MSU Extension MI Ag Ideas to Grow With

My name is Dave Thompson, I am an MSU Extension Pork Educator based in Coldwater. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this session this evening titled the realities that no one tells you about owning chickens. And this a good title for me tonight because my granddaughter is talking about getting some chickens. And so I'm looking forward to learning from Zack about this. Before we get started with Zach, we're going to do two things. We're going to watch a short video, I believe, on farm safety tonight, Beth, after we do that, we're going to hear a brief presentation by my friend, Sarah Fronczak was going to talk about manure management on small farms. So I think, Beth if you'll T up the food safety farm safety. You need to share your screen, Beth. Blood in it. Ohh, that sounds like campylobacter. Have you been snuggling with your chicken again? Yes, mom I can't help it she's so soft and warm. It feels good to kiss her and squeeze her. Two souls separated by fate and disease. Welcome to another installment of The Chicken Came First, the continuing saga of a boy and his chicken. There's good reason I tell you not to cuddle your chicken, Timmy. The CDC says not to let children under five around chickens. But Mom, that's a whole year away. You also need to stop having tea parties with her in the kitchen. The CDC says you should never eat or drink around poultry. And to keep them out of areas where food is prepared. But Mom, I clean up all her poop. That's where nasty bacteria like campylobector and salmonella come from Timmy. That's what makes you sick. It's over Timmy. You can't go on like this. Then later that day, Mom says I can't kiss you anymore, and hold you until I'm five. We can't have tea in the kitchen anymore. I'm sorry, Erma. In 2020, 1,722 people were sickened in all 50 states from backyard poultry. Of these, 333 were hospitalized, and one person died. 24% of the ill were under five years old. Tell children under five to not cuddle their chickens. I definitely need to get a hold of that tape for my granddaughter. If you'd like to learn more about food safety, visit the MSU Extension website, and search for food safety. And there's some great tips on there, some great videos. Again, before we hear from Zach, we're going to turn things over to Sarah Fronczak to talk a little bit about manure management on small farms. So Sarah, take it away. I couldn't stop giggling. I..., you know what, before we, before we do that, I just want to remind everyone that if you have questions that come up, but during the course of either presentation, just go ahead and type them either in the Q&A box at the bottom of the screen or the chatbox and we'll look for them. We'll try to get them answered either during the course of the presentation or right afterwards. So thanks there. Take it away. All right. My name is Sarah Fronczak. I'm an environmental management educator with Michigan State University Extension. And I'm just going to give you this short presentation. And I would like to emphasize that I grew up on a chicken farm. So I'm pretty familiar with the birds and how much fun it can be. So I, I guess as I move forward with this, just think about any questions that you might have for me and you can contact me. This is my e-mail or you can give me a call on my cell phone and I'd be happy to answer your questions. So the other thing I want to say is that if you haven't started your backyard flock yet, I think one of the things that I hear a lot is that we wish that we checked with our local city and county governments before. And became familiar with their rules before we got our poultry going. Because there can be a lot of rules about having poultry, but also disposal of poultry waste, which is really where we're going to hone in to tonight. Okay, Good. I'm glad it's going forward. So we're going to talking about manure production, we are going to talk about nutrients in manure, manure storage options, and manure application. So I have a quick question for you. How much manure do you think a chicken will produce in one day? I think we can put them in the chat, like up. Anybody have any guesses? Go ahead and put it in the chat. How much manure can a chicken make in a day? A half of a cup, a pound, 4 ounces. Eight ounces, a quarter pound. Well, let's see. What about 15 chickens? Because let's be honest. Right? You're not going to have just one chicken. None, none of you chicken lady's have just one chicken, you have at least a dozen chickens and you love all of your chickens the same, I'm sure. So I did this for my math purposes. So in one day, 15 chickens can produce 5.4 pounds of manure. And it just adds up. The manure produced for 15 laying hens for one year is just under a ton. So remember these calculations are for manure and they don't include bedding. So that's a lot of poo. And when you're trying to deal with that, when you're living on a city lot, that can be a really big deal. So manure manure accumulation on your farm or in your yard, where does it accumulate? Well, many farms have outdoor pens and lots where they keep their animals. And these pens can have a good deal of manure that accumulate on them. So we suggest that bear lots are cited away from any kind of water source, whether that is like a stream or a pond or a well. They should also have a grassy area that surrounds the pen that any kind of contaminated water can flow off into the grass so the nutrients can be used by the grass. We suggest that you keep clean water clean. This means that any clean water that might run into this pen is diverted. So this is really talking about gutters. So you don't want the rain water coming off of your house or your garage or your barn or whatever you have your birds in to end up into the area that they're also pooping in. So we want to keep clean water clean. And this next one is kind of a point of preference and ease, but you could keep, you could the lots are a lot easier to clean IF and scrape regularly if they're if they're concrete. And so that's something that you might want to consider. I know it's an investment, but it's something you might want to think about. Additionally, consider that smaller lots can be more efficient to scrape because the manure isn't so spread out. So depending on how many birds you have, having the right sized area is really important. So let's see. Got a quick question. Yeah. How do you scrape a lot? That question comes from Gretchen. What when I was a kid, it was with a big flat shovel. What do they use today? It depends how big your lot is. So if it's 12 by 10 or something, just throwing it out there, then a shovel is completely appropriate. If you have a bigger area and you can fit in like a skid steer or something That's awesome. That would make it go a lot faster. But it's really about the equipment that you can afford. But honestly, I think a lot of times this is this is you with a shovel or maybe, maybe your kids with a shovel. So depending on how you, how the ownership of those birds has allocated. So if you have indoor pens and lots, you want to clean out the manure with wet bedding. You want to do that on a regular basis. And I think you're probably aware of that. So there we go. So the other place that manure might accumulate as if you had like a movable tractor or are doing like pastured poultry or some people have these little tractors that they move around their yard. So just a few tips. If this is something that you're thinking about, you want to move your tractor when there's 50 percent or more of the forage buff that's grass left. And then within the first week you're gonna move one to two times. And after that, you'll be moving daily. So be aware that in in warm weather, birds do feel stress and that you can move them less if they look stressed, but just make sure they have enough shade and water. And I'm sure you can ask Zach plenty of questions about bird stress that he's much more equipped to answer those questions than I am. So you also want to make sure that you keep that chicken tractor away from surface water because any kind of rainstorm might wash manure off into the surface water. So manure contains nutrients that can be valuable fertilizer when placed where plants can use it, or if allowed to run off, could cause a lot of problems to surface water and groundwater. And we don't really want our backyard birds to create any kind of environmental problems. So the average chicken manure can contain 21.4 pounds of nitrogen, 14.3 pounds of phosphorus, and 14.6 pounds of potassium in 15 chickens worth of manure for a year. So although the composition of chicken manure varies according to the age of the chicken, the moisture content varies and the kind of litter that you use and that kind of thing, that the storage and handling can also affect manure, nutrient composition. And what we really suggest is that if, if you're going to use this as a fertilizer, that you get it analyzed every few years. So, or every time you change feed rations. So why are we concerned about nutrient runoff? Well, the primary concern about manure runoff is phosphorus loading, dissolved oxygen levels and increased and biological oxygen demand or BOD. So this this naturally occurring element, phosphorus is a limiting factor for aquatic plant growth. And that means that unhealthy aquatic ecosystems, this natural plant food is present in smaller amounts, limiting plant and algae growth. But when excess phosphorus enters the system, it can quickly cause overgrowth and this can lead to nuisance plant an algal communities that put stress on aquatic ecosystems. So then we end up with things like fish kills and other aquatic critters that have issues getting enough oxygen in the water. So the other issue that we saw, and this is a picture of Lake Erie and down here is Toledo. This is a picture of the harmful algal bloom that occurred occurs in Lake Erie on an annual basis. So what happens there is a naturally occurring bacteria is in the water and when it gets extra nutrients, it blooms. And this particular one is called, I've lost my thought. Sorry. I'm sorry. The type of algae? Yeah. I just went out of my head. It looks green algae or yellow algae to me. It's a blue-green alga, which is actually a bacteria. Yeah, Mike, Microcystis. Thanks Dave. I just needed to talk about it a little bit more. So Microcystis is the name of the alga and it produces a toxin called microcystin, which can be a dangerous. It's a neuro and hepato toxin. It can be toxic to humans as well as animals. We've had reports of dogs being poisoned by microcystin. And of course, in Toledo, this is a great cost to their surface, or to their municipal water source. So it's just something to consider when we're dealing with nutrients. I had somebody raise their hand. I don't really know what to do about that. We don't have any comments in the question and answer or in the chat, so okay. Well, I'm glad you can see that someone's concerned. So so how do we prevent manure runoff? Well, we think about different kinds of manure storage facilities. And depending on the size of how many birds you have, this might be different. Or if you've got chickens and rabbits and a pig. Like this is really depends on how much manure that you're creating in, on your little farm. So there's three common types that we think about. One is three-sided concrete holding area with a concrete floor. A covered dry stack on clay or concrete. So this would just be like a pile of manure that stacks on something really hard, uh, roofed building that would keep the rain off of it and keep it from running off. A large tank. So some people, because you're only dealing with chickens, you're only dealing with a smallish amount. A large tank would work. So we often see like a horse owners use things like dumpsters. So that's a possibility too. Or you could use an earthen or a concrete pit. So what does that kind of look like for you? So so stacking your manure on top of the hill next to surface water. We're going to call that a poor, a poor plan. It's going to end up creating algal blooms, creating fish kills and, and you can see lots and lots of plants will grow in the water and that's no good for the environment. The second best would be a an uncovered sort of concrete enclosure. It can also be block, might be another option. And with that, we're going to keep the nutrients where they belong. The only issue is that you're going to have rain that falls in there and you have to do something with that water. And then finally, we have the covered, enclosed manure storage that allows you to get rid of that manure and in your own time and still protect the environment. So another option might be composting. Composting can reduce the volume of manure by half. It can decrease the odor of manure and it also helps with nuisances like weed seeds and pathogens. Nutrients and compost are also more stable for plants to use at a later time. So top five benefits reduces volume by half, decreases odor, which is important if you have neighbors. It kills weed seeds, kills diseases, and it stabilizes nutrients. So some of the difficult things is that it can require more management. So you need to be taking temperatures and turning the pile. But manure left in a pile isn't composting. Composting is a process and there's a recipe to it. You have to have the correct carbon and nitrogen ratio. And like I said, you have to turn your piles to introduce oxygen and composting is it has a higher temperature. Another option for disposing of your manure, which you may or may not be able to use because you won't have the land base. But a pretty common way of disposing manure is with a manure spreader. So if you have the option to do land applying this, this could be something that you have available to you. So if you if that's something that you're looking at, you can give me a call and we can talk about that in more details depending on the fields that you choose. So one thing that we really want to emphasize is that record keeping on the farm isn't exciting, but it's essential. So when you spread manure or you dispose of manure, you should keep records of where that went. And we have, when I'm all done with this, I'll paste a link to a sample manure record page that you can use. And it also will have a manure management plan that you can formulate and it'll walk you through. So you can use that as a, as a resource. Manure can be really stinky. And it's important to consider odor when we store and spread manure. So we can maintain good neighbor relationships. Especially if you're in town, those neighbors will complain to your municipality and then you might get in trouble with other people. So it's important to maintain those good neighbor relationships. Consider dealing with your manure in the morning before the air is warm, that sometimes helps with odor. Avoid holidays when your neighbors are having guests over and they might be outside. And another, another thing that we suggest to people is if you keep your farm or your animal area clean, people are more likely to perceive it as less odorous. So we all smell with our eyes in other words. I know that chefs like to say we eat with our eyes, but it applies here too. So considering those things keep us from from being on the bad side of our neighbors. So I'll take questions and I gotta get that link for you guys. And I have to pull it out of my presentation. Sarah that was, that was terrific. I think if you'll put that information on the, on the chat or the chat line, that would be great. And also keep an eye out for any late questions that came in. It looked like there were two or three coming in. You can feel free to answer those if you would. I think in the interest of time though, we're going to need to move on. So thank you, Sarah very much, that was that was excellent. Now let's jump into the feature presentation today. So Zach, would you like to take it away? Yeah. Good evening. Started. I'm Dr. Zach Williams and the poultry Extension Specialist for Michigan. I'm based out of the animal science department on the main campus. So today, I'm going to tell y'all were going to talk about some of the realities that people don't tell you about owning chickens. This is sort of the gloom and doom talk, I guess, about owning chickens. I'm not going to tell you like how to feed them, or how to care for them or raise them or anything like that. We're going to talk about stuff and no one tells you and that everyone is like, Oh, what do I do now? Alright, things we're going to talk about - laws. There are laws for the local, state, and federal level and you better know them. if you are going to own chickens. There's also noise. We're going to talk about foragers and what that means, especially if you live in like a neighborhood. We're going to talk about that they are not pets, that they are livestock and they should be treated as such. And what that means. We're going to talk about diseases also veterinary care, housing. If you ever want to go on vacation, you probably shouldn't own chickens. They are at the bottom of the food chain. And then we're also gonna talk about some end of life concerns and how you deal with end of life with chicken. These are all questions I get all the time. And they are some of the most common ones I get from people that have anywhere from like backyard chickens up to, you know, small size producers. So I start with the important stuff. Let's start with laws. Now. We'll start the local, then we'll go to state. Then we'll move to the federal level. Before you own chickens or before you buy chickens. You better know what the local ordinances are. Some may allow poultry, some may not allow any poultry, or some may not have laws altogether. And so you kinda have to interpret those laws the best you can. And some are very strict. And they'll say you can only have four hens per residence and that's it. But a lot of times that's what they'll do. The limit, the number, limit the species. Some may allow you to have chickens, but say no ducks or no turkeys. And then they'll limit the sex, most of the times it's females. Because roosters and males they just they make a bunch of noise they are generally useless. So local ordinances and even then sometimes if they're not specific about poultry, they may have like a noise ordinance. So if your neighbor complains that your chickens make noise, or your rooster's crow from five o'clock in the morning until seven or eight o'clock at night. You might actually go to court for your chickens and you're probably not going to win. Lose neighbors, lose friends, so know the local ordinances before you buy. Because like I said, if you're, you know, it's the local laws. So a lot of people aren't even aware that they're township or municipality has local laws that allow or don't allow poultry ownership. And then no zoning that whether you're zoned agricultural, residential, State laws and state laws have to do a lot with the transport of poultry across state lines. Transport to shows. Also the selling of meat and eggs and then of course, disposal of carcasses and waste. What do you do with waste, which we just heard a very good presentation, on handling poultry waste. So transport, transport within states usually fine. But once you go out of state, there are certain things that you have to do before your chickens can travel out of state or before they can come into Michigan. Like there's some states that around here where I believe Illinois or Indiana, sorry, that they vaccinate for a certain disease that we don't vaccinate for in Michigan. And any bird that's been vaccinated for that is illegal to cross the state line. Those chickens are not allowed in the state of Michigan simply because they've been vaccinated for a certain disease. And then if I go out of state, they had to be tested for other diseases, which is where we come into the National Poultry Improvement Plan, which a lot of you may be certified to test or have your, have had your flocks tested before. So transport across state lines. And then it goes in and out of Michigan. Selling of meat and eggs. Now. And these are where the law gets really complicated. Because this depends on how large you are, usually it's based off of how many eggs you produce or how many hens you have, how many chickens you have to produce meat and eggs. And there's a whole plethora of laws. We could spend the rest of this week going over laws and not go through all of them. But if you are going to sell meat and eggs, It's important to know the laws. And a lot of people sell eggs. It's much more common to sell eggs than sell meat. And what's you may not know is that if you reuse a carton to sell eggs in, like you say you bought a carton of eggs at the store. And then you save those cartons or someone gave you cartons and you sold eggs, in those cartons, that is illegal. You broke the law and Michigan. It is illegal to reuse someone else's egg cartons because we use those carbons to trace back those eggs, the source if there's ever a disease outbreak. Alright, disposal of carcasses. Good luck burying a dead chicken in Michigan. It's pretty well impossible. And then a lot of waste companies aren't taking caucuses anymore. So you would have to work out with your like garbage pick up as to whether or not they will allow you to dispose the carcasses in your normal waste. And then of course, municipalities and local ordinances also have laws against disposal of waste. And then we'll get into federal laws. And these have to deal a lot with disease and disease control, which we'll talk about here in a little bit when we get to the disease slide. In the federal it's just because they consider chickens livestock. And there are reported diseases and diseases that we have to control on a national level. Noise. This is for, if you live more in town, they're really noisy. Rooster's can crow up to a 140 decibels if you're standing right next to them, that can cause permanent hearing damage. 140 decibels is equivalent to a large caliber handgun or rifle going off if you're standing right next to the muzzle. Hens will cackle and there's really no way to stop them, they're going to crow. There's these bands you're going to put around the neck that's sort of for it, but don't really work. And what they don't tell you is that rooster's crow all day long. It's not just the morning thing. It's an all day thing. And a lot of times the noise level that chicken's degenerate will go against local ordinances, especially for noise and nuisance. So just keep that in mind. But of course they are noisy and they crow all day long, Hens cackle, which is also really loud. But there's really no way to stop them. So these little cute chicks, that just go cheep, cheep, cheep. Eventually they're going to be pretty loud. Alright, so noise, just remember that they are noisy. And you may get in trouble with your neighbors and the local town. Seen that happen. Alright, foragers. And this is going to tie into housing chickens. If our poultry are foragers, they roam everywhere looking for food. Regardless of property lines, roads, fences, et cetera. So they may go in to your neighbor's flower garden. They may go into your garden. So they are, they're not like dogs as you can keep within a fence for the most part. They won't fly over the fence, but they roam and they roam everywhere and they dig. And so we have to keep them inside, contained within some sort of coop or housing structure. All right. This may get a lot of angry looks, but I'm going to say it anyhow. It's chickens are not pets. They are livestock, they are farm animals that we use for egg and meat production. As you saw in the first video. Over the last, oh, probably five years or so, there had been a nationwide outbreaks of salmonella every year in young children. And it's because they have, it has been linked to backyard poultry. Because these little kids get home and they like to do like that with the saw in the video. They like to pick them up, carry around. Some people take them in their houses. Don't ever do that. So yeah, so they carry many diseases. They carry salmonella Campylobacter. They also carry a lot of staff. They carry clostridium, which kids can give you a nice case of gangrene. All kinds of diseases that can cause illness in us. So they're not pets. They are livestock. Even though, you know, you are going to want to kiss that little chick, don't do it. All right. Zach, is it possible to mitigate some of that by buying the chicks from a reputable or a skilled supplier and then maybe treating with low dose [medicine name] or something. Are there some strategies to mitigate that? Yeah, you can get, if you give it from a really reputable supplier. they may be salmonella free. But other things like like campylobacter, clostridium, we're not there yet. But we are producing salmonella free flocks. But again, they can pick them up from the environment. And it doesn't make them sick. They, it's natural in their intestines and so they're just happy as a and B. I would not suggest trying to give medication yourself to try to get rid of salmonella. Just because, well now you can't, you gotta have like a veterinary prescription for that. And you can kinda be shoot like guessing as to what you were trying to do and why those antibiotics don't work for poultry for these things, because it is natural to them. So if you buy from a reputable source then then a lot of them or salmonella free now. And Josh has asked if it's legal to get the eggs from Indiana? Yeah. So if you buy it from some place, they should know whether or not they've gotten, many people in Indiana are not vaccinating for, this is the vaccine for infectious, for rigo trachiatis, that they give a live vaccine that is illegal to give in Michigan. So most of them are not going to get that anymore, but it is something to be aware of. Thank you. Alright, diseases. Diseases are very hard to diagnose because if you ever own poultry and you've gotten sick, as probably always acted the exact same way as every other time a chickens gotten sick, is kinda, kinda get down. It may have diarrhea, it may just kinda huddle up. That's pretty much what they do for most diseases. There's some that are very recognizable, but most of them kind of present the same way. So diseases are hard to diagnose. If you would like a definitive diagnosis. The Michigan State University Veterinary Diagnostic Lab will be happy to charge you about a $150 to $200 for diagnosis for a chicken. Good luck finding a veterinarian that is going to work with poultry. We'll talk about that here in a second. But again, and we can't diagnose them until they're dead. So we take carcasses and we base a diagnosis off of that, off the necropsy, and again, it's going to cost about a $150 to $200 for diagnosis. Some diseases are what we call reportable. What happens here is if you're flock tests positive for these diseases, then we, then it's mandatory and it's the law that these diseases have to be reported to state and federal authorities. Yes. Okay. And what happens here is you're going to get into quarantines. You may end up getting into depopulation. Depending on what the disease is and quarantines could be anywhere. You know, basic 14 may be within a mile or a three mile radius or even a five-mile radius from the farm. So that is something to think about. It does happen. There's been an outbreak of New Castle in California. This continuous outbreak for like the last, I think three or three to five years. And it came from these backyard and like small flocks. And it just went from one to the next and that is just keep it keeps going. And the federal authorities and state authorities go in and they'll knock door to door and ask you if you have chickens, if you're within this quarantine zone and they will come and they'll test. And people have to comply. All right, So diseases, some diseases reportable. And then of course it goes into a whole new set of like state and federal laws for those diseases. And they're hard to diagnose. Veterinarians. There are none, or very, very few that will work with poutlry. That's just the reality of it. So you may find one, if you do, that's really lucky. But more often than not, you're not going to find one who will work with poultry or one that knows anything about them. It's not like dogs and cats where everybody wants to. If you went to the vet school now at MSU, and you asked all four years in veterinary students how many of them want to do poultry. I think there's one out of 500 students or something. So he'll probably get a job with one of our commercial farms. So there are none or there are very, very few veterinarians that will handle poultry of any kind. So if you have questions, there's really no one to go to except for like me. Or if they die, then you could send them to a diagnostic lab. All right, housing. You had the housing can be as simple, as complicated as you want to make it. That there are certain considerations. It has to be warm weather proof and it has to be something they're going to want to stay in and be happy all the time. Because again, if we let them go out, then they are just going to forage and roam all over the neighbors, all over the neighborhood. Weather proof, like we see in Michigan, they have to stay above about 40 degrees at all times to keep your chickens alive. Once it starts going below 40 degrees, then you're going to start to see some cold stress, so insulated house, some sort of supplemental heat like now would be a good time for supplemental heat. But again, the housing has to be something that can maintain itself during all whether. It is something to keep them dry, if manure is inside of the housing gets wet, it's going to smell really bad. It gets a really bad ammonia smells, which if your in the town or have neighbors close by, they are not going to like that. And then of course it has to be predator proof because everything eats chickens. Chickens are prey. Everything and anything will eat your chickens, from cats to dogs, to possums, raccoons. Pretty much anything will eat them, hawks. And they're going to find a way in. It doesn't take much for these predators to come in and get your chickens. So again, that goes back to housing, but that also if you live in a neighborhood or if you have little kids, there's going to be predatory animals coming around. And this could be like coyotes and bobcats and dangerous animals that might come around to your chicken coop. They could pose a danger to either like household pets or if you have little kids. End of life care. So we talked about lack of veterinarians. So guess what's going to happen if you have a chicken who needs to be euthanized? Well, you're going to be doing it. And there's really only about two methods that you could do at home. What else will be cervical dislocation, which if you've never been trained how to do it is pretty hard. And the other one is going to be just like cutting its head off, which is also pretty hard and not real pretty and not a good way to do this. If you're not comfortable with either of those, you may have a hard time. You are going to have a hard time finding a veterinarian that will euthanize these chickens if they need to be euthanized. So to wrap up, I was kind of gloom and doom. It was kind of on purpose, but it's not to scare you off. But what I really want to do is make sure that you're aware of these things. Because a lot of people, you know, they go buy some chickens and they had no idea about like there's these laws that like if you put eggs in someone else's carton it's illegal, you could get fined by the state. Or even like owning chickens could be illegal or that, you know, there's no veterinarians, that are going to take care of your sick chickens. You're kinda on your own. So those are things I just want everyone to be aware of. If you're thinking about buying chickens or if you have them now, there are stuff to think about. So again, not to scare you off, but I just wanted everyone to know these things that they don't tell you. And it's pretty common stuff. And I get asked all the time, like who can be a veterinarian and how do I get this disease diagnosed? And this is the reality that it's going to cost me about 200 bucks and there are no veterinarians or it's any of this other stuff. So I think I got it in on time. I can take questions, I guess now. Zack, I think that was great. I really need to get this information to my granddaughter so expect a call from her sometime soon. Okay. I think that yeah, it's great information and I think there's workarounds to a lot of these things and you talked about those and I think this was really great. I really enjoyed it. I just want to thank Zach for the great talk. Lots of useful information. I want to remind you all that if you have a question, feel free to type them into the question box. But before you do that, I, we really would appreciate it If you would take two minutes and do a survey. If you don't want to do it now that's okay. Cut and paste this link that I just sent. Http colon, backslash. Beth where did it go? The link to the survey is in the chat, but we do have a couple of questions in the chat Dave for Zach. Oh did we? Ok. Yeah, go ahead Beth. I don't see them. So if you would relay them to Zach. So the first question, the first question is we'd like to free-range our chickens within an e-fence during the day. Hawk predation has been consistently a problem. Any tips besides the typical CD's, flashing tapes and scare balloons? Put them under a roof. That's pretty all I, I mean, well yeah. Put a roof over them. I mean, things will scare them away but sometimes they get used to it. And they realize that, hey, that CD's not really going to do anything to me. They may come anyhow. So if you put them in a roof and put wire around them, that's the best way to keep hawks, and other predators out. I'd second that. I have lost many birds to hawks and owls too. So I actually don't worry about protecting chickens from predators, but I do worry because we are fruit farmers also. And we'd like to protect our sweet cherries and our tart cherries. And we use the same things, the flashing tape, the balloons, those type of things. We have the cannons and we actually have to have a rotation for those because they do become so used to those so quickly. So we find that if we use the cannon for a couple of days and then swap that out for some of the balloons. It helps, but there's just, there's not a lot to deter some of those animals specifically when you're free ranging, that is really hard. If you're using, if you want to free range, sort of, you could use something like a chicken tractor that they're completely enclosed in and then move it often. And that way you're getting all the benefits of being free ranged. Like they get bugs and sunshine, right? But you get to control those predators a little bit better. And then there's another question that says, how can raccoons be kept away? The same electric fence around the bottom or the top works. But again, don't let them out and keep them like pretty small wire because like raccoons and possums, and a lot of other creatures and they can get their head through the rest of them go in. So even like the two by four inch wire like possums and stuff, can get through that. So like octagonal wire, whatever six-sided kind of mesh wire is probably the best. Yeah. We we would bury hardware for mesh two feet down and then connect it two feet up onto the chicken wire that kept him out pretty good. That was a lot of digging so, but that works if you're up for that, it'll keep them out of the enclosures that you have your animals in. And there's a couple more comments. I think one of those, Kristie, thank you for adding in that comment. When it comes to the hawks that some of the times that chickens will hide underneath the trees. And then Shannon also comments that they use hardware cloth to help protect from some of those predators. So those are all great ideas and comments and we appreciate you guys adding those into the chat. If there's any other questions for Zach right now, we'd be happy to have those either in the Q and A or in the chat box. Feel free to put those in. And Zach we really appreciate your time tonight sharing with you, sharing with us some of those good things to know about raising chickens. Unfortunately, what I figured out is that my six-year-old is breaking the law by reusing those egg cartons. But hopefully nobody is going to report her, so. We won't report her. Jeannine and I posted in the chat or Q&A from MDARD, Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and for direct first receiver of sales, they don't require that it's a clean brand new carton. Although it is ideal to black that information out. You have to black the information out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's different laws for whether you're selling, like Jeannine said, whether you're selling directly to someone or like if you sell to someone who uses it in their restaurant, then you've opened up a whole new can of worms. You absolutely have to then. Yes. Or if you have over 3000 hends. And all of those details are in the food law. So your six-year-old is probably safe Beth. That's good to know. Alright Zach. Thank you very much. Beth, we move right into the next presentation then or the next, we kind of repeat everything again? Let's go ahead and move right into Jeannine. I think that's a great idea. Okay, Jeannine, take it away. I'm working on it. Can you see my slides? It looks great to me. Yes we can. And while Jeannine is getting ready, I think we'll just remind everybody, Beth, that who's new to the group, that if you have any questions, just use the Q and A. button, or the chat button at the bottom of the screen, we'll try to answer them in real time. If it's something that we need to ask Jeannine about, we'll ask her to comment. So yeah, please interrupt Dave if there's questions in the chat. Thanks Jeannine. So our speaker is, address as we go. Great our speaker is Dr. Jeannine Schweihofer from Michigan State University and she's going to give an overview on direct marketing of meat. So Jeannine, take it away. Thanks Dave, it's a pleasure to be here. I wish we could all be in person, but this is the next best option it looks like so. Thank you for including me in this very, I think, growing opportunity. That has been more than just a trend. It been a steady increase in livestock marketing and finding additional value for marketing livestock by direct marketing them. But that's been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic as consumers are looking to secure their food supply and continue to know where their food grows from, comes from. So I'm going to talk about an overview of direct marketing meats and there's a lot of information to cover. Just a reminder that MSU Extension programs are open to all in case you're just joining us at this point in the presentation tonight. So there's several questions to answer and I'll try to answer these throughout the presentation and integrate the answers into the rest of the presentation. But what are the required regulations and how do you follow them? Where can you sell your meat? How, and what factors should you consider when choosing and working with a processor? How do you price the product, and then what are the impacts of COVID-19 on direct marketing processors scheduling? And that's the million dollar question that I probably don't have all the answers to, right? But let's start out with talking about how we follow the laws, the required regulatory requirements when we're selling this meat. And it really depends on who you want to sell that to. So if you want to sell this to somebody for their own personal use, their own family use, or they're non paying guests, it can go through what we call a custom exempt meat processor. And that is where the owner of the live animal or owners of the live animal accepts the responsibility because that animal will not be inspected at the time of harvest. And each package of meat is then marked "Not for Sale". If you want to sell individual cuts or bundles or at farmers markets then you need what we call federal inspection or USDA inspection. And then that meat can essentially be sold to anyone, anywhere in wholesale or retail quantities. So again, there's a few different types of inspection. Federal inspection which is conducted by the US Department of Agriculture, Food Safety Inspection Service. And that is where each animal receives inspection at the time of harvest. And an inspection stamp is put on the carcass and then that mark or inspection legend is put on each package of meat. And so establishment 33 or 38, excuse me, in this picture is used for example purposes, but each establishment or USDA inspected processing facility is given an establishment number, and that is the number that goes in the inspection mark. There's actually a directory available online. There's even an app where you can look up where the meat is coming from based on the USDA inspection establishment number. Inspection establishment numbers and stamps are different from USDA grades. Beef is the most common livestock meat product that would be graded. And that grade being added to a package or advertisement at the retail level, such as prime, choice or select. So inspection is different from grading. There's also like I talked about, custom exempt where there is essentially not regular inspection. There might be periodic inspection by USDA of those facilities. And that can range from six months to two years before they come back to those custom exempt facilities. So again, the owner or owners of the live animal is responsible for that animal being harvested without inspection. And if you're selling me direct under custom exempt or using custom exempt processors, you can still base the price on the hanging rate and all of those things, but you need to have some sort of paper trail or electronic trail ledger type record keeping system that indicates that the owner became the owner of the live animals even if they pay based on that hanging carcass weight. And then Michigan does not have state meat Inspection. There's 27 states that have state meat inspection in the U.S. and 23 that don't, I believe. Michigan does not. We've not had state meat inspections since the early 80s, but we do have retail exempt licensing, which is through the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. And they will get periodic inspections at those facilities. In order for that need to be sold to the public at retail, it has to start with a USDA inspected stamp on the carcass or if they're cutting up subprimals or primals of meat. It has to start as USDA inspected meat. Jeannine, a question. Yeah. Has Michigan MDARD inspectors ever gotten approval under USDA. to do interstate movement of meat? No, because Michigan doesn't have state meat inspection. We just have retail exempt licensing. And so we would have to have state meat inspection in order to, there's some programs where you can, the states work with the federal level inspectors to go through for interstate commerce. But Michigan's not eligible because we don't have a state meat inspection program. Good question. Okay. So that would be retail exempt. So in a grocery store, for example, if they have a meat cutting room or in a small meat packing facility where they may have a retail counter. You may not see the USDA Inspection on every individual package. That's because it was USDA inspected and then cut right there at that store packaged for direct sale to the retailer. So that would be the retail exemption. So if you are selling meat from your farm and or at farmers markets, it does need to be federally inspected through a USDA inspector, not just for harvest or slaughter, but also through that packaging and processing. So all the way through the cut and wrap process, it needs to be USDA inspected with that individual mark of inspection on it. And you also need a license from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, or MDARD, as we often refer to them, for a food warehouse license. It's a similar license to a food establishment license that the retailers would have for retail exempt sales. Except that with food warehouse license, you're not having any exposed product or open product or repackaging any product. It's all coming to you packaged with that USDA Inspection mark on it and then you're selling it direct to the customer. So you're just basically keeping it typically in frozen storage, although you could do it if you have enough inventory and volume through refrigerated sales as well. And to get that licensing, you need to have your facility inspected. And that area where you store the meat must be separate from your own private use, and your own family use. The freezers have to be separate and it has to be partitioned off. So if you're storing it in your home, it needs to have a separate entrance than your regular family entrance. If you're storing it in your garage, you cannot have other hazardous materials in there such as gas and oil, so you can't park your car or your lawnmower in your garage. And the same would be true for an area of a farm shed or something. It needs to have a separate area. So sometimes people use the service entrance and then partition that off from the rest of the farm shop? Or they build a facility all on its own just to store the freezers for the direct sales or storage. In order to find out who your area of food inspector is that will come and do the inspection. You can call MDARD's 1-800 number. It's 1-800-292-3939. And that's a general number for MDARD, but it is answered by a live operator. And so you ask to speak to your area food inspector. They will ask for your zip code and then you'll be connected. And I do have an article out there with a few more details on licensing to direct market individual cuts of meat in Michigan. So when you are selling or purchasing meat and poultry, generally, beef can be done at that custom exempt level by the half of a, a whole animal, or a half of a carcass, or half of an animal. So half a beef or a quarter could be a front quarter, a hind quarter or a half of a half, which would blend cuts from both the fore quarter in the hind quarter. Some places will do an eighth, but usually that costs quite a bit more to get the processing costs,. it cost more because there's more effort and work and coordinating all the cuts with the various customers. Generally when carcasses are sold, for swine it's a half or a whole, not less than a half. And generally for sheep and goats, it's the whole animal. Poultry, it's the whole bird. But again, we just talked about how you can do direct cuts or packages or bundles at the farm level with USDA Inspection. So what are some things to think about when you're working with your processor? The logistics of it are very important. Scheduling right now, as I said, the million dollar question is, what are the impacts of COVID on direct marketing of meat? Everybody wants to purchase direct marketing, or direct marketed meat. So it is extremely difficult to find a rail space or a harvest appointment at both custom exempt and USDA inspected facilities throughout the state. Each facility that I talked to is handling their calendar a little bit different, but most of them are booked through 2021 and now into 2022. Some of them have left some room in their schedule in 2021. Many of them are trying to work with the local fairs still. But your scheduling and your appointment needs to be done out months and or a year in advance.. So some things to think about when you try to do that is make sure that you know when your animals will be finished and ready for harvest so that you can schedule that appointment at the right time for the right animals. You also want to schedule the right number of animals and deliver on what you schedule. You cannot take extra that day. And it is also not appropriate to take fewer animals than you scheduled without calling ahead to cancel. Now everyone has a waiting list right now. So calling ahead and canceling it, it's not as big of a deal as it used to be. They'll find somebody else to take that appointment. But if you're showing up the morning of and you have fewer animals, it's harder for them to fill in those cancellations and you may receive a cancellation charge if they weren't given enough notice to fill that slot. Everything I want to talk about briefly with your processor is trust. Every so often there's a few questions on, I didn't get my meat back. There's no way the meat from this the animal could be the one I sent. You really have to have a trusting relationship with your meat processor. I can't stress that enough. And it's built on hard work on both sides, good communication. and both of you delivering on your word. And so if you have questions, express those to the processor, try to work with them, try to see if they will let you. It's harder now with COVID protocols and such, come in and see your carcasses hanging in the cooler to get a better understanding of if they're not finished enough or if they're over finished or you know what the issues maybe that are causing some of your concerns or your customer concerns. And every so often there's there's somebody out there that's, that's not doing right on the processor end as well. But I can't express enough that you really need to build that trusting relationship with your processor. And that the majority of the time, by far and wide, you are getting the meat that you delivered. Every, every bit of it. They really have no reason to, to be changing it around. Some other things to make sure you work with, with your customers and the processor are the timing of it. So when those animals are delivered, the cutting instructions, it's best if they can be delivered right then, if not very soon after. So that while that animal is hanging, so beef you might have seven to 14 days while the beef is hanging. But pork, all those carcasses may only hang a day or two before they're cutting them. So if they don't get the right cutting instructions in time, there can be several problems there. It's also important that you communicate with your customers who was responsible for paying for the processing. fee. If they are picking him up, direct or if you're supposed to be delivering it. And then if there's any special storage needs. Also when they call your processor calls to pick up the meat, it is important that you go and pick it up in a timely manner because they have limited freezer capacity. And they're trying to keep moving as many animals through the whole system as they can. So we need to be cognizant of that on all ends. So how much meat do you get from an animal is a question that a lot of your customers will have and then sometimes the farmer has the question of, well, I didn't get quite enough or the customer has the question of I didn't quite enough meat back for what I sent. So how much should you get back? Well, it depends on the species, it depends on the animal. It depends on how that animal is finished, how long the animal's hung. All sorts of things that, that depends on. But in general, there's some general rules of thumb and these infographics have been created to help customers understand how much freezer space they will need for animals that they might purchase. So pigs generally have a dressing percentage, which is the carcass weight or hot carcass weight, sometimes it's a cold carcass weight, but the carcass weight divided by the live weight gives you a percentage. Now you may not always know that live animal weight, but we can still use some averages. So if they have an average 270 pound market hog, that's finished, we're going to get an average of 70 to 72% yield. And have a hanging carcass somewhere around a 190 pounds. And from that hanging carcass, we're still going to lose some more bone and fat and skin trim and all that and get 65 to 72% yield of that hanging weight. And so that gives you a 120 to 140 pounds of meat, take home. Some of that will also vary on how much meat is smoked and the cooking loss associated with that, that smoking bellies for bacon and hams and things like that. Or if things are made into sausage and such. But in general, for one pig in the freezer, you need about three to four cubic feet of freezer space. And if we have a 120 pound lamb, we're going to get about a 50% average yield on a dressing percentage for a hot carcass weight of around 60 pounds. We'll get a little bit less, so we'll get 60 to 65 percent of that carcass weight as a take-home weight. So we'll get about 35 to 40 pounds of lamb from one carcass and need about one cubic freezer or one cubic foot of a freezer space. Then if we have a steer that weighs or a heifer that weighs 1250 pounds, will get about 60 to 63 percent dressing percentage. So somewhere between seven hundred and fifty and seven hundred and seventy five pounds hanging carcass weight. And we'll get 60 to 70 pounds average yields. And this can be pretty variable based on the amount of muscle the animal has, the amount of fat cover if it's a dairy type breed or a native type beef breed. And then if you're getting a lot of bone-in cuts versus boneless cuts. If you get boneless cuts, you're going to get about 50 percent. If you get a combination of bone in and boneless cuts from beef, you'll get in that 60 to 70 percent range. So that's why that range is so big for beef. So we'll have about 450 to 540 pounds of take-home, meat one beef animal and need about 12 to 15 cubic feet of space in a freezer. How do you price it? So we have a bunch of different tools for pricing freezer animals. We have a grain finished beef one, we have a grass-fed beef one because the dressing percentages are different. And the gut fill and things like that from grass versus grain. We have one for pigs and we have one for lambs and goats. And all of these are available on the website I'll give you at the end. It's a simple Excel worksheet that works on a one animal basis and it give some examples in the blue column, but in the green cells is where you put your numbers. So when people call me and say, what's the price of freezer beef? Well, what's your costs? Do you have going into it? You need to know your numbers to get the right price at the end. And so this is not an exhaustive, complicated like accounting for all of your costs, but it gets you thinking about the different costs and there's some comments in the columns to the right that you can't see on the screenshot. But beyond just the initial cost of the feed. And the animal, is their transportation and marketing? Yardage to keep those animals on the farm, like straw, things like that. Management and then other costs that might be included in that. And then the next section works on beef pricing examples comparing the live price to the hanging weight. So if you're trying to compare based on current live market prices to what that equates to an a carcass basis. this section helps figure that out and figure out how much difference in price you could get by direct marketing. And then the last section, which I've expanded to the right here, is really to help you, as well as potentially your customer know. A, how much meat to expect. B, how much the processing cost will be. And then C if there's any difference related to the current retail price for that species. And so sometimes by buying in bulk, there can be even at a higher direct marketed price, there can be some savings compared to the overall beef price or pork price. And there's links in the comments sections of these spreadsheets that help you figure out what those current average prices are. There's also industry resources that you should make sure you are taking advantage of and sharing with your customers. So pork.org, beefitswhatsfordinner.com. American lamb have some lamb resources. This can help customers identify the cuts that they want made, as well as different ways to do some things. Also, when you are picking a processor, you should think about the type of packaging options that they have available. And sometimes there's a cost to have vacuum packaging versus the traditional freezer paper wrap. Overwrap is what we would see in the grocery store more of with a oxygen permeable film over the meat cut that's on a styrofoam tray, that's less desirable for long-term storage. So the most ideal storage is vacuum packaging. They can be put into bags where the seal bar gets this top chamber of this package gets closed and all of the air gets excluded from that package. There's also a roll stack machines where it becomes like skin tight. It's two rolls that literally roll and the meat those through it, in it, the oxygen gets excluded from that. So those would be reduced oxygen packaging or vacuum packaging. And are most ideal for long-term freezer storage. Freezer paper would be next in line to vacuum packaging. The length of storage for your product can be up to 12 months or many times even longer than that for beef. And then six to 12 months for lamb and pork. And we do have some resources available on the web for handling, using and storing different meats and you can share those with your customers as well. So why do people want to buy? Well, I mentioned in the beginning, they want to secure food supply. May want to buy meat from you because they want to know your story and how you raise those animals and what went into them. But you can also promote some convenience. So going to the grocery store can take longer. It may take longer to think about pre-meal planning with frozen meat, although I am a farmer as well and we raise our own beef and I have it in the freezer and I often cook it from frozen. So there's some convenience factor to having that meat on hand. You just have to be able to know what, what cuts are the right ones to cook the right way. And so thinking about cooking from fresh or from thawed state versus frozen. Make sure that your customers know to properly thaw frozen meat in the refrigerator, cold water bath that would be changed every 30 minutes or in the microwave. And that sitting it out and the counter is not an acceptable method because we'll get bacterial growth on the surface. So even if the center is still frozen when we cook it, that external surface of the meat can heat up quickly and that's where the bacteria can grow and multiply in short order, get to high numbers where we have some food safety issues. I mentioned that I do cook a lot of my my meat from frozen state. You just have to allow a little bit more cook time. So on average about 1.5 times the amount of time for cooking. And then we talk about food safety a lot and why it's important to use a food thermometer or a meat thermometer when cooking meat. But my new conversations that I have, is not only is it important to protect you and your family members, but you really get a much better, higher quality eating experience if you're using a food thermometer and know your internal temperature so you're not overcooking that pork and drying it out, like some previous generations might have been really prone to do. Pork can be put in it could, you know, cooked at 245 degrees and held for three minutes, be pink in the center. Color is not an indicator of doneness. And be really juicy and flavorful. Dave, do you have a question? Yeah. Jeannine, I see with this hamburger that you've got 160 degrees Fahrenheit on the thermometer. I think with the pork is it 245 or is it 145 that we..? Yeah, so ground meats need to be cooked to a 160 degrees instantaneous. There's lower temperatures that they could be cooked to for longer periods of time. So you need to cook like a 155 degrees for 15 seconds, lower down that longer periods of time, but instantaneous where it's right away. For ground meat is 160. For actual muscle meats like steaks and roasts that can be less. So for steaks, you can cook them to, you know, pork a 145 degrees hold them for three minutes. Very, very good eating experience. Like I was saying, they'll be think in the center and, and be juicy and delicious. I couldn't agree more. Quick question, following up on that is, if you didn't cook it to a 145, is there really much of a risk of trichinella? Or is the risk more for harmful bacteria? Yeah. so there's, so trichina, trichinella, trichinosis is the reason that so many people overcooked pork for so long, right? Cause they didn't want that parasite to then become an internal parasite in the human. And it's virtually been eliminated from commercial hog herds. However, it's still found in some that are outdoors and, and things like that. So you can't completely ignore it. But at a 145 degrees and holding it at that temperature for three minutes. Which if you cook at instantaneous that long it'll have some post cook rise and temperature. You want to have any worry about trichina or other bacteria or pathogens at that point. Thank you. And then I guess some of the other things that why we would want to use a meat thermometer, right? So if I'm cooking a pork shoulder, pork butt roast or something, it could be safe to eat at a 145 degrees. But it's going to be tough and it's not going to be taste very good, right? So if I'm making some good pulled pork, and I want that to be really tender and flavorful and a good eating experience. I want to get that to 190 to 200 degrees, right? So I'm cooking above that, beyond the safety measure from a quality standpoint. So there's a combination of food safety and quality in endpoint meat temperatures and we could spend all night talking about that, but I won't. Other things that can be confusing for consumers, are label claims on food packages. And I'm highlighting these. We have six done right now, but these are new infographics that are available on our MSU Extension rapid response consumer site. For details on what it means to have hormone claims on a label, antibiotic claims, GMO, natural or organic, animal raising claims, and things like that. So we have these new resources and there is a regulatory requirement for putting on extra label claims for meat and poultry products. And you have to work with your USDA inspected facility. I mean, get label label approval through USDA to put on those marketing label claims. So I've been over a lot of things tonight. All of these resources are available on our MSU Extension meat marketing and processing website. We have articles, so some of those news articles about direct marketing and the licensing you need. We have some classes available for processors that are going to be available online. My contact information is there under people and then under publications is where you'll find all of those pricing worksheets. The marketing options that have those infographics with the amount of take-home meat and things like that. So all of that is on this website and another related topic, but I didn't go into detail is poultry. And so the regulations and requirements for selling and marketing poultry in Michigan are different. In a nutshell, it doesn't always have to be USDA inspected to sell it at a farmers market or even to a restaurant. It can go through an MDARD licensed poultry facility. But there's more information on the spec sheet that's about four pages long with all the information as well as if you're interested in trying to start your own poultry processing facility what those requirements are. Couple quick questions that came in Jeannine. Yeah. Pertains to different, different ways to cook very lean versus meat with a lot of back fat. Yeah. So you need to know the type of meat you're cooking, as well as consumer preference, right? So some people like very lean meat, some people like that highly marbled with them marbling or intramuscular that fat specs within the muscle. That would be considered marbling. Create a higher fat content. Most meat is trimmed relatively trim on the external fat at the processing level or at the retail level. But really, you can cook them in similar ways. You have less insurance, with leaner cuts of meat, I call that marbling a little bit of insurance sometimes because it can keep the product juicier. So really watching your temperatures and pulling them at the right time is important. Thank you. And then there was a question around for how long on the last temperature point? I'm not sure if that was came, and that came in at 7:51, so maybe before you talked about instantaneous and ground beef, ground meats, 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Poultry, 165 degrees Fahrenheit. And then other full muscle steaks and roasts can be cooked, you know, a 140 degrees is rare. Pork needs to be a 145 and held for three minutes. You really want to hold all of your steaks, and roasts, and let them rest. So steaks and chops, I would let rest for three minutes at least. Because what that does is not only does it let the the meat keep cooking, but it allows meat to absorb the juices back in. So when you take that first cut into it, all the juices aren't running out on the plate and then not being captured when you're taking each bite. The same thing would be true for using a meat thermometer, right? They're very small end tips make a very small, yeah, insert into that muscle. It doesn't let a bunch of juice out when that happens. Where if people are trying to slice into it to see if it's done. You're letting all the juice out right there. Thank you, Jeannine. If anyone has any last minute questions for Jeannine, please type them into the Q and A and we'll get to them. But I see that a 195 degrees. So I think I was talking about pulled pork. So some tougher cuts that have more collagen and connective tissue in them. So pot roast, things like that, as well as pulled pork and such. You're cooking them well beyond safety levels. But you're trying to get a better eating experience. So that 190, 200 degrees Fahrenheit is going to give you much more palatable and good eating experience. Yep, low and slow is what Beth's typing in. And also with those methods, you will likely want to use a moist heat cookery where more tender cuts and things like steaks and chops can be cooked with dry heat. So grilling, pan frying, things like that. Where low and slow. For your pot roast, pork shoulder - shoulder roast, or pulled pork, things like that. Any other questions? Okay. Then seeing there are none, I want to thank Jeannine. That was really nice. Jeannine really enjoyed it. Made my mouth water though. I gotta tell you I haven't had dinner yet and seeing some of these cuts, talking about. Seeing how it's Ash Wednesday today too. I was just really thinking about bacon, to be honest with you, a good share of the..thank you. Thank you. Bacon is about the only cut that you don't have to measure that, that final temperature and it's good at any temperature. So thin. yeah, but it does need to be cooked some though. Okay. I'll remember that tomorrow. Thanks Jeannine. Please do, I posted the survey again, please do and Beth I can see is just done it again. Take two minutes to do the survey. It really helps us out. This was a Qualtrics survey, so it's a blast to do. You'll never have more fun than you will take in this Qualtrics survey. We do take your comments very seriously and use them to build more quality into our future programs. So please, please, please take a minute and do that post program survey. I would say we'll send you a check for a $100, but Betsy and Beth would have a fit if I promised to do something like that. So we won't send you a check. I did paste in to the chat as well the meat marketing website where all those resources can be found. Thank you. Thank you, Jeannine. So if you'll take a minute or two to do that, we'd be most grateful and did anyone else have any last comments they'd like to make? I do want to thank all of you for coming online and doing this tonight Beth. I read your mind, I could see it in your eyes. You sure did. I want to thank everybody, it really was great to have such a good group and you asked great questions. And I hope we answered them sufficiently. If not, though, Dr. Schweihofer is always happy to talk about this. And I know Zach happy to talk about chickens too and Beth can talk about just about anything as can Casey Zangaro I see is on the line. And Betsy, thank you again for for setting this thing up tonight. It was, everything just went like clockwork and I think it's a miracle of modern information technology that these things come off so well. But thank you too so. Dave if you just want to remind people that the presentations will be, they've been recorded, they're going to be closed captioned, and posted online. Hopefully in the next few weeks. If you do need it sooner, or are looking for that information sooner. I stuck my e-mail franzeli@msu.edu in the chat, shoot me a quick email and I will get it to you as soon as possible so. Thank you, Beth. And thanks again to everybody. And everyone that is driving, I hope you're not driving tonight, but stay safe and off the roads if you can and hopefully we'll see you at one of the programs tomorrow. So there's still a lot of, two days of great programs coming up and please join us. Remember when you signed up. You signed up for whatever you want to see this week and in, please come and join us for a couple of the programs tomorrow especially, Beth, i am reading your eyes, especially tomorrow night beginning at 6:30. And who do we have on tomorrow night? Is that the beef? Cattle. Beef. So we're going to be talking about small herd beef cattle and then also setting up an online store for your farm. Okay. And will it be Cable doing the beef or will it be...Darren. Oh, ok. Yeah, they're both great speakers and you'll have a lot of fun watching them. And will it be Jeannine again tomorrow night with online? No, it's going to be Mariel Borgman. She is with the CFE and Community Food workgroup and she's going to be talking to us about setting up an online store and online sales for your farm. And Mariel is great too, so you gotta be, you can't lose tomorrow night. So please come back and join us. And until then, thank you. Everybody have a great night. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.