Using the meat in our orchards

I know someone who raises meaty pigeons just for eating. I heard it’s delicious roasted. It’s more nutrition and better taste than chicken. I have no problem to buy frozen from supermarket,but I can never be able to kill a living thing.

Your words are so true. Thank you. :heart:

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My mom passed away just a couple years ago after having Alzheimer’s take her from us. I know you miss your husband, but the release from Alzheimer’s is a release for the whole family.

Prayers and condolences for you and your family.

Scott

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We eat a lot of squirrel and rabbit, mainly in a brown gravy. We take squirrel hunting so seriously down here that some schools close early or don’t open at all on the Friday before the season starts.

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It has been a long time since I enjoyed a rabbit dinner. I used to cut them up, bread in Frying Magic breading and fry in the cast iron skillet.
Finish off by baking in the oven til tender.

We started having pet rabbits (still do) who live in the house and are litter box trained. One evening while sitting at the dinner table and trying to eat a rabbit we purchased at a local supermarket, our pet rabbits decided to join us by playing tag around our dinner table.

It was mighty hard to view our pets and then take a bite of the cooked rabbit on the table. That is the last time I will taste rabbit.
I made my long eared friends that promise.

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Cacciatore style over polenta.

Sorry for your loss Mrs G.

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I feel quite the opposite. I have seen how things live and I have seen how they are killed and it is often horrific and far worse than it needs to be. I used to live next to an abattoir and I could tell you stories…

If I raise an animal myself I know it lived a good life, I know it was looked after well, and I know it was calm and not stressed throughout its life.

If I kill something myself I know it was as quick and as painless as possible. I know it did not have to line up and watch many others die before it got to the front of the line. I know that the end was far less stressful if I do it.

Yes doing the deed and is harder on me than just buying meat, but it is so much less stressful on the animal.

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I always helped my grandfather kill domestic rabbits (usually on Friday night for Saturday lunch). He made it a point of not letting the other animals see the processing. At age 17 I went working for a summer in a slaughterhouse and that turned me into a long term, on-and-off vegetarian. Among other things I was allowed to take pig liver home for the dog, and my dog developed a huge disgusting rash over bi-weekly consumption of that liver! factory farmed livers were already toxic in the 1970s. So not just the awfulness of the screams and fear of the animals, the end product was toxic. I concur in full with TW. Humanely raised meat is the best option for the animal in life ad death, for my mind and for my health (I do eat liver fairly often now).

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since i was 5 , i had watched my father dispatch many meat chickens and turkeys with 1 wack of a hatchet. it was quick, humane and the meat was fantastic! so much so, i still do it today. nice to know where your food comes from, esp. with all the horror stories you hear . we hunt deer/ grouse/ hare and fish also.

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how did you litter train them? Ive heard of this but never attempted it myself…

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Have you watched “The Magic Pill”? It was recently released on Netflix. It pretty much sums up my dietary choices.

I have not watched it. But I, too, eat lots of animal fats, nuts and avocadoes. I don’t need extreme fat because my metabolism is excellent now, so why lose all the goodies in a sweet potato or carrot? If I think I need a little refresher, I just fast for a day or two. Being fat adapted, it is not difficult. I am in Japan for work for several weeks, and I brought tallow, ghee and coconut oil in the suitcase.

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I wish they would have taken ketogenic out of the description. I took the documentary as a more primal way of eating. Eat less processed crap, avoid grains as best we can, no fake oils, allow our animals to eat the way they were meant to, etc. You think I’m not going to stuff my face with my home grown fruit, lol. Fasting is very effective. Dr. Jason Fung even was seen once or twice in this documentary. He is doing great work with his patients, getting them off of insulin and so forth.

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I am pretty sure any toxicity was from a Vitamin A overdose.

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I’m sorry for your loss.

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I doubt it. Pig liver is not particularly rich, and it was like half a pound a week. I have always hated supermarket liver myself.

Missed a rabbit last night. Broke my snare. Put up a good struggle it appears…

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Sous vide is the best way to cook any meat, including gamy meat!

Here’s my hyper efficient Sous Vide machine that uses very little electricity. I heat up the water in the gas stove to desired temperature first then transfer into my custom-insulated Sous Vide container and let the machine take over in maintaining temperature.

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Beautiful, I love the idea of low temp cooking. It’s on my to do.

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Derek:

The easiest way to train a rabbit to use the litter pan is to confine it to a small area and use a dirty litter pan already used by other rabbits. The new rabbit will smell what is in the pan and should figure it out real quick.

If starting with a new pan, it will take some trial and error to get the rabbit to realize what the pan is for. Clean up the misses with paper towel and put it in one corner of the litter pan. The rabbit will catch on.

I use the paper based litter mix for my rabbits (care-fresh?). Aspen chips work well too. Tried the corn cob litter once but the paper based or aspen chips get my vote.

Rabbits are great pets as not noisy. However, they will chew carpeting and any power cord they can find. My rabbits are restricted to certain rooms in the house (no carpeting) that have been ‘rabbit proofed’ (cords covered and rooms gated off). I have replaced a few telephone cords in the past (also lamp cords).

I had one rabbit that was a great alarm clock. She always got breakfast when the morning alarm went off. The morning it failed to go off, she woke me up as she was hungry. Glad for that as I got to work on time. That rabbit was a bit spoiled as she preferred to sleep on one of the beds all day. My wife gave up on me years ago about the rabbits in the house. She does have a rule that they can no longer be in the bedroom.

Mine all now have one room in our finished basement that they reside it. They are let out in the evenings and mornings. Some like to hop upstairs and have breakfast in the kitchen yet others are afraid of the stairs. Each rabbit is different as far as personality. One enjoyed listening to county music (Eddie Arnold) yet another prefers banjo music. I can tell because if the music is wrong they walk away and if they like it they tend to sit near my stereo speakers for long periods of time and move their ears back and forth like antennas.

Their hearing is amazing. Once when in the basement, the rabbit I was with stood up like it heard something. I heard nothing. It was a good 2 minutes later that I heard our family pickup truck pull up in our driveway. They have much better hearing than I have.

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