Yesterday it wasn't raining for a change so I decided to clear a bit of the grass growing on ye olde veg plot.
It was once a little paddock and I inherited a bit of couch grass which I think I may have added to with the tons of fym I have applied to it over the last twenty or so years.
Being a natural none chemicals gardener I can live with pernicious weeds like grass and nettles.
Instead of composting the weeds I fill a couple of wheelbarrows and feed it to the 'indoor' pigs and poultry. They love it!
Yet I was in a posh supermarket very recently and they had Free Range Turkeys for sale🤔. Well that's what was printed on the plastic wrapping. Perhaps it was old packaging they used?
They like the grass and weeds and old bread and vegetable peelings like the pigs do.
Do you give grass and certain none poisonous weeds to your livestock?
I forgot to say that Zero Grazing is a term used by Dairy farmers to bring the grass to the cattle instead of the cattle going to the pasture to graze the grass.
ReplyDeleteDave - apparently turkey producers were permitted to slaughter their turkeys early last year and freeze them ahead of Christmas and still call them 'fresh' turkey. Maybe the same applies to free range (or free to range) - they were packed before the avian lock down. And yeah - we fed all manner of stuff from the house-garden and kitchen to the pigs and hens, and garden weedings and windfall fruit to the calves.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that Tigger - thanks! Pigs were traditionally kept in the orchards to forage and eat the apple windfalls. I bet they would have liked a flagon or two of cider. I think giving livestock a mixed diet helps to improve the meats flavour.
ReplyDeleteIf you are referring to my family as "livestock", I give them roast beef on Sundays with vegetables, gravy and Yorkshire puddings. They gobble it up like pigs.
ReplyDeleteDid you ever keep livestock YP? All that money and they live like pigs. Who? Pinky and Perky! I'm here all week!
ReplyDeleteThe only indoor livestock we have are the giant spiders who lurk in the dark corners. I don't feed them!
ReplyDelete'Yikes Scooby!" We get spider visitors in the Summer but Tiger Kitty and Domino our smallholding mousers catch them. An old farmer once told me if you have cobwebs in a livestock shed you haven't got enough ventilation.
ReplyDeleteFree range but where were they from? Haven't heard of any avian flu here. Lots of turk-eys just over the waters lol
ReplyDeleteM & S Linda. Think they came from Irish farms or English maybe? All poultry in Ireland and Blighty aren't allowed to go outside because of the Avian flu outbreak. I bet old Mr and Mrs Fox are not happy bunnies? I just got your joke. I wonder do they eat Turkey in Turkey?😊
ReplyDeleteApparently Free Range means free to roam and raised in the fresh air.
ReplyDeleteI don't have livestock (just one indoor cat) but if I did they would get greens like this and probably be free ranging and pecking away in a field if I had one.
ReplyDeleteHi River. Our pigs will go free range again soon. It's been the wettest Autumn and Winter that I can remember. The last few days it has been dry.
ReplyDeleteIf I had livestock I would.
ReplyDeleteGood point Tom. I wouldn't like to live anywhere that I couldn't keep a few animals or an allotment to grow veg and plants. I still dream of winning the lottery and buying a house with a walled kitchen garden in Dorset.
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