Wisconsin "Cheeseheads"

[jvls1942]

rainy day here, bored, picture time..

some of my green bell peppers are turning red. this is a first for me..
.

this is the scrawny cherry tomato bush that produced over 150 tomatoes.
can you see the fine hair roots ?

 

[babylady4]

Chicken processing day here.... the plucker was worth every penny. Processed 25 birds in an hour..... not the greatest speed but since it took us an hour to process 5 by hand last year...... we were doing well. Average weight was around 4.25#.

Next batch we will wait an additional week.

 

[jvls1942]

when we did meaties, we would do the smallest ones first.. then a week later to the smallest ones again, etc etc etc.
my reasoning is this: the first batch of small ones are poor feed conversion ones. they are never going to get much bigger.
by the time we got to the last batch, we were processing 7 to 8 pounders.. We didn't raise any cockrels, We ordered all pullets.
cockrels tend to have larger skeletons, thus taking up more space in the freezer.. and their drumsticks tend to be stringy..
If I didn't have a plucker, we would never raise meaties..
.....jiminwaUSAu......

 

[babylady4]

I ordered straight runs for both my orders. DH was telling me his mom would butcher their meat birds like that, one week do some then another week do some more...... I do not have the luxury of processing chickens every week. One and done here. My SIL brought his cone rig, I found a 100 gal stock tank used online for icing the birds after processing....... we had a nice assembly line running.

The one in the house had some sort of joint infection brewing in both legs. We did not process her, she ended up getting buried with the waste.

 

[LJ33]

Hey everybody. Its SO HOT. I just had to say it. 89 degrees with 70% humidity. I have two big jugs frozen water the girls are huddled around, in the shade under their coop. They already got treats and I soaked a big area. I've stayed inside mostly getting "domestic' things done. We are supposed to be in the high 80's/90's for the next handful of days.

I got a trail cam. three days and nada. Just bugs and a couple neighbors driving by. I will chalk that up to good for now.

Not sure if I have mentioned that we are technically not supposed to have chickens. When we first bought the house, it was allowed. then Changed and we had no idea. Well, tomorrow is a township meeting to re consider and allow. Sounds like they want to come up with rules. which is fine by me. only problem is that i will be in Rockford, IL tomorrow for work. Trying to pen an email or letter and I can call tomorrow during the day to voice my support. My three surrounding neighbors know about the chickens and nobody cares. Ive also been giving out eggs LOL.

 

[babylady4]

LJ33 you should be grandfathered in since you bought your birds before they changed the rules..... what township is this anyway?

 

[jvls1942]

X2.. you should be grandfathered in if you actually had chickens at that time.
If you didn't have any, If it were me, I would still say I did. Nobody can prove otherwise..
but that is me..
today I was turning my wood chip pile over with the loader. all of a sudden the hydraulics quit. I checked for blown hose.. No such luck. that leaves me with the next scenario. the splines on the shaft to the pump stripped off.
It happened once before. Now I have a major job on my hands. take the loader off to get at the front mounted pump. I think I will just leave the loader off. It will take a while to get a new shaft made anyway.. I custom made the loader w/hydraulics since there was not a factory hydraulic loader for this tractor.
that custom made 10'' shaft cost me about $90.oo fifteen years ago.
on a brighter note. I finished weeding the grapes and got them tied to stakes. I have some major pruning to do to train the main stem..
.......jiminwisc........

 

[LJ33]

LJ33 you should be grandfathered in since you bought your birds before they changed the rules..... what township is this anyway?

Township of Wheatland.

I don't think we are grandfathered in. We had just signed the papers on the house when they changed the ordinance. We got the chickens 8 month later. Mainly bc we had discussed with neighbors who didn't care. And we know one of the town board members, who told us "nobody cares" We built the coop behind the house and with the fences, you can't see any of it from any angle off of our property.

The entire change was over one neighbor dispute last year and the council knee jerk reacted. From what I've been reading, they have been discussing this for awhile, had one vote already and tonight sounds like it will be approved....and writing language to include 4-h projects and larger animals based on your lot size. In our township, its everything from very small city style lots to multiple acre parcels. So its hard to do a "one size fits all" for us.

 

[babylady4]

It would not matter if your neighbors do not care about the chickens or not. One person living in that township can report you and force the removal of your birds (I speak from experience).
If you can participate remotely to this meeting I would make an effort to do so. Crafting Ordinances over the complaint of one individual is an extreme reaction to solve the problem. The person who whined must have connections on the board. I would think they would have to collect signatures, etc. go through the entire process a person would have to go through to change an ordinance.

 

[LJ33]

I get what you were saying. Also knowing my neighborhood, people do stuff all the time that the town constable has zero interest in enforcing. It can be frustrating at times. Although at the same time, there’s kind of an unwritten rule that nobody snitches on anybody. And our neighborhood gets along well.

That said… I definitely want to be in the legal category. I read the proposed ordinance. To comply I would have to get rid of two of our chickens based on the square footage of our lot. Fine- I’ve got a friend that has plenty of acreage to take on two more. But the main issue is that we’re not supposed to have the coop or run within 40 feet of a lot line. And R4/R5 zone sizes- , that’s nearly impossible even if you have a perfectly square parcel.


It’s an $80 initial fee, have to submit coop/run plans and they have specs like sq foot per chicken etc. The amount of chickens you can have depends on your zone : R5-R1 . you have to get written approval from all bordering property neighbors and have to get new letter every year, a $30 permit renewal fee each year.

They also have written in there that you have to clean the coop every day and some other stuff that I think would be hard to enforce but I get it. They’re just covering all the bases.

I’ve had neighbors shooting off fireworks at 8 o’clock in the morning yesterday, I really have no faith they’re going to come check and see if I’ve cleaned my coop every day..