December 2, 2018 @goldenoakfarm
It turns out my husband got 27 lbs of pollock filets. He loves catching pollock, but we are not fans of it. The layer hens need daily animal protein as it is not provided in their feed, so we grind the raw fish and package it in daily allotments and freeze it.
When feeding supplements the rule of thumb is to not exceed 10% of their daily ration. That works out to ¼ oz/day/bird so with 18 birds that’s 4½ oz./package.
We got 7 of these bags which is 95 days of fish for the hens. So this was our first job of the day.
My next job was working on the checkbook and budget while he went out and moved the 2 piles of dirt that were delivered yesterday afternoon. He has filled 3 of the 4 huge puddle holes in the driveway to the barn now.
I had found this brand new puzzle at a tag sale this fall. After I was toast from looking at figures too long, I got the card table out and opened it.
Turns out the card table is not big enough. So tomorrow I hope to borrow my mother-in-law’s puzzle table and move it all to that.
The rest of the day I read a biography of P. L. Travers, the creator of Mary Poppins and watched a Christmas movie.
Have you tried grinding other fish? I saw a video in which someone used a meat grinder to grind up asian carp and capture the large bones in the grinder plate. It allowed him to process the fish into carp burgers.
Any fish in the carp family is toxic to chickens, due to an enzyme called thiaminase that is harmful. I was told this by a feed mill owner who has proved invaluable in the past.
My husband only likes deep sea fishing, so that's the type of fish we use....