Caring for Livestock in the EXTREME Cold

When the temperature drops below zero you suit up, do chores and don't complain.  When the real feel temp is around -50 you take notice!

We have to take extra measures to care for the cattle and chickens when extreme cold spells hit, and it's all about More! One reason we love our Hereford cattle is that they are very cold hardy and seem to have enough sense to take shelter when it's extreme outside.

Pedro with "The Girls" eating lots of extra hay

Cattle: More warm dry fodder (stalks from corn or soybeans) bedding, more hay and more trips to the water trough.  Bryce and Loren recently placed an extra hay wagon in with the cows.  Cattle eat approximately 20% more when the temperatures drop below 20 degrees. I imagine they are eating a much higher volume of feed today. We also spend a lot of time taking stock pots full of hot water out to thaw frozen water troughs.

We have three paddocks near the barns and each paddock of animals has plenty of access to the barns where they can go in and hunker down in the fodder.  On days like this I pray that their instinct to stay close and share body heat is strong. We also pray that it warms up so that we have enough hay to make it all the way to spring.

Chickens with two heat lamps and extra bedding

 Chickens stay in their coop when the weather is insane like this.  I used to open their trap door and wait for them to come out, but they just laughed at me! They currently have two heat lamps and we use the "deep bedding method" to keep it clean and create a bit of heat.  Deep bedding works much like a compost pile.  I thoroughly clean the coop each spring (not a fun job), we then lay out new wood chip bedding.  As the bedding gets dirty we lay down more new wood chips on top of the old ones and continue putting new chips on top of old until in mid winter we have a nice deep pile about 18" -2 feet deep.  The chips and manure on the bottom decomposes slowly and releases some heat which keeps the coop surprisingly comfortable on cold days.

Chickens roost close together in the rafters at night to take advantage of the rising heat the the chicken to chicken warmth. As you can see I have a heat lamp right next to the water to keep it partially thawed.  It has been working fairly well since our heated water tank broke. Chickens also eat a lot more feed in the extreme cold.

We even have one smart cat who lives under a heat lamp in the coop right now. I still need to figure out a trick to keep the eggs from freezing and cracking!

Poultry on Pasture

Here are a couple pictures of our meat birds on pasture.  We have them in a 164 foot electric netting with a portable shelter that we moved every day last year.  The way we are raising them now is called a "day range" model of pastured poultry.  They come out during the day and spend the night in their shelter to stay protected from predators.  I like this model a lot better because it makes chore time easier and gives the chickens space to roam and keeps them cleaner!  They can nibble on the grass, but prefer their feed. Last year when we kept them in the portable shelter all the time, we had to move them 3 times a day the last two weeks of their lives.

The worst predator we have seen this summer has been the 100 plus heat for days on end.  We lost a few birds to heat exhaustion, but have been doing everything we can to keep them alive.  We have even had a sprinkler in their pen.  They are not fond of water, but it does keep things cooler when we run the sprinkler on mist setting. We also need to make sure they always have fresh water and shade.

We will butcher these chickens in about a week.  Nothing compares to the taste of pastured poultry!

Riemer Family Farm is a sustainable multi-generational family farm in south central Wisconsin

Nobody can resist a cute chick!

 Here are just a couple pictures of our baby chicks.  They are now just over a week old and doing quite well.  We brood them in the garage in old cow water tanks with pine chips for bedding and heat lamps.  The important things to watch when raising chicks from a day old is to keep them the right temperature and give them lots of fresh water and food.

The chicks we are holding (and resting on the giant baby belly) are laying hens and will lay their first eggs at about 20 weeks.  The little yellow chicks in the brooder could be your dinner in just 8 weeks.  They will all move outside at week 4.

Choosing Chicks for 2012

We are having a hard time deciding what egg laying chicks to get for 2012. Our current 23 lovely ladies will continue to lay eggs through the next year or two, but due to demand for eggs we are going to order about 25 more and have a whole lot of cackling (and poop) in our yard!

Help us choose - clicking on their name for more information: These are the three finalists. The smaller bird in each picture is the hen (female egg layer) the larger is the rooster. We will not be getting any roosters! I like to sleep! We will likely get a few Americaunas which lay blue/green eggs and then two of the following:

Speckeled Sussex


Golden Laced Wyandotte

Black Australorp

Which one is your favorite?

These images and links are from Meyer Hatchery Website where we usually order our birds.

Power Cooking a Whole Chicken=3 Family Meals

I first learned the phrase "power cooking" a couple months ago from Tara Vanden Branden when I hosted a Pampered Chef party. We power cooked with 3# of our ground beef, but I have come up with my own version Riemer Family Farm Chicken style.

Our meat chickens averaged about 6# this year, so we can get some really hardy meals out of just one chicken. Some are so large that they do not fit in the slow cooker unless completely thawed and then smushed.

So here it goes 3 simple meals: 1 large chicken

Meal 1: Chicken and Vegietables

Throw the whole chicken in a slow cooker and set on low for 6-8 hours. I like to add roasting veggies with a couple hours left. You can use what you have on hand, last time I used: carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash, onion, leeks and garlic. I add as many veggies as I can possibly fit. When everything is cooked I take out half the veggies and the chicken drippings and then actually get a 4th meal from veggie/chicken soup.

Cut the chicken (reserving at least 1 breast) serve the veggies and enjoy!

Meal 2: Chicken and grape salad

1..5-2lb chicken breast
1 C Celery, finely chopped
1 small onion minced
1 C seedless grapes sliced
1T Dijon mustard
dash of salt
1 t ground mustard
1/2 t black pepper
1 1/2 C Mayonnaise
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Salt and pepper the cooked chicken and make sure it is cool. Roughly chop chicken and place in a large bowl. Add all other ingredients and mix. Enjoy on tomato slices, bread, or a bed or greens. This recipe was taken from "Paleo Comfort Foods" by Julie & Charles Mayfield.

Meal 3: Chicken Tortilla Soup

Kalena (my child that will not eat half the time) said "Mom will you make this every day!" last time I made this soup.
I used the recipe from one of my favorite blogs "The Pioneer Woman". Click here for the recipe http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2011/01/chicken-tortilla-soup/. It calls for chicken breast, but you can shred any of the chicken meat for this soup. I also skipped the cornmeal and it was just fine. Serve with your favorite corn bread!

I hope your family enjoys these recipe's as much as mine did!

Renovated Chicken Coop

By request here are some pictures of the before, during and after of the chicken coop painting. We did the work this past September.

This was taken after the carpenters did their work. Bryce is shooting any cat with water that seems to threaten the young chickens. It turns out the cats were not a threat at all. They just like to see the hens flap and squawk.

during...

after.

Most of the work came even before the before picture! We had to empty it of 80 years of farm junk, then had the help of two carpenters to make it "safe and usable" and now finally a nice paint job and a door with a fiberglass window that will not shatter into a million pieces again! :) Let's just say I looked a bit silly this fall vacuuming the grass.

Sweet little fluffy chicks...Round 2

After "harvesting" our first batch of 30 meat chickens we decided it was not so bad and so here we are doing it again! This time we have 50 birds...well make that 53. The hatchery throws in the bird equivalent to a bakers dozen because one can expect a certain casualty rate. Although out of our first bunch of 31 we only lost a single bird. I'm hoping to finish with 53 this time, but maybe I'm being unrealistically optimistic!

These sweet little chicks will spend the first 3-4 weeks in our new improved brooder. We have an eight foot diameter metal cow tank with two foot high sides. The floor is covered in several inches of wood shavings and they have three water troughs and three food troughs. These little guys have a ton of space. They only require 1/2" of space, but are happier the more room they have to roam. They start getting quite large even at 3-4 weeks when they move out to the chicken tractor (see previous blog post about that).

Taking care of the chicks is one of the many home school projects that the girls get to take part in on the farm. Elli has become the primary farmer for bottle feeding the one calf on milk replacer and both girls have taken on the job of making sure the cats have water.

Chicken Tractor!

We searched long and hard for a perfect "chicken tractor" design and in the end did what everyone else we could find on the internet did...used what they had and made it work as a shelter for their meat chickens.

There is no single way to build a portable bottomless chicken shelter. We raised our first 30 Cornish-Cross chickens in it, and will be raising our next batch soon. I must say the meat is very good! We pulled the shelter to the next fresh plot of pasture once, or twice a day depending on their size (you would be amazed at the poo a large chicken can produce)!

This is chicken tractor version 1.1. It never made it into circulation. Farming is a lot of trial and error sometimes.

This is the tractor we used. I must say Bryce was pretty brilliant with this one! It was made out of the abundance of scrap wood we have around the farm and 1/2" hardware netting. We secured the netting to the frame and installed a simple latch to remove the plywood door on one end. We drilled a hook for the water and secured a heavy duty tarp over about 2/3 of the shelter to protect from sun and weather.

Bryce also installed metal fence posts into the 4 corners and strung electric wire all the way around about 8" above the ground. We then connected the electric wire to the steer pen wire and had a heck of a shock for any raccoon that might come after a chicken dinner! We surprisingly did not see any evidence of predators coming near the chicken tractor.

We hope to use this shelter for many rounds of birds and continue to improve on our design in the future to raise even more chickens for our customers.

Chicken Day!

Today was the day we have been waiting for! CHICKEN DAY! I got a call from the post lady in the picture at 6:30 am. She said we could pick them up and ring the side door if we were before 8:30. Yes, they really do just come in the mail. We ordered them through a reputable hatchery in Ohio. Before picking them up we went out and filled the food trays and water dish's and were off to town with banana's in hand. Kalena was still in her jammy top.

When we got the chicks home we gently lifted them one at a time and dipped their beaks in the water so that they would know where to drink. Our friend told us to do this, not sure if it's an old farm wives tale or not, but it seemed logical. They immediately started running around and checking out their brooder. They jumped into their food and ate their litter. I gave them a hydrating gel that was supposed to rehydrate the tired little day old travelers.

In all we have 57 chicks: 31 meat birds and 26 hens. The hens are three different breeds: Golden Buff, Plymouth Barred Rock, and Rhode Island Reds. These are all known for their large brown eggs and are excellent layers. We look forward to getting eggs from them in September. Now we need to get to work getting the chicken coop cleaned up.

After they graduate from the brooder they will range around the farmstead by day and hang out in the coop where it's safe from rotten raccoons by night. Say tuned for more adventures in chicken land!