Neglected? I Think Not
It seems everywhere you turn people are upset that some folks have outdoor animals. I’ve seen lots of name calling, confiscation of pets and even in some municipalities people are citing people for having outdoor pets. With proper shelter, warm bedding, water and extra feed, many animals do quite fine outside, even during the winter. We have outdoor animals, chickens, ducks, guineas, cats and even Tara spends most of her time outside. I can guarantee that they’re not being neglected, or abused, in fact they’re all happier for it, much, much happier! These animals would be absolutely miserable if we tried to keep them inside to stay warm all winter.
Tara is one happy dog when she’s out in the cold, in fact, she’s much happier the colder the weather gets. She’s been getting extra bones and lots of the fatty pork trimmings we saved when we slaughtered our pigs. As you can see, she’s happy as a clam out in the cold munching on her goodies. The duck pond that has a stock tank heater in it is close at hand, which means she has delicious ducky water to drink (it’s her favorite kind, so much better than the fresh stuff in her heated dog bowl).
The chickens, ducks, and guineas are also getting a nice warm meal before they roost up for the night. Remember all those potatoes I planted this past summer in the garden? I’ve been cooking them up on the wood stove and mixing them with fermented grains, dried herbs and a bit of lard as well for good measure. Naturally, the fowl are tickled pink with these delicious meals and are rewarding me with loads of eggs.
The Sweets, which is our little feral garage cat, is also spoiled rotten. We have a heated mat for her in the garage, but she refuses to sleep on it, even when the weather dips down to -20. She does however, relish the warm venison burger with added bacon grease. She gobbles it right up along with chicken necks and wings and anything else I take out to her. In the winter she eats about double what she does in the summer. Her fur is so thick you can’t get your finger through it down to her skin, it’s amazing how velvety she gets during cold weather. She also loves to hunt down by the sauna, no doubt there are load of mice down there.
The truth is most animals adapt very well, bringing them into a heated space during a cold snap actually does them more harm than good because it can cause loss of their warm winter coat. If you have stray animals around feel free to provide extra nutrient dense food for them and provide shelter with warm bedding, but please don’t try to put them in a heated space to keep them warm. And please, don’t assume those with outdoor animals are neglecting or abusing their pets, sure there are some people that are, but most are not.
Do you have any outdoor animals? How do you help them in cold weather?
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Friday Favorite: The Brown Chiots
It’s hard to believe that the Brown Chiots is 12 years old now. Or at least she will be in the next week or so, we’re not sure when exactly she was born, we got her at the local dog pound in early March and were told she was 7-8 weeks old at the time.
The day after we got her she got sick, really sick. Turned out she had Parvo. It was the weekend and the vet told us to try to make sure she got enough fluids through the weekend and to bring her in on Monday morning if she survived. She made it through the weekend and on Monday morning to the vet she went. They kept her for 2 days and gave her IV fluids and then she came home almost back to 100%. It’s amazing she survived.
She drove us absolutely CRAZY when she was pup, but that’s what puppies do. She ran away, dug holes in the garden, ate plants and did all sorts of destructive things. She was great as far as house training though, never once soiling indoors. She also was fantastic at not tearing things up, she never once ate a shoe or tore up anything she wasn’t supposed to.
Her only vice was tearing up all tissues that didn’t make it into the garbage can. Those she would frolic and play with throwing them around until they were in thousands of tiny shreds all over the floor.
Then at 2 years old she matured into the best dog ever and has been that way ever since. She’s the garden namesake, as she used to love to run around the garden. She still does, though at a much slower pace in her old age. She’s closing in on being the oldest pet we’ve had. There was a cat named Jeffrey that I got in high school who lived to 13 before getting cancer.
What’s the longest lived pet you’ve had?
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Snow Dogs
Tara has been living at Chiot’s Run for almost three months now. She came to us towards the end of September and is really settling in to her role as protector of all things living. I find her sleeping by the ducklings sometimes and she frequently patrols the perimeter fence we have set up now. She’s also really liking the cold weather, she finally spends her days outside without panting and searching for shade. She was definitely made for winter! Lucy is also a winter loving dog, she gets super excited when the snow starts to fall. You can almost see a extra spring in her step when the weather turns cold.
Tara even has a few nicknames already, Terrible T seems to be the one she likes best, though she’s anything but terrible. We also call her Sweet T to round it out.
Yesterday, Tara spent all day out and towards evening we discovered that she had started to dig herself a den. It’s located in a small ravine between the chicken and duck coops. You can’t tell she’s in there until she sits up and pops her head over the top of the rocks. It’s the perfect place to be able to hear what’s going on and be close to both coops.
We have yet to decide on a permanent place for T, but we’re thinking this might be a good. Perhaps a little roof over her den or just laying saplings and pine boughs might suffice. We knew she’d eventually show us the place she wanted to claim as her own, this should work until the snow melts in spring, then she’ll have to find herself a new den. It can be hard to have strictly outdoor animals in our society, people think they’re being abused or neglected. Some certainly are, but there are those that are much happier being outside, Tara is one of those! It can also be hard on us as we want to protect them and keep them safe, truth is, Tara is perfectly able to take care of herself and knows what she wants and needs.
Have you ever had outdoor animals?
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Checking One Off the List
*Warning* real butchering shots in this post, if you don’t like the sight of meat, read something from the archives.
In one of our podcasts, Mr Chiots and I each talked about the five things we have on our “want to do” lists. His included things like: welding, riding a horse, sailing, etc. Mine included learning seam butchery, which is one of the reasons we decided to slaughter the pigs ourselves. Luckily I found someone locally that is skilled in this art and he agreed to come over and mentor us.
Neal came Sunday to help us with the slaughter and again yesterday to show us how to butcher the pigs. When he left the pigs were all portioned up. We continued working getting all the roasts, tenderloins and choice cuts into the freezer for safe keeping. The sausage meat and fat were all cut up and set to chilling in big bowls for grinding today. The bacon and hams were hung on the back porch to dry and ready for the salting, brining and smoking.
It was a great day, much less difficult than the actual slaughter day, which was emotionally draining. Yesterday was spent getting up close and personal with our food. We also enjoyed building friendships in the process and love that we are building our community all the while.
Overall it was a success. I started out the morning with much anxiety but that slowly melted away as we worked. I’ve got my work cut out for me for the next couple days, calculating brine amounts, salting, turning and hopefully producing a delicious variety of bacons, hams, and hocks. We’ll be eating our first pork roast tonight for dinner, we’re really looking forward to it. I am in particular because I don’t really like pork when it’s not cured or heavily seasoned in sausage.
Next year we’re hoping to plan a weekend long pig butchering event. We have a few other friends who are interested in learning these skills and we’d love to make it more of a community event like it was long ago. A time to gather with friends to celebrate good food and relearn heritage skills.
If you aren’t vegetarian, which is your favorite cut of pork?
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Fermented Chicken Feed
I’ve been reading about chicken nutrition for a long time, in my reading I came across fermentation of feed. Since I know how healthy fermented foods are for humans, I decided to give fermenting a try for the chickens. My chickens have been on my own homemade chicken feed for six months now and they’re all thriving.
I noticed a few changes when I started my chickens on fermented feed. For starters, the yolks on their eggs are much bigger than they used to be. They also have much smaller poop, oh yeah, and it doesn’t stink like it used to. I’m not really surprised by this, the same thing happened when we put our pets on raw food.
Not only are they healthy and happy, they’re still laying like champs. I’m getting 12-15 eggs per day from my 18 layers, some of which are older ladies.
I mix grain from a local grain mill, mostly wheat and oats that are fermented for 5 days in a big bucket by the wood stove in the kitchen. The chickens LOVE the fermented grain, the ducks to too, so do the guineas, and the pigs. Everyone gets fermented grains.
This feed is local and organic, I also love that it’s soy, corn and GMO free. The best part is that it’s 85% cheaper than the organic layer feed I used to purchase. It even costs me less than conventional chicken feed would, about 50% less than that, you can’t beat that. Healthy chicken and more money in my wallet! If you have chickens and want to know all about it, I’ll be recording a podcast about this as well and writing a post about it soon.
Have you ever heard of fermenting chicken feed?
