Homesteading and Hobby Farm/Ranch

Sludig

Sludig

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Might have to finally shoot something unless I get live traps. The one hills have eyes hick Bernie that threatened my dogs if they came on his property sheet his horses. (Funny since mine are penned in and inside dogs)

He had a litter of heeler something mix cattle dog puppies. Menus have told me complaints go on deaf ears when his goats get out and his adult dog runs amok. Now the 3 puppies have killed a feral barn cat, ate a bag of dirty puppy piddle pads from my porch, and been in another neighbors cattle field. I also have some chain link on my dog run that is a little messed up I don't recall but might have been that way.



So fixing to escalate to having to shoot, but wasn't to find loaner live traps to prove that they are on my property and maybe give the guy one last ultimatum warning of here's your dog back last chance.


Though part of me thinks when they go missing he'll cover for me even if a different neighbor does the deed.
 
Goatface

Goatface

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should start 7 mins in, mostly the 1st part he explains his setup, moves cows everyday day, doesn't used chemicals and stuff

 
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Sludig

Sludig

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The extra large bags do stink, but holy shit how heavy they get with the amount of fly's.
 
Wantonsoup95

Wantonsoup95

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There's great products you can add to feed for larval control. We have Clarifly here at the mill and the pig farmers that use it vs those who don't is night and day.
 
Aldarion

Aldarion

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I've posted before about blood spots in eggs. We were running about 10-25% of eggs with blood spots. (Never the white eggs, only the brown eggs)

We stumbled across the cure. Its corn. Just regular old cracked corn.

We'd previously fed our chickens laying pellets plus table scraps, and they free range all day. I figured they must be getting the right nutrients with such a wide range of foods. But my wife read somewhere it was good to give them corn in colder weather for the extra calories.

Within a few days the blood spots went away almost completely. I havent bothered to count and estimate the current rate because its effectively zero. If anyone else has blood spots in their eggs, and doesnt currently feed corn, try it. I'd love to hear if it works for others too.
 
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BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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If you have a feed mill in your area and a way to haul and store it you can have chicken feed custom made and buy it by the ton for much cheaper than bags of pellets. We buy 1 ton totes for around $280. Bagged pellets at $15 a bag is $600/T. If there's a seed plant you can sometimes buy what they call screenings from cleaning seed that they will sell for as little as $50-100/T. We usually feed that along with something else but it's some real cheap feed. People feed it to hogs and cattle as well.
 
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Sludig

Sludig

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Aldarion said:
I've posted before about blood spots in eggs. We were running about 10-25% of eggs with blood spots. (Never the white eggs, only the brown eggs)

We stumbled across the cure. Its corn. Just regular old cracked corn.

We'd previously fed our chickens laying pellets plus table scraps, and they free range all day. I figured they must be getting the right nutrients with such a wide range of foods. But my wife read somewhere it was good to give them corn in colder weather for the extra calories.

Within a few days the blood spots went away almost completely. I havent bothered to count and estimate the current rate because its effectively zero. If anyone else has blood spots in their eggs, and doesnt currently feed corn, try it. I'd love to hear if it works for others too.
Click to expand...
How does extra calories prevent embryo's from developing. Pick up and refrigerate your eggs quicker.
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

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Sludig said:
How does extra calories prevent embryo's from developing. Pick up and refrigerate your eggs quicker.
Click to expand...
You are wrong about every aspect of this post

I take that back, your use of the word "eggs" was correct.
 
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Sludig

Sludig

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"id love to hear if it works for others" Gets salty about anyone questioning it. Usual self assured aldarian
 
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Aldarion

Aldarion

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/sigh

Blood spots arent embryos.
(We don't have roosters so what the fuck is all this talk about embryos anyway? )
The chickens arent getting more calories now, they're getting a different food type. Its clearly some specific nutrient rather than total calories.
Blood spots have nothing to do with egg age
We pick up all our eggs daily anyway cause we eat them
Eggs don't need to be refrigerated
the plural of the word "embryo" is "embryos"; no apostrophe
I think that covers it.

Have you actually seen a chicken at some point? Why are you waddling into this conversation when you are confused about apparently every aspect of it?
 
Sludig

Sludig

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I'd call you an unlikeable cunt, but everyone already knows it and you relish in it.

If you literally google egg blood spot, there's lots of hits about it commonly believed to be a fertile egg. It's what I was always told. You didnt mention a lack of any roosters, my 16 chickens do have roo's. I get a blood spot maybe once every couple months. Only fed corn once we got into deeper cold. If they are fertile, refrigeration will stop/kill development. Of course you can leave eggs out on the counter, without being brooded on, they likely wouldn't develop much either I suppose.
 
Blazin

Blazin

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So on Tuesday afternoon I notice on cam that all my hens are in run, no biggie happens sometimes but normally 1-3 tend to take turns getting some chow time in coop . They also tend to run in and out pretty often on a normal day. I started noticing they weren't going in coop. Check coop nothing seems amiss, nightfall comes and I had to flush them inside to get them to go in.

Next day the moment the door opened they ran outside and for the next few hours not a one would go in not even for food or drink. So again I'm thinking okay a rat or something got in there and scared them. My coop is no ordinary coop however as I built it into the lower level of my bank barn which is solid concrete, there really is no way for anything to get in. I went ahead and really checked it over again, checked the camera etc. I started thinking maybe mites or something got into the bedding and are bugging them or maybe ammonia levels high despite good ventilation and fan going. I completely clean the coop from top to bottom all new bedding. Still they absolutely refused to go in. I had to catch every single bird by hand to get them back in.

I'm now locking them in 24/7 for at least three days to see if I can get them to reset. Whole thing has been rather bazaar. The only thing I did different was I brought shop vac in without locking them out on Tuesday I just wanted to get some spilled feed. They have certainly heard me vacuuming before but not in the coop that I can remember, normally when I clean it I just lock them out in the run.

So far being locked in their behavior is completely normal and seem happy, so hopefully they forgive me the mistake and get comfortable that it's their safe space again. Only other oddity was my son was with me and they don't really ever have anybody but me in the coop. Have heard stories from people who have had chickens a lot longer than me that sometimes they can just get really spooked by something mundane but was a new experience for me.

Went to a farm show today and found a chicken tractor that was built with galv piping and canvas roof for about $1k and definitely intrigued for meat birds in the spring. We have built our chicken tractor out of PVC and corrugated roofing and I think it cost me about $600+ in materials and I really liked this set up for $400 more. Disassembles into a smaller space, has a little nicer look to it and was pretty sturdy.
69523147936--86CD40A1-E21E-483F-8476-9129747A52CD - Copy.jpg
 
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Blazin

Blazin

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BrutulTM said:
How many chickens is that thing supposed to hold?
Click to expand...
That's the smallest one they make (32) broilers is what they state which would be following Joel Salatin's guidelines. I don't like them that crammed and would do no more than 20 in a tractor that size.
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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Salatin would never spend $1000 on a tractor for even 32 chickens. He would build it out of free pallets and used chicken wire. I take it that this would just be to raise for yourself, not a commercial enterprise?
 
Blazin

Blazin

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BrutulTM said:
Salatin would never spend $1000 on a tractor for even 32 chickens. He would build it out of free pallets and used chicken wire. I take it that this would just be to raise for yourself, not a commercial enterprise?
Click to expand...
I am fortunate enough I don't need to be economical in my endeavors, Salatin would lose his shit if he saw what I've done. I follow a lot of polyface principles but budget is not one of them.
 
BrutulTM

BrutulTM

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I'm actually pretty interested in raising broilers to sell. "Pasture raised" chickens can easily sell for $20 a bird so if you raised say, 300 at a time you could net $6000 for a project that would take 6-8 weeks and would probably take maybe $1000 in expenses plus someone would have to go out there for half an hour a day to move the tractor and top off the food and water. The big obstacle is the butchering. There's no processing plants around here that do poultry. I think with a good scalder and plucker and some practice 4 or 5 people can process 300 birds in a day but right now it takes us most of the day to do 25.
 
Blazin

Blazin

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BrutulTM said:
I'm actually pretty interested in raising broilers to sell. "Pasture raised" chickens can easily sell for $20 a bird so if you raised say, 300 at a time you could net $6000 for a project that would take 6-8 weeks and would probably take maybe $1000 in expenses plus someone would have to go out there for half an hour a day to move the tractor and top off the food and water. The big obstacle is the butchering. There's no processing plants around here that do poultry. I think with a good scalder and plucker and some practice 4 or 5 people can process 300 birds in a day but right now it takes us most of the day to do 25.
Click to expand...
Butchering is definitely the sticking point. Paying for it will ruin any profit. One of our goals this year is to really try to apply proper levels of neck beard powergamer efficiency to it. Plucker is a must, good set up etc The cutting is a skill/xp issue to really speed up I have seen people do it so fast kind of blows my mind, exact same cuts and hand movements.

Owning enough tractors (pens) that you have a batch for each week so you can just get into a rhythm of butchering every Friday for example rather than try to do too many birds all hitting 8 wks at the same time.
 
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