Donna Lynn wrote:

Pearl Sutton wrote:

Nina Surya wrote:
Did you get to be a vet assistant with or without diploma's? Asking for ... me!

I did vet assistant many many years ago, and it was basically "Are you a warm body that can clean cages, not freak out with upset animals, hand me things, be useful? You are hired!" No idea if that's still valid, but it used to be that way.

Same for me, basically.  I was in 10th grade and thought I'd hit the jackpot working with animals... then I found out the vet paid less than legal minimum wage because "so many people want to work with animals that I don't have to pay that much and always have a waiting list."  I did everything from clean cages to assist in surgeries.  By the time I quit to pursue extracurricular school activities I felt that I could do a spay surgery by myself, I had assisted in so many.  There were downsides though, such as too many healthy pets being "put to sleep" just because their owners paid for it and might get upset if they saw their former pet enjoying life in someone else's yard after they paid to have them killed.  I begged to take home one dog who was friendly, gorgeous, healthy and playful.  Of course my parents would have nixed it even if the vet had said yes, but the vet eventually gave him the lethal injection after we played with him and gave him love for several days after he was dropped off for euthanasia.  

That's sad. I've only ever taken one healthy dog to be euthanized, but that was because he had had some personality changes that made me worry that he wouldn't be safe, especially around children. He'd always been a really good dog, but then we moved when he was about six, and he started killing poultry (he'd always lived with free-range poultry and never bothered them), and was being so rough with our cat that he'd also lived with for years that I was afraid he'd kill the cat, too.  He was about half pit, and half Border Collie. With the pit ancestry, and with him being eight years old at the time, it was doubtful that I could have found a good home for him, anyway. But that was a hard thing to do.

I mostly feed my Rat Terrier raw meaty bones. She does get some kibble because - at the moment - I have five dogs, and can't afford to feed them all meat. They do all get some, but the outside dogs, including the LGD, mostly get kibble. This is my third Rat Terrier; the first two were mostly on kibble, though I did switch the second one over to meat towards the end of her life because she developed some allergies. That was part of the reason why I've had my current RT on raw meat from the time I got her; the other factor was that my daughter and I had been on the carnivore diet for several months when I got her (and are still on it, three years in), and I was seeing so many benefits that I couldn't just put her on kibble, which is mostly grains and legumes. She's done really well on it, including raising a litter of healthy, happy puppies sired by my brother's Schipperke (three of them are still here and just turned a year old - so much for thinking it would be fairly easy to find homes for small dogs! But I love them and will keep them forever if necessary.).

What she actually gets is a whole chicken leg quarter about every other day. On the in-between days, she'll get some hamburger, possibly an egg, maybe some fat scraps from a pork roast, or a can of tuna with a pat of butter on top of it. Once in a while she gets maybe a TBSP of dairy - yogurt,, sour cream, or cheese. She is in very good condition; she's gained a little weight since she was spayed a few weeks ago, but I don't think she's going to balloon up like some dogs do. If she wants something green, our yard has lots of grass and other green stuff, LOL! (I've never seen her eat any of that, though, while her predecessor often did.)

I sometimes have to persuade the boys (the RT's puppies, though they aren't puppies anymore) into the dog kennel for a bit, so I can take my truck through the gate without all of them escaping. A little hamburger grease or some other cooking fat on top of their kibble works really well for that - they love it, and it's good for them in moderation.

Two of my daughters are named Cedar and Juniper (my oldest and youngest). They are in their forties - those names are somewhat in use now, but I think we were among the first to use either of them. (Their dad and I met while studying forestry at college. One of our fellow students named his daughter Willow, which, after the movie of the same name, I would not use. But at the time, just before Juniper was born, I wished he had chosen something else, because that's what we'd planned to name her! Had to come up with something else - we decided on Juniper as we were on the way to the hospital to have her!).

There are other tree names that are good, too. Ash. Birch, and Spruce (I've heard of people being named both of those). Rowan is another one, maybe a shrub more than a tree, depending on where you live.

What you could do is go through plant lists and see if anything stands out to you. But as others up there have mentioned, do be careful of names that are hard to spell or that might confuse people. Juniper, for instance, is constantly heard as Jennifer, and I'd always have to correct people. My middle daughter didn't get a tree name, but she always, always has to spell her name for people, AND tell them how to pronounce it (Maranatha).

As for flower names, my dad's mother's name was Rosie Rose (a clerical error - her name was supposed to be Rose Elizabeth or something like that). And I had aunts named Daisy and Violet. Flower names have been fairly common through the ages - you should be able to do a search for 'flower baby names' or something like that, and get some lists.

Andrew Welser wrote:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
--Robert A. Heinlein  

For me, it's been difficult to hold a career path: I want to change jobs every few years because I'm getting board and want to learn something new.

I think that's a characteristic of highly intelligent people, especially males. My brothers had the same issue, especially in school. They both ended up dropping out of high school because they were bored, but did well in their working lives as long as they had a variety of things to do. Retired now, they still keep busy with a variety of projects. The older of the two is working on building me a new wood stove right now, out of an old pressure tank cut down to fit the small space I have available - figuring out as he goes along how to put in an ash tray, and the stove pipe collar, and a flat top for cooking on, and how to make the air run inside for better combustion (I wish we could do a rocket mass heater, but that would entail cutting a hole in the floor of my house and building a foundation for it - though, honestly, by the time my brother has all of this stuff figured out, it might have been just as fast to do that!). He's having fun, LOL!

This is an interesting topic. I'm a bit of a 'polymath,' and it seems like most of the people I know are. I'm going to conjecture that 'polymath' is probably the default state for human beings, if they don't grow up on modern mass media in the public education system (and often, even if they did). But sitting in front of a TV, or at a desk all day long, limits the number of skills a person is able to develop while they are young, which is when they should be beginning to develop those skills!

The only downside to having chestnuts as your primary staple crop would be that once in a while, the crop fails. Best to have several strings to your staple crop bow! But they are definitely worth having if you have room for large trees.

Rick Valley wrote:I grew up in the NE: New York, Ohio, and moved into the East Coast, New England, Maryland. I'm used to going t the Farmers Market and getting fresh roasted chestnuts, or roasting them in the fireplace. It's always fun to leave one un-pierced, so it POPS!
If you have the time,  roasting, peeling and maybe slicing them into cassaroles and stir fries. Or boil them and make cream of chestnut soup. But most definitely: Turkey Stuffing on Thanksgiving, with Celeriac and red pepper slices* that's un poco picante pero dulce. *slices must be of a size to have a reasonable stuffing texture: not too big but distinct, not minced. Dammit, I've planted chestnuts all over, and here in Eugene I don't know any trees to gather from. I'll just have to buy some.

If you don't mind a trip over to the coast, I can tell you where to find some chestnuts. (If someone hasn't cut the trees down in the last twenty years since I last gathered nuts from them.) I sprouted some, right before we moved with my grandmother over to Klamath County, but they didn't survive the winters over there. I think it's too late for nuts from those trees this year - I gathered them in September. But the nuts fall on the road, and in the ditch. (The trees are high up on a steep bank above the road - not sure you could even reach them.)  My grandmother's grandparents settled near those trees in the early 1870's - the first white family to live there; she was born there in 1913. She told me that the parent tree was old when she was a little girl, and nobody knew who had planted it; the only settlers before her family moved there were single men, who her family knew, and none of them had planted it. I've wondered if there was a chestnut-tree 'Johnny Appleseed' (Johnny Chestnut?) who went around planting trees in weird places....And when you consider that there was no road up there until the late 1920's (the settlers used the river, mostly), someone had to have walked up the river, or over several hills, and stopped on the bluff above the river to plant a chestnut.  Definitely an odd place to put one.

They are European-type.  If you want to go looking, head towards Florence. Shortly before you reach Florence, you'll cross the North Fork of the Siuslaw River; turn right on the North Fork Road. Go between five and six miles up - sorry I can't be more precise. I know the house we used to live in is at seven miles up, and those trees are between one and two miles back down the road towards town. The trees will be on your left and well above the road as you go upstream, with a pasture on the right side of the road (and just before that, the river is on the right side of the road). Just a little past the trees is a low pasture on the left side of the road, then a hill with a house on the side of it, back a ways (one of my cousins lives there). It would make a good excursion! If you hit it right, you'll probably see some nuts on the road, but you might need to park (carefully - there's no shoulders) and walk the ditches looking for nuts.

Otherwise, if you want to plant trees, look at Burnt Ridge Nursery - they have really good prices for very small trees of some varieties.

Brian Cady wrote:There are different types, which are best prepared differently:
European & American are great roasted quickly at high temperatures, after cutting through the shell.
Chinese chestnuts are starchier, typically, and best roasted slowly at low temperatures, without cutting the shell.

Below is James Nave's Chinese chestnut cooking guide:

Brian
-

How to Cook Chinese Chestnuts – J. M. Nave

If you have some favorite way of cooking Chinese chestnuts, I'm not trying to change that. I'm just trying to show people how you can best bring out the flavors of Chinese nuts and get better textures. Cooking Chinese nuts the same way you would cook European or American nuts is not optimal because Chinese nuts are much denser. And if you are cooking Chinese nuts optimally, you don't need to cut the shell. Low and slow is the optimal way to cook Chinese chestnuts.
The most interesting way, and most common way, to cook chestnuts in China is to roast chestnuts at low temperatures (240F or less) for extended periods of time (60 minutes or more). Roasting at lower temperatures for longer periods of time breaks down the dense Chinese nut and fully releases the flavors in the nut. It also gives the nut a softer texture, more like an American or European chestnut. A  Chinese chestnut that is cooked at 350F or above for short periods of  time (30 minutes or less), will normally have a burnt or hard exterior and an almost uncooked interior. The flavor will not be well developed. Cooking Chinese chestnuts in this manner has led to the common belief in the US that Chinese nuts are inferior to American or European chestnuts. American and European chestnuts that are cooked at high temperatures for short periods or time will be mostly cooked and falling apart and the flavors will be well developed. Because Chinese chestnuts are much denser than American and European chestnuts, they benefit from slower more thorough cooking at lower temperatures. Their density also gives Chinese nuts greater versatility in cooking. For example, Chinese chestnuts can be used in many dishes such as soups and stews without falling apart.
To fully understand how the density of the nut impacts cooking, it may be helpful to compare cooking chestnuts to cooking beef. Different cuts of beef have different textures and densities. Tenderloin (so named because of the soft texture of the meat) is quite different than brisket. Tenderloin may be cooked at high temperatures for short periods of time. The result is beef that is soft and full of flavor. Brisket on the other hand is a much denser cut of meat. Cooking it at high temperatures for short periods of time will result in a burnt exterior and an uncooked interior. The meat will also be tough and difficult to chew. To properly cook brisket requires cooking for longer periods of time at lower temperatures to allow the heat to penetrate to the interior of the meat. This results in a much more flavorful brisket with a softer texture. Chinese chestnuts are the brisket of the chestnut world. They are exceptionally good eating when properly cooked.
Another benefit to cooking Chinese chestnuts at lower temperatures is that the shells do not need to be cut. In the US, chestnut shells are normally cut when nuts are to be roasted to allow heated water vapor to escape. If the shell is not cut, the expanding water vapor will cause the shell to explode. But when a Chinese chestnut is cooked at 240F or below, it will not normally explode because the buildup of water vapor is very slow and it can escape without exploding the shell. This also results in another benefit. When the shell is not cut, the cooked nut retains more moisture which results in a better texture for the nut. To some extent, not cutting the shell also results in a partial steaming of the nut. It’s simply a better way to cook Chinese chestnuts. Which brings up the point that Chinese chestnuts can also be cooked by boiling for at least 60 minutes. Boiling is not optimal for American or European chestnuts because the nuts tend to get very soggy and fall apart which also makes them difficult to peel. Because Chinese nuts are denser, they don’t absorb much water and tend not to fall apart after boiling, which also makes them as easy to peel after boiling as they are before boiling.

Thank you for explaining the difference between Chinese chestnuts, and American and European. My only experience has been with the European types. This may also explain why Chinese chestnuts are considered to be not quite as good as the other two by some people - they don't know to cook them differently.

Leigh Tate wrote:My neighbor gifted me with a bunch of chestnuts. I've never had them before. So except for the old seasonal song that mentions them roasting by an open fire, I don't know what to do with them. I tried one raw but wasn't too keen on that. Does anyone have some ideas to share? Recipes?

I haven't done much with them, but we have a young chestnut tree in the yard (and I'd like to put in a couple more). They seem to do well in our area. I've had some canned ones that seemed a little sweet - don't know if any sugar had been added. But I liked them. A lady at church, every fall when she has chestnuts from her own trees, brings them to church dinners wrapped in bacon and roasted. That's good! I would say, experiment. They work with both sweet and savory flavors, and are more starchy than oily like most other nuts.

Cassie Martin wrote:I don't know if they do this everywhere, but potatoes are tenacious where I live. If you miss just one or two little potatoes, they grow big, healthy plants next year. There are potatoes growing in the lawn areas where we had garden beds years ago. They could hypothetically be harvested any time, you would just need to know where they were in the winter.

Could you mark the plants with stakes?

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:The sunchokes would probably grow just fine, but I suspect my daughter (adult, handicapped) can't eat them. Most plant foods seem to trigger extreme gut problems for her...Daughter tolerates sauerkraut well (and dill pickles); it seems likely that kale could be made into sauerkraut...

It might be worth trying fermented sunroots. There's some chance that the fermentation is what's making hard to handle veggies work, and if it worked for these, you might have a staple.

That is definitely something worth trying. I have been planning to do a variety of fermented vegetables, and see what she (and I) tolerate. We both tolerate fermented dairy much better than non-fermented, too.

Been reading through this and pondering our options here in south-central Kentucky (growing zone 6b or 7a, depending on which chart you look at, though I think it's more 6b, given that we've had temps down to minus 10 F the last two winters, and minus 5 just about every previous winter since we moved here).

The sunchokes would probably grow just fine, but I suspect my daughter (adult, handicapped) can't eat them. Most plant foods seem to trigger extreme gut problems for her, leading to her not being able to eat and losing way too much weight (possible Crohn's, but definitely something along those lines). We've found a few things that she seems to be able to safely eat, but sunchokes are high in fiber and I suspect those wouldn't work for her. On the other hand, she seems to be okay with winter squash or sweet potatoes, and those both grow well in our climate. Both keep quite well, given appropriate storage conditions, and are pretty hardy even in adverse growing conditions, and are easy enough to plant. Daughter doesn't tolerate nightshade family plants well, so potatoes won't work for us.

The walking onions should be fine, since onions are used for seasoning, rather than as a primary vegetable. Our diet now is primarily meat, but we still use some onion and garlic.

The kale - I'm not sure about. It's a good choice in a lot of respects. Daughter tolerates sauerkraut well (and dill pickles); it seems likely that kale could be made into sauerkraut, though it would be a little different....

My major focus is on raising the meat portion of our diet, complicated because we are both sensitive to eggs (which qualify as meat for diet purposes); she's extremely sensitive to eggs, and eating them causes her autistic behaviors to come roaring back. We have about an acre and a half of pasture, and currently have eight goats on that (feeding hay in the winter), but we've had issues with parasites with them, in spite of regular worming, and I want to sell the goats and get some St. Croix sheep instead. Don't know if we can raise all of our meat, but if we could raise all of our red meat from ruminants, we could continue buying some poultry and pork (and fish).

I have a fenced garden area (it's only 32' x 52'), and dogs on the property that keep deer and most other pests away, so don't have to worry too much about my stuff getting eaten, just out-competed by the weeds!

Because of the goats, I haven't progressed much on tree-planting, but would like to put in mulberries and persimmons (which are native here), and chestnuts, all widely spaced in our small pasture. There are wild black walnuts all over the place which usually have a fair crop, too.

So that's where we are at.

I have no amazing dishes to post here. I've been admiring, and drooling over, all of yours! But daughter and I are essentially eating nothing but meat, salt, and a little fermented dairy. The only plant foods I've found that I'm sure are safe for both of us are sauerkraut, dill pickles, and blueberries (in moderation). Once in a while, we get away with a little garlic powder or onion. Last time I tried lentils (cooked in the pressure cooker, in hopes that would help), my daughter lost ten pounds or so because she was in pain and couldn't eat regularly for several weeks. Pepper (black or capsicum) is even worse, triggering autoimmune conditions for both of us.

So, right now I have about five pounds of ground beef in the oven - that's lunch today and tomorrow for the two of us. Then there's a big ham in the frig to use up, followed by some chicken legs. I'm not really complaining - our food is tasty enough (you come to appreciate the base flavor of the food, if you aren't putting a lot of seasoning on it). But I have to admit that I do miss some of the flavors of the plant foods we can't eat.

Thankfully, contrary to some of the information floating around out there, meat is highly nutritious, and yes, you can live just fine on an all-meat diet. So we don't NEED the plant foods, they'd just be nice.

Hugo Morvan wrote:It's awesome! Some critical thoughts i had. I've heard this moss can last for a long time, but i'd rather have a straw bale. Anybody else doubt that the bark of birch overlapping will last a long time? I can believe it's a good foundation because the roots will grow into it, looking for water come summer. Which will help it to stop the snow sliding off those shallow roofs.

I saw that video a few days ago, too - I watched it because I'm from the Interior of Alaska, which has a similar climate to Siberia. My thoughts on your thoughts, LOL!

You can build with straw-bale construction in that climate - if you can find the straw bales. In Alaska, farmers who grow grain and have straw for sale are few and far between (though they do exist - for a price; the straw is in high demand with people who have horses). Logs are much more available, and moss is an excellent chinking material for the gaps between the logs. It actually lasts quite a while, and when it does need to be replaced, it's easily available, usually for free. I would absolutely not chink between logs with straw, even if it was available. It wouldn't do nearly as good of a job at stopping drafts, and it's more attractive to anything that eats stuff like that than moss is. And believe me, if it's fifty degrees below zero (F) outside, or seventy below, or even colder, even the tiniest crack in your walls will become a whistling breeze letting your heat out and the cold in.  

Birch bark actually is very rot-resistant and long-lasting. It is so waterproof that if you cut birch trees down for firewood, you must split the chunks of wood open, or the bark will hold moisture in and cause the wood to rot out, leaving a tube of bark in a fairly short time. It's a little tricky using birch bark to shingle/waterproof a roof, because there will be a hole anyplace that there was a branch on the trunk of the tree, but with care, it's possible to make a very good water-tight roof with birch bark (remember, birch bark used to be used for building canoes, too). Eventually, several decades down the line, it will start to rot and will need to be replaced, but again, like the moss used for chinking the log walls, the birch bark is usually easy enough to come by, and free.

As for snow sliding off the shallow roof, first, the roof slope is shallow to keep the sod from sliding off. The sod is there primarily to protect the birch bark and to insulate the roof in the summer, helping to keep the house from getting too hot inside (because in a Continental climate, summers can get quite warm). The sod also prevents the winter snow from melting and sliding off of the roof; and the shallow slope of the roof is additional protection from the snow sliding off the roof, because you absolutely want that snow to stay there! That's why the roof is built so strongly, to support the snow loads. Although, most years, in Continental climates such as the Interior of Alaska, and much of Siberia, there really isn't that much snow. It's not like areas east of the Great Lakes, for example, which get 'lake effect' snow dumped on them many feet deep. But you need whatever snow you can get for insulation. Snow has about the same R-value as wood, depending on how densely packed the snow is (from .5 to 2.0 R-value per inch); a good snow cover on the roof can make a huge difference in how comfortable the inside of the house is when it's extremely cold outside. We used to shovel snow up against the sides of our cabin as deep and high as we could get it without blocking doors or windows; this helped keep the floors warm, too, because we didn't have the cold air under the floor.

We always had a space under the floor dug out for cool food storage, too; whether it was accessed through a trap door in the house, or via a doorway on the outside with steps down (or both) just depended on the builder. This space would work reasonably well as both a refrigerator and a root cellar most of the year. We raised potatoes to sell, and my dad's parents' house had a basement which stored potatoes very well.

We never actually lived on permafrost, but the method they used in the video for the foundation is very similar to what is recommended in Alaska for construction on permafrost. (Permafrost tends to be patchy; if the ground is well-drained, you won't have much of it, if any.)

It's a rough climate to live in, and a rough climate to build houses in - one reason houses tend to be small cabins is because you only have a few months of good weather for building. You can add on later, but if you try to start with a big house, you are likely to not even have it closed in by the time winter arrives.

A masonry stove, whether rocket mass heater or the standard Russian masonry stove (in it's many iterations), is the ideal method of heating one of these small houses. When you need heat ten months out of the year, reducing the amount of firewood you have to cut is huge! We usually had a barrel stove; those eat firewood really fast, and, even lined with sand or firebrick, they don't hold heat at all. Wish we'd known about the masonry stoves back then.

Phil Stevens wrote:Kathleen, if parasites are an issue where you are (they're a massive problem here, to the point where the commercial sheep farmers are talking about Drenchageddon) you might want to try feeding biochar. Lots of studies and anecdotal stories out there saying that biochar will reduce or eliminate intestinal nematodes and also help with general health. My sheep like small pieces, like the size of whole grains, and screened to remove dust (makes them sneeze). I mix some sea salt minerals with it for some extra enticement, and they butt one another away from the trough when I give it to them.

On the browse topic, I feed lots of tree branches whenever the pasture growth slows down. I grow a lot of coppice willow for this purpose (as well as to produce feedstock to make more biochar -- stacking functions), and make tree hay in the summer with that and fruit tree prunings.

I don't have any sheep right now, just some meat goats and some Nigerian Dwarfs, but I've had a lot of trouble with parasites with them. For one thing, we have meningeal worms, also known as deer worms. I'll have to try the biochar and see if that helps, because commercial wormers just don't cut the mustard. (I'm planning to sell the goats and replace with St. Croix hair sheep, specifically because of the parasite problems. Though I haven't lost any goats to parasites for several months. Sigh. Maybe the ones that are left are the more resistant ones, and I should keep them....)

Brieanne Rice wrote:We raise a flock of 70 dairy and meat sheep on 185 acres on yhe central coast of CA on what I call an oak Mediterranean forest. The Dorpers are out 24/7 and the dairy girls are spoiled closer to home on rotationally grazed pasture. We don't have loads of grass here so the flock definitely eats mostly browse. The breed that has hands down been wonderful for us is the Dorper. They can utilize low quality feed and turn it into succulent meat and the amount of fat they have is seriously impressive. We have lots of toyon, ceanothus, thistle, CA sage, sycamore, and oak. The acorns in the fall and winter might be responsible for all that fat. There are loads of various types of plants I'm forgetting but I'm sure you get the picture. Our 8-10 month old lambs hang between 70 to 100 lbs which is really amazing. We've been running sheep for about 12 years so we've had a pretty good run at this and it seems to be a perfect match for us. I would say though that supplementing with kelp is always a good idea, given that it is cheap insurance that fills in any nutritional gaps and also helps remineralize the soil via those tidy little sheep poos.

The dairy girls get irrigated pasture most of the year and I focus on medicinal plants and herbs over grass but of course the seed bank is full of grass so we get that as a default as well. They love it all and clover is their absolute favorite but they eat chicory, dandelion, and I plant sorghum in the summer for them and they eat it, along with the malva, lambs quarters and mustard that pops up which they also love. Overall the sheep tell me grass is highly over-rated and they would rather eat the forbes.

Hope that helps!

Brieanne

This is going to be very region-specific. Where Brieanne lives, parasite problems should be fairly low; it's a Mediterannean climate with dry(ish) summers (sounds like she's close enough to the ocean to have afternoon sea fog, which will provide some humidity). Dorpers are a good breed for a dry(ish) climate, as it's similar to South Africa, where they were developed. On the other hand, I live in Kentucky, which is humid (wet) most of the time, and parasites are a serious problem here. You can still raise Dorpers, if you are willing to use lots of chemical wormers (though your flock will still struggle). But here, you'd be better off with one of the parasite-resistant breeds. They don't grow as fast, or get nearly as big, but you can keep St. Croix hair sheep or Gulf Coast Native wool sheep here with minimal use of chemical wormers. Farther north, you could use one of the breeds that is somewhat parasite resistant, but not quite as resistant as those two, such as Katahdins. I would suggest locating several people in your area who have sheep and talking to them about parasites; it wouldn't hurt to talk to a local vet, and to your local Agricultural Extension agent (because the Extension does a lot of research on the state level). Then you can make a more informed decision about breeds based on local conditions.

Going on three years ago, my handicapped daughter and I had to make some drastic changes to our diet for health reasons. Our diet -- as long as we stay on it (and we almost always regret it when we don't stay on it) -- is almost entirely meat, to include poultry and fish. We do seem to be able to eat fermented dairy products (in reasonable amounts), and a few fermented vegetables such as sauerkraut and pickles. So far, it seems like blueberries and watermelon, in small quantities once in a while, don't do any harm. So that's essentially it. We have a tight budget, so I don't buy steak (steak isn't safe for my daughter, anyway, because she chokes easily). I get the cheapest ground beef, bulk packages of chicken legs, the cheapest pork roasts, a few cans of fish, bacon, and once in a while a bag of frozen shrimp. Neither of us tolerates eggs - they really bring on her autism symptoms. I was surprised to find that our food bill actually stayed the same or went down, though if you went into it buying steak for your red meat, that probably wouldn't be the case!

I still keep trying out various things that we'd like to be able to add back into our diets, but very few have worked. So, simple diet it is for us, and it's really not been the hardship that I expected. No, we don't need carbs (carbohydrates are NOT an essential nutrient). An all-meat diet is quite nutritionally complete; vegetables are not only not necessary, all of them contain substances which are not good for human health, something we've been made extremely aware of over the last few years as we've experimented with various foods. I could give you a long list of health problems that have gone away as a result of cutting almost all plant foods out of our diets - and come back  when we try to add them back in. I was NOT expecting that. My expectation when I started was just to get inflammation under control and reduce the muscle pain I was experiencing (it worked). All these other things resolving was a total surprise, but a welcome one, for sure.

Sometimes people will say, "Fine, but the whole world can't eat that way." I did a little research, and some back-of-the-envelope figuring, and it looks like, yes, the entire world *could* eat a more-or-less carnivore diet if they wanted to. That figuring just involved the currently-arable land already in use, and didn't include a lot of land that is really marginal for growing crops but could easily be used for raising livestock, or the huge amounts of forest which would make excellent silvopasture. Nor did my figures take fish and shellfish into account at all, or small critters such as rabbits and quail which are primarily raised in cages.  So, there is that, for what it's worth.

This is one of those "How long is a piece of string?" questions. The answer is, "It depends." In this case, it's going to depend first on local building regulations, plus what your cheapest source of materials is, divided by the amount of time you have available. Or some such equation. Wattle and daub might be cheap, but take too much time (and I can see, with a 10' x 10' footprint available to you, that the thickness of the walls is going to matter). Ditto for cob walls. Might make adobe bricks and plaster them, if you had some place to store the bricks out of the weather until it was time to use them.

Recycled materials can be great, but the time involved can be considerable. Not just for refurbishing (taking out old nails, stripping old paint, re-planing to desired dimensions, etc.), but even just locating exactly what you need. Again, though, if you had storage space, you could slowly accumulate them.

Here's a thought - get one of the shipping cubes, like shipping containers, but 8' x 8' x 8'. That would leave a little exterior space to add something to the outside to cover it up (and I recommend adding a roof, because sometimes the metal rusts and they start leaking).

Several other people have mentioned feeding raw food (specifically BARF), and I just wanted to add something to that. I hope nobody will take offense, because I don't mean to offend, but I strongly believe in dealing with the root cause of a problem, not just soothing the symptoms. If it helps to give a medication to your pet (or to a human), fine, go ahead and use it -- but please, please work on finding and eliminating the root cause while you are doing that! ALL medications have side effects (not to mention supporting and enriching the pharmaceutical industry). You really don't want to use them long-term if you can possibly eliminate the necessity for them altogether.

I only give meat to my little Rat Terrier -- no vegetables or carbs. That's because my daughter and I are both on the carnivore diet -- dealing with the root causes of our own serious health problems -- and I figured, if it works for us (and it does), it should work for a dog, too. And it does. Of course, she's outside quite a bit, and if she craves vegetables, there are plenty of edible green things in our yard; she can help herself. But I've never, ever seen her chewing on grass (unlike my previous Rat Terrier, who did often eat grass).  And she's a very healthy, active little lady. My suggestion is to try BARF with a little carb and veggie, if you want, and if any problems remain, then go the rest of the way to just meat. Charlotte gets whole chicken legs (drumstick and thigh, raw, with the bone and skin); raw ground beef; a little bit of pork once in a while; a tiny bit of liver once in a great while; and sometimes a can of tuna with a pat of butter added to it. She also hunts mice (and moles) in the yard, though she doesn't eat the moles, and I don't know how many mice she actually catches.

My second Rat Terrier had this type of problem. Vet thought it might be allergies to fleas or? Treated her for that, with minimal success. What fixed the problem was putting her on a raw meat diet -- no commercial dogfood at all. Not as expensive as you'd think, with a small dog (she weighed about seventeen pounds). I've got my third Rat Terrier now (love the breed!). She gets a little dog food, but her diet is mostly raw meat, and has been since I got her when she was eight weeks old (she's almost two and a half now). She's very healthy, and hopefully will have a longer lifespan as a result of not eating (much) commercial food.

I don't see a poll, but will answer anyway.  We -- myself and my handicapped daughter, and my brother and his wife -- have two houses and a couple of old barns on a little over two and a half acres.  Over half of the land is fenced pasture for a few goats, plus my fenced yard, which is close to half an acre, is used to rotate the goats onto fairly often.  My brother takes a brush hog to the actual pasture two or three times a year to knock down any weeds the goats don't want to eat, and he mows my fenced yard with an old riding mower that he was given (in need of repairs) a couple of times a month.  His own yard gets mowed more like once a week, but we try to keep the goats from going there because they'll eat my SIL's ornamentals and the few fruit trees we've planted.  

I'm considering swapping the goats out for hair sheep (the sheep would be a better meat source for us than the little Nigerian Dwarf goats, but more important, the hair sheep I'm considering, St. Croix, are much more parasite resistant than the goats).  I don't think much would change, though, since St. Croix sheep are known for being good browsers like goats.  

On noise and ducks, I've got around a dozen Ancona ducks, and find they are only noisy if they are talking to me (usually to let me know they would like to be fed now, thank you very much!).  Otherwise, if I hear a duck I check on them, because something is probably wrong.  

I've had both chickens and ducks, and like both of them.  My ducks have been a little messier with their water than the chickens were, but not really a lot -- I just move the ducks' water bucket and pan frequently.  I don't have chickens anymore because we found out that my daughter was really sensitive to their eggs (eating even just the yolk causes her autism to get bad again, which we only realized when we hadn't eaten any eggs for a while, and then tried them again).  So I sold the chickens and got some ducks, and -- after waiting several months for them to get old enough to start laying -- found that my daughter was just as sensitive to their eggs.  I still have some of the ducks (sold a few of them); I enjoy having them around.  But currently have a pack of puppies that think it's fun to chase a flock of ducks, so the ducks are penned up, which isn't so great.  I'm going to try to get the rest of them sold this spring, since we aren't able to use their eggs.  

One advantage ducks do have over chickens is that -- if you can let them free-range -- they will pick up a much higher percentage of their own diet, at least during warmer weather.  

If you need heat (I have an electric foot warmer on top of a raised footrest under my desk -- that is SO NICE in the winter!), hot water bottles would do the trick.  Put something down under them to keep them from losing heat into the floor, and cover your feet and the hot water bottles with a towel or a blanket or something.  You'll have to change the hot water bottles out when the water cools off, but it's a good non-electric solution.  Alternatively, if you have a wood stove, you could keep a few bricks on top of it, and use them the same way as the hot water bottles, just change them out when they cool off.  

A Cullman wrote:Unless steps are taken to seal the chamber/bucket, or a fan is added to the vent stack, would a draft be created? Are there any articles on this?

Given that a typical toilet seat is less than airtight, and that there is going to be an airgap between the bucket and the seat, it seems like the system is basically open. I checked my toilet seat here at home, and there is a 5/16" gap between the bowl and the seat, and a 1/4" gap between the seat and the lid. My toilet seats would have approximately 17.5 sq in of ventilation just at the bowl/seat/lid area. A 3" vent pipe would only add 7 sq in.

I guess my question is whether the juice is worth the squeeze. A lot has been made of the fact that composting toilets don't smell. The prevalence of vent stacks seems to suggest otherwise. I guess I can try without and always add one later.

The one outhouse I've been in that had no odor, also had a 12" vent pipe directly from the poop chamber up through the ceiling to the outdoors (this was a government outhouse at a roadside rest area, with no electricity).  So I think it is a valid concern to have a large enough diameter vent pipe.  However, I've also used humanure bucket toilet systems several times, for up to a year each time, and found that if enough organic material is used to cover deposits in the bucket, there was little to no odor (usually no odor, as long as the bucket was cleaned after it was emptied, and left out in the sun for a day or two to disinfect).  So probably, the combination of organic material added on top of deposits and a smaller vent pipe would be sufficient.

I'm not going to look it up, but I wonder if the jump in food exports in 1972 might have been related to sending food aid overseas (to Russia, for example)?  That would give someone another angle to research, at least.  

And I've got things to do, may check back in later!

thomas rubino wrote:Hi Kathleen;
Shorty started on a cement board put down over the original floorboards.
There is no access under the cabin at all.
I debated cutting through the floor to add shoring and decided to risk not doing it.
There is over 2500# in Shorty (A big girl) but it is spread over a 4x4' area, and the original floor is double-layer sitting on cedar logs.
I gambled that it would be fine and as far as it seems so far, I was correct.
Although that is a lot of weight, it is dispersed quite well.

I always have the option if, in ten years, the floor starts tilting.
I can cut an access hole at that time, and add extra support...
OR better yet the boys who will inherit this property could do so while I sit back and watch...
Yeah, I like that option best!

LOL!  I'll have to consider this -- and do some measuring to see if I can make a 4' square fit into the space.  Our house is small; the living/dining room is only about 12' square.  But I really, really would like to have a masonry stove in here, instead of the little Vermont Castings Aspen stove I have now.  (Despite it's diminutive size, with the hardwood we burn here in Kentucky, it does hold live coals all night.)  Hmm.  I'm also not sure the underpinnings of this house are as sturdy as yours.  We do have a crawlspace, but I think the floor boards are only one layer thick under a very thin layer of plywood subfloor (1/4").  And the floor joists are standard lumber rather than logs.  

Thanks for the speedy response.

Did you build Shorty on the floor, or cut a hole in the floor and build a foundation for it?  Wondering, because I'd really like to do something similar in my old house, but don't want to have to cut a hole in the floor (and shore up joists, etc.).  

I rode a bike a lot when I was younger.  The first few years of married life a bike was my primary transportation when my husband wasn't home with the car (I didn't learn to drive until I was in my thirties).  I was able to keep that up until we had three children -- I had been able to manage with two, with one in a bike seat behind me and the baby in either a front pack or a back pack, depending on her age.  My husband built me a bike trailer, so I could carry all three of the girls, but the first time I took it out, the right tire caught on the edge of the pavement as I was starting to make a left turn, and the trailer flipped over, spilling all three of the girls out into the road right in front of an oncoming car!  The driver managed to stop in time, and the littlest one was strapped into her car seat and unhurt, but I never took the trailer out again.  I had a bike again a few years ago, but couldn't go far with it because youngest daughter, who is severely handicapped, still lives with me.  She can't ride a bike, and is too big to carry as a passenger, and I can't just leave her alone at home.  So, we either walk, or we take my truck.  The roads around here are too narrow, with no shoulders at all, to be safe for riding bikes, anyway.  I've thought about going Amish and using a horse and buggy -- maybe someday!

I hate that type of survey, too.  I've never taken one about alcohol, but others, including at the doctor's office, or the social security office, can have some very ambiguous questions.  If there's room (and it's a paper survey) I'll try to make explanatory notes, but I don't know if anyone pays attention to those.  There was one I had to fill out recently (can't remember where) that wanted to know my nationality -- European, African, Asian, etc.   I wrote in American, which wasn't even on the list of possibilities!  I think they were after race (there is only one race, human), but why they would expect someone whose ancestors have been in North America for four hundred years to identify as European, no matter what their skin color is, I will never understand!

I have a Lehman's wringer, and have used it a few times.  The rollers did crack more quickly than I expected -- my mother used a wringer washer when I was young, and I don't remember the rollers being cracked at all, even after many years of use.  The wringers are helpful, though, especially for stuff that's hard to wring by hand, like large towels and blue jeans.

Hi, Luna!

I would recommend two YouTube channels for you.  One is Huw Richards.  He's in Wales, but he started his YouTube channel when he was twelve (he's now in his early to mid-twenties, I think).  I suspect his YouTube gardening channel may be most of his income now!

The other gardening YouTube channel I recommend is David the Good.  He's a bit odd sometimes (like any of us have any room to talk, LOL!), but he has gardened in Florida most of his life, starting out in south Florida.  He's in southern Alabama now, but you could still get a lot out of his videos.  He talks about what to grow in that soil and climate, and how to grow it.  

My youngest daughter (who is now 44) is autistic, too.  She's pretty severely handicapped, so doesn't post, but I sometimes amuse her by reading something from here, or showing her pictures.  Don't worry about being autistic -- we know what it's like, and are glad to have you here.

And, just a thought, but the best thing that has helped my daughter was making some drastic changes to her diet.  Basically, all we eat now is meat.  She doesn't tolerate eggs (and I don't tolerate cow dairy).  We are both in much less pain, and much more functional, and she is a much happier person than she had been for a long time.  Worth a try!

Jay Angler wrote:Where I live there are plenty of "pet" horses, but very few of the sort of tough, useful work horses of eras gone by. I have rarely seen them used as actual transportation, but they are used on our local trails for recreational outings.

Jay, if you have experience training horses, or can get some experienced help, you are close to a good supply of some of the best western working horses -- the BLM mustang herds!  They generally turn out to be excellent using horses, pretty bombproof and level headed (get one that was born and raised on the range, though, not one that was born in the holding pens.  Nothing wrong with those genetically, but they don't have the wide range of life experience that a range-bred horse has.).  The horses themselves don't usually cost much at all, which makes up somewhat for the expense of getting them trained if you can't do it yourself.  I've had a couple of them, and have known several more -- all but one turned out really well.  (One mare ended up going to peewee rodeo for a bucking bronc!)  If you are careful when selecting one, you can get a nice-looking horse, too.

John Weiland wrote:

Tereza Okava wrote:........-- but that chicken fat is never coming out of it the oven floor now.

Agree with this and other comments on the cleaning aspect of these ovens....*AND* the issues with carry-over tastes in some foods due to build-up of grease and oil.  When we air-fry items, we now only use one basket-tray combination that has been used from the beginning.  It gets cleaned once  about every 4-5 meals, but no amount of scrubbing will get rid of the build-up.  So for baking, I bought a second basket-tray combo that does NOT get used for air-frying.  Experience showed me that glass bakeware is better placed inside the basket and on a tray if placed in the lower rung of the oven (Cuisinart TOA60)....have broken Pyrex pie plates when I didn't have that barrier between the bottom heating element and the pie plate.  But with the right set up, bakes an amazing number of things without resorting to the main kitchen oven.  As r ranson noted, would almost like to get rid of big stove/oven in the kitchen but still use the stove-top a lot.

I actually have a nice gas range that I bought new just before covid started, so over 4 1/2 years ago, and it's still not hooked up -- I don't need it!  I am thinking that when my microwave dies, and the toaster oven/air fryer, I probably won't replace them, either.  I have a hot plate, an electric kettle for heating water, and the Ninja Foodi, and that's really all we need.  Of course, being on carnivore, I'm not doing any baked goods.  We do still eat small amounts of veggies once in a while, but don't need the range, toaster oven, or microwave for any of those.  If we have dessert at all (usually only when we have company), it's a bit of plain yogurt with some berries.  I need to figure out what to do with the unused range (I bought a cutting board that fits perfectly on top of it, for more counter space).

I have two air fryers.  One is a toaster oven style, and I don't like it.  It works just fine, but it's hard to clean the grease splatters from cooking meat (and that is just about all we do eat, as we are on carnivore for health reasons).  

The other air fryer is in a Ninja Foodi (an 8 qt. instantpot type thing).  This one doesn't work quite as well (it helps to turn things over halfway through cooking), but it is MUCH easier to clean.  I've had it less than a year, so am reluctant to give an opinion on longevity yet, however, I'm doing almost all of our cooking in it.  It is used every single day, often twice or three times.  I fry hamburgers, roast chicken, pressure cook a big roast, make meat stew, and just yesterday cooked a pork roast sous vide (and then roasted it). It will make yogurt or dehydrate food.  I am very happy with it.

I had a six quart instant pot for several years (no air fry feature).  It still worked fine when I got rid of it, but I didn't use it much because half the time when I wanted to pressure cook something, the lid wouldn't seal.  If you look at the reviews on Amazon, failure to seal is one of the top complaints for Instantpot.

I do have one other Ninja product, a blender that is around ten years old and still working fine, though I hardly ever use it now.  But I've been impressed the the quality of the Ninja brand so far.

Karen Lee Mack wrote:

Jay Angler wrote:

Karen Lee Mack wrote:This guy is talking about exactly what this thread is all about - how does going carnivore affect your health and affect your homesteading.

Super busy today, so I didn't have time to listen to the whole video, but right off the top of my head, I was thinking , 'what are your animals eating???' Ok, maybe they're eating some grass, but our chickens eat a commercial pellet that is mostly wheat (no corn or soya). Growing sub-straight for raising Black Soldier Flies for chickens would be awesome, if I wasn't a bit far north for them.

I don't grow rabbits, so I'm not sure what one would specifically grow for them.

One of the underlying principles of homesteading is to try to produce not just for yourselves, but for your animals also. I'm no where near that point yet, but I'm trying to head that way. In the short term, my ducks and geese adore the apples we produce and the chickens and ducks will eat every bit of kale I can keep away from the deer!

You could have a whole garden for rabbits!! Keeping in mind they are herbivores so, for example, while they can eat some carrot root, the tops are better for them.
Where I am currently, I am more successful with treehay - mulberry and willow mostly.
I plan to do a big herb garden - for seasoning and medicinal but also for the rabbits.
The best list I know of for rabbits is on another forum and I can't remember if it is okay to link to something like that.
A lot of the information on the internet is from pet rabbit folks and they are sometimes overly careful and rule out many things that
people feed meat rabbits with no issues.

A rabbit's digestion is somewhat sensitive so I always tell people, think of them as babies - you introduce a new
food slowly and often. Kits can eat whatever the mom has been eating for the most part.

And who wants to miss out on using the lovely rabbit manure for growing things?!

Rabbits are probably the best meat animal for people who don't have a lot of land -- they need little if any grain, so it is possible to grow all of their food at home.  I prefer red meat (beef, goat, lamb, venison, moose, etc.), but rabbit is good.  I'm just working out how to have enough animal fat in our diets if we have to make rabbit into a high percentage of our meat supply (I'm not worried about the so-called 'rabbit starvation,' but our carnivore diet needs to have a fairly high level of fat, and rabbit is pretty lean).  My daughter can't eat eggs anymore, so our alternate source of healthy animal fat is going to have to be milk from our goats, probably.  I do have a bunch of coconut oil on hand, and coconut oil is safer than the seed oils, but I can only use small amounts of it without getting nauseated (and it gives my sister-in-law, who lives next door and we often eat together, an instant migraine).

I have a copy of the book, Beyond the Pellet, by Boyd Craven Jr. and Rick Worden.  That's a good reference to have on hand for feeding rabbits.  There's also Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps, by Claude Goodchild and Alan Thompson.  That one is older, but the information should still be useful.  (I like to have paper reference material in hand, just in case we can't access the internet at some point.)

Karen Lee Mack wrote:This guy is talking about exactly what this thread is all about - how does going carnivore affect your health and affect your homesteading.

https://youtu.be/Uz-fER9rPZM?si=tFTx7KFxpj8sfxzT

I posted in the comments on that video!

Karen Lee Mack wrote:

It's always nice to hear from you, Kathleen!

I am sorry about the duck eggs but yes, your daughter's brain is the important consideration.

I have stopped the honey. We were experimenting with Xylitol mints but like anything else, it gets out of hand.
And yes, I can tell by my pain exactly how good I have been.

And yes, I am glad that I had just watched a vid that stressed bones & skin and in oil (or add fat). I like the kippers in water probably better but won't sub them for this.

Did you know I have Tamuk rabbits?! If I can help you with anything along those lines, feel free to message.

I have had NZs and may have some again in GA. Already networked with someone who has gorgeous Red and another person with beautiful blues.
My experience crossing is the first generation will look like Tamuk in terms of the thinner fur.
I often have folks come back to breed to my bucks. Slight amount of bio-risk but otherwise a good deal all around.

I did not know you had Tamuk rabbits!  I had been watching Craigslist for one of the commercial strains of NZ -- they come up once in a while.  I'd heard of the Tamuk rabbits, but hadn't looked into them much until I saw the ad for them on Craigslist.  I'd like to get a purebred buck at some point, but I figured since we are just raising meat for ourselves and to supplement the dogs (I've actually switched them primarily to raw meat with bones, and I'm buying a lot of cheap chicken, but figured home-grown rabbit might be healthier for them), we can deal with the NZ x Tamuk buck for now.  When I take the does back to the lady I bought them from to get bred, probably day after tomorrow because my brother plans to replace my bathroom sink/vanity/faucet tomorrow, they'll be bred to a NZ buck again, because she doesn't have a Tamuk buck.  But I really liked the two-month-old size of the crossbred litter she had.  I've had NZ's before, a couple of times, and have found them to be a little more nervous and skittish than I like.  Though, they were the Whites.  I've heard that the colored ones aren't quite as nervous.  That was one thing I liked when I was reading about the Tamuks, that they are supposed to be a little more docile.  

I had just watched a video with Dr. Boz, can't remember if it was Kelly Hogan she was talking with (I think it was).  That's what spurred me to think about doing the sardine fast.  I'm not gaining weight, but I'm not really losing much, either.  Need to shake loose and get moving again.  On the plus side, Juniper was underweight for several years.  She very consistently would eat one day, and not eat the next day.  She'd gotten down to about 98 lbs at one point -- she's only 5'2" and fine-boned, so that wasn't desperately low, but she's now eating just fine, every single day (the last time we had a day she couldn't eat was after we'd been off carnivore for several days because we had company).  And her weight is back up to a healthy level, and she looks so much better!  She still fits in her size six jeans, though!

We are still hanging in there, too!  We eat a meal with carbs a little more often than you, maybe once or twice a month, because my sis-in-law likes to cook for all of us when she's feeling up to it, and she forgets that we aren't supposed to eat that stuff!  (She has memory issues, not sure if from lupus, or the meds she's on.  I wish I could persuade her to try carnivore for a while.)  

We tried the duck eggs, and found that even separating them and just eating the yolks, my daughter can't tolerate them.  I hadn't realized that she'd stopped doing what I call her 'broken record' act (repeating the same word or phrase over and over and over and over and ....), until we ate the duck egg yolks for a few days, and she started up again!  So, no eggs for us.  Le sigh.  We like eggs, they make a good quick and easy meal, and would allow us to try a few carnivore recipes for 'breads' and such things.  However, not at the expense of my daughter's brain shutting down!  I have sold about half of my ducks, and may just keep the few that are left.  They are pretty out in their pen, and come running when I bring their feed, so they can count as entertainment.  If I could be sure the dogs would leave them alone (the Anatolian probably would, the little dogs won't), I'd put them out in the goat pasture, so they could utilize the pond, and eat slugs and snails.  

I just picked up three Tamuk rabbits this morning -- two purebred does, and a young Tamuk X NZ buck.  We forgot to breed the does before I brought them home, and the buck is only a couple of months old (and weighs around five pounds -- he's twice the size of the purebred NZ litter she had that are the same age).  So I may take the does back over to get them bred.  I'm also looking for another good buck, as the one I got is the son of one of the does.  Rabbits don't generally have any problems with inbreeding, but I'd still rather not breed that closely.  I very much liked the looks of that crossbred litter, though.  (And she had one more Tamuk doe she wanted to sell -- I might pick her up, too, but need to get another cage up, first).

Just a suggestion, but if you are still having pain, try going strict carnivore for 30 days.  No honey, no fruit, etc.  That will probably cut your sugar craving right out!  That's what I had to do, and most of the time I don't even want anything sweet anymore.  The sardine diet should help, too -- I'm planning to try that, after the first of next month.  I don't actually like sardines much, but what I read about the diet said it's important to eat them packed in olive oil (or drizzle butter on top, or maybe even bacon grease).  We eat kipper snacks quite often, but the ones I buy are packed in water, so the fat level is too low.  I don't know how much nutritional difference there actually is between sardines and kipper snacks (herring fillets).  If I cheat while I'm in town and eat something sweet, I ALWAYS have pain in my joints by the time I get home from town.  So I suspect that the honey you are still eating may be the cause there.

Elijah Ravenscroft wrote:

Ben Adams wrote:Turned out it was not truly an egg allergy but a soy allergy coming via the eggs.

You may have just saved both a marriage and a life. 😂 Wife and I are two weeks from our first chicks, and she has a major soy allergy. I had no idea it could be transmitted that way, so now I know to feed soy-free.

Plant proteins can also be transmitted through milk, just so you are aware.

Ben Adams wrote:

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:Many people need to avoid eggs, in particular chicken eggs, and especially egg whites.  Dairy is another food that many people are very sensitive to.  (I've tried substituting duck eggs for chicken eggs -- works for some people, but apparently not for us).

Just a quick anecdotal reply to this: I knew a lady who could not eat eggs, UNTIL they got their own hens and fed them feed without soy.  Turned out it was not truly an egg allergy but a soy allergy coming via the eggs.  :-\

But that doesn't mean true egg-allergy is not possible.  Allergies can develop to pretty much any protein.  Just saying to "keep experimenting."  :)

Our problem isn't technically an allergy (histamine reaction), it's a food sensitivity, but you are right that the feed could be at least part of the problem.  I'm feeding the ducks the same feed that our chickens used to get, so it could be the problem with their eggs, too.  I may experiment with more expensive soy-free feed, once I sell part of the duck flock so I'm not feeding so many of them.  We'll probably still stick to just eating the yolks, though -- my daughter, who is autistic and has a number of auto-immune conditions, has been doing so much better since 1. going carnivore, and 2. getting off of chicken eggs and cow dairy, that I'm not inclined to do anything that might set her progress back even a little.

Editing to add that the feed may be at least part of the problem for people who are sensitive to milk, too.  I think the feed is at least partially why I have some trouble with both pork and chicken.  Ruminant meat is fine, I think because even animals that finish in feed lots have spent most of their lives on pasture.