A Cool Cricket Gets Invited to Dinner

Chameleons can eat a variety of insects (e.g. wax worms, meal worms, super worms, fruit flies, flies, moths and grasshoppers) but since worms gross me out (a lot) and the other bugs aren't available for purchase in the pet store, our chameleon's diet consists of house crickets (called Acheta domesticus).

I'll explain more about the lives of our soon-to-be-dinner house crickets in a future post, but today I noticed something quite neat happening in the cricket cage - a cricket molting.

Crickets have direct development (gradual metamorphosis) in which the larva (immature insect) resembles the adult (mature insect) except for being a smaller size and having a lack of wings.  There are three stages of development in the life cycle of the house cricket: egg, larva and adult.  Only the adults have wings and can reproduce.

Like ocean crabs or lobsters who cannot grow their existing shell to make it a bigger size, crickets cannot grow their outer skin either.  As such, in order to grow larger, they molt out of their old exoskeleton and emerge from underneath with a new skeleton.

Our cricket molting - see the white cricket emerging downward out of the old brown skin?

At room temperature, there are ten larval instars (or stages) to house cricket development.  At the end of each larval instar there is a molt to the next larval instar in which old skin is cast off in one piece.  The next instar has a new and larger skin into which the cricket can grow.  Larvae roughly double their size in each molt.  

Our crickets are usually brown coloured but when a cricket emerges from its molt it is soft and milky white in colour - it looks albino.  Interestingly, newly molted crickets require several hours for their new skeleton to harden after which they assume the normal gray-brown colour.

Newly molted cricket.

Too bad being noticeably cooler than the other crickets is a great way to get yourself invited to dinner - not the outcome you are hoping for when you are the dinner.  Down the hatch!

Source: "Fluker's Cricket Biology Guide."  Accessed February 11, 2013 from http://www.flukerfarms.com/pdfs/cricket.pdf

Pregnancy Craving: Nonna Mela Pizza

Ah, pregnancy cravings.  I always wondered if I'd have them and you can ask the staff at the local McDonald's - I definitely do.  The food I crave most - the Big Mac.  No kidding, I am usually a Big Mac once a year kind of girl.  I will not admit how many I have eaten since becoming pregnant...it is embarrassing.    Don't ask Ian either - he is my Big Mac partner in crime.  Why oh why do they taste so delicious?!

Recently; however, I have been craving something healthier - the Nonna Mela pizza from the wood-fired pizza joint in Kingston called Woodenheads.  Some especially crazy pregnant ladies would have insisted on driving to Kingston to satisfy this pizza urge but instead I decided to be creative (and frugal) by replicating this delectable dinner at home.

Luckily I just made a batch of apple butter which is a key ingredient in the Nonna Mela pizza, along with roasted garlic, cheddar, sweet onions and chicken.  So, I fried up some red onions, roasted some garlic cloves in the oven, grated some cheddar cheese and whipped up a batch of homemade pizza dough in our bread maker...before I knew it...tada!...homemade Nonna Mela.

The pizza was absolutely delicious and I was able to completely satisfy my pregnancy craving without having to drive all the way to and from Kingston to do it!  Woohoo!

My Nonna Mela.

Woodenheads' Nonna Mela.

Now if I could just recreate the Big Mac at home...curse that special sauce!

Biology Lesson: the Chicken Vent

When we first started to raise hens we did a ton of research to figure out exactly how these little egg producing creatures work. I can remember sitting at the kitchen table with Adam (a friend of the family who was staying with us while on a business trip) searching Google for things like "Where does an egg come from?" and "How does a chicken lay an egg?"

While most of us are happy to eat eggs, it remains a mystery to many people how exactly a chicken produces them.  Below are five interesting facts about how chickens lay eggs.

Female chicken.

1) A hen (aka female chicken) does not have to have sex with a rooster (aka male chicken) in order to lay an egg.  Hens are similar to human females in that they ovulate (i.e. produce an egg) regularly regardless of whether a male is present or not.  However, unlike human females who ovulate monthly, most reproductively mature hens ovulate daily.

Completely unnecessary.

2) A hen only has one opening (called the vent) where the intestine and oviduct meet in a chamber called the cloaca.  This opening serves as the exit point for both digestive waste (aka poop and pee) and eggs.  In case you were unsure, human females have three separate openings.  An interesting fact is that chickens don't have a bladder because they don't actually pee liquid like humans do, their "pee" comes out in a white solid form called uric acid.

Anatomical diagram of the chicken oviduct.

Chicken vent.

3) Hens never lay more than one egg a day.  However, sometimes an egg will be a "double yolker" which means that there are two yolks inside one shell.  This type of egg could have produced identical twin chicks if it had been fertilized, incubated and the chicks had been allowed to hatch.

Double yolker.

4) To lay an egg, a hen turns part of the cloaca and the last segment of the oviduct inside out, like a glove. The egg emerges from these inverted membranes so it cannot contact the walls of the cloaca and get contaminated by digestive waste. Moreover, the intestine and inner part of the cloaca are kept shut by the emerging egg and their contents cannot leave when the hen strains to deliver the egg. Therefore, eggs are always clean when they are laid.

5) Most of the egg is formed in the early portion of a hen's oviduct; however, the shell material is added towards the end in the shell gland portion of the oviduct (aka the uterus).  The shell is composed of calcium carbonate and takes about 20 hours to form.  If a hen lays brown eggs, the brown pigments are added to the shell in the last few hours of shell formation.

Amazing, isn't it?

Recipe: Apple Butter

Doesn't apple butter sound delicious?  Apple + Butter = Yum.  However, I recently found out that there is actually no butter in apple butter...it is just applesauce cooked right down until it becomes the consistency of butter.  Regardless, I was in the mood for apple butter and after a quick web search in which Ottawa foodies declare that all store bought apple butter in this area is simply inedible - I decided to buy a bag of apples and make my own.  Here's how I did it...

Ingredients:

6 gala apples
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
1.5 cups sugar
small pinch of salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Instructions:

1) Peel, core and slice the apples into chunks.  Cut out any damaged parts.  Feed peels and cores to chickens.

2) Put apple pieces into a large pot, add cider vinegar and water.  Cover, bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer and cook until apples are soft (about 20 minutes).  Remove from heat.

3) Spoon cooked apples out of liquid and into a separate bowl.  Add 1/2 cup of sugar for each cup of cooked apples.  Mix to dissolve sugar.  Add a dash of salt and the cinnamon, cloves, allspice and lemon juice.

4) Mash apple and spice mixture with a potato masher.

5) Cook mixture uncovered in a large, wide pot on medium low heat, stirring frequently to prevent burning.  Scrape the bottom of the pot while you stir to make sure a crust is not forming.  Cook for 1 hour until thick and smooth (the consistency of butter).

Helpful Hints:

Apple butter is great on toast, pancakes, in oatmeal and on pizza as a substitute for tomato sauce (think Nonna Mela pizza from Woodenheads in Kingston).  Yum!

Source:

Recipe adapted from Elise Bauer's Apple Butter Recipe posted on September 20, 2005 on http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/apple_butter/

Kamikazi Honey Bees

Honey bees spend the vast majority of the winter season hibernating but that doesn't mean that there is nothing going on inside the hive.  During the winter months, the bees continue to eat honey, raise some brood and move around a bit in a cluster formation.

Bee hive in the winter, covered in snow.

On warmer, sunny days (when temperatures reach about 0 degrees C) some of the bees take cleansing flights outside the hive to get some fresh air into their lungs and some exercise.  However, bees can't fly very far until temperatures reach about 10 degrees C, so throughout the winter we find dead bees littered in the snow surrounding the hive.  These bees went for cleansing flights, got chilled and weren't able to make it back inside the hive alive.

Dead bees in the snow around the entrance of the hive.

Hive entrance after I removed the bee carcasses.

 Usually the bees that die outside on these flights are the oldest bees in the colony and would have died shortly anyway even if they had remained in the hive.  Often these bees are also sick with tracheal mites and have chosen to make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the colony by flying to somewhere outside the hive where the mites inside them can't infect any other bees upon their death.

To a new beekeeper the numerous bees found dead in the snow is initially somewhat shocking.  I remember thinking, "Are there any bees left alive inside the hive?"  But when you remember that a hive is composed of between 20,000 - 30,000 bees in the winter, a few hundred "Kamikazi" bees is put into perspective.

This Kamikazi bee made the ultimate sacrifice.

Narrowing the Gender Gap

It seems that we're preparing to buck the trend of acquiring only female dependents on Gael Glen Farm.  We had our 20 week ultrasound today and found out that we're expecting a baby boy!  I have had a strong feeling throughout my entire pregnancy that I am carrying a boy but today my feeling was validated by science!

It was easy to see during the scan why my tummy is growing so large and why I am feeling stronger kicks - the baby is much, much bigger than he was during our last munchkin viewing.  He takes up almost all the extra space in the uterus now and doesn't look at all like a baseball park peanut anymore.  During the scan we saw the baby's many parts (head, heart, eyes, stomach, lungs, limbs, spine etc.) and he showed off his many moves for us by rolling, spinning and flipping.  So far, everything looks healthy and normal.

At one point during the scan, Ian was looking up at the screen and whooped - "It's a boy!  And he's well endowed!"  The ultrasound technician chuckled and said, "I think you mean that your baby has an umbilical cord."  However, it seems Ian's delight was simply premature because five minutes later the ultrasound technician pointed out a very clear view of our baby's reproductive parts.  The baby is definitely a boy.  At this point Ian requested a photo as proof much to the technician's shock until he realized that Ian was joking.

So, it seems that this spring we will be narrowing the gender gap on the farm by adding one boy baby to the ranks of the male runner duck, male bees, male fish, male pear tree and Ian, of course.  While the girls will still outnumber the boys on the farm, we've always been supportive of the move towards gender equality (as long as it doesn't involve roosters)!

Our baby boy in a 20 week ultrasound photo.

Winter Trout Fishing Adventure

Ian here, for the last post in fish week.

Well, yesterday I had decided I would post when I got home from a fishing trip into the Lanark County highlands with tons of pictures of the lovely rainbow trout that I would be bringing home.

Alas.  This post will have no pictures taken yesterday.

It's disappointing when you KNOW there are fish in lake (because the ministry puts them there...) but they just won't bite.  When we got there, our prime target lake was inaccessible due to snow banks freezing up really high and not being able to get through with my friend's truck so we picked another lake that I'd been to before and had caught fish.  The only trouble with this one is accessibility is VERY easy and so it's fished pretty regularly.  When we got there, 2 other groups were already set-up (and this lake is very small).

We started by drilling 5-10 holes, all at different depths and then figured we'd move sideways and cover a good portion of the area.  Well....   By the end of the day, we had drilled about 50 holes and had only gotten one little nibble on a set line.  That fish let go pretty well right away and we went home with nothing.

We were using bare #6 hooks pulled down with split shot weights tipped with small minnows and worms in depths ranging from 15 to 50 feet.

I guess it just goes to show, as the famous saying goes, it's called fishing, not catching.

The day wasn't a total bust.  I managed to find a place that re-fills propane tanks in Arnprior and had a great breakfast at the Antrim Truck Stop for 5 bucks.

I'm taking a little break from fishing this week and next weekend I have other plans, so.... no fishing.

This is Ian signing off fish week.  Back to farm stuff Monday!

This is what a rainbow trout looks like on the ice.  I haven't seen this yet in 2013...