.99. No one else around has such big cooked birds at such a low price. Sam's Club ones are a little smaller and cooked longer (darker and dryer). Hubby and I agreed we would keep Costco membership just for all the chickens we get. One can last for three meals and two meals of chicken noodle soup.
I am cooking up some broth right now...well the crock pot is making broth out of that great chicken. We had it two nights for dinner and cut off the extra breast meat for chicken salad soon, then the broth to make soup. Talk about a bargain.
I am heartened that so many people are questioning the food they eat, the quality of the food and the inhumane life of the animal. If I had to choose two animals whose lives are pure hell, it would be dairy cows and chickens. So I will never ever eat another one or have any dairy.
I guess for those who can get local, it is a thought. But not for me.
You may be right, but in my estimation, it's Poultry that are least-humanely raised, then factory-farmed hogs, and then dairy cattle, in that order. I was following up on two kids from rural Iowa I used to know, that were extreme bullies in school, and as middle-aged adults, one drives a truck, hauling livestock, and the other works for a farmer who has a hog barn. If I know them, those guys get their kicks abusing the animals, working with them, loading them on trucks, etc. Suffering means nothing, to either of them. Oh yes--one(the hog worker) was writing on his F-book account about the sheer joy of shooting a deer, and watching it die. I have a cousin who was in the busiess of "producing" turkeys, at one time. He had a building--one of those huge "turkey sheds" catch fire, and something like 5,000 turkeys die. It was the economic loss, that he felt deeply, though.Originally Posted by kally
What is your experience with dairy farms? I was raised on a dairy farm. The only requirement from the cows was to give milk and some calved. Our dairy cows (120) slept in a barn with fresh straw bedding every night. The milk parlor was heated with a TV that they used to stare at while eating their nightly grain. They were fed silage and hay every morning and night and had fresh water available 24 hours a day regardless of the weather. Many had names, were spoken to and petted while their udders were being washed. They had a barnyard or orchard to roam. Our dairy setup had to meet standards for Grade A dairy which included no chickens on the farm. Health and production records were kept on each cow and if sick, which was rare, the vet was called immediately. Not sure how much better they could have been treated short of bringing them into the house.
Yah, in Zurra, cattle seem to live relatively well, being pastured for most of the time. In Iowa, it's a different story; land prices are much higher & used for corn & beans. The farmers who have cattle keep them concentrated in large pens, with so many animals to a pen that they are standing in their own mud. It's not a picturesque sight, like cattle grazing is here.
I've seen muddy cattle, usually beef cattle. Our cows could not come into the milk parlor muddy, on the occasion that they were muddy (heavy rain) they'd get hosed off before coming into parlor. Could not have muddy or manure laden cows in the milk parlor, not sanitary, not Grade A compliant.
I am sure some places are better than others. It is so horrible that so many animals are abused for our food.
With cows I think the taking away of the baby calves is dreadful.
With chickens I think destroying all the male chicks by grinding them up or suffocating them is equally horrible.
As a mom I can agree somewhat with that statement. However, that happens with beef cattle not so much with dairy cattle. The heifer babies are kept to increase the heard and the bull babies are usually sold, not a babies but as 300-400 calves, unless kept for breedig purposes.
Golden, it's the other way round. It's beef cattle that keep their calves and raise them to weaning. Heifers and bull calves alike are kept because both will make beef. In dairy herds, heifer calves are kept (often raised on milk replacer) while bull calves are sold very young, often even at birth.
There are a couple of things here: cattle don't have the full range of human sapience and emotion. They bellow for their calves for about 3 days, then forget about them. If you bring back a calf after a week or so, they often don't recognize each other. This is natural: cattle are prey animals. In the wild, calves die or are taken by predators. Females who didn't get over their natural grief would be at an evolutionary disadvantage. In the wild, without the resource drain of lactation, they come back into oestrus and are impregnated again.
In countries other than the USA, it's quite common to raise calves on cows that are not their mothers. You'll see a cow in a pasture with four calves - modern dairy breeds produce four times as much milk as a calf needs. Older cows, or cows that are not suited to machine milking, are kept in the herd because they rear these calves. It's called multiple suckling. With my own two-cow herd, I'd often see both calves suckle both cows indiscriminately, sometimes at the same time. One year I was given a calf, which joined in the feast readily. Sometimes all 3 calves would be working the same udder at the same time. My cows gave birth every second year- that was their natural cycle for our region. I got more milk per cow than my neighbours who followed the calf-a-year-for-maximum-yield dogma.
http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net...etland-cattle/
There are many ways to produce milk for human consumption. Given that cows produce so much milk, it's possible to let a cow raise her calf and still get viable amounts of milk for sale. You can separate cows and calves overnight, milk the mothers in the morning (leaving one quarter of the udder unmilked, then send them all off together for the day or part of the day or send calves and cows out in separate herds. Milk again in the evening. I settled for less milk, fed less supplementary fodder, and milked only in the mornings.
http://www.qlif.org/qlifnews/oct08/suckling.html. In this article, calves are being weaned at three months. I think this is too young. 5-6 months is natural age. Calves that live together in groups rather than individual calf pens have much less weaning stress, and if they're on grazing they are also less stressed.
Then there's perennial dairying. In this system, a cow gives birth four years apart. A cow who is well fed and milked daily will continue to lactate almost indefinitely. However, her milk production will drop over time. The optimal inter-birth interval is four years. The cow can raise her calf to natural weaning at 6 months old, while producing profitable amounts of milk, and after that her full production is available for humans. Perennial cows,, because they're not strained to the maximum, can easily remain in the herd for 20 years, during which time they produce only 4-5 calves.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16027215
I once read about a man whose Jersey cow gave birth only once, at the age of 2, and lactated steadily for 20 years thereafter, giving a gallon a day even in old age. I think it was a back issue of a Countryside magazine; will have to hunt this down because it drives me nuts when I can't lay my hand on something.
I favour perennial dairying, having the cows raise their own calves, and keeping the old or small-teated females for foster-mothering. It makes so much sense as well as being the most humane (to my sensibilities) and the most profitable in the long-term.
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