Homesteading and Hobby Farm/Ranch

Sludig

Sludig

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Kiroy said:
Goats are browsers so you don't have to worry about them messing with the pasture unless you put in a boatload. Cows mow, so also aren't too hard on pastures. Sheep graze really near the ground so are harder on the pasture, and horses will strait rip out the grass and fuck up your pasture in record time. Our goat pasture is about 2 acres that I can flood and sprinkler irrigate and 6 goats (3 pygmy 2 nigerian1 boer) + 2 sheep is just about perfect for that pastures health w/o having to put work into it other than some seasonal seed projection I do. Get an LGD and throw your chickens in that pasture as well.

I'd start your gardens at 1/2 acre for the first year and get a feel for it before decided how much more. It really does become a lot of work. We keep 1/2 acre of flowers and 1/4 acre of vegetables and it's a decent amount of work, but as our soil improves (we're no till) it's getting easier.

As for the mower, my next zero turn will be a commercial model. Properties like ours just beat the shit out of them. Make sure you can service the hydrostatic drives!
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What seeds do you do? I've been thinking of trying to get the whole thing tilled in and fertilized, and plant a bunch of bermuda in the spring. But if it's just for these critters discussed, maybe I'll just leave it be. 1/4 or so is random grasses. Just a good 1-2 acres chunk is this very fast growing green leafy stalks with like tiny white flowers? Almost 2 feet in a month or so. Will attach a phone pic if I remember.
 
Sludig

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Sludig

Sludig

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Apparently dogsbane/indian hemp.

Oh boy, mixed reading on whether it's fine for the goats, but I suspect a bunch of 2,4D in my future.
 
Burns

Burns

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Sludig said:
What seeds do you do? I've been thinking of trying to get the whole thing tilled in and fertilized, and plant a bunch of bermuda in the spring. But if it's just for these critters discussed, maybe I'll just leave it be. 1/4 or so is random grasses. Just a good 1-2 acres chunk is this very fast growing green leafy stalks with like tiny white flowers? Almost 2 feet in a month or so. Will attach a phone pic if I remember.
Click to expand...
Don't get on the lawn upkeep treadmill, if you can help it. All the grass sold in big box stores are going to require irrigation and chemicals for weeds and all that shit. It's a bunch of bullshit pushed to keep you paying. Billion dollar industry and all that.

Order some native seed if you can. When I was researching, I think I saw a place that was near OKC, but many of them ship, so it's not like you have to pick it up local. You will need to do your own research on what kind of grow speed, maximum height, minimum mowed height, resilience to drought, and other such things for your area. You may be able to call/email one of the shops that sell native seed, and see if they can just recommend a mix.

For example, parts of Texas can grow Buffalo grass. It has a maximum height of 5-8 inches, highly drought resistant (as little as 12in/year), and if you want it shorter, you only need to mow every one or two months in the summer (at least, according to the internet).

The best place I found, with good info (at least for Texas) is down between Austin and San Antonio:

Thunder Turf Product Detail at Native American Seed

Discover and Buy Thunder Turf at Native American Seed
www.seedsource.com

If you can find a map like this of OK, you should be able to figure what will work up there. OSU has an article with some maps that look similar, but they are too small to read: HERE

2022-08-04 10.50.47 www.seedsource.com 260c276ec6a8.png
 
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Sludig

Sludig

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Burns said:
Don't get on the lawn upkeep treadmill, if you can help it. All the grass sold in big box stores are going to require irrigation and chemicals for weeds and all that shit. It's a bunch of bullshit pushed to keep you paying. Billion dollar industry and all that.

Order some native seed if you can. When I was researching, I think I saw a place that was near OKC, but many of them ship, so it's not like you have to pick it up local. You will need to do your own research on what kind of grow speed, maximum height, minimum mowed height, resilience to drought, and other such things for your area. You may be able to call/email one of the shops that sell native seed, and see if they can just recommend a mix.

For example, parts of Texas can grow Buffalo grass. It has a maximum height of 5-8 inches, highly drought resistant (as little as 12in/year), and if you want it shorter, you only need to mow every one or two months in the summer (at least, according to the internet).

The best place I found, with good info (at least for Texas) is down between Austin and San Antonio:

Thunder Turf Product Detail at Native American Seed

Discover and Buy Thunder Turf at Native American Seed
www.seedsource.com

If you can find a map like this of OK, you should be able to figure what will work up there. OSU has an article with some maps that look similar, but they are too small to read: HERE

View attachment 426231
Click to expand...
Not sure if you saw my follow up. But looks like a good chunk is dogsbane which is supposed to be toxic, so addressing that will be fun. Figured besides chemical id need to disc plow it all under, from there native mix I agree probably fine given its for goats and maybe a kunekune or 2.
 
Burns

Burns

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Sludig said:
Not sure if you saw my follow up. But looks like a good chunk is dogsbane which is supposed to be toxic, so addressing that will be fun. Figured besides chemical id need to disc plow it all under, from there native mix I agree probably fine given its for goats and maybe a kunekune or 2.
Click to expand...
Yea, no idea how to best remove, on a large scale, grass/plants you don't want without dumping a bunch of chemicals on it. I would assume that it is growing on neighboring properties, so you would need a replacement grass that can out compete it, when you plant new stuff. May have to also take into account growth rate vs how many goats are going to be grazing. Sounds like a lot of research.
 
Izo

Izo

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Blazin said:
Went implement shopping, I want this flail mower
View attachment 425813

Sorry she is always blocking my view. This flail mower
View attachment 425814

Being able to run mower offset from tractor would save me a lot of frustration of tires pushing grass down. Current issue is I only have one set of hydraulics at the rear and would need two but I may just buy extension hoses and run it from the FEL controls which would be nice to have the joystick control. Almost $7,000 mower however.
Click to expand...
captain hook smiling GIF

Lawdy, look at the time. It tit, uh, took a while, but there's a watch there somewhere. Action!
 
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Kiroy

Kiroy

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Burns said:
Yea, no idea how to best remove, on a large scale, grass/plants you don't want without dumping a bunch of chemicals on it. I would assume that it is growing on neighboring properties, so you would need a replacement grass that can out compete it, when you plant new stuff. May have to also take into account growth rate vs how many goats are going to be grazing. Sounds like a lot of research.
Click to expand...

ya short of chemicals, outcompeting with something faster, stronger and more desirable is always the best way
 
Aldarion

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I never got around to reporting back on our meat birds so here it is.

TLDR,

this little fucker was the key. My son who helped me throughout the process said it looked like cutting a cake, because you could see the layers of feathers, meat, bone, etc in one clean cut.
bonus points when you get the head to drop directly in the bucket for the plunk sound effect.


I was present for some chicken slaughtering as a kid but never did it myself. This summer we raised a bunch of meat birds and gave it a shot. We ended up selling a bunch of the hens to people who wanted laying hens, because we were always pressed for time and this shit was a project. But we slaughtered and processed a dozen or so roosters.

Out of the whole process - slaughter, hang, scald, pluck, gut, cool, seal in bags - I found two steps took the most troubleshooting: slaughter and gutting.

I don't like the cut the throat and bleed them method, I prefer to remove the head. I initially used a hatchet because yes I am retarded. Its ok if you learn from it maybe? For our second round I bought the beautiful axe linked above. This thing is no shit on my apocolypse bug out bag list now, its such a great little knife/axe hybrid. I put a nice edge on it and it was cutting through the whole thing effortlessly in one clean swipe, from feathers to bones.

Gutting. You don't want to pop the intestines, cause there's shit in there. *second pro-tip, for round 2 we starved the birds for 2 days only making sure to give them lots of water. MUCH cleaner.

But either way, guts are messy, and it takes some figuring out where to cut. What ended up working for me was freeing everything from both ends then reaching in from the posterior and grabbing the gizzard, a large muscular thing that can take some force. Thats my handle to pull the whole thing out.

Then secondly there is a trick hard to describe for removing the lungs, which are really packed into the ribs. Once you find the right angle, you can scrape under with your fingers and free them from the ribs in one motion, then pull them out. Half the time it turned into a mess while I was figuring it out.

The other steps were trivial in that it was easy to read about them or watch a video and follow the instructions.

We've eaten a couple now. Good meat, smaller than the usual grocery store birds. Its not the difference between homegrown vs storebought tomatoes, but its noticable, the dark meat is much darker, the gravy is more flavorful. The skin is extra fatty and yellow.

But of course the best part is raising chickens from chicks with my family, then slaughtering them with my wife and son, and watching them eat chicken legs. A++, will do again next year.
 
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BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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We're going to try the cones for bleeding the chickens out next year. Seems like even if we hold onto them after beheading like 10% wind up breaking or dislocating a wing flopping around.
 
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Sludig

Sludig

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Aldarion said:
I never got around to reporting back on our meat birds so here it is.

TLDR,

this little fucker was the key. My son who helped me throughout the process said it looked like cutting a cake, because you could see the layers of feathers, meat, bone, etc in one clean cut.
bonus points when you get the head to drop directly in the bucket for the plunk sound effect.


I was present for some chicken slaughtering as a kid but never did it myself. This summer we raised a bunch of meat birds and gave it a shot. We ended up selling a bunch of the hens to people who wanted laying hens, because we were always pressed for time and this shit was a project. But we slaughtered and processed a dozen or so roosters.

Out of the whole process - slaughter, hang, scald, pluck, gut, cool, seal in bags - I found two steps took the most troubleshooting: slaughter and gutting.

I don't like the cut the throat and bleed them method, I prefer to remove the head. I initially used a hatchet because yes I am retarded. Its ok if you learn from it maybe? For our second round I bought the beautiful axe linked above. This thing is no shit on my apocolypse bug out bag list now, its such a great little knife/axe hybrid. I put a nice edge on it and it was cutting through the whole thing effortlessly in one clean swipe, from feathers to bones.

Gutting. You don't want to pop the intestines, cause there's shit in there. *second pro-tip, for round 2 we starved the birds for 2 days only making sure to give them lots of water. MUCH cleaner.

But either way, guts are messy, and it takes some figuring out where to cut. What ended up working for me was freeing everything from both ends then reaching in from the posterior and grabbing the gizzard, a large muscular thing that can take some force. Thats my handle to pull the whole thing out.

Then secondly there is a trick hard to describe for removing the lungs, which are really packed into the ribs. Once you find the right angle, you can scrape under with your fingers and free them from the ribs in one motion, then pull them out. Half the time it turned into a mess while I was figuring it out.

The other steps were trivial in that it was easy to read about them or watch a video and follow the instructions.

We've eaten a couple now. Good meat, smaller than the usual grocery store birds. Its not the difference between homegrown vs storebought tomatoes, but its noticable, the dark meat is much darker, the gravy is more flavorful. The skin is extra fatty and yellow.

But of course the best part is raising chickens from chicks with my family, then slaughtering them with my wife and son, and watching them eat chicken legs. A++, will do again next year.
Click to expand...
I'm a vagina I'm finding. Like for whatever reason, the idea of killing a cow? No biggie, but way beyond my ability and tools.

The chickens and wee mini goats? Too cute/too attached. I saw some meat rabbits, same thing. Triggers the feeling of being a sociopath to hand slaughter, food or no food. Like I don't think I'd have anywhere near as much trouble with popping a deer by rifle. If I was actually starving sure. And I think the goats if I had big enough of a herd would be easier to bring myself to and if nothing else might be simpler to disect compared to as you saw the chickens and all the soft explody nasty bits. Saw these neat folding tables with built in sink meant to attach to a hose, figured that would make an easier process station.



Problems for the peanut gallery. My land I think I said before might need some drainage work. Last owner said he never watered and pond never went dry. Well it 95% did go dry in our heat wave etc. But now in about 10 days it's refilled from the about 10 foot wide swath of standing/streaming water going along my fence line and into the pond. It follows a few areas you could see water used to run at some point in history. But I'm not sure that indicated this is normal, or just following least resistance from the past. Near the front yeard where it starts, it seems to be coming from my "bad" neighbors who I've never spoken too, kinda trailer trash white folks with one of them in jail at any given moment. Their property is overgrown but I can see the water pooling amongst their tall grass. They Always working on cars and the water near the front has some oily residue on it though seems to clean up by the time it reaches pond. The free waters been nice, but going to be impossible to mow without tearing up the ground in 1/2 inch of water.

The rural water district said basically they can't do much other than check around the area of their meter. I'm like wtf, someones losing thousands of gallons. So Tuesday I'm out of town again, but I'm not sure who to even call if the water district doesn't care. Unless there's some natural stream/resevoir that intermittantly pops up there, I cant imagine anything other than a line leak because it hadn't rained for so long. (Did get some raid up the hill from us like a week before I noticed the water, and been mostly dry during all this free water flowing.
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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There's probably a spring feeding it. It could have dried up during a drought and then a rain recharged the aquifer and got it going again.
 
Sludig

Sludig

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20220903_120030.jpg


Xposted from Pets as a little more appropriate here.
Nigerian dwarf buck got broken. Hope he knocked up the girls already. Supposedly no one wants to do surgery on goats around here unless I go to university for like 5k. So taking the 10% slim chance of it setting on its own in a brace before we put it down. Though I'm thinning why can't we amputate. Small and limber enough he was getting around without using it.
 
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BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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There's probably a decent chance it will heal if you can brace it. At least I've seen calves with broken legs just get better with no treatment.
 
L

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BrutulTM said:
We're going to try the cones for bleeding the chickens out next year. Seems like even if we hold onto them after beheading like 10% wind up breaking or dislocating a wing flopping around.
Click to expand...
I've only seen chickens slaughtered once, when I was 7 so I'm probably not remembering this correctly. My Dad and uncle tied their feet to a clothes line, grabbed the head, and pulled down. Then beheaded them with a butcher knife, leaving them there to bleed out. I don't know if that would solve your issue or not.
 
Kiroy

Kiroy

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Sludig said:
View attachment 432106

Xposted from Pets as a little more appropriate here.
Nigerian dwarf buck got broken. Hope he knocked up the girls already. Supposedly no one wants to do surgery on goats around here unless I go to university for like 5k. So taking the 10% slim chance of it setting on its own in a brace before we put it down. Though I'm thinning why can't we amputate. Small and limber enough he was getting around without using it.
Click to expand...

I have goats that I keep as pets (more of a hobby and for pasture health) and if one got fucked up I can't imagine just not shooting it, but since you came from the pets thread I'm guessing you have a bit of a different relationship with your goats.
 
lurkingdirk

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Kiroy said:
I have goats that I keep as pets (more of a hobby and for pasture health) and if one got fucked up I can't imagine just not shooting it, but since you came from the pets thread I'm guessing you have a bit of a different relationship with your goats.
Click to expand...

Please describe the nature of your relationship with your goats.
 
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