Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[ChocolateMouse]

Chromantics, I will say this much... Your bunnies that are furred out will be just FINE. Keep in mind there are bunnies outside of your bunny barn, running around on almost no food because everything is under snow, that are exposed to all the elements all the time and they certainly aren't dying out any time soon!

 

[dolfi]

Chromantics, I will say this much... Your bunnies that are furred out will be just FINE. Keep in mind there are bunnies outside of your bunny barn, running around on almost no food because everything is under snow, that are exposed to all the elements all the time and they certainly aren't dying out any time soon!

how long do I leave the doe in cage?

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Dolfi, mine are never in more than a few hours. Usually it is about 10 minutes. Once the deed is done a few times she comes out. It isn't good to leave does and bucks together a long time.
They can start fighting and it gets vicious. You could end up with a castrated buck. They also sometimes just keep breeding and the litter births can get sonny from different impregnation times.

Why don't you just start sending me some PMs. :3 That way we aren't off hijacking every thread around.

 

[Triple Willow]

And this is why homesteading is so vitally important!  I know, I'm preaching to the choir, but it amazes me how many people I see and hear about that has to stop their entire life for some bad weather.  A simple, well built fireplace, wood burning stove (or better yet, a rocket mass heater with built in stove) solves a large part of their energy problems.  The refrigeration and freezer problem we have down here for power outages doesn't matter for them right now.  But without the ability to turn on a stove, so many are just panicking.  Water is obviously readily available right outside their doors, everyone should be able to last a month with their regular food supply.  I just don't get how people can be so ill prepared.

We very, very rarely have power outages here, though.  I keep talking myself out of buying a generator because we've never had an outage that lasted long enough to affect our fridge or freezer, in the 31 years I've been alive.  Harbor Freight has one with great reviews that would run both my fridge and freezer, plus all of the lights and ceiling fans in my home, with some power left over.  It's such a simple process to set up, too.  Flip the main breaker to take your house off the grid, which prevents the generator power from leaking out to the grid.  Get a heavy duty, 220-volt extension cord with prongs on both ends.  Run it from the 220-volt outlet on the generator to the 220-volt outlet of your house.  When you power up your generator, the power flows to your circuit breaker box and is then distributed to the entire house.  And with an estimated 10-hour run time per gallon of gas, it isn't a huge expense on fuel, either.

You are so right about homesteading (or whatever you want to call it.) The problem is that as a percent, very few people are preparing. I know a lot of people who struggle week to week to buy groceries right now. They just can't get ahead, or maybe don't know how. And some I have told and told to prepare for hard times but they can't or won't get their mind out of the here and now long enough to prepare for the future. I don't know if other people have this problem but I have people who think that should something bad ever happen that they can just come to my house and they will be warm and have plenty to eat and be taken care of. That is a problem.

We had an ice storm in January of 2009. It took out power for hundreds of thousands, for some up to a month. Even a big part of the cell phone service was taken out but landlines did work for a while. Some had no radio and no tv, so no new about what was going on. Most people were not prepared at all. Most houses around here depend on electricity for everything. Ours is practically that way. But, I thank God we have propane gas logs so we were able to heat one room. We had running water for a while then that went out too. With no running water that meant the toilet facilities were no more. I cooked on a gas camp stove. It was cold enough outside to take the frozen food out of the freezer and store it in coolers outside. A lot of the other food was fine in the house because it was so cold. A gallon of milk made it all week sitting in the kitchen floor. lol Our electricity was out for 9 days and it was a learning experience, and I'll even say it was a good learning experience. The crazy thing is, if it were to happen again today I'm still not prepared like I should be. I will have to make some life changes before I can ever get prepared, but that's a whole other topic. lol I tell you one thing, when you have elderly or small kids to fend for during a time like that, you better up your game. If somebody is on serious medication be sure to have a backup supply. The way you do that is each month have the prescriptions refilled as early as they will let you. What is left from the previous month, store it away. If you do that each month with 2-3 or hopefully more pills soon you have a good supply in storage. That's very important in case you can't get out to get more.

I'd go ahead and get the generator, just in case. When the ice storm happened here people were bringing them in on the back of pickups and selling them everywhere. A gallon of gas to run 10 hours sounds great but I'd have to see that. It was costing people out the wazoo to run generators. And yep, there were some deaths due to the carbon monoxide. Sounds like you have a good hookup for one into your breaker box. Most people here had to tear their meter off the house and hook up their generator there. I suppose that is what we would have to do too because we don't have a breaker box, we have a fuse box. It is really a whole lot to think about.

 

[Triple Willow]

I'm quickly getting our family headed that way, but so far we haven't reached it yet.  I've been canning fairly extensively the last six months and have a good selection put up.  We still use the freezer a lot, though, for our larger whole meats like chicken breasts and steak.  And I'm not comfortable canning bacon yet.  There's just something that doesn't seem right about it.  A lot of the rest is dairy products.  We're huge on dairy, but don't have a cow, yet.  I'm looking in to that, but I have to make sure our zoning will allow a mini-Jersey.  The rest is considered a luxury, which is why I haven't committed to buying the generator.  I always keep 10 gallons readily available for vehicle emergencies anyway, that I routinely rotate out, so the gas storage isn't a big deal for me, plus the two large SUVs that we keep filled.

With the hot water heater that just went out on us last month, I stripped and kept the tank.  I'm turning it in to a rocket heater and stove this coming month while I'm off for my wife's surgery.  Even though we don't need the heat here in Arizona very much, If I can get the details worked out to use it as a the stove for canning, I will be totally stoked!  We always have a huge surplus of small branches and wood available, we'd never have to worry about it.

Do you have any info on the rocket heaters? I've seen small rocket stoves but not a heater.

 

[Demosthine]

You are so right about homesteading (or whatever you want to call it.) The problem is that as a percent, very few people are preparing. I know a lot of people who struggle week to week to buy groceries right now. They just can't get ahead, or maybe don't know how. And some I have told and told to prepare for hard times but they can't or won't get their mind out of the here and now long enough to prepare for the future. I don't know if other people have this problem but I have people who think that should something bad ever happen that they can just come to my house and they will be warm and have plenty to eat and be taken care of. That is a problem.

We had an ice storm in January of 2009. It took out power for hundreds of thousands, for some up to a month. Even a big part of the cell phone service was taken out but landlines did work for a while. Some had no radio and no tv, so no new about what was going on. Most people were not prepared at all. Most houses around here depend on electricity for everything. Ours is practically that way. But, I thank God we have propane gas logs so we were able to heat one room. We had running water for a while then that went out too. With no running water that meant the toilet facilities were no more. I cooked on a gas camp stove. It was cold enough outside to take the frozen food out of the freezer and store it in coolers outside. A lot of the other food was fine in the house because it was so cold. A gallon of milk made it all week sitting in the kitchen floor. lol Our electricity was out for 9 days and it was a learning experience, and I'll even say it was a good learning experience. The crazy thing is, if it were to happen again today I'm still not prepared like I should be. I will have to make some life changes before I can ever get prepared, but that's a whole other topic. lol I tell you one thing, when you have elderly or small kids to fend for during a time like that, you better up your game. If somebody is on serious medication be sure to have a backup supply. The way you do that is each month have the prescriptions refilled as early as they will let you. What is left from the previous month, store it away. If you do that each month with 2-3 or hopefully more pills soon you have a good supply in storage. That's very important in case you can't get out to get more.

I'd go ahead and get the generator, just in case. When the ice storm happened here people were bringing them in on the back of pickups and selling them everywhere. A gallon of gas to run 10 hours sounds great but I'd have to see that. It was costing people out the wazoo to run generators. And yep, there were some deaths due to the carbon monoxide. Sounds like you have a good hookup for one into your breaker box. Most people here had to tear their meter off the house and hook up their generator there. I suppose that is what we would have to do too because we don't have a breaker box, we have a fuse box. It is really a whole lot to think about.

Regardless of whether you have a breaker box or fuse box, the principle should be the same. You are required to have some sort of isolating mechanism that will physically disconnect your house from the power line. On my old house, there were two extremely large fuses that were outside inline with the power coming in to the house. By removing those, it has the same effect as flipping off the main circuit breaker in the new models. There should never be a reason to remove or modify your meter to make it work. The code requirements for decades have been set up to allow the isolation. In the old days, everyone did a bit of their own electrical work. But now, most just make a phone call and have someone do it for them. That's the other part of homesteading: the knowledge to make things work in emergency situations. Excellent point on the carbon monoxide. It's not something most think about, but it can kill you.

I find it ironic that a huge part of our metropolitan area buries all of our utility lines underground, even though we never have bad storms. Every neighborhood built in the last 20 years or so is that way, and yet you constantly hear about places around the parts of the nation experiencing catastrophic storms that still have above ground lines. You would think they would put in the time and effort to make it more storm-protected. If you are having to go through and replace a huge stretch of damaged line, take a little extra time and effort to bury it during the repair. Over the next decade or so, it'll be a huge improvement over the exposed systems we currently have.


Tax refunds are coming in and I'm seriously considering taking that small, extra step of protection. My wife has slowly come around to a bit more of the self-sufficiency ideals. When we lost power for two hours in the middle of cooking dinner last year, I broke out the camp stove, too. It was quick and simple, but she was a bit surprised and impressed. Immediate "Hey, I know what to do." Plus, we have a propane barbeque grill that has several extra tanks all the time. I'm a flashlight hoarder, so that made the light situation easy. Besides, we have long daylight hours and plenty of windows. From a survival aspect, Arizona is a really sweet environment that is very easy to live in.

 

[Beekissed]

What most folks don't realize is that homesteading or living off grid or whatever folks call it is more than just being prepared with supplies and ways to create electricity. There are people who have all that in place and still can't seem to cope with the power going out or the lack of phones because they have made a life long habit of having everything they want NOW, going places whenever they want to go..the wheels roll constantly out there, of being dependent upon outside sources for comfort, entertainment, for every little whim and thing...no one is denying themselves anything nowadays. Even the poverty line folks...I know..I've lived well below the poverty line all my life and I've seen what goes on there.

People think we are stuffy and old fashioned because we don't invest our money in cell phones...they require power to recharge, they don't have reliable service when the chips are down and they consume a good amount of everyone's time, make everything in life at their fingertips and they don't even have to read a map any longer to get anywhere. It's full on dependence on that phone wherever they go and it's like a leach to anyone wanting to foster self-reliance. Time to toughen up and live life outside the cell.

Same with TV and computers. There are solar charged/crank radios that really pull a signal, so if the news is needed, it's there. Dependence upon the TV or computer for information has become a way of life and people just don't know how to cope without those things running 24/7 in their homes. They derive comfort, entertainment and information from them on a constant basis. Time to develop a life outside the boxes.

Freezers and refrigerators...we have them. We only use them to keep drinks, veggies, condiments and leftovers cold. The freezer has bags of ice in it and some frozen bones for the dog. All these things are greatly expendable. Learn to live a life not dependent upon dairy, cheese, meats that are not canned into a jar, foods that require an oven or a microwave to make. Turn your diet into a survival diet instead of a buffet of the world's foods, no matter if they are out of season, and you are already prepared more than the people who have stored up foods for 5 yrs survival...what they will find is that they will not like the foods they have stored because it is so vastly different from their daily diet. They will then see their time without their luxury foods as a "hard time" instead of just..time.

Being prepared is a life long habit and it's more than storing food and fuel or having systems in place to accommodate when you can't have your regular life...it's about making your life in a constant state of readiness and adaptation and that's all an easier thing to do if you are already adapted to live a small life...a life without luxuries...make your regular life a life that doesn't change much when the power or food stops. And not only that, but you actually don't think that the life you live is without luxuries or that you are living under any kind of lack of any kind~being content with your life is a big key to the success of living a small, adaptable life. That's the single biggest detriment to anyone wanting to live self-sustainably...their minds, their attitudes, how they view their possessions and their daily life activities.

It's an all in and all out attitude if one is to commit to being prepared for lack in this world...the key is to narrow that margin to the degree that you really don't feel it when the supposed lack arrives. Nothing much changes and it's life as usual, with a few minor adaptations for loss of power.

 

[Demosthine]

Do you have any info on the rocket heaters? I've seen small rocket stoves but not a heater.

Rocket mass heaters and rocket stoves operate under the same principles. The difference is that the heaters have a secondary container surrounding the exhaust, usually a 55-gallon steel drum, that is heavily insulated inside. The air heats the metal drum and gives off large amounts of radiant heat. The exhaust air is still quite hot, so if your design is appropriate, you can route the exhaust tubes through a large bench or the floor to further heat the area. A great starting page is on the Inspiration Green's Rocket Mass Heater page. You can also purchase and download Ianto Evans' book Rocket Mass Heaters from his website.

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[sarahsunshine]

or maybe go solar thats the direction we are going... right now we are very dependent on our freezer, not in the winter exactly lol, but also our water pump in electric... we've been discussing this possibility with a lot of interest lately ... we are trying to get more and more on our own, next step is to get down to 2 horses and add a cow... solar is a big one.... weve already got our gardens but they are going to keep getting bigger, we canned for the first time last fall, and we will do LOTS more this year, im going to start tr==drying a lot of the garden stuff to feed to chickens and rabbits next winter... im excited with the prospects

Did you guys see this?
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-liberator

The 500W solar panel, complete with batteries, is made so you can just plug it into your wall socket and it will power your circuit. Genius idea!

We are moving - I hope to an acreage. I want to go solar with battery backup, but have a wood stove for heat (though they are trying to make wood stoves illegal pretty much! - WT#?)

My parents live in a house with a propane furnace - but the fan requires electricity. No auxilary power so a generator would help. But they do have a large room with a wood stove (you could heat a pot of water and put a frying pan on it if you needed to), so they could last for a while (and have for a week or so) with no power. The hardest time for them is if the power goes out in the summer because then you can't store food very well for a long time. Other times of year they have a full deep freeze.

I'm hoping that if we have chickens, we could at least last on eggs for a while - and the veggie garden!

We also have a couple big buckets of dried lentils and beans, and a rainwater collection vat (1000L - 250 gallons) which we could drink from (and do at our land). If we have a big storm, we would do best to go to our land where we can cut wood, heat our cabin, use rainwater (or snow or ice from the pond), and cook on propane!

 

[sarahsunshine]

Rocket mass heaters and rocket stoves operate under the same principles. The difference is that the heaters have a secondary container surrounding the exhaust, usually a 55-gallon steel drum, that is heavily insulated inside. The air heats the metal drum and gives off large amounts of radiant heat. The exhaust air is still quite hot, so if your design is appropriate, you can route the exhaust tubes through a large bench or the floor to further heat the area. A great starting page is on the Inspiration Green's Rocket Mass Heater page. You can also purchase and download Ianto Evans' book Rocket Mass Heaters from his website.

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These are AWESOME!!!! They are used throughout different parts of the world - northern europe, mongolia in particular. I know a couple people who build them. They are great when built right, but there are many people who build them who aren't very knowledgeable or practiced so be careful! They run on really small short hot fires (that burn clean), and they heat the bench (thermal mass), and then the heat dissipates over many hours. Lots claim to go for 24 hours an a small fire, but the less good ones only last 4 hours. Great stoves!