DQ Farm (est. 1991)

The disposal of carcasses and animal wastes often pollutes the environment.  In Malaysia, farms generally bury them or burn them. 

At DQ, we compost them and return them to the soil as fertiliser and as soil amendment.  We have innovated our own method of composting carcasses, after much trial and error,  as follows:

Lay the carcasses and wastes in layers and between the layers, cover them with carbon material such as dried lallang, leaves, etc.  We generally require the abdomen of all carcasses to be opened to prevent inadvertently creating anaerobic conditions from forming inside the carcasses which may result in the formation of toxins.

Lactobacillus is sprayed on the layers to speed up the heating process. Lactobacillus is a medium heat microbe and works well and fast at our ambient temperature of around 30 celcius. Within a day they will bring the temperature of the heap to 45 celcius for the thermophilics to take over.

Cover the carcasses carefully with dried brown (carbon) material.  If done properly there will not be any smell and there will not be any scavenger animal digging up the carcasses. 

With enough moisture and oxygen, actinomycetes will jump into action almost immediately breaking down the materials in the heap and giving the characterisitic "earth" smell to your compost at the end.

After the layers have been build up to a sufficient height, we cover the pile neatly with any old canvas.

Cover up the pile neatly to retain the heat for the thermophilics to do their work thoroughly.

After a couple of days, the heat generated will be sufficient to cook an egg in a short while.  Or to cook beef:

65 celcius - hot enough to cook beef.

The pile or heap should be turned a minimum of two times to ensure that as much of the material has gone through the heating process to destroy pathogens and even some toxins.  At DQ this process will take 30 days. 

After that, we introduce local composting earthworms to turn the compost to humus / vermicast.  The composting earthworms ( eisenia fetida) works pretty fast, within 10 days they will have a few inches of vermicast for you to collect and use.

( Do not use imported earthworms as there are millions of microbes in the guts of earthworms and you may be introducing 'aliens' to our environment).

Beautiful black humus in just 40 days.  The end result is a microbes-rich fertiliser suitable to be used as a soil fertiliser, as an amendment or as a foliar spray.  We use this humus to build up sandy soil, as an anti-fungal, as fertiliser and generally to return to the soil what has been taken from it. 

If you are already applying some other organic fertiliser, the addition of humus made the DQ way at a rate of 100kg per acre to acre and a half will see a 10 to 15 percent improvement in yields.  And that's 10 to 15% straight to the bottom line as the inputs used are generally free!

One of the most important food safety precautions is keeping the Cold Chain intact.  Since 2001 when we first started we noticed many fresh poultry suppliers giving scant consideration to this very important food safety concern.  The delivery truck is extremely important in our hot climate.  Our truck runs at - 5 degrees celcius.  Yes, it is below freezing point, but what many suppliers do not realise is that each time the truck stops and unloads, the surface temperature of the meat product is affected, allowing for the growth of bacteria. 

An Infrared Thermometer gun used by our supervisors to measure surface temperature.

Our supervisors will take random readings of the chickens at every stage of the Cold Chain.  What we want is for the temperature at the surface (skin) of the chicken to be at between - 2 to + 3 degrees at every stage. 

We sent eggs previously, a few years back to test for omega 3.  In particular we were interested in the omega 6: omega 3 ratio.  We were not surprised to find 'ayam kampung' eggs and 'organic' eggs having ratios of 20 to 1.  We were focussing on the omega 6: omega 3 ratio and not on questions like whether the eggs are free-ranging or not, really organic or not, etc.

As a result of the tests, we wanted to produce our own eggs.  We have been doing trials on grass fed, free-range eggs for a few months now and we were surprised that physically there seems to be a difference:

The left egg is a normal egg bought from a supermarket. The expiry date is another 14 days away

The egg on the right is a DQ egg which has been in the refridgerator for 10 days.  The supermarket egg is a full 30% bigger.

The white of the supermarket egg is all over and watery.  The DQ egg has a thicker white around the yolk, and lesser watery white.

The DQ yolk and albumen stands up, whilst the supermarket egg flattens out.

We are surprised that there are physical differences.  We do not know what these differences mean.  A friend said it just means that the supermarket egg is less fresh and could be stale.  Stale? With the expiry 14 days away?

We will be sending our eggs for omega 6: omega 3 ratio tests and keep this blog posted.

 PS:  This is the Lady that laid the egg:

Carcosa's Site              www.countryfarmorganics.com

       

   

 www.ecogreen.com.my

www.wernerskl.com 

www.yogitree.com 

www.healthparadise-organic.comR U Lohas in Ipoh.

Delicious DQ curry chicken at R U Lohas

We deliver to Sri Perdana for special functions

Aussie Premier John Howard had our goat meat here for dinner

Apparently, only our chicken can compete with el cerdo.

Imagine that, home catering using organic ingredients!

So, what do we feed the chickens?  Grass of course.  We seeded over 30 varieties of grasses, legumes, and plants in the fields.  We selected them for protein, for omega 3 and for antioxidants.

Then, we supplement by cooking for them!  Yes, we cook for our chickens to give you the best, most flavorful, nutritious chicken you can find in the world:

These huge cauldrons, or kawahs ("crater kuali") are used to cook for the chickens.  What do we cooked? The final mix is a secret,  but we have banana piths, old-type non-GMO jagung, ubi, sago and lots of tilapia from our own ponds.

Here's a pond next to the reban to cool down the chickens while trapping the flies and insects as free protein for the fish.

What's with our claim that our chickens are "Permanent Free Range"?

In some countries, free range is defined as having "access to outdoors".  So, if you have lots of little doors for the chickens to go out, and yet you place all the feeders inside so that the chickens seldom if ever go out, you can still validly say your chickens are free range.  In Malaysia, free range can mean hanging around a permanent reban which the chickens retire to during the night.  The grounds will be smelly, dirty, full of flies.                                                        

Our permanent free range chickens are raised in fresh fields with movable coops being used to move them from padang to padang.  They never go back to a reban.  They are moved from fresh field to fresh field, and when the time come for them to be harvested, they are on fresh fields, not muddy smelly bacteria infested grounds.

We are the only farmer in the world using these heat-insulated movable, dismantleable field houses.  One man can pull the tent to a fresh field once the existing field becomes dirty.

Here's our comments on the local incident of avian flu reported in the media:

http://www.geocities.com/dqcleanchicken2/avianflulatest.h...

Our chickens are now certified "Halal" by an independent body, BL Halal Food Council S.E.A. 

They have also awarded us their "Bersih" and "Suci" mark.  These marks reflect our farming practises which are free from chemicals and pollution and does not harm the environment.  The awarding of the marks take into consideration that the chickens are not fed animal protein and are processed in a hygenic and sanitary manner.

Click here to view the certificate:

http://www.geocities.com/dqcleanchicken2/scan0007a.jpg

Many customers have called our office and asked, “how worried should I be about avian flu? Should I still be eating chicken?”:

There are two areas of concern. One is the H5N1 avian flu as reported in the media – a disease affecting birds with high mortality and which very rarely infects humans causing similarly high mortality. The second concern is the possibility of a mutated avian flu spreading from human to human.

The first concern – the chances of the average Malaysian being infected by avian flu is very slim. If we were to look at the situation objectively, in spite of millions of birds being killed and the number of countries affected since it first surfaced in Hong Kong in 1997, the total humans affected thus far is in the region of about 120 persons with about 60 mortality. Compare this to SARS or to Nipah.

All those killed by the avian flu were those with direct contact with live chickens. They were either involved in the culling of sick birds, or butchered sick birds to cook. One must remember in many poorer Asian countries birds that are obviously sick are still slaughtered and cooked. In 2004, two siblings in a Vietnamese family died after butchering 10 sick chickens for a wedding dinner. None of the guests or other members of the family who ate the cooked chickens came down with the disease.

It is not the practice in Malaysia to sell or to eat diseased chickens.  The signs of disease in a chicken with avian flu are obvious and cannot be passed off as healthy, ie those people who died from butchering sick birds for food knew the birds were sick though they may not have been aware of the consequences.  Further, most Malaysian families do not buy live birds and therefore are not involved in butchering live birds.

For ease of mind, buy your chickens from a farm that is visited regularly by vets (as is the case with DQ Farm), and avoid buying live birds at the wet market or have live birds delivered to your homes. 

The second concern – the mutated avian flu that will spread from human to human. If such a mutation occurs, you won’t be getting the flu from chickens but from another human being.  Eating chickens will not increase or decrease your chances of catching such a flu, if it should happen. You are better off avoiding crowds. Better yet, have DQ Chickens delivered to your home and boost up your immune system with home-made DQ Chicken essence of chicken.

In the event of human to human avian flu, we would suggest stocking up on N95 face masks as these masks will filter off even flu viruses. It can be used for up to 8 hours continuously before changing.

Our chickens are inspected regularly by a veterinarian surgeon.  Dr. Craig Wong came today Oct 23, 2005 to inspect the chickens in our farm:

Checking the mouth

                                                            Checking the Vent