Green-Change.com » Keeping Animals

Head Cheese Recipe

Darren — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:21:35 +0000

Yep, it’s as tasty as it sounds!

Head cheese (also known as brawn) doesn’t actually contain any cheese – it’s a boiled pig’s head, with the meat removed and chopped up, then set in a terrine mould with jelly made from the cooking broth.

For quite a while now, I’ve had a couple of my pigs’ heads sitting in my freezer, waiting to get the opportunity to do something with them. The problem is they need a lot of time to cook, and I’m not often home all day. I’ve had a few days off during these school holidays, so had a go…

I pretty much followed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s recipe from the River Cottage Cookbook, with a few tweaks based on what I had available.

I started with a mirepoix (fancy cheffy sounding word for carrots, onions and celery!) in my biggest cooking pot. I slipped the whole head in, along with the ears (I’ll talk about them in another post), and covered it all with water – it only just fit! Then I added cloves, coriander, nutmeg, peppercorns, thyme, rosemary, parsley and apple cider vinegar.

The whole lot then simmers, covered, for 4 or 5 hours. Longer is better, as it extracts more of the gelatine and minerals from the bones (just like a good bone stock).

Next step was to remove the head and let it cool. While waiting for that, I turned up the stove and left the lid off the pot. You need to reduce the stock by about two-thirds.

Once the head was cool enough to handle, I removed all the meaty bits, diced them up and put them in a bowl. I gave the snout to the dog, and the chickens got the skin and all the fatty, gristly, unpalatable bits (they especially loved the eyeballs!). I was surprised at how much meat came off the head, especially since the cheeks had been removed (for making guanciale).

Once the stock had reduced, I mixed a handful of chopped fresh parsley and more apple cider vinegar through the meat and set it out into a loaf tin (why don’t I have any terrine moulds?!). I then poured the stock over the top until the meat was just covered, and put the tin in the fridge to cool and set.

I had a fair bit of stock left over, so I poured it into silicone muffin trays and put it in the freezer. Once it’s all frozen, you can tip it out and put it in the one bag. It’ll be easy to separate, and a single “puck” can be added to almost any dish to enrich it – a lot like Fergus Henderson’s trotter gear (which I’m also going to be making soon). It adds gelatinous body and porky goodness, really lifting dishes like risotto, stews, meat pies, etc.

Once set, the head cheese is turned out of the mould and can be stored in the fridge for up to two weeks. As I said before, I was surprised at how much this recipe made – the block below must have been well over 2 kg (that’s a large dinner plate it’s sitting on, and I’ve already eaten some!).

I had some on toast for lunch today, and will be giving some to my dad and some friends tomorrow.

I’ve got another head in the freezer, and will definitely be making head cheese again. I’ll be using more of the herbs and spices next time, and maybe some bay leaves as well. You think you have enough flavour in there, but since you eat it chilled the flavours are more muted and it can really take a lot more than I gave it. I’ll also be seasoning the meat with salt and pepper more before it goes into the mould.

If you want to read more about cooking with under-used animal parts, I really recommend Chichi Wang’s The Nasty Bits series over at Serious Eats – I got a lot of good information from her Pig’s Head article.

Do you cook with offal and/or offcuts? What’s the tastiest dish you’ve made?

Pig Trotters In Sweet Vinegar

Darren — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:53:45 +0000

I’ve had the trotters (and heads!) of our pigs in the freezer for a while now, waiting for the opportunity to cook something nice with them. I came across this recipe for Stewed Pork Trotters in Sweet Vinegar, and knew I had to give it a go:

(that’s Shu Han’s photo, not mine!)

The first step was to blanch the trotters (boil them) for about 15 minutes and clean them up a bit:

I didn’t have the Chinese black vinegar specified by the recipe, but a quick bit of web searching told me that apple cider vinegar would be a good substitute. And apple goes well with pork, right? I left out the eggs as well – they’re really only there to round out the meal, they don’t contribute anything to the actual pork.

Here’s how mine turned out (yeah, not quite like the picture above – I reduced the sauce a lot more, and my trotters weren’t cut up to begin with):

So how was it?

The first thing that struck me was that there’s something mildly weird about eating a meal where you’re spitting out the occasional toenail. Other than that, it was delicious!

I have to say though, that there’s bugger-all meat on trotters. It’s pretty much all bone, cartilage, fat and skin. It’s got a lot of flavour, but there’s not much you can actually chew on. No wonder they add the eggs to the recipe above. It was deliciously velvety gloopy, and the little bits of leftover sauce set into a solid jelly. There’s truth in the old saying, “something gelatinous is a foot”!

For the rest of the trotters, I think I’ll try making some of Heston Blumenthal’s Trotter Gear to use as a flavour enhancer for other recipes.

Now, does anyone have any ideas for two pigs heads? The cheeks have already been removed (I’m going to try guanciale with them).

A More Secure Chicken Pen

Darren — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:00:49 +0000

You might remember the trouble I had with foxes last July. We lost our whole flock of chickens (20+), as well as our two Indian Runner ducks, in a single night.

I’ve held off on getting more chickens until I could secure the pen – obviously I never want something like that to happen again. We did get some ducks along the way, but I’ve been locking them up in the shed at night and letting them out into the pen each morning. We also got a dog not long after that attack, and I’ve been placing her droppings around the perimeter of the pen to ward off predators.

It’s taken a while, but this weekend I finally got some time to put my Predator Protection Plan into practice!

My original plan was to create a smaller secure pen, and turn the remainder of the existing run into separate breeding pens. It would have been less work in the short term, but then I’d have to make sure each breeding pen was also built securely. If I could completely secure the perimeter of the existing large run, then I could later build simple breeding pens inside it without needing to fox-proof every one of them.

I originally built the frame of my chicken run a bit like a post-and-rail fence, with one rail at ground level and another about 3 feet (1 m) above the ground. This made it easy to attach the chicken wire and bury it in a skirt around the pen. You can see what I’m trying to describe in this older photo:

Note: clever though it sounds, burying a skirt of chicken wire around the pen didn’t stop the foxes from digging under. The wire was a very light gauge, and although galvanised, it rusted and was easy to break through. In a later attack, a fox even chewed right through a non-rusted piece of this wire! Chicken wire keeps chickens in, not predators out.

I bought sheets of “ripple iron” (like corrugated iron, but with smaller corrugations) from a recycler a while ago for $4 each. I dug trenches between the posts on the inside edge of the pen, about 1.5 feet (45 cm) deep. I then screwed the sheets of ripple iron to both of the rails and backfilled the trenches.

I got five sections – each with three pieces of ripple iron – done on Saturday, despite the rain. I’ve still got one section to go, and then I just need to secure the pen door.

The ducks enjoyed all the digging, and received a good few worms as reward for their patience. Below are the Indian Runners now – they’ve grown a lot since we got them as week-old ducklings in October, and should be laying soon! The front two ducks in the line are Pekins, and the warty grey-and-white one at the rear is our Muscovy drake.

Construction went a lot smoother than I was expecting, and I was really pleased with the end result. I can’t see a fox getting through that!

Indian Runner Ducklings

Darren — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:06:18 +0000

We’ve been looking for Indian Runner ducks for a while to replace the ones we lost in the fox attack. There really aren’t many around, and they go quickly when someone does advertise them.

Luckily, I found a guy selling ducklings on the Backyard Poultry board (look for Harry from Thirroul if you’re interested – he’s a great guy and breeds lovely ducks!). We were up in Sydney this weekend, so we picked up 8 ducklings on the way back through. We’ll be keeping 6, and the other 2 are for a friend.

How cute are they?!

They’re very young, and so still need a heat lamp for a few more weeks.

Gourmet Farmer – Australia’s River Cottage?

Darren — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:23:08 +0000

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall‘s River Cottage TV shows. I just can’t get enough of them!

Well, an Australian TV show in a very similar vein debuted on SBS last year, named Gourmet Farmer and starring Matthew Evans. Like Hugh, Matthew once made his living as a chef. He then worked as a food critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, before packing it all in to move to a 22-acre small farm near Cygnet, in Tasmania’s Huon Valley.

I really enjoyed the first series. It showed the trials and tribulations of trying to grow your own food and raise animals when you don’t have much of a clue what you’re doing (hehe!), and at the same time showcased some of the many small food producers from around Tasmania.

One of the highlights of the first series for me was when Matthew’s mum came to visit, and she asked him if he was planning to breed his new sows. “Nah,” he replied, “I was thinking of getting a boar in to do that.”

Gourmet Farmer comes across as a bit of a lifestyle show with magnificent scenery and delicious recipes, but it has more depth than most and touches on some important food issues – preserving heritage breeds, free-ranging animals, use of sow farrowing crates, the economics of family farming, the excessive restrictions of our “food safety” regulations, etc.

The new series started last week – you can still catch Episode 1 on the SBS web site if you missed it. The second episode will air on SBS tonight (Thursday) at 7:30 pm.

Here’s the promo video of Gourmet Farmer Series 2, to give you a taste of what’s coming up:

So what do you think? Is Gourmet Farmer Australia’s answer to River Cottage?

Puppies and Piglets Available – Illawarra

Darren — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 11:26:44 +0000

I’ve had a few people email me recently asking about both the kelpie puppy we just bought and the piglets we raised this time last year.

The good news is, both are currently available from the respective breeders!

There were about 7 or so pups in Jessie’s litter, all just as cute as her, and as far as I know there are still some available. The family lives in Jamberoo.

The family I got the pigs from last year emailed me last week to let me know they have just had two litters of pigs born, both of which should be available for purchase in about 2 months or so (maybe a little less).

If you’d like to be put in touch with either of them, please email me!

Meet Jessie, The Red Kelpie Pup

Darren — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 22:20:40 +0000

Meet the newest addition to our home, Jessie:

She’s a female red kelpie. We picked her up on Saturday from a local family, after waiting several weeks for her to grow big enough. Not all of us were terribly patient with the wait!

Her mum’s owners have girls in both Hannah and Sarah’s years at school, and I think every kid in both classes has been asking their parents if they can have a puppy!

Jessie’s mum is a beautiful dog with a really good nature. She’s great with kids and chooks, and is really active and playful.

So far, Jessie has handled the transition really well. The kids play with her a lot and tire her out, so she’s been eating and sleeping well. She cried a lot the first night (we tried all the tricks, like a hot water bottle and a sock with a clock in it), but slept through last night without fuss.

I think she’s going to be a great family pet and companion for the kids, and an excellent first line of defence against those dastardly foxes. I’m hoping she’ll also chase the cockatoos out of the fruit trees and the bower birds out of the vegie gardens!

No related posts.

Meeting Joel Salatin In Jamberoo

Darren — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:20:15 +0000

Wow, today was amazing. Definitely one to tick off the bucket list!

I went to an all-day workshop with Joel Salatin (of Polyface Farm, brought to fame by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma), right here in Jamberoo. I was there with a bunch of friends from around town and from further afield, I met some interesting new people, and I finally got to meet Kirsten and Nick from Milkwood in person!

Here’s me and my mate Adam (the other half of Fiona, from Inner Pickle), having a quick chat with Joel after the workshop. You won’t get those smiles off our faces for at least a couple of weeks!

My head is spinning with all the ideas I heard today, and working out ways to scale them down to work on our acre. I’m going back over my notes, and I’ll be watching more of Joel’s videos on YouTube, and reading his books, to get even more ideas.

But most importantly, Joel’s enthusiasm just fires you up to get out there and try stuff. One of his sayings that struck a chord with me was “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly first”. There’ll be plenty of time to refine and get it right as you go. He actually used the example of a fox eating all your chickens as just a setback, something to learn from and move on from.

I was hugely impressed that both the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Kiama were there today. I think that shows the level of commitment they have to supporting localised and sustainable agriculture here. I’m sure they can’t have missed all Joel’s points about government regulations and bureaucracy getting in the way of producing and selling food on a local scale!

I even got to try raw milk for the first time in my life, from a local dairy farmer. It was really good, like bought milk but better. Too bad I’ll probably never be able to have it again!

I’ll post some more of my notes over the next few days, as I get it all straight in my head.

Chicken Massacre

Darren — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 14:06:31 +0000

It’s taken me a while to write this post. I’m angry, sad, and more than a little disheartened about keeping chickens.

Last week, foxes broke into our chicken run and killed 20 of our 21 chickens, and both of our Indian Runner ducks.

They dug underneath the gate to gain access, despite the fact that I’d laid chicken wire under it to prevent digging. They simply tore through the chicken wire, just like they did a few weeks ago when we lost four chooks.

Since that first attack, I’d secured all around the base of the pen with heavy wire, pavers, and railway sleepers. I was even putting stuff across the gate at night to prevent them from digging under it. But it wasn’t enough. They managed to move some pavers and timber enough to dig under the gate.

You can see the hole wasn’t very big – not much bigger than my fist.

The foxes killed everything they could get at. But they couldn’t get most of the bodies out through the small entry hole. They only took two of the smallest chickens away with them.

That’s what angers me the most about this whole thing – they slaughtered everything in sight, 20 chickens and 2 ducks, just to take 2 chickens away for food. It’s such a senseless waste.

The one surviving rooster wasn’t in the pen. So when I locked him up the next night, I made sure to check all the reinforcing around the pen and put a wooden pallet in front of the gate to stop anything getting under again.

But that night, the foxes tore a hole straight through the perimeter fence of the pen and killed him. The fence had a layer of normal 2-inch chicken wire and a second layer of half-inch chicken wire over the top to keep chicks in. They simply tore through both.

So we now have no chickens at all, just the two muscovy ducks that were housed separately.

But you have to look for the silver lining in every cloud.

I’m going to go back to the drawing board, and build some new chicken pens. They’ll have strong welded mesh fences with buried corrugated iron perimeters to stop anything digging underneath. Chicken wire just doesn’t cut it for keeping predators out. I’ll build a number of smaller pens instead of one large one. This will reduce the chance that the whole flock can get wiped out at once like happened this time, and it also gives me more flexibility in managing breeding, isolating sick birds, and looking after mothers with chicks.

As an additional line of defense, we’ll also be moving up our plans to get a dog. We were originally planning to get one next year, but we’ve now started looking and if the right dog comes up we’ll grab it. We want to get a puppy so it can grow up around chickens and ducks, with strong protective instincts towards them.

I’d like to hear about any good predator-proof chicken run designs you’ve seen, and would love to see photos. Please leave links in the comments below!

Podcast Interview With Gavin From “The Greening of Gavin”

Darren — Wed, 25 May 2011 13:35:46 +0000

I did another podcast interview again last night, this time with Gavin from The Greening Of Gavin. Gav has a great blog, covering lots of sustainability issues and fun stuff like home brew, cheesemaking, soapmaking and candlemaking. I’ve been following his blog since not long after it first began.

You can listen to the podcast episode directly from Gavin’s site or download it as an MP3 file here: Episode 20 – Interview With Darren (Green-Change.com). If you’re into podcasts, I highly recommend adding his feed to your list.

If you’re interested in any of the things we discussed in the podcast, here are some links:

Jamberoo, and the Illawarra Shorthorn cattle breed.
My old blog (mostly dormant now!) – pool-room.com – if you’ve seen the Australian movie The Castle you’ll know where the name came from .
The Sustainable Illawarra web site (what remains of it). Most of the content was moved over to the KiamaSphere web site when the Wollongong and Shellharbour councils refused to continue funding the original site beyond the original 3-year program.
An Inconvenient Truth’s home page, and its Wikipedia entry.
Food Inc’s home page, and its Wikipedia entry.
The Power Of Community’s home page, and its Wikipedia entry.
David Holmgren’s Future Scenarios book.
Jamberoo FutureCare.
Jamberoo Community Growers.
My article about using a chicken tractor to create garden beds.
My article about bird nets for the garden.
My article about our recent fox attack.
My series of articles about raising pigs, and in particular, the cost breakdown of home-grown pork.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall‘s wonderful River Cottage home page, info on the UK Channel 4 River Cottage TV series, and the LandShare initiative.

Whew! I think covers pretty much everything.

As always, feel free to post questions and comments below!

Fox In The Henhouse!

Darren — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:35:17 +0000

Some rather sad news today, I’m afraid. A fox got into our chicken run early this morning, digging under the fence and chewing through the buried wire that was supposed to stop invaders.

Fox In A Chicken Yard, oil painting by Jean-Baptiste Huet 1766 – photo by Mary Harrsch

From the looks of the chicken pen this morning, Barney the Barnevelder rooster and Sir Francis the muscovy drake put up a pretty good fight and drove the fox off. Unfortunately Barney is gone, as are the three half-grown pullets. Sir Francis was injured, but I think he’ll pull through.

Luckily, the rest of the chickens escaped unharmed (although a little traumatised).

It looks like my weekend project is going to be fortifying the chicken run some more. I have a friend with a fox trap, too, which I’ll try to borrow and see if we can’t even up the score. I’m thinking I might even run the electric fence I bought for the pigs around the chicken pen as further discouragement to inquisitive predators.

It’s disheartening and frustrating, but unfortunately that’s life on the homestead. There are predators around, and we have to find a balance between giving our animals some freedom to roam, and protecting them from danger. In this case, the protection wasn’t enough and I need to upgrade it.

Do you have any good ways you protect your chicken run from dogs and foxes? Any tips on how to catch the fox?

Muscovy Ducks Arrive

Darren — Tue, 03 May 2011 13:09:47 +0000

We welcomed two new residents to the homestead this week – a pair of 4-month-old white muscovy ducks.

I found them being offered “free to good home” on the Backyard Poultry notice board. By the way, that’s a great site if you’re looking to buy or sell poultry in Australia.

The family I got them from was really nice, and had obviously cared for them extremely well. They got them as little ducklings for their young daughter, but they grew too big for their backyard and were messing it up with poop everywhere. They’re named Sir Francis and Louie.

I think one of them is male – when alarmed it hisses and the hair on its head and neck stands up. The other one is slightly smaller, but I’m still not sure if it’s male or female. I’m really hoping at least one of them is female, but time will tell as they mature.

The plan is to use this pair as the start of a breeding flock. Once I know what I’ve got, I’ll get 1 or 2 more so I have 2 or 3 females and 1 male. Then we’ll breed muscovies – they’re supposed to be one of the best meat birds, with the lean and tender meat often compared to veal, and avoiding the greasiness that other duck breeds can have. They’re excellent mothers, too, and don’t need much help to raise their ducklings.

Have you ever raised muscovies? Have you eaten them? I’d be very interested to hear your experiences in the comments below!

We’ve Got Ducks!

Home Made Bacon

Darren — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 11:44:17 +0000

“A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and not by a but.”
John Berger

I mentioned a few posts back that I had the belly of one side of our pig left whole, so I could try my hand at making bacon. Finally, I can report on the results!

Bacon made from the belly is typical in the US, but elsewhere is often referred to as “streaky bacon” (especially in English recipes) or “American-style bacon”.

I read a number of recipes online, and decided to go for something that didn’t require smoking. Mostly because I don’t have a smoker .

In the end, I chose a fairly simple wet-cure bacon recipe I found over at The Cottage Smallholder. I did two batches – one with maple syrup instead of treacle, and the other with golden syrup. Mostly because I didn’t have any treacle or molasses .

The bacon sits in the salty/sweet brine for 4 days in the fridge. It was still fairly soft when I took it out – a bit like pickled pork. I thought it’d be firmer, but then I’ve never done this before.

A wet-cured bacon isn’t going to last as long in the fridge as a dry-cured smoked bacon, so I decided to slice it up and freeze it in useful-sized batches. Of course, I had to fry up a few slices just to see how it turned out.

It was great! Salty, very slightly sweet, and absolutely delicious.

Next time I think I’ll try harder to find molasses, and see if it turns out any different. I’ll also definitely try a dry cure, and maybe even rig up a smoker and go the whole hog. Pardon the pun .

Have you ever tried curing bacon or ham? Any tips to share?

Home Grown Pork

Processing Roosters

Darren — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 21:56:12 +0000

A friend rang us up the other day, asking if we wanted their young rooster for the pot. He had just started crowing, and was no longer welcome in their yard.

Instead of taking it, I offered to show him how to kill and process it himself. I had a young rooster I wanted to do as well, so we may as well do them together. He came over with his wife and daughter yesterday, we had a great BBQ lunch, and then got to work.

I’ve posted before about my process for killing and cleaning chickens. There are links there to excellent web sites and resources that contain everything you need to know.

Because both of the roosters were pretty young, they’d make good roasting birds. So we plucked them instead of skinning them like I usually do. Only problem is, I don’t have a pot large enough to scald chickens in – so we had to dry-pluck. It’s not hard, but it does take a lot longer than scalding.

Once again, the chicken processing station proved a winner. The two of us had plenty of space to work side-by-side.

It’ll be roast chicken for dinner tonight!

Missing Hen Returns With Chicks

Darren — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 02:12:47 +0000

We recently had a hen go missing. We’re not sure exactly when she disappeared, but for a few weeks she hasn’t been returning to the chook run at night, and we weren’t able to find her anywhere around the yard.

I figured maybe a fox, dog, eagle or snake might have gotten her, although there were no signs of a struggle or scattered feathers anywhere. I knew it was possible she might have found a hiding place to sit on some eggs, but I didn’t think it likely.

Turns out I was wrong!

On Saturday, we were walking around the yard deciding where to plant a few new trees. I noticed a tiny little animal scurry into the cover of a sweet potato vine, and thought it was a mouse or an injured bird. When we approached to investigate, the hen ran out to protect it and we realised it was a newly-hatched chick.

She had four chicks with her. They were tiny, and could only have been a day or so old.

The hen is a cross between an ISA Brown mother and a Barnevelder father. She turned out with a very pretty brown and cream banding, and lays lovely chocolatey-brown eggs. The father of these chicks was our Light Brahma rooster. The cunning blighter managed to sneak in one last clutch before we dispatched him!

I love the three cute little butts in this picture!

I checked the area near where we found the little family, and found her nesting place right in underneath a huge lemongrass bush. She must have been well-protected from the elements in there (we’ve had both pouring rain and scorching heat over the last three weeks!), and obviously no predators found her.

DIY Chicken Processing Station

Darren — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 20:42:07 +0000

Until recently, whenever I’ve killed a chicken I’ve done the “processing” (cleaning, gutting, butchering, etc) on an old table in the backyard spread with newspaper. It got the job done, but was messy and not very convenient.

What I really needed was a dedicated chicken processing station.

I bought a second-hand stainless steel kitchen sink from a stallholder at the Dapto Markets for $5. You can also get these cheap from recycling centers, scrap metal dealers, the garbage tip shop, garage sales, etc. Sometimes you even see them being thrown out in skips when people renovate their kitchens. The best type of sink is one with drainage racks on both sides, and a single sink in the middle.

I had some 90mm x 45mm framing timber left over from some previous projects, so I used that for the frame of the station. To keep cost down, you could pull apart some shipping pallets or scrounge something suitable from a second-hand building supplies place.

I was really happy with the final result:

The nice thing about using a kitchen sink is that you can scrub it down with bleach to sterilise it before starting work. Cleanup afterwards is quick and easy too.

No sooner had I built the frame, and it was time to process the first chicken on it – our big rooster, who was starting to really hurt the hens with his size and strength, and the massive spurs he’d grown. I’ve got another rooster who is going to step into his place, until my Australorp chicks grow big enough to take over.

The processing station worked beautifully. The height was perfect – I had measured up our kitchen benches and built this frame to the same height. I hung a garden hose over the back of the frame, and put a large bucket under the sink drainhole. It was very handy being able to wash off parts of the chicken as I worked on it, as well as being able to keep my hands and the knife clean.

Even if you don’t butcher your own chickens, this kind of setup is very handy for quickly washing off vegetables from the garden before bringing them inside, washing out plant pots, and cleaning up your hand tools.

The Cost Of Raising Your Own Pigs For Meat

Darren — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 11:48:33 +0000

In this post I’ll summarise all the costs we had in purchasing our three piglets and raising them through to slaughter and butchering. As you’ll see, not only was it ethically rewarding and satisfying to rear happy pigs in an outdoor environment, but it was economically rewarding too!

Purchase of pigs ($80 each): $240
Batteries (D cells) for electric fence: $28.20
Garlic for worming: $7
Straw for bedding: $10
12x bags pig weaner pellets ($14.50 each): $174
14x bags pig grower pellets ($18.50 each): $259
9x bags “Cool & Calm” horse pellets ($13.50 each): $121.50
LHPA tattooing ($11 each): $33
Fuel transporting to abattoir: $35
Abattoir kill fee ($29 each): $87
Abattoir-butcher freight ($19 each): $57
Butcher cutting and packing ($40 each): $120

Total cost: $1171.70

According to the butcher, we got about 74 kg of meat back. I’ll subtract the heads, tails, etc and round that down to an even 70 kg.

That comes out to an approximate cost of $5.58/kg. Not bad!

As you can see from the above list, by far the biggest cost is feed. If you can grow a lot of feed yourself or have access to some kind of (meat-free!) waste food stream, you could really save a lot of money.

We kept our feed costs down a bit with the help of some friends. A nearby baker was giving us three big flour-sacks of day-old bread each week, and our greengrocer was giving us a big box of fruit and vegie scraps every week. The pigs also ate the weeds and grass in their runs (they had two different runs while they were here), and we fed them a lot of grass, weeds, and vegetable garden waste. We also got a few buckets of fruit from feral fruit trees and from under friends’ trees.

The Cool & Calm horse pellets were a way to keep feed costs down a little, and were also a useful substitute when I was running low on pig pellets (they are a special order item from feed suppliers around here). They are fairly similar to pig pellets in protein, fibre, etc, but probably lack the lysine (required for good pig growth). I alternated between pig pellets and Cool & Calm in successive feeds.

We chose not to castrate the pigs. Peoples’ opinions differ on whether this is necessary, and it didn’t seem worth the vet cost to me. It is supposed to reduce “boar taint” in the meat, but then that’s not usually a problem in boars killed under 6 months old anyway. It didn’t make the pigs hard to handle or anything, and we had three males so we weren’t going to have male-female interaction problems.

I haven’t included the electric fence equipment in the above list, since that was infrastructure that I’ll continue to use. The feed troughs, shelter, etc were all stuff I had lying around, and I was able to borrow a caged trailer for transport. I also haven’t included any running around in the car other than the abattoir trip, since most feed and bread pickups were on the way home from work anyway and the greengrocer dropped the scraps to us. These may be things to consider if you want to use my figures to estimate costs for your own pig project.

So there you have it! That’s all the costs and related info I can think of right now for our first foray into pig-raising. Hopefully this might help other people thinking of raising some pigs.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and feel free to ask questions if I’ve left anything out!

Home Grown Pork

Home Grown Pork

Darren — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 12:21:02 +0000

And so we come to the second-last chapter in our pig project – receiving all the pork back from the butcher (the final chapter is, of course, the cooking!).

The butcher we used was Alaban’s Butchery (48A Central Ave, Oak Flats, ph 4256-1388), and I highly recommend them. They took us through the different ways the carcasses could be butchered, and the different cuts we could get, and gave it back to us packaged into meal-sized portions ready for the freezer.

As I mentioned at the start of the pig project, our pig was called Kevin (Bacon). I couldn’t get the song “Kevin in the back seat of my Cadillac” out of my mind on the way home! Too much Gatesy and Tripod (Bevan The Musical, Part I and Part II), I think .

As you can see, the pork was a little on the fatty side – especially in the loin and belly areas. The leg chops are OK. I think that was a result of growing the pigs a little bit longer than I would have preferred. Christmas and new year got in the way (yeah, bad planning!) and the pigs were pretty big when we took them to the abattoir.

The total amount of meat we got back from each pig (including trotters, tail, ears, cheeks, head, etc) was 74 kg. They normally say a pig dresses out to about 75% or so, but I’m not sure if that includes all the extra bits we got. But it’s safe to say our pigs must have been over 90 kg, probably about 95 kg. Next time I’ll try to do them closer to 80 kg live weight.

As you can probably tell, we opted mostly for chops. We kept one belly whole (just removed the American-style spare ribs), and the other belly we had cut into pork rashers. I’m attempting a wet-cure bacon with the belly – it’s still in the fridge, so I’ll report back on results when it’s ready. We also got some nice leg and shoulder roasts, and some rolled roasts. No hams this time, and no mince or sausages.

Now I just need some recipe ideas – please post suggestions, recipes, links etc below!

In particular, I’m looking for things to do with the head (I got two heads, as another family didn’t want theirs). I’m thinking a chinese-style dish with the trotters, I think I remember a River Cottage recipe for the ears, and I’ll try to find the tail recipe they used on Australian Master Chef last year. I’d like to try guanciale (like pancetta) with the cheeks, but we’ll see how I go.

Taking The Pigs To The Abattoir

Darren — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:15:39 +0000

Last week, the time came to take our pigs to the abattoir. Before you can move pigs, though, you need to get them tattooed by the Rural Lands Protection Board (now the Livestock Health and Pest Authority, or LHPA) and fill out a PigPass.

I rang the Cumberland branch of the LHPA to arrange for tattooing, and they were very helpful. They sent out a ranger (who actually lives here in Jamberoo) to tattoo the pigs and help fill out the PigPass. Fortunately, the systems accommodate small “hobby” producers by allowing you to use the Crown brand instead of registering your own. The total cost was only $11 per pig.

The tattoo only lasts about 10 days, so you need to arrange it for the week before you expect to transport the pigs.

The nearest abattoir to us is the Wollondilly Abattoir Co-Op, at Tahmoor (almost 100 km away!).

We borrowed a caged trailer to transport the pigs. Loading them was a bit of fun and games, but we eventually lured them up the ramp with some pig feed and apples. It helps that you have to stop feeding the pigs the evening before taking them to the abattoir, so they were nice and hungry by this stage. We did have to change clothes before setting off, though!

The trip up to Tahmoor was uneventful, thankfully, and we found the abattoir easily.

Here it became interesting – the stockman at the abattoir told us to “just unload them into that pen down there”. Standing in the doorway of “that pen” was a 300 kg boar, waiting for us! We backed up the trailer, argued for a while over who was going to enter the pen to open the gate (I lost!), and then started trying to coax the pigs down the ramp.

We must have looked like a pair of wallies pushing, pulling, swearing and begging the pigs to move, all to no avail. The stockman took pity on us and called out to use the nearby hose – which had the almost instant effect of making the pigs stand up and trot down the ramp.

Our pigs were in, but then the huge boar came over to check out the trailer and decided to sit on the ramp! A few more minutes of encouragement with the hose and we got him to stand up enough to get the trailer closed up and the pen gate shut again.

Whew!

Friends help you move, but real friends help you move pigs.

Then it was just a matter of filling in some paperwork (description of livestock, where they were to be delivered, etc) and leaving it for the abattoir staff. We had hardly talked to anyone while at the abattoir – they just told us which pen to leave the pigs in and to leave our paperwork in the letterbox nearby. Everyone seemed to assume we knew how it all worked, but we had no clue. They didn’t even want us to pay them – they said they’d put the kill fee on our butcher’s account and we could fix him up.

We drove off just a little unsure of how this was all going to work out!

Fortunately the butcher rang us a few days later to let us know the carcasses had arrived, and to work out how we wanted them cut up.

So to answer Donna and Jason’s question from my last post about when is it time for bacon – real soon!

Pig Tractors For Clearing Land

Darren — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 19:42:21 +0000

Hang around permaculture people for any length of time, and you’re sure to hear about chicken tractors. They’re a great way to concentrate chickens in a small area, to dig up weeds, deposit manure, and generally prepare a garden bed for planting. Here’s a photo showing how we used a chicken tractor to prepare our vegetable garden beds:

But if you want to clear a larger area in a shorter time, you can’t beat a pig tractor!

We moved our three pigs into a weed-choked area on Boxing Day (December 26). Here’s what it looked like when they moved in:

They rooted around frantically, tasting all the yummy new things they had to browse on:

Clearing land is hard work, so they all lay down for a snooze after exploring the new pen:

Now here’s a photo of the same area exactly three weeks later:

Pigs are dedicated, tireless workers, and much more pleasant than a rototiller!

If you want more reading, the Permaculture Research Institute also recently published an article on the use of pig tractors.

An Assortment of Duck and Chicken Eggs

Darren — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 12:08:54 +0000

Our chickens and ducks have not been terribly productive in the past month or so – we actually had to buy eggs to get us through Christmas! Free-range, of course. With all the cooking, fry-ups, pavlovas, etc of the festive season, there was no other option.

I’m not sure why the ducks were off the lay, but other people in the area have told me that their ducks haven’t been laying much this summer either. It has been a wet summer so far, and not as hot as it usually gets.

The chicken egg production is down because we have two hens with chicks (they stop laying until the chicks are independent), another one broody, a bunch of ageing layers that just don’t produce like they used to, and a bunch of young pullets that are not quite laying yet.

Things have started to pick up this week, though, with 4-6 eggs per day starting to come in! Below is an assortment of recent eggs:

Working left to right, they are:

Chicken egg – 97 grams (yes, bigger than the duck eggs!) – from one of the Brahmas that recently hatched chicks. This one will be a double-yolker. You often get very large double-yolkers or strangely shaped eggs from older hens, especially as they come back into lay after moulting or hatching chicks, as their reproductive system gets going again.
Large duck egg – 92 grams. From an Indian Runner duck. They’re not usually this big.
Normal duck egg – 67 grams. Again from the Indian Runners, but this is more typical of the size.
Barnevelder egg – 61 grams. This is the typical size for our Barnie. Her eggs are a nice light brown colour, with darker brown speckles.
Brahma egg – 54 grams. You’d think these hens would lay much larger eggs, given their massive size! Their eggs are much rounder than other breeds’ eggs, very nicely proportioned.
Crossbreed egg – 44 grams. I’m not sure who is laying these lovely brown eggs (they’re darker than this picture in real life), but it must be one of the crossbreed pullets. I’m guessing it’s from a Barnevelder/ISA Brown cross, since both those breeds lay brown eggs.
Bantam egg – 36 grams. These are tiny, very cute, and kids love them. You need a couple to replace a single egg in a recipe, though.

What I first noticed when opening the commercial eggs we bought at Christmas, was how uniform they all were. I’m so used to seeing lots of different shapes, sizes and colours of eggs together, that uniformity is jarring. It’s the same with home-grown vegies – you get a lot of variation in size and shape, but when you go to the supermarket they’re all exactly the same. Maybe I’m just weird for noticing these things!

Geese In The Garden

Darren — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 12:29:20 +0000

On my recent tour of the Permaculture Visions property at Mount Kembla, I saw lots of great ideas for gardening and property design. This is part of a series to share them.

This post is about the geese that patrol the garden, and the straw yard where they live when not out on patrol.

They’re not easy to make out, but right in the center of this photo are the geese. They patrol much of the acre of gardens, but are excluded from sensitive areas by chicken wire. The geese eat mainly grass, but also provide pest control and clean up fallen fruit.

Here’s a closer look at some of the geese. While ducks and chickens are very useful in the garden, they are susceptible to attack by dogs and foxes. Geese, being a bit larger and louder, deter dogs and cats and help protect the other poultry during the day. They still need to be locked up at night, though. I’ve read from other web sites that geese are good watchdogs as well, noisily warning you when strangers enter your property. They’re probably a little scary to any intruder not familiar with them, too!

When they’re not out patrolling the yard, the geese live in this straw yard. They have shelter, water, and feed, as well as a bit of green pick to browse on. The fruit trees drop food on them too.

The straw yard is divided into two halves by a fence, and the geese can be let into either side. While the geese are on one side, the other side is rested. It can be sown with grain or green manure, and once it is going well the geese are allowed in and the other side of the yard is shut off. This gives them regular access to greenery in their run, while also allowing the ground to recover after heavy grazing and not turn into the typical chook run moonscape.

Have you ever kept geese? What tips do you have to share?

Permaculture Chicken Mansion

Darren — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 12:03:35 +0000

On my recent tour of the Permaculture Visions property at Mount Kembla, I saw lots of great ideas for gardening and property design. This is part of a series to share them.

This post is all about the fantastic chicken coop, dubbed the “chicken mansion”, that April showed us.

It’s a little hard to see inside the coop, but the floor is a raised metal grid with gaps of about 12mm (1/2 inch). It’s strong enough for a person to walk on, and allows manure, dust and broken down pieces of nesting material to fall through to the ground below. The mesh prevents rats from getting through, and the material that falls through simply rolls down the slope below the coop. On the left, you can just see the water barrel that collects rainwater from the roof gutters and provides drinking water for the chickens.

From the side, you can see how the whole coop is raised off the ground. Good use is made of the natural slope of the land, so you can walk in at ground level from the top side. The nesting box lids lift to allow easy access for egg collection from the outside, and the mesh side ensures good ventilation.

Looking at the chicken coop (on the left) from the rear, you can see the fox-proof ladder that allows the chickens access. The ladder is wide, and has wide spacing between rungs, so that foxes will not be able to climb it. By giving the chickens a ladder, you don’t need to lock them in each night and let them out each morning.

You can read more details about this chicken coop from the Permaculture Visions chicken mansion page.

What are the best chicken coop features you’ve seen? What would your “dream chicken coop” include?

Swill Feeding Pigs In Las Vegas

Darren — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:21:19 +0000

BBC’s Ethical Man visits a pig farm in Las Vegas, where pigs are raised on the scraps from restaurants, to supply pork products back to the restaurants. It’s a disgusting job (they also visited this farm on World’s Dirtiest Jobs), and I think it’s safe to say that the Ethical Man won’t be invited back!

Check out the video here:

Feeding Swill To Pigs in Las Vegas

Australians please note that it’s illegal to feed swill to pigs. Many other countries have similar prohibitions (but not the US, evidently).

Plants For The Chicken Run

Darren — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 12:32:40 +0000

Someone asked what they could plant in and around their chicken pen, to provide the chooks with additional food and some green pickings. Here are my suggestions:

A classic permaculture recommendation is to plant a mulberry tree in or just outside the chicken run. The berries will drop into the pen and provide a high-quality feed. It will take a few years to get established, though. Pigeon pea and tagasaste are also often recommended in permaculture books.

Comfrey around the outside of the pen will love the manure, and is great to feed to the chooks. Very useful around the garden, too. Comfrey grows very fast, so a relatively small patch will provide you with constant pickings.

Thorny raspberries around the pen will provide some additional protection from predators, some food for you, and leaves and prunings for the chickens. Bamboos will provide fast-growing shade and wind protection.

Make a bottomless cage out of a timber frame covered with chicken wire (1/2 inch is best, so the chooks can’t get their heads through it). Sow some seed (oats, wheat, or even just cheap bird seed mix) onto the ground, and place the cage over the top so the chickens can’t get at it. As it grows up through the cage, they can nibble it. You can periodically move the growing cage to start a new patch, and let them eat the old one down. Radish is also good, since it grows so fast.

Herbs in general are good for the chickens. Parsley, rosemary, sage, etc will grow well just outside the pen. You can occasionally cut a bunch of herbs and throw them into the run. They’ll provide the chooks with some greenery to eat, but also lots of minerals, micronutrients, etc.

Wormwood, rue, nasturtium, nettle and tansy repel some parasites and intestinal worms.

Marigolds look pretty, and feeding the yellow flowers to the chickens is not only good for them, but makes their yolks even more yellow. Chickweed, clover, alfalfa (lucerne) and dandelions are welcomed, as well, although you have to explain to people why you’re growing weeds!

Field corn and sunflowers are very good. Let the heads dry, and you can store them up for winter. Then just throw a head or two into the pen every few days, or as a weekly treat. Jerusalem artichokes, a relative of sunflowers, are pretty plants and provide edible leaves and tubers for the chickens (and tubers for you, too!).

Fruit trees can be planted inside the run, with 1/2 inch chicken wire cages around them to protect them while they’re young. The chickens will clean up any fallen fruit and eat any fruit fly larvae, and will enjoy the shade as well.

If you have a pond, you could try growing azolla and/or duckweed in it. These are surface plants that will thrive on the nutrients in the pond water and help keep it clear. They grow and reproduce very fast, and you can periodically scoop out handfuls to throw in to the chickens.

What have you tried? What would you recommend?