Tag: Alcohol

Dealing with Hurt Chickens

Chickens can get hurt in a number of ways. In some cases, the chicken will care for itself or its nest mates will help out. For example, it’s not uncommon for a chicken’s comb to get a little frostbite during colder than normal weather. The damaged part of the comb will eventually die off and the chickens nest mates will pick it off. The comb usually grows back all on its own (I’ve never seen it do otherwise, but have heard of situations where the chicken needs help). In some cases, you see blood on the other chickens, which is perfectly normal. They’ll clean themselves up. The best thing you can do is observe the chickens carefully, but maintain a hands off policy unless the chicken really does exhibit a need for help (you notice an odor, the flesh is off color, or the chicken behaves contrary to normal).

However, there are also situations where you need to be proactive in helping the chicken because it’s impossible for the chicken or its nest mates to do the job. For example, one of my hens recently laid an egg so large that it caused damage to the cioaca (essentially the chicken’s anus). The cioaca actually turns inside out during egg laying so that the egg doesn’t come in contact with the intestine or any fecal matter, but both eggs and fecal matter come out of the same hole. The damage caused bleeding, which brought the other hens, who pecked insistently. If the hens had been allowed to continue, the hurt hen would have eventually died.

I check all of my hens daily, but even so, by the time I understood what was going on, the hen had also developed an infection. In order to prevent problems in the coop and for the hen, you must have a hen-sized cage available. I recommend one about two square feet in size so that the hen can walk around a little, but not too much. Line the bottom of the cage with fresh hay every day to help keep things clean (hens are inherently dirty).

To combat the infection, it’s important to keep the hurt area clean. This means cleaning the area once or possibly twice daily using a product such as hydrogen peroxide. You can use the 3% hydrogen peroxide commonly available from your drug store, but I’ve found that a 12% solution is far more effective. You must use it with care because a little goes a long way. In addition, make absolutely certain you get food grade hydrogen peroxide or you risk killing the chicken. Gently wipe the area after cleaning with a clean cloth (a soft paper towel works well). Discard the cloth afterward—you really don’t want to reuse it. You’ll need to hold your chicken firmly, but gently during this process.

Cleaning is a good first step. To help the area heal faster, apply triple antibiotic cream. Don’t even think about trying to bandage the area. All you’ll end up doing is frustrating both you and the chicken. Leaving the area open will generally help it heal faster.

Check your chicken several times a day. Make sure you keep things as clean as is possible, but otherwise let the chicken rest. Depending on the kind of injury, your chicken may spend a lot of time standing—this act is perfectly normal. Hens won’t lay any eggs when they’re hurt due to stress. Chickens generally won’t talk to you either. In fact, you know that they’re starting to feel better when they do start talking to you again.

If you find that your chicken is pecking at the wound, it often means you need to look closer. In many cases, a chicken will peck when an abscess develops. When this happens, you must carefully pop the abscess so it can drain. Use alcohol to clean the area first and make sure you use alcohol to clean both your hands and any instruments you use. Focus on keeping things open and clean.

Your chicken may not want to eat or drink at first. This is also perfectly normal. However, make sure the chicken has fresh water available. In addition, you can provide other sorts of high protein treats to encourage eating and drinking. For example, most chickens love milk, which contains protein and vitamins that will help the chicken heal faster. In addition, you can get the chicken meal worms, which are easier for it to digest and are considered a delicacy by chickens too.

The most important thing to remember is that you must wait until the chicken is completely healed before returning it to the coop. The other chickens will treat it as a new arrival and the usual hectic activity will occur while everyone decides on a new pecking order. Let me know your thoughts on helping hurt chickens at [email protected].

 

Advantages of Making Your Own Extracts and Tinctures

It might be easy to initially dismiss someone who makes their own extracts and tinctures, but knowing how to make your own is an important skill. I commonly make many of my own extracts and tinctures because the products I create offer these benefits:

  • Cost: Even though you can get fake vanilla at a low cost, the flavor just isn’t the same as the real thing and buying the real thing is incredibly expensive. For example, buying the beans and making your own vanilla is significantly less expensive than buying it from someone else.
  • Customization: I don’t just make vanilla with vodka or some other relatively pure alcohol. Vanilla made with a moderately priced brandy or rum has a unique taste that is fuller than anything you could ever buy in the store. Sometimes adding vanilla to flavored alcohol, such as Grand Marnier, produces some amazing results.
  • Strength: It’s possible to make your extract or tincture to any strength desired. This feature means that your recipes end up tasting as you expect them to, rather than lack the pizzazz that you’d get with a store purchased product.
  • Characteristics: Many of the tinctures and extracts that you obtain from the store, even when pure, rely on the least expensive source of flavor. However, when making your own product, you can choose ingredients with specific characteristics. For example, the three kinds of vanilla bean you can commonly obtain are: Madagascar (traditional), Tahitian (a fruity flavor), and African/Ugandan (bold smoky flavor). Other sources are likewise robust. For example, a mint extract can combine the best characteristics of several kinds of mints.

Creating your own extract or tincture isn’t hard. The goal is to use some sort of solvent, normally an alcohol product, to extract the essential oils from an herb or spice. To create the extract or tincture, place the product you want to use, such as vanilla, into a glass jar. Fill the jar with the solvent, such as vodka, place the covered jar in a cool, dark place, and then wait. Just in case you’re wondering about the difference between an extract and a tincture:

  • Extract: A solvent containing the essential oils of an herb or spice. The solvents can include glycerine, vinegar, alcohol, and water. The product can be heated to induce more rapid extraction of the oils from the herb or spice (with some subsequent loss of strength). The herb or spice isn’t normally macerated. You can use some extracts the same day you start them (such as when steaming mint to make mint jelly).
  • Tincture: An extract that is always made with alcohol and no other solvent. The extracted item is normally macerated for maximum penetration. Tinctures are typically stronger than extracts and require more time to make.

Making your own extracts and tinctures is a lot of fun and experimenting with different formulations can produce surprising results. Most importantly, you know precisely what your extract or tincture contains, unlike the products you obtain from the store. Let me know your thoughts on making extracts and tinctures at [email protected].

 

Fermenting Fruit and Animals

Every year a certain amount of fruit falls from our trees and ends up rotting on the ground. For some people, that would be the end of the story. A few others might clean up the resulting mess. However, we choose to leave it in place. The fruit actually ferments and produces alcohol. Even through many people don’t realize it, fermentation is a natural process that would happen quite easily without anyone’s help. In fact, some of the best tasting foods, such as sauerkraut, are naturally fermented (most sauerkraut you buy in the store isn’t naturally fermented and you’d be able to taste the different readily if it were).

It turns out that the animals in the area enjoy imbibing in a little fermented fruit. Our experience isn’t uncommon either-it happens all over the world. There is never enough fruit left over to make the animals terribly drunk (as happened recently to a moose in Sweden). Most of the time they appear to get a bit happy and go on their way. Until the other day, all I had ever seen eating the fruit were the rabbits and deer in the area. So, it surprised me a little to see our laying hens swaying back and forth on their way to the coop. I couldn’t help but think of those teenagers you see on TV who have used a fake id from somewhere like https://fakeyourdrank.com/ to buy cheap booze and have drunk more than they can handle. Rather than going to an unscrupulous liquor store, however, It seems that the hens also enjoyed the fermented pears lying on the ground.

All of the fruit we grow (apples, pears, plums, cherries, and grapes) will ferment given time. You might wonder how the fermentation takes place. The easiest way to see the start of fermentation is to look at unwashed grapes, especially wild grapes. If you look carefully, it appears that they’re covered with dust. That’s not actually dust, it’s wild yeast. When the fruit is ripe enough and the yeast is able to breach the skin, fermentation begins.

If it’s so easy to create alcohol from natural sources, you might wonder what all the hubbub is about in buying yeast. Different yeast have different properties. When you rely on a wild yeast, you get varying results. Cultured yeast has known properties, so it works better when making bread or wine. The results are repeatable. In addition, using a cultured yeast makes it easier to stop the natural conclusion of the fermentation process, which is always some type of vinegar-like substance (more specifically, lactic acid).

At issue here is how much responsibility a landowner has to nature when it comes to fermented fruit. Because we pick the vast majority of our fruit, the animals in our area get a little happy and that’s about the extent of what happens. When you leave full trees of fruit to rot though, it could become a problem for the wildlife in your area, such as that moose in Sweden. If you can’t pick your fruit for whatever reason, try to find someone who will. Otherwise, you might find yourself trying to correct the errant judgements made by the wildlife in your area when it gets drunk. Let me know your thoughts about fermentation and animals at [email protected].