Radical Animal Husbandry

Just saw this community pop up on the local feed. I think liberation of all sentient beings is very important, and any exploitation of human or non-human animals is antithetical to creating a more just world

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/20943177

Abstract To safeguard against meat supply shortages during pandemics or other catastrophes, this study analyzed the potential to provide the average household’s entire protein consumption using either soybean production or distributed meat production at the household level in the U.S. with: (1) pasture-fed rabbits, (2) pellet and hay-fed rabbits, or (3) pellet-fed chickens. Only using the average backyard resources, soybean cultivation can provide 80–160% of household protein and 0–50% of a household’s protein needs can be provided by pasture-fed rabbits using only the yard grass as feed. If external supplementation of feed is available, raising 52 chickens while also harvesting the concomitant eggs or alternately 107 grain-fed rabbits can meet 100% of an average household’s protein requirements. These results show that resilience to future pandemics and challenges associated with growing meat demands can be incrementally addressed through backyard distributed protein production. Backyard production of chicken meat, eggs, and rabbit meat reduces the environmental costs of protein due to savings in production, transportation, and refrigeration of meat products and even more so with soybeans. Generally, distributed production of protein was found to be economically competitive with centralized production of meat if distributed labor costs were ignored.

These chickens are kept to give blood samples each week to monitor for mosquito born illnesses in the community. They have a very important job to do!

The department has taken the "lowest common denominator" approach to standard of care. Most of the chickens are pecked nearly featherless with visible signs of poor health. "They're just chickens", "the coop is gross" "I just go in to feed them", ect.

I'm no expert, but this isn't right. I've lost a lot of respect for my coworkers, they aren't reliable sources of information on care.

Coop has a dirt floor, with 2-3 inches of straw bedding. Soil was hard packed before intense raking. Roughly 200sqft.

They are fed Nutrena Country Feeds 16% pellets in the feeder pictured below. When I visit, I give them a cup of the wet pellets mixed with one of their eggs (I was told this is great for them?).

I am allowed to visit my girls for 30 minutes, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I let coop #1 forage in a fenced area while I clean their coop, but coop #2 cannot. They are located deep in the woods, with no clear area I could watch them.

What can I do to give my girls the best possible life while they work for science?

My department only provides feed and straw, everything else is my personal funds.

So far I've added bedding, supplement their diet with foraged invasive plant species (from a safe source) and meal worm treats, hang cabbage heads to entertain, and brought in novel objects for them to perch around on. The coop not featured has a "merry go round" I've made out of a bike wheel.

How often (and how) should I clean the coop? Right now, I dig a hole in the floor and bury all the roost poop, then rake all the bedding into a pile to redistribute. I use a hose to wash out their water bowl and poop from any hard surfaces.

Is leash training a genuine option for life enrichment? The harness fits, but it makes them SPRINT.

Any and all advice is GREATLY appreciated, thank you all so much :)

so this is the other end of animal husbandry, but I feel it's important to know how to deal with an animal on the cutting board with skill and respect before you ever dispatch one. I'll try not to make this too long and rambly, but here's my thoughts on why you should try to learn how to properly break down whole birds.

First, respect. I find that seeing an animal in a form that still looks vaguely like an animal helps build that connection in your mind that yes, this was a living creature once. And I think that's important when we're still buying chickens from the grocery store-- obviously if you're raising your own chickens already, you're more intimately aware of that. I have a lot of issues with the meat industry, and one of those is how sanitised and detached the meat buying process is. It's a lot easier to ignore that the food you're buying was once alive when it's a plastic package of seven breasts from 3 and a half different animals.

Second, frugality. I'm not saying it's strictly cheaper to buy chickens as whole birds vs. a pack of breasts or thighs, maybe like for like but I find when I buy a whole bird I'm more likely to purchase one that was as high-welfare as possible. But once I have that bird, I'm more likely to use the whole thing in a frugal mindset. I'm not going to toss the drumsticks if I don't like dark meat, or discard the skin. I worked hard to make that one bird into what can be around 10 meals (for a single person), and I'm going to appreciate each bit, up until all that's left is bones and I'm making stock.

Third, meal diversity. I know a lot of people just eat the breasts, but continuing from the second point, when you've broken down the entire bird you're kind of boxed in to making a meal with the drumsticks, with the thighs, with the wings. Maybe this is only a benefit to some people, but I feel like when I have ingredients I Must use I have an easier time deciding what I will make. And I'm pushed out of my comfort zone of diced chicken breast into remembering that there are recipes I love for thighs, and that I can make my own hot wings.

Anyways, now that I've hopefully convinced you that you should have this butchering skill whether or not you intend to raise meat chickens, here's a video I used to learn how to do it myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTNEjPOixKY

Also please enjoy the photo of my recent chicken butchery... nobody make fun of me for having the shittiest plastic cutting board and knife, I just moved house and all of my nice stuff is still back in my old place and I needed Something on a tight budget so I could still cook. (But in general, if you're looking for a cutting board, get one made of wood. The heavier the better. These shitty plastic cutting boards are like chicken turntables I swear to god)

A really good book authored by actual experts about dispelling myths and legends about backyard poultry keeping, complete with proper scientific explanation as to why certain things do and don't work.

I am working on a story in which a group of well-organized squatters are practicing agriculture in a suburban development. They keep goats that graze on nearby grassy areas and I wanted to know what is done with herd sires when they age out of breeding. Everything I can find talks about male kids and wethers, but there’s nothing about sires except that older male goats’ meat tastes bad.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/528227

Spoiler: it's not

Rabbits seem like a good choice for livestock if you live in a more urban area. Thoughts? (This is my first post on this website. Please let me know if there are any formatting issues. Thank you.)

The subject of the research may be broilers but it should be useful for anyone who has a flock.