chromedome

I do have some quail and chicken pics to post, btw. It's just been a time issue. Maybe this evening, we'll see.

One of the two vendors we've been speaking to plans to use the rabbit in a 50/50 mix with chicken thighs. The other (less experienced, I suspect) did some Googling and thought that duck fat might be the optimal option. We're due to cull some juvenile roosters in the next week or two, so I plan to start saving the pockets of fat from their body cavities for this exact purpose, and we'll see how that goes. Of course, our spoiled and pampered bunnies have rather high levels of fat, by rabbit standards, but it's mostly concentrated in two strips cushioning the kidneys, running along the surface of the tenderloins. When I deboned all of that rabbit meat for grinding, I did make sure to keep it all and get it into the packages. Rabbit fat isn't the tastiest of stuff, I have to say, but it doesn't taste bad either. As long as it brings the lipid content I'm sure the sausage's seasonings will easily mask it.

Neither an article nor a link, but you can find it easily enough.

We have a friend here for a few weeks before he heads out to Alberta, and he's helping us with some projects. A ramshackle shed on the driveway has been revamped with a new floor, vapour barrier, and insulation, and today the doors are going on. That's going to become the new year-round home of our quail, which will get them out of the chickens' enclosure where they currently live. We've also repositioned last year's chicken coop, and added a three-nest nest box to one side of it. We commissioned that from a local carpenter. We've also added a new chicken door in what used to be the back of the coop. Soon we'll be moving the chickens' enclosed run downhill by about 15 feet and turning it at right angles, so it runs away from that side of the house rather than parallel to it. The side of the run will be pressed right up against the coop, and we're going to cut a hole in the wire so they can use the chicken door (the wire will be secured to the coop, so there's no way for chickens to get out or predators to get in). The old, full-width door opening remains in place, and I'll be able to use that to clean out the coop without having to actually go in and work around the chickens underfoot. That old coop has also gotten insulation and a vapour barrier. Last year I McGyvered it by simply putting silverboard insulation (1/2-inch foam inside a protective/reflective foil coating) over the outside walls and roof, and holding it in place with screwed-down straps. Now it's properly insulated on the inside, and we've put in a simple "ceiling" consisting of a couple of wooden slats, a tarp stapled firmly to the slats and the coop's walls, and more silverboard sitting on top of that. Last year, the only heating the coop got was from the chickens' body temperature and a heated water bucket, and its interior temperature hovered around freezing even when the temperatures dipped to -20 and -25 (call it roughly 0F). This year, with the insulated ceiling and fewer gaps in the insulation, it should be even better. We've also moved/removed a few remaining pieces of the old pool deck, the pool house, and the little shed and oil furnace my father-in-law had put there for warming the pool's water. The pool house and shed were screwed together, and had been laying on their side for the past year and a half, since the pool deck had mostly been dismantled. It turns out some rats had been nesting there, attracted inevitably by the chickens' (and quails') food. The chickens had been watching us idly, in their typically gormless, pop-eyed manner, until the rats began to emerge. Then, like a switch had been flipped, they went into full "raptor" mode. Three of them darted after one of the rats and surrounded it, pecking at it viciously as it shrieked in pain and terror, until it made a desperate panic-dash (past Wembley, who'd been noisily waiting his turn) and found cover in the pile of scrap lumber left from the pool deck, where its nest-mates had already found refuge. Wembley and the chickens patrolled that pile of lumber for a solid hour afterwards, trying desperately to get at the rats, all but one of whom survived. I don't know if it was the one the chickens had drawn blood from, or perhaps another that had gotten injured in the course of us moving the structure; it's hard to say. Though it did rather forcibly remind me of a discussion we'd had here recently about whether chickens could be considered a predator.

Gonna throw a few random, haphazard updates in here at odd moments through the day, just to catch up a bit. Belatedly dealt last night with a cohort of rabbits that had been ready for processing 4-6 weeks ago, but life has been too busy to circle around to them. Ordinarily, when I get them done at the ideal 16-week age, they average about 7 lbs live weight and 3.5 dressed weight. I didn't get a live weight on these ones, but the dressed weight averaged around 5 lbs so I'm guessing they'd have been 10 lbs or thereabouts. We've been negotiating with a couple of local vendors to get sausage made from our rabbits, just to give my poor sweetheart (who, remember, can't eat most red meats and especially pork) something that she can eat in breakfast wraps, on pizzas, etc. It's not that I can't do this myself, or haven't in the past, but the meat grinder and sausage-stuffer attachments on my KitchenAid are just not up to the task of doing anything like that in bulk. Also, there's the time issue (which never goes away). So I may or may not splurge on an upgraded meat grinder and/or sausage stuffer, depending how much it costs us to get this batch processed. This batch of rabbits seemed ideal candidates for the purpose, given that they're oversized and also likely to be tougher than those harvested at 16 weeks (their legs were perceptively more sinewy than usual). So after I cleaned them and broke them down, I deboned everything except the forelegs (we jokingly call those "wings," and treat them like chicken wings; they're a bit fattier and richer than rabbit meat in general). We're also going to have several pounds simply ground up for us, because ground meat is a really useful/handy thing to have for all kinds of purposes. So, of the nearly 50 lbs/20+kg of dressed rabbit, I got a total of 12.4kg deboned meat (27-odd pounds), 3.2kg of forelegs (7+ lbs), and the rest went to bones/carcasses which I roasted off for later processing into rabbit broth. It was a big project, we started at around 3 and I wasn't finished until after 10. Ordinarily, when I'm not deboning the bunnies, I'd have been done 1.5-2 hours earlier.

A real estate office in a nearby township, which positions itself as a vendor of upscale properties, has the perhaps-incongruous habit of putting silly "dad jokes" on its sign. When I drove by yesterday, it read: "Nothing tops a plain pizza."

One of them is my son-in-law's mother. She has fairly severe Crohn's and just had a second resection earlier this year, and has a raft of other chronic conditions and/or allergies that further restrict her dietary options (and her life in general). Despite that she raised three kids, mostly by herself; two boys on the autism spectrum and a daughter who was the stereotypical rebellious hellion teenager. ...and paid off her shitheel ex's massive gambling debts as well, while working at not-especially-lucrative jobs. I admire her greatly.

This one's got some layers to it. For the benefit of anyone who doesn't know, there's a hugely popular animated film right now called "K-Pop Demon Hunters." The plot, drawn from a few Korean cultural touchstones, revolves around a Korean girl-group pop band who are (passing over lots of back-story here) battling demons, per their destiny, and a rival boy-band who are... demons. Anyway, that provided the context for someone to pull this together, which we'll all recognize from previous discussions here at eG:

I don't. Often these warnings from the CFIA include a list of known retailers, but there doesn't appear to be one in this case (I'm sure you'd already looked). To trot out the old "stone thrown into a pond" metaphor, the ripples of the pistachio recall keep spreading (this first update revolves around a single restaurant/sweets shop in Nepean, the second is in London). https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-pistachio-containing-products-recalled-due-salmonella-3 https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-baklava-type-products-recalled-due-salmonella There's also another recall of halva in BC. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/shaikh-al-kar-brand-plain-halva-recalled-due-salmonella-0

Found on FB by my daughter, who definitely does this.

...and another (Dubai chocolate). https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/dubai-brand-pistachio-knafeh-milk-chocolate-recalled-due-salmonella-0

More baklava/pistachio stuff added to the recall. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-baklava-and-ice-cream-products-recalled-due-salmonella

Just a couple of random lightweight thoughts/updates, for those who are still following along at home. Although we've not had many sales of rabbits for breeding purposes since spring (that's when people want to buy breeders), we've had a steady trickle of sales for pets. Just yesterday a young couple came to pick a male from our recent litters of weanlings, a sibling of little Polly's. He looked much like her, only bigger. Last week, when I ran down to NS, I also took along two young bunnies (a grey one from our other litter of weanlings, and a brown one from the older batch which are currently 12 weeks) for a repeat customer. I should explain that the sale of bunnies for pets dovetails neatly with those for breeding: people buying breeders typically want one buck and 2-3 does, but those buying pets overwhelmingly favor males. That's partly because the bucks as a whole are more docile and tractable with humans, and because they're less likely to have an issue with the household's other pets. Also, while relatively few vets have experience/expertise with rabbits, it's easier to have a male neutered than a female spayed. Rabbits are tricky to anesthetize safely, because of how they metabolize the anesthetic, and spaying is a more complex and time-consuming exercise than the relatively quick snip of neutering. It's *very* problematic to have a doe spayed, and the likelihood of a fatally unwelcome outcome is high. So when you put those factors together, it creates what the business-guru types like to call "synergy." Earlier in the summer, it resulted in us selling out a couple of litters entirely (except for the ones we retained ourselves for breeding purposes). Our random flock of "barnyard mix" chickens is maturing apace, and the adolescent roosters are now beginning to work on their crowing technique (month-end is when those from the first hatching have their date with destiny, in the innocuous guise of a freezer). It's as funny as you'd expect, with their voices breaking as frequently as those of 12-yo boys. One of them sounds startlingly like a loon, which amuses me greatly. This morning as I walked into their run to feed them, I looked down at the flock of 50-ish birds of all different sizes (some of the adolescents are fully as large as our big rooster, but Prissy's little guy is about half the size of a quail), all with their beady little eyes fixed on me and the mash bucket, I couldn't help putting on that big, booming, baritone "event announcer" voice and declaiming "...AND NOW, THE MOMENT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR..." The birds didn't get it, but my uncaffeinated brain thought I was hilarious. When I was feeding the quail, one of the red tuxedos (for whatever reason, the "red" breeds seem to be feistier and scrappier, which amuses my ginger GF greatly) decided he'd take advantage of me opening the door to leap out and go hang with with the big birds for a little while. In the five or so seconds it took for me to put down the feeder, pin the door closed with my knee (to prevent any further breaks for freedom) and nab him, he'd already been swarmed and pecked by a half-dozen of the chickens. He wasn't hurt, but he sprinted straight to the back of the cage when I popped him back in, and his body language pretty clearly said "Okay, I'm done!" Reverting back to Prissy and her single chick, she has relaxed enough that they can be out among the general population now. She still reacts violently to any of the other birds taking too close an interest in the little guy, or (God forbid) taking a peck at him, but she's now past the point of constant, boiling, protective rage. At one point this morning, as I was wrapping up, she was just sitting and watching the world go by when his little head suddenly poked up from between her feathers. It was awfully cute, but sadly I didn't have my camera with me. Some of our "barnyard mix" hybrids have really interesting coloration, in varying shades of white/cream/pink/red/gold on some birds, and striking black/gold/silver on some of the others. A few have feathered feet, and have grown much larger than their peers; my GF tells me that's the influence of one or another Polish breed. I'll make a point of grabbing a few pictures at some point, just to show some of the more striking combinations.

...and again. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en/alert-recall/various-pistachio-containing-products-recalled-due-salmonella-1?utm_source=gc-notify&utm_medium=email&utm_content=en&utm_campaign=hc-sc-rsa-22-23

Yes, but do they plunk s'mores makings, volcano-style, on the middle of an otherwise-savory pizza? (If so, I probably don't really want to know about it)