Ethical Carnivores

[JoyfulGoats]

How much do you typically spend per month, Sheepshape? Did you contact the farm for the meat or did they advertise? Most ethically raised meat around here is quite expensive. Even beef liver is almost 7$/lb. The cheapest meat I've found is ground beef tripe, 3$/lb (which might be a mistake, because the bigger size bag is 6$/lb...). How much of their diet can be eggs?

 

[Beekissed]

Don't know how it is where you live, but in a lot of areas in the states they have a roadkill list one can be placed upon. When the police or highway department are aware of a fresh roadkill deer they will call the people on the list to see if they want it.

Some folks feed their dogs on this bounty and, no doubt, their cats too.

As for the ethical dog and cat food, life is just way too short to overthink things that much. The HUGE myriad of foods produced for our own consumption that lack any ethical roots is enough to contemplate and it can't be controlled either. GMO, non-organic, imported from other countries, etc....it can drive a person crazy trying to put up roadblocks to all the unethical farming and growing practices out there. Too, too many.

My advice? Do the best you can afford to do and then just let it go. You'll live longer and happier that way.

Around here we scavenge for road kill deer when possible, harvest our own deer and save scraps, offal and bones for the dogs, cats and chickens. Chickens are raised here for our own consumption, with the scraps going to the dogs and cats. The cats hunt but are also given some small amount of cat food per day in the colder months. The dogs are able to catch some wild game even within their boundaries here, which they consume. All animals are given garden produce grown here and fruit as well. We also forage for fruit elsewhere to give them. All get kitchen scraps too.

But, in the end, they are given formulated feeds also. It's the cheapest form of total nutrition I can give them and I don't feel bad about that. If, after I've done all I can reasonably do about supplementing their diet naturally, then I also feed them cheap ol' dog or cat food, I don't feel a bit bad about it. They gotta live and I do too. There are little kids in other countries starving right now...I can't see spending extra money on my animals in the face of that. And, yeah, I do send the extra money to those in need.

 

[Sheepshape]

JoyfulGoats....I really don't know and suspect that it varies quite a lot month on month.

Over here offal generally is pretty cheap as folk don't seem to like it much. My dog loves all offal, so that's a bonus. We have local farmers' markets where offal can be bought in bulk at bargain prices.Also my local supermarkets all sell off their produce at less than a quarter of the original price at the end of the day and , should I happen on meat (e.g. organic breasts of lamb), then I buy as many as they have.

As my dog is something of a 'dustbin' (i.e not at all picky about his food), he'll eat pretty much anything. He loves fish (again the end-of-the day reductions).

In the summer the dog has a couple of eggs a day....any way....boiled, fried, raw etc.

I suppose I am pretty picky about what I will eat ....I'm sure some would rate me as a hypocrite as I don't eat the lamb that I raise, but that's as may be.I only buy local organic milk, raise chickens for their eggs, grow a lot of our own vegetables etc.

I hope that I don't criticise others' lifestyle choices and aim to be a practising vegetarian and not a preaching one.

 

[Alibo]

Crikey, I never realised that Muscovy ducks were so fierce! Sorry about the rabbit kits, Alibo. I guess chicks and smaller chickens wouldn't be safe around them either.

Never had a problem with them bothering any fowl, even our little bantam chicks, when we had them. We had a muscovey hatch out chickens last year too. They can sit on almost 20 chicken eggs! I have eight right now but we harvested a few for Christmas. They have the taste and consistancy of Roast Beef!

 

[Alibo]

Quail might be a nice inexpensive way to feed some cats ethically. I bet they would not even need to be de-feathered. Mine are fat on rats but they eat all of the animals they catch, down to everything but the tip of the nose

 

[Baymule]

The reason that sometimes you don't see the Great Pyrenees is they go lay up in a cool spot and sleep. Mine sprawl out like they are doing dead dog imitations, but spring to life when they perceive danger. Danger=hawks, garbage trucks, stray dogs, motorcycles, cow monsters across the road, coyotes, neighbors talking in their own yards, (how DARE they) gunshots, our pigs, deer and just because.

 

[Bruce]

X2 on @CntryBoy777's daytime coon comment.

Last summer we rescued a hen from a coon at 3AM behind the house. We thought she was already gone as fox food or something not having seen her for a week. Turns out she was brooding non fertile eggs in the bushes. I put her in a stall coop I was planning to use for integration so she wouldn't go broody in the "Fort Knox coop" nest boxes in the next stall. There was a 4" gap above the door. I would have put her in the broody buster but I had a sick hen in it, same non predator safe coop. I started locking the other girls in the FK coop a couple of hours before dusk to keep them safe from the coon, they were not happy about that practice since they free range during the day and put themselves to bed at dusk.

2 nights later the coon got into the lower part of the barn (through a woodchuck tunnel I believe) and took the head off a hen in a non secure coop. Now, due to my failing, she was dead. And as coons do, killed for nothing, it only ate the head and crop, leaving the rest of the bird for me to find in the morning.

The same evening that it killed Fae I went to the coop to put food in the girls' coop feeder and get some scratch to entice them back to the barn. What do I see but the @#$%^ coon going into the FK coop (open people and auto chicken door) after the sick girl in her broody buster (I moved it in there right after I found the headless hen). It was WAY WAY WAY before dusk let alone dark.

And when I have lost hens to a fox, it was always late April (maybe they have their babies then but their normal food hasn't yet started its population explosion), WELL before dark and not more than 50' from a building. One right behind the small barn in 2014, one about 50' behind it the next year. That same evening one tried to snag a hen right next to the little barn straight out behind the house. She screamed, I ran out as did DD1, fox ran to the woods, Echo to the neighbors' house 100 yards away and across the road. We found her there 2 hours later.

Point being "nighttime predators" do not kill your animals exclusively at night.

 

[NH homesteader]

Ok. Not playing devil's advocate here but we do not have a LGD. My goats and chickens are close to the house. Coyotes do not like to come close to the house. If we hear them too close we go out and shoot to scare them away. Electric fence top and bottom helps a lot. Keeping them inside at night helps a lot.

I don't think everyone needs a LGD. If your animals are close to your house and/or in a secure area where there are not as many predators, you can stick with electric fencing and good house structures. A lone LGD is not always happy.

We have rats here. When we raised cornish crosses they bit them, because they're too stupid to do anything but sit there. They have never gone after our heritage chickens or turkeys.

 

[Bruce]

The reason that sometimes you don't see the Great Pyrenees is they go lay up in a cool spot and sleep. Mine sprawl out like they are doing dead dog imitations, but spring to life when they perceive danger. Danger=hawks, garbage trucks, stray dogs, motorcycles, cow monsters across the road, coyotes, neighbors talking in their own yards, (how DARE they) gunshots, our pigs, deer and just because.

Yep. The 3 weeks I had Merlin you would often think he was laying dead. Not in any comfortable looking "I'm asleep" position but sprawled out like he'd been shot, even in the snow. However, though not moving, his ears were listening. He could be up and running in 1/2 second if he perceived a danger. Unlike @Baymule's GPs, he never barked at vehicles, people walking by or when the neighbor's dog barked (which is often) or at those neighbors which while about 450' away we can sometimes hear them. In fact he very rarely barked during the day at all.

 

[BrendaMNgri]

Wow! I guess I'll cross them off my list then. Not worth spending that much on an animal that might not behave. I guess I'll just stick to goats and sheep as my mammals.

OK others have come deliciously close to saying what I am about to say, but I'm going to be the one who actually says it.

Whoa, Nellie. You are setting yourself up for epic fail gal, if you are coming into ag with the mindset quoted above!
As someone else quipped in this thread elsewhere, REALITY - it WILL bite you in the arse in the end….this is not something you do after reading two chapters in a book….

I strongly suggest you find your local county Ag Extension office and see what they have in terms of materials for furthering your education. I suggest you get your hands on
the numerous Ag/animal/livestock/homesteading magazines available out there in the big ol' world, and start reading them, or better yet, sign up for some ag classes, livestock management courses, etc. And if you have experienced farming neighbors GO TALK TO THEM and ASK them for help and advice.

Animals/mammals/whhhhaaaaaaahhhht ever you are going to refer to them, are living beings, not objects of stone or made out of plastic…...
They have minds. They have feelings. They bleed, they die, they get happy, mad, sad, etc.

And you're darned right they will often do something that is not what you perceive to be "right" or as you call it, "misbehaving"…..

You used that term "misbehave" which really put me off, and infers to me you have little if any patience or grasp of this overall.

Zero patience is a sure fire way to fail in agriculture, no matter if it's raising hogs, corn, beef, lamb or fill-in-the-blanks.

Based on what you have said here, you have a huge huge learning curve ahead of you.

Sheep and goats can "misbehave"…beyond your wildest dreams!

Finally I don't understand why this whole thread is in the Livestock Guardians section because it's about everything BUT livestock guardians….can the mods move it to a more appropriate place?