Frustratedearthmother's Journaling Journey

[flowerbug]

i really miss the place up north that made really good Crispy Orange Beef, no place else has ever done as good of a job on it. i also loved their hot and sour soup. thanks for the memories!

how do you get a sheep dry? do they have blow dryers for that?

 

[frustratedearthmother]

how do you get a sheep dry? do they have blow dryers for that?

I know nothing about sheep! I think wool sheep might have a rain-proof lanolin coating on their coat. Not sure about hair sheep. @baymule? Do sheep stay out in the rain?

But, when I showed goats we had livestock dryers that would get them dry in just a few minutes. They were so powerful they could double for a leaf blower lol!

 

[tortoise]

My wool sheep stay out in rain, even severe storms.

But, sheep are not smart, so there's that....

 

[baymule]

My sheep are spoiled brats. They love their barn. In hot weather, when they have full bellies, they go to the pasture gate and complain loudly. They want to go back to their barn to ruminate. The barn roof has radiant heat barrier under the metal roof. It is a considerable temperature difference. Light to medium rain, they don’t care. Hard driving rain, they will seek shelter. They never get soaking wet.

 

[baymule]

FEM, when you can chicken leg quarters for your dogs, how many pieces per quart, how much water and do you put rice in it?
We caught leg quarters on sale for 37 cents a pound. I know you can raw chicken, give me some hints, please?

 

[frustratedearthmother]

@baymule

Well.... I've totally changed the process, lol. I've always been a little afraid of canning rice so I barely put any in the jars. I didn't like the ratio. Now I cook rice separately and can the chicken separately. Especially because then I can use the chicken for us if I want to. We love chicken salad and the canned chicken works great for that.

Today I cooked 12 cups of rice and used some broth and frozen goat milk as part of the cooking liquid. I also toss in any dog friendly leftovers, and after it's off the heat I stir in a dozen eggs.

I had roasted a bunch of chicken last week for chicken and dumplings so I saved those bones and pressure cooked them and added them to the mix today. We keep it in a big rubbermaid container in the extra fridge. If I make an extra large batch (like today) we freeze some in ziploc bags.

Around thanksgiving I was given a deer shoulder. They got all the trimmings off of that in their rice that week. I canned a bunch of brisket chunks recently and they got the fat and trimmings from that too.

When I can raw chicken I don't add any water at all - the chicken makes it's own juice. When I use it in the dog rice I just dump it all in. I swear it smells so good!

So, long story short - If I have enough other goodies to go in the rice I use that - if I don't I use canned chicken. The things that don't change are goat milk and eggs. They get that in every batch.

The only thing I don't like about doing it that way is the rice gets clumpy. We generally add a little warm water to it to make it mix better.

The puppies don't get it very often because I like to keep them on their age appropriate feed. (but I cheated tonight since it's a holiday and gave them a little.)

 

[baymule]

So you pack the raw chicken in a jar with no water, how many pieces?

 

[frustratedearthmother]

So you pack the raw chicken in a jar with no water, how many pieces?

Yes ma'am.
It depends on whether I'm canning thighs or legs, ( I generally can them separately) and how big they are. But I pack 'em as full as I can while respecting head space requirements. For the drumsticks I alternate them with the fat end up and the next one the fat end down... I've even lopped off the knuckle end of a drumstick just to get them to fit in a pint jar, lol.

I checked one of my pint jars and it looks like there's at least 5 drumsticks in it. You can probably get 5 or 6 thighs in a quart jar if they're average size.

Then process as usual. I know you know this already - but for anyone who hasn't done it before... 75 minutes for pints and 90 minutes for quarts at 10lbs of pressure. (for my altitude - which is basically sea level lol)

 

[baymule]

I'm gonna have to play with this. For DH to mix chicken from one source, rice from another and eggs from another.......... (I won't can eggs) and I don't want a big pot in the refrigerator taking up space. I have a big pot in the refrigerator now, with duck and rice. I had a duck in the freezer labeled 2012, it still looked good, but I wasn't interested. LOL LOL I have a hog head in the freezer too, skinned and split in half, need to cook that up and make room for the steer.

Dang, don't our dogs eat good?

 

[Mini Horses]

I can my chicken the same. Push it in jar, full, no water. I debone but, its for me. No dogs now. Old roos I do for DD dogs...if they live to old have 4 I need to dog food out now. .

FEM is right, makes great, ready to use, for chicken salad. Or fast chicken & dumplings, pot pie, etc.