Homesteading and Hobby Farm/Ranch

Not chickens. But have used those rotating finger deals to pluck ducks/geese pretty quickly. Another format I have seen used I really wouldn't mess with it is pour liquid wax on them and then bust it off to pull the feathers. Lots of duck hunters and especially the places that guide and pluck hundreds of ducks a day use those rotating finger deals, some on a cordless drill held in a vice and such. All kind of examples.

I pluck by hand.

Decided to DIY a plucker, I'll post once I finish.

In the past I've said negative things about free ranging chickens. I need to take that back. After moving the chicken coop and building a new fence, we've started free ranging both our layers and our meat birds. Something about the new layout seems to keep predators away. We havent lost a single bird.

Whats awesome is watching them eat bugs from sunrise to sunset. Free high protein food. Counting the number of times they peck at the group and applying any kind of reasonable hit rate, thats a huge number of bugs per chicken every day. I also like that this recycles nutrients from livestock shit (in the pasture) and converts the lawn into not completely wasted space - its a worm farm for the chickens.

We talk about eating bugs and living in pods - this is how you eat bugs, processed through chickens. And by not free ranging I think we were missing out on this.

Aldarion said:

Decided to DIY a plucker, I'll post once I finish.

In the past I've said negative things about free ranging chickens. I need to take that back. After moving the chicken coop and building a new fence, we've started free ranging both our layers and our meat birds. Something about the new layout seems to keep predators away. We havent lost a single bird.

Whats awesome is watching them eat bugs from sunrise to sunset. Free high protein food. Counting the number of times they peck at the group and applying any kind of reasonable hit rate, thats a huge number of bugs per chicken every day. I also like that this recycles nutrients from livestock shit (in the pasture) and converts the lawn into not completely wasted space - its a worm farm for the chickens.

We talk about eating bugs and living in pods - this is how you eat bugs, processed through chickens. And by not free ranging I think we were missing out on this.

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Just need some cows and you'll be a grass farmer.

Tame him and make him part of the family

it amazes me that most pets don't care to share with raccoons. one of my neighbors has outdoor cats that they feed on a side porch. was over one evening not even dusk. wife put food out. we were standing about 20' away and raccoon just showed up and started eating like it lived there.

best to keep the windows shut in the room with the food and do a few walks around the house afterwards. they will probably try to get back in at some point.

Not yet anyway! Maybe Araysar can start domesticating raccoons like the russian silver fox experiment

Araysar said:

He was fat and smelled like fish. I took him to a wildlife sanctuary 25 miles away.

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And set him loose near the hobo settlement?

So bacon day has come and gone. We hired a local butcher that operates a mobile slaughter service; he killed them on site then hung in the truck and transported to his facility for hanging and butchering. Impressively efficient and humane; he shot them in a head with the rifle. Not a second of stress in those pigs lives.

The biggest of the 3 was something like 310 live weight. Looking forward to all that pork! Well that and ribs, sausage, ham, bacon, and various other cuts including some raw pork belly itself.

Next up are the meat birds - we've got 2 dozen ready to harvest in 2 weeks and another 2 dozen a couple months later. I think we'll do a trial run this weekend with some of the bigger ones.

But the best news is we finally got cows. It took some time to arrange for hay and find the cows we wanted but here we are - we've got a pair of Dexter heifers at last. Not sure on the age but I'd guess theyre around 800 lbs each, so not babies. We're going to try to train them as hand milkers, which is from everything I have heard not a trivial task. This is part of why we have two, I'm assuming it'll go better for one than the other so we'll sell the one we like less. We had also been told by everyone that cows are happier in a group and its obvious from watching them, it made the transition to a new home much easier I believe.

Long term we hope to keep one of them, breeding her with meat breeds and raising the calves for meat or sale.

Bring on the fuckin apocalypse. Although, I do need a lot more ammo come to think about it.

5 acres. I'll have pics in a few weeks, but those is the start of a journey trying to mini farm. No delusions of full subsistence more a hedge against future events.

Lots long term to learn about. The property will be an interesting challenge i think i need to make a land use plan for. Lots of tree cover, but the ground is a mix of kind of a lawn in front, mixed grass and weed middle, then the back 1/3rd is a mixture of mud and little bits of standing water. Beyond the property line is a tiny creek. That back area seems like it has marshier plants but i think it dries out fairly thoroughly in hot summer/fall. There's also a small pond in middle of property.

Was thinking to try and enlarge the pond and French drain the front yard to it as it gets some standing water after heavy rains. We are on a hillside slope and get enough run off that seller said he never has to water. For the back portion be good to increase drainage to the creek and make that area more usable to grow hay or a crop of some kind. (If we can expand pond ideas would be some fish, chickens, dairy cow or mini dairy goats and whatever we have the energy left to grow.)


But, the immediate concern is not turning into a jungle and the point of this post.


Looking for input and advice on mower vs going straight to big dick mini tractor.

A $3k zero turn especially if it can handle some light brush is probably the most sensible. But a 20k kubota bx series with a back excavator seems like fun and allowing on demand work vs having to plan rentals. Besides French drain, want to build shooting berm, clear some saplings and big bushes, maybe dig out work ground for pens or gardening areas.

Id be concerned with muddy back area for zero turn or even a mini tractor. If it occasionally dries out I imagine brush hog or down when i can then let it ride. But part of wanting to address the moisture level.

I'm not familiar with zero turn brands, and like wise rather than going John deere/kubota, I wonder if there's other mini tractor companies that are worth looking at as the more light duty harbor freight vs l) commercial use.


Pics of kinda soggy back bush areas.

Locnar said:

Have you kept up with the cost to raise those pigs and get them back as processed meat? Just wondering if you think you even broke even or not on them. I KNOW you wont with the meat birds unless you process them yourself.

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Feeders are pretty cheap. a 310 pound hog should yield 140-150 pounds of processed pork. My guess is that all told it was 80 to 90% of the cost of just buying the pork as a bundle directly from a processor.

Pig carcasses aren't very hard to process at home, the real impediment is rigging up a cooler to hang the carcasses in for a week before you start cutting.