On the grass

I'm sorry I'm so behind with keeping this updated!  The recent rains have made the grass pop up and given the cows, soft, shiny coats.  We got the cows out on pasture last weekend.  They all ran out, kicking up their heels. We have video of it as well as videos of the cows grazing and a short discussion about appropriate grazing.  Even though pasture is the perfect natural diet for cows, the first weeks out on pasture is stressful for them because it is a sudden change in their diet from the dry hay they eat all winter.  Bring out the peppermint rub!  We are still feeding them hay to reduce the stress of a sudden diet change and to keep the flavor of the milk from getting too grassy and bitter.  Their milk production is up and the milk has a nice yellow color from the chlorophyll in the fresh grass.  

We butchered all of our old hens last weekend.  We debated on whether to butcher them all because we knew some of them were still laying pretty good.  But our young chickens are laying just fine and the old chickens have bad habits of laying eggs and roosting in places other than their chicken house, so we decided to go ahead with it.  We were pleasantly surprised by the amount of nice yellow fat these chickens had on them.  We canned them all and ended up with 21 cans of chicken.  I have a short video of the jars of chicken, just before the video camera died.  It will be so nice to have these for summer dinners, when I don't want to be inside cooking and heating up the house