Homemade Suet Cakes

Homemade Suet Cakes

October is one of my favorite months of the year. I love that the hustle and bustle of August and September have started to slow. Harvest time is finishing up, my garden is dormant and school routines have been established. The leaves are changing to beautiful yellows, oranges and reds. All around is a picture perfect view of nature.

At my home, we have had two nights in a row that temperatures dropped to freezing levels. Frost and ice have covered both the grass and my car’s windshield. Winter is on the horizon and this backyard chicken keeper is starting to get into the routine of preparing for the cold weather to come.

One of the ways that I help my Ladies get through the long Michigan winter is by preparing homemade suet blocks. The extra calories help the hens to stay warm. Beef tallow, suet,  is a great binder to hold together extra goodies such as cracked corn, sunflower seeds and millet.  These provide not only extra calories, but have nutritious value without any preservatives or added chemicals. The rendered beef tallow,  alone,  can be kept in a sealed mason jar in your basement, pantry or canning cupboard for up to a year, longer if kept in the refrigerator. The mixed up suet cakes can be kept in your refrigerator for up to a year before going rancid. If at any time, a rancid smell develops, please err on the side of caution and do not consume or feed it to any animal, dispose of the product immediately.

Things you will need:

Glass Jar (for holding the tallow)   

stock pot

1 Pound Beef Fat/Suet

¼  Cup of Black Oil Sunflowers

¼  Cup of Cracked Corn

¼ Cup of Corn Meal

½   Cup of Millet Bird Seed

Fine Mesh or Cheesecloth for straining

molds for the shape of suet cake you would like to make

Steps:

1. Begin by chopping your beef fat into small chunks. This makes rendering the fat quicker.
2. As your fat is rendered to liquid, scoop out any large pieces of crispy bits or cracklin as we call them.
3. While the fat is rendered, prepare your jars by sterilizing them in boiling water.
4. Pour into the warm, sterilized, jar using a fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth to catch any left behind bits.
5. Allow the Tallow to cool. Mixing your hot tallow with your seeds would cook the the ingredients.
6. Once the tallow has cooled to room temperature, before it solidifies, mix your ingredients together.
7. Place in molds and allow to cool and harden. The corn meal and cooled tallow will begin to thicken quickly, but to get fully hard I let them set overnight. You can place them into the refrigerator to cool more quickly.
8. To serve to your birds, place in a suet cage or serve in a feed bowl. Store the remaining cakes in the refrigerator, wrapped in wax paper and placed inside a storage baggie.

 This is a basic recipe for making beef tallow as well as homemade suet for your birds to enjoy. I use these during Fall Molts and through out the winter to give my Ladies a booster of calories. Once you are comfortable working with tallow, you can add different things to your suet cakes. 

Peanut butter, dried fruits, are all appreciated additions that your flock is sure to love. I feed these during the day and remove them from the chicken area at night. I have had good luck so far with night time predators, but do not like to encourage them by leaving food out at night.
 
 
http://www.communitychickens.com/homemade-suet-cakes/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=CC%20eNews&utm_campaign=2014.10.14%20CC%20eNews

 

Winter Lighting For Your Chickens

 

Egg production tapers off when hens don't catch enough rays, which explains why many flocks stop producing completely in winter. 

A little mood lighting inside their coop, however, can help compensate for the shorter days. Just be sure to select bulbs that cast a warm glow—as the chandelier shown here does—since bluish-white light won't trigger laying.

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20712574_21354981,00.html

Getting Ready for Winter

 

Getting Ready for Winter

 Jennie E.

We prepare the car and the house for the coming winter season but we also need to get the chicken coop ready too. Luckily, chickens handle the cold better than we humans but they still need some protection. And don’t think that they don’t appreciate it, because they do, a well tended chicken will reward you by producing better year round.

Dominique Rooster and Black Star Rooster

“When you’ve finished cleaning – take a picture because it won’t look this great again until Spring!”

The first order of business is a good fall coop cleaning. Empty the nests and sweep or shovel out the coop. Don’t forget to compost all that great fertilizer and old hay. Grab the steel wool, a bucket (or the power washer) and the vinegar. Use a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water. Start from the top and work down cleaning all the surfaces as you go. If you want to whitewash, this is the time. When you’ve finished cleaning – take a picture because it won’t look this great again until Spring!

Coop Security/Insulation Check

As you clean look for holes, cracks or crevices where the winter winds can come blowing in. Fill those holes with caulking or cover them with a board. If your coop isn’t already insulated you might want to do that too. Just make sure that you don’t leave any of the insulation where the chickens can peck at it because they will eat it up and it’s definitely not good for them. If the coop is a dirt floor check for holes caused by predators or erosion along the outside walls and seal them up.

Feathered Friends

“DTE kills lice and other bugs, deter’s mice and the added bonus… it works as a dewormer if they eat it!”

There has to be a vent of some sort in order to keep the moisture/humidity down in the coop. This can be achieved by installing a roof vent, a side wall vent or leaving an opening in the winterizing material that you use.

Once you’ve finished the cleaning then sprinkle powdered lime and Diatomaceous Earth (DTE) throughout the coop. Powdered lime does wonders in reducing the “aroma” of coop. The DTE kills lice and other bugs, deter’s mice and the added bonus… it works as a dewormer if they eat it!
Now your ready to add new straw or, if you live in a humid climate, add wood shavings to help reduce the chance of frostbite, refill the waterers and throw the girls some scratch for their patience.

If your winterizing includes adding plastic or tarps be sure to use at least 3 mil thick to ensure that it’s strong enough to hold heat and to survive wind and ice.

Heating For Hens

It’s not time yet to heat the coop but it is time to start thinking about how you’re going to do that. Since chickens acclimate well to the cold, you don’t need to provide heat until the temps are down in 20’s. Two great ways to heat are with a 75 watt black incandescent light that is available at most animal supply stores and home improvement stores or an oil filled radiator heater. Unless you have a very large coop or sustained temperatures below -0 the black incandescent should be sufficient. If you want efficiency with your heating, install a dimmer switch for the incandescent bulb. If you use an oil filled radiator be sure to keep it away from the chickens with a cover over it that will allow proper functioning but will not allow the chickens to touch it.

Winter Water Works

Another area of major importance is how your chickens will have water during freezing weather. You might opt to do the ‘bucket carry’ method by carrying two buckets, one with fresh water and the second to pour the old water into. Adding a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar (ACV) to each gallon of water will keep the water from freezing a little longer. You can also install a watering system with a built in heater like the ones used for dogs and cats. Just be sure the wires are not exposed. If you have a water faucet spigot in the coop be sure it is well insulated.

There are some special precautions you can take if you live in really cold climates, areas that receive lots of snow or areas with brief deep freezes. Some of these include covering your chickens combs and waddles with an oily substance like petroleum jelly or vegetable oil. Keep walking paths shoveled for them so that they don’t get frostbite caused by walking in the deep snow.

See the above pictures of my “operation”. I have 42 layers and too many roosters right now. Plus I keep a dozen bantam/game hens and 7 guineas who are not housed in the “big house” as we call it. I live in central Texas so it’s still a little early for winterizing but I did do my fall cleaning this week and made out my “honey-do” list for the hubby.

 http://www.fowlblog.com/2014/10/getting-ready-for-winter/?utm_source=Winter+Blog+Campaign&utm_campaign=Winter+Blog+Campaign&utm_medium=email




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Winter is just around the corner - Prepair For Proper Diets Now

How to Enrich Your Chickens’ Diet This Winter

Grow supplemental winter treats to keep your chickens happy and healthy when they can’t free-range.

By Rachel Hurd Anger

Chickens are omnivores with strong instincts to forage for vitamins, minerals, protein and oils found in the living grasses and insects they eat, to sustain life and to produce healthy eggs for would-be offspring. But, despite winter’s wonder, the season lacks fresh, living foods.

While grain-based feed is balanced for optimal nutrition as a main food source, feeding only commercial feed denies chickens some of their natural behaviors. Chickens can become bored during the winter months, and when they have nothing to peck but feed, they can start pecking each other instead.

Encourage natural behaviors during winter and decrease seasonal stress by offering sprouts and fodder grown in your kitchen. The fresh tastes of spring will boost the flock’s winter activity levels, keeping them warm and occupied during the coldest months. In the warmer months, forage can be sown directly in the run for in-coop enrichment all year-round.

Sprouts and Fodder

In Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Tina Gabel breeds, shows and sells Silkies and Nankins, in addition to keeping a few large layers. Her interest in healthful and holistic foods led her to try sprouting for her flock.
"The satisfaction of growing sprouts and fodder doesn’t end after the first jar,” Gabel says. "It becomes a nice hobby of sorts.”

She prefers sprouting soft, white wheat through fall, winter and early spring, and recommends the simple jar method of sprouting. "It’s so easy and fast, and the supplies are available at local stores.”

To sprout seeds in a jar, add 1/2 cup clover seeds, alfalfa seeds, wheat berries or even lentils into a quart-sized canning jar. Secure a double layer of cheesecloth over the jar’s mouth with the band. Soak the seeds overnight, then rinse through the cheesecloth at least twice a day for two to four days, draining upside down between rinsing. Gabel drains hers slightly tipped in a dish drainer, but if you’re short on space, place the jar upside down in a small dish. Slow the growth process by storing finished sprouts in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use them, continuing to rinse occasionally.



Sprouting seeds packaged for human consumption are usually labeled Certified Organic, while conventional seeds might be treated with chemicals that make their sprouts inedible. Even if you don’t feed your chickens organic feed, sprouting organic seeds ensures they are appropriate for human consumption and safe for your flock.

To grow fodder, simply grow your sprouts longer. After three or four days of sprouting, transfer the sprouts to another container, such as a colander or a bowl. Continue gently rinsing the fodder at least twice a day, and drain well. Within a few more days, the roots will intertwine to form a thick mat topped with lush greens resembling sod. Once the mat forms, flip it onto your hand to rinse the bottom, let it drain and return the fodder to its container. To serve to chickens, tear off a small section at a time, trim greens from the top or present the entire mat for the flock to peck at their leisure.

"We harvest fodder for the bantams by cutting 1/2-inch pieces for them so they don’t get impacted crops,” Gabel says. "The large fowl are given chunks of fodder, which they love to grab and carry around.”
Foraging for living foods in the winter keeps chickens happy and ensures that the eggs laid during the off-season are as healthy as possible.

"By supplementing the diet with soft wheat sprouts, hard wheat fodder and fresh vegetables and fruit, along with some seeds and supplements, we can help fill any possible nutritional gaps,” Gabel says.
While she grows her sprouts and fodder, daughter Lindsey makes a supplement "pizza” for the flock year-round, with layered poultry conditioner, black oil sunflower seeds and a sprinkle of probiotics to help keep the show birds in tip-top shape.

Once she discovered the ease of growing treats hydroponically, without a greenhouse and soil, growing sprouts and fodder became a hobby that Gabel shares with other chicken owners.

Coop-Side Forages

For chicken keepers raising their broods in cities or areas where flocks are more vulnerable to predators, free-ranging for forage can be inadvisable or impossible. For these chickens, the lack of living foods isn’t only a seasonal problem, but one that plagues the coop environment the entire year.
Sherry Fischer can’t let her flock of Silkies forage in her yard in Fort Bragg, Calif., so she decided to bring the yard into the run.

"I became interested in enrichment in the coop and run when I found myself envious of people who were able to free-range their chickens,” she says. "I expressed concerns with a friend about the flock’s mental and physical well-being while kept in a pen.”

Fischer began hanging pots of edible nasturtiums inside the run and planting strawberries out alongside the run where her Silkies can help themselves to the forage that grows within a beak’s reach. She even grows forage right inside the run. Her grazing frame, a shallow raised bed topped with framed chicken wire, allows her lightweight Silkies to munch on the clover and mixed grasses growing through. For large layers, a grazing frame requires hardware cloth to support their weight over the forage.

Through her diverse social media network, Fischer encourages other chicken keepers to grow supplemental foods and forage inside their coops and runs, or to grow it elsewhere and serve it in a natural way. One of Fischer’s foraging tricks is stuffing freeze-dried mealworms into cracks in logs and around rocks for the chickens to find.

She assures that providing some enrichment in any coop is easy and beneficial. "It’s not hard to be kind and caring, and to provide a stimulating environment for chickens,” she says. "It can be easy.” During the winter months, Fischer sometimes even bakes for her flock. "Veggie-filled corn muffins topped with mealworms—yum!”

High-quality nutrition and a pleasant coop environment are important to many modern chicken-keepers. As Gabel treats her chickens to sprouts and fodder while they wait for spring, and Fischer’s flock enjoys foraging inside the run, each chicken keeper creates a superior quality of life for her livestock. What it takes, Fischer says, is "just seeing to it that they have the opportunity to find and work for some of their own food, access fresh greenery and function as a flock within a combined area.” Offering living foods, such as sprouts, fodder and purposeful forage, is a simple gesture to increase a flock’s quality of life. The once-offbeat hobby of chicken keeping continues to evolve against the grain.

Learn more about chicken diets and winter chicken-keeping:

• 6 Winter Tips for Your Flock
  
• 6 Coop Winterizing Chores
  
• Frostbite in Chickens
  
• 7 Chicken Treats for Better-Quality Eggs
  
• 5 Herbs Your Chickens Will Love 

About the Author: Rachel Hurd Anger, a freelance writer living in Louisville, Ky., sprouts lentils and grows alfalfa and clover fodder for her small flock of hens throughout the year. During Kentucky’s unpredictable winters, she scatters sprouts for forage and serves warm oatmeal breakfasts. Follow her chicken-keeping adventures on UrbanFarmOnline.com'sg Chicken Quarters.

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6 Winter Tips for Your Flock

Keep your chickens warm, healthy and productive this winter with these cold-weather guidelines.

By Kristina Mercedes Urquhart

Courtesy Hemera/ThinkstockHelp your chickens avoid frost-bitten feet by clearing a path in the snow for them in the chicken run.

When Old Man Winter moves into town, your chickens are counting on you to help guide them through the season. Luckily, chickens are bred to gradually acclimate to the coming cool weather. In fact, most heavy chicken breeds prefer it to the searing heat of summer. Even so, they’ll need a little help in certain areas to get through without a hitch. Here are six tips for successfully overwintering your flock.  

1. Fight Frozen Water 
Perhaps the most frustrating (and foreseeable) part of overwintering any livestock is the endless battle against frozen water. Unless you have electricity in your coop or barn, I’m sorry to say that all solutions include a bit of heavy lifting. 

One option is to use a heated dog bowl or heated waterer base. It’s easy to install and inexpensive, but there is one catch: You must use a double-walled, galvanized-steel water fount in place of the standard plastic. 
If running electricity to your coop is not an option, you may be carrying your weight in water to the flock several times a day. In this case, have two or more waterers ready to alternate by thawing indoors.  

“One idea is to fill the waterer with hot water and then drop a chunk of ice (or a good amount of ice cubes) into the water to slowly cool it down over the course of several hours,” recommends Ashley English, chicken keeper and author of the Homemade Living book series. 

Whatever method works for you, the important thing is that your chickens have access to fresh water at all times.  

2. Protect Combs and Wattles 
In a cold spell with below-freezing temperatures, your chickens' combs and wattles may be susceptible to frostbite. Use petroleum jelly (or olive oil, as a natural alternative) to fight frostbite by applying it to the affected areas. Apply the lubricant when your chickens have gone to roost at night. They may not find it pleasant, but it beats the alternative. 

Keep in mind that chicken breeds with large combs and wattles, such as Leghorns and many roosters, are more prone to frostbite. You’ll find that cold-hardy breeds with small combs, such as rose or pea combs, will fare better come winter.

3. Provide a Path in the Snow
If the snow is piling up to a few inches or more, shovel out a path for your chickens. Frostbitten toes or feet can be very painful but are easily avoided by protecting chickens from the snow.

“You don't want an intrepid flock mate deciding to brave a wall of snow,” English says. “The snow will win, every time.” 

4. Heat the Coop—or Not
Some chicken keepers swear by heating the coop during the harshest of winters. While there is a benefit to using a heater or lamp (supplemental light means more winter eggs), consider the safety risk. Heaters plus dry pine shavings or other bedding can quickly become a fire hazard unless properly or professionally installed. Also consider the possibility of power outages and a subsequent drop in temperature. Chickens cannot adapt to a sudden plunge in mercury, and it could spell disaster for your entire flock in one night.
As an alternative, you can allow your chickens to gradually acclimate to the cooler weather during autumn without heat. In the fall, check your coop’s roof to ensure it won’t leak during heavy snows. Protect your chickens from heavy drafts, but be certain there is adequate ventilation in their enclosure. Accumulated moisture during the cold months can lead to frostbite. 

Finally, don’t underestimate the effectiveness of insulation in your coop. Your birds will roost together and create a good amount of heat on their own (the equivalent of 10 watts of heat per chicken). All you have to do is help the heat stay there. 

5. Give Feed a Boost
Consider supplementing your flock’s diet with cracked corn or scratch.
“The fattiness of the scratch will allow the birds to pack on an extra layer of body fat, which aids them in better combating colder weather,” English says.

That said, scratch and corn are treats and do not contain the complete nutrition your flock needs.
“Continue them on their regular feed, tossing a few handfuls of scratch during evening rounds,” she says.

6. Collect Eggs Often
If you’re one of those poor souls, like me, who makes multiple trips to the chicken coop to change out water, remember to collect eggs each time you go. Because chicken eggs are nearly 75-percent water, they’ll freeze and crack quickly once exposed to the cold air.

Use your judgment when it comes to your flock and your particular setup—what will work for some may not work for others. As always, check your flock daily and look for signs of illness. And once everyone is tucked in, curl up with a hot cup o’ something and enjoy the season.  

About the Author: Kristina Mercedes Urquhart writes from the mountains of western North Carolina, where she lives with her menagerie of animals, including a mixed flock of chickens. She contributes to several Bowtie publications, and you can find her regular column, “Fowl Language” in each issue of Chickens magazine.
http://www.hobbyfarms.com/livestock-and-pets/6-winter-tips-for-your-flock.aspx

More tips from Kristina:
If you give your chickens supplemental lighting on a timer, it should come on early in the wee hours of the morning and continue until it is light outside. If you want to leave it on 24/7, that seems to work also. Do not set the timer to come on at dusk and go off after it is dark. Since birds are night blind, the light will go off while they are still active and they will be unable to find their roosts in the dark. If you set it to come on at 3 or 4 AM, they will crow too early, but will use the natural dusk to migrate to their perches to sleep. I use a clear heat lamp and just leave it on 24/7. So far no problems and they still come into the coop and put themselves to bed when it gets dark outside.

Our domesticated fowl require a balanced diet provided by most commercial feeds. Layers, in particular, need the correct ratio of protein, calcium and other nutrients to be healthy due to their high egg production. All chicks should be fed a Starter feed (labeled as such), until about 19 weeks or so -- or until you see the first egg. Once a pullet begins to lay, she should be switched to a Layer feed, also labeled as such. It is highly recommended that you provide grit to break down any treats (usually commercial feed has some grit in it), and oyster shells to provide for added calcium. Both should be offered free choice at all times -- a hen will only take what she needs when she needs it.

Scratch and cracked corn have their benefits, but consider them like candy for the chicken world. It is not a sufficient daily diet, and should only be offered as a treat. Given sparsely in the winter, scratch will increase a hen's body fat and allow her to stay warmer. Because of the same reasons, do not give scratch in the summer. If fed scratch/cracked corn year-round, your hens may run into trouble due to unecessary fattening, such as egg binding and prolapse.

Last tip: allow them to free range and pasture as much as possible, but remember your flock still requires access to Layer feed to be healthy. 

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