A whole new meaning

You can believe and do anything you want. It's what makes this country great. Personally I try not to get too religious when it comes to treatment of animals and I also question sources of things like this. It's not like the huggers are going to the best places and showing unedited clips. There are good people and bad people in all walks of life and farming is no different. But I can tell you I've been around small farms raising pigs, cattle, chickens and turkeys and been around large factory farms for those critters too (never a farmer myself). Livestock from one aren't any happier than livestock at the other. They're a resource, a very needed resource, and applying human emotions to resources is a bad idea.
 
By filling my freezer with game I harvest along with livestock I raise I feel more self reliant. I also know exactly what my family is eating. Not all the slaughter houses are bad but enough so that I don't buy meat from the store. Not only because of the treatment of the animals but the hormones and anti-biotics that are pumped into commercial livestock. I try not to get into this debate with too many people. I just know I feel good about my families diet and way of life. +1 on raising chickens, fence the garden or they will eat the bugs and the vegetables!
 
Were I in a position to raise my own livestock and live off butchering them along with hunting I would. I already grow my own vegetables (albeit I don't have enough land to produce enough to feed a family of 6 for the entire year so I still have to go to the grocery store) and I'm quite familiar with butchering animals (done rabbits, pigs, goats, cattle, chicken, duck and turkey along with game animals) so it wouldn't be a stretch for me.

The only problem is that I don't have the land and the funds necessary to start raising my own livestock - I'd want to raise some of each of the following, chicken, pigs, goats and chicken. That takes a lot of land that I don't have and it takes a lot of funds to start that I don't have.

So I go buy the majority of my meat and about 40% of my vegetables from the grocery store. I don't worry at all about how the animals were treated/killed before they reach the store because I believe that the majority of them are done in the way I've seen them done - which is humanely and cleanly.
 
This is a topic I could spend hours (maybe days) discussing. I'll try to keep this short...

I very much prefer eating only animals that I know were healthy, and were slaughtered properly. For that reason, I avoid beef, turkey, and chicken; and try to minimize my pork intake. I'd be lying to everyone, including myself, if I said I don't eat commercial meat; but I do try to avoid it.

A few years back, my wife was asking why I hated commercially-raised animals so much. While explaining that the reasons depend on A) how it's raised, and B) how it's slaughtered, I showed her a few videos. Standard commercial 'chicken houses' and beef feed lots nearly made her sick, which I made worse with some data on the hormones, diseases, chemicals, and antibiotics they're loaded with. But, it was a video of mass compressive asphyxiation of pigs that pushed her over the edge.

Seeing a hydraulic wall crush 40 pigs at a time, before dumping them - half of them still alive - battered, bleeding, covered in feces and vomit, and (the live ones) screaming, onto a conveyor belt... that really got her attention. She didn't knowingly eat pork meat for at least a year.

Since then, my wife has not only NOT had a problem with the idea of sending a bullet through an animal's brain or heart, but she has become a staunch supporter of ethical hunters being some of the most humane killing machines.
She also doesn't complain when I go out of my way to track down a free-range chicken, or spend 3 hours calling around to find a local farm with grass-fed beef. (Or some well-treated suckling pig. ;))


If I could raise my own livestock, I would. My wife and I would LOVE to be able to raise our own Pronghorn, but that's not likely to ever happen.


And, just one last thing I have to say...
My biggest problem with beef is not the animal or the methods of slaughter. My problem with beef is the feed. Corn is evil, and cows should not be eating it. With a proper diet, up to 80% of disease in commercial beef would be gone.
(I'm sorry. I had to. I hate corn. It tastes great, but our agriculture and beef industries are completely screwed up because of Corn subsidization.)
 
What the heck were you watching that had a hydralic wall crushing pigs????


As far as taking alotta ground to raise food, a couple acres will get you ALOT of food.
Our 70'x50' garden gives us an AMAZING amount of veggies. Especially in good dirt (which we dont have). Had to build a root cellar.

Unless you are raising the hay and grain for the animals, they dont need alotta room. Our goats and chickens share an area of about 80'x50' (though we're thinking of making it bigger). The 2 steers were in the corral until we butchered them. We dont have any, but a couple pigs wouldnt need anything bigger than 25'x25'.

We dont have any irrigating water so we trade work for hay. We border Dads 20 acres, so combined it is 35 acres. But, this is sagebrush, sandy desert and with no irrigation, it is nothing but space. We really have to water the heck out of the gardens in the summer. You would be AMAZED at how fast a 105* 20mph wind will dry stuff out. Just like a clothes dryer.
 
Heh. In 1902, most farmers in Lavaca County, Texas, raised cotton. My grandfather, then 17, raised hogs and corn, instead. Too much cotton for the market, so the price fell. My grandfather's profits paid for his two years of college.

They didn't know that corn was bad-nasty, in those days. Nor did I know, as I fed chickens from WW II days onward, that cracked corn in hen scratch was evil. Quail, dove, foxes and ravens like cracked corn, although my friendly local fox would demonstrate that he could not digest corn--by leaving evidence on my front porch.
 
Art, I am going out on a limb and predict Frankenmauser's concerns about corn are GMO-centered. Creating strains that are Round-up ready requires you to imprint Round-up into the DNA. Should you be digesting that stuff?:confused:
 
What the heck were you watching that had a hydralic wall crushing pigs????
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It's an older slaughter method - though, still in use in some places, apparently. (CO2 stunning is far more common now.)
Yesterday, I tried to dig up a link to a video showing the hydraulic compressive asphyxiation I'm talking about, but can't find anything available online.


Art, I am going out on a limb and predict Frankenmauser's concerns about corn are GMO-centered. Creating strains that are Round-up ready requires you to imprint Round-up into the DNA. Should you be digesting that stuff?
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For the most part, I consider the GMO aspect of commercial corn to be a separate subject (but I dislike it just as much).
My biggest problem with corn is the massive amount of government subsidization that has created a false economy that can't be stopped. It has invaded nearly every part of our food chain, not because it's the best option, but because it's dirt cheap. And it's only cheap, because it's heavily subsidized. Corn is the 800 lb gorilla that rules our food industry, and can't be stopped.


Anyway...
I very much prefer taking care of animals, myself. From their last moments alive, to my dinner plate, I like to see how everything is handled.
 
Guess that sound was the limb I went out on snapping.

I hear you though! There is some kind of corn variant (syrup, starch, meal) in everything!
 
I'd not considered raising rabbits.
Guess that is my next project. Have plenty of scrap wood to make a hutch. Seem to remember them being quite pricey at the pet store.
 
They're a resource, a very needed resource, and applying human emotions to resources is a bad idea.
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I guess I'm not of the same make as you guys. I've been to slaughter houses and I've seen how its done. I know a few people who worked at them and two guys who are foremen (sorta) at the ones they work at. Frankly I can say I'm not ashamed of eating beef, pork, chicken or other meats from the grocery store.
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I've also seen the actual kill - which is quite humane. The most widely used method (or so I was told) was the method I saw in all three slaughter houses - a steel piston is put to the forehead of the cow and it shoots out to strike the head meaning instant unconsciousness and death from trauma to the brain. The cattle feel no pain.
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I agree with these statements....I live several miles from a meat processing facility....I am friends of the owner..so I see the total operation....The whole process is very humaine....The owner is an avid hunter....He processes many wild hogs and deer..along with livestock....Hormone free chicken and beef is one thing..but I don't go along with the tree-hugger mentality....:rolleyes:
 
I agree w/this post!

This might be a little off topic but, I get irritated by people who eat meat from a grocery store and feel like filling my freezer with venison is barbaric. If they only knew that hunters have much more respect for the game they use than the processing facilities do. Just my two cents.
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+1
 
I eat no commercially farmed or packed meat. Partly because factory farming is terrible for the environment. A serving of meat takes nearly 10x the food and water then it takes for a serving of veggies. So having someone starve so I can have a burger is not acceptable to me. The treatment of the animals varies wildly from very well to down right cruel and abusive. I have also thought about doing the bunny and chicken raising to have year round meat but we have so many deer hunters that wont eat their kills its easy to fill a freezer or 2.

Its very time consuming to hunt and fish for your meat or grow veggies for that matter but its so much more satisfying to eat a meal you hunted and gathered for yourself. I do miss bacon and sausage but that stuff is bad for ya anyway lol. I am an awful tree hugging environmentalist but I don't know many hunters who are not. You see fish kills and wild game disappear in an area and you get environmentally conscious in a hurry.
 
Having fun with it!

So this afternoon I took a large cull buck (single long skinny beams and no tines whatsoever) and on the way home I decided to grab a veggie burger and coke from Burger King. Well, they had me pull up and wait as they probably don't get veggie burger orders that often. When the girl came out to deliver my sammich she looks in the back of my truck and sees the gutted deer, then looks at me, and says "Uhhm.... Were YOU the one who ordered the veggie burger?" I said "Yup, sure did" and seeing the confused look on her face I said "I know... It's a long story!" :D
 
globemaster3
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Join Date: January 28, 2006
Posts: 797
Art, I am going out on a limb and predict Frankenmauser's concerns about corn are GMO-centered. Creating strains that are Round-up ready requires you to imprint Round-up into the DNA. Should you be digesting that stuff?
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The problem with roundup ready corn is that farmers can drench the corn and soil with roundup. Nothing grows but the corn. If for some reason a person wants to grow something but corn, then the ground is ruined.
 
The problem with roundup ready corn is that farmers can drench the corn and soil with roundup. Nothing grows but the corn. If for some reason a person wants to grow something but corn, then the ground is ruined.
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Completely false.

Roundup must be applied to growing leaves to have any effect.

Roundup is expensive. All farmers I know use the minimum amount per acre and meter it carefully. High tech (expensive) equipment and advanced (expensive) electronics are used to keep use to a minimum effective level. Here's what i mean by expensive: http://agsystemsonline.com/used-equipment/self-propelled-sprayers/

Crops are regularly rotated on fields that have been sprayed with roundup for decades.
 
Completely false.

Roundup must be applied to growing leaves to have any effect.
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Heck..I used to use roundup around the yard...I had to use it every year cause everything would grow back....
 
Ehhh...If it doesn't bite back, I'll eat it. Well, everything except cauliflower. Cauliflower exists only to have a place to put Hollandaise sauce, which also does not appeal to me nearly as much as a chocolate milkshake. Or butter-pecan Ensure Plus, for that matter. :D

The thing about deer, dove and quail, though, is that I'm basically a natural-food freak. As preference, anyway. So, ethics in the acquisition thereof.
 
I have a bunch of free thinking friends who don't agree or are ambivalent about hunting.
When I drop the line "Nothing is a sure thing, but if I drop an elk I have 300+/- lbs of organic meat in the freezer," they all stop dead. You can just see the light bulb go on.
Annie get your gun.
 
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