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Island Roo's sketch made me think of my brew house back when I used to home brew beer. In brewing you use a "mash tun" to do the conversion of the starches in the malted grains into sugars for the yeast. You could use the same type of tun for fermenting your feed. A typical mash tun is a...

If you want lots of hops for shade go with "cascade" for a hop variety. It is well know amongst home brewers to be nearly a pest for growing so fast. It is also the hop of choice for many american pale ale recipes so you score twice. Some of the other hop varieties are not so easy to grow. If...

I would start with the area's MSU Ag extension office or agent. They are a great resource for these kinds of things. good luck, Jerry

tsc has a nice assortment of tires you can choose from. I used two of them about 1.5 x 8 pnuematic tires for my tractor and they work fine. I just used bolts for axles.

Simple answer to this: plastic kitchen garbage bag in a 5 gallon pail, line that with a paper grocery sack. waste goes in there and tie it shut when done. toss the whole thing in your deep freeze until the night before your garbage collection and transfer to your garbage can, take to street. I...

I have some new hampshires and I think they will do OK for you as meat birds so long as you know that: A you will get a smaller carcass, similar in size to the whole fryers found in the store, around 3 - 3.5 lbs B the meat will be a darker meat than your CXs C the cost per pound...

the plan above looks like a decent idea and should work well. But, IMO, it's built way too heavy. use 2x2 instead of 2x4 and 1/4 inch exterior plywood rather than 1/2 and I think it should be much easier to move and plenty strong enough. they use vinyl siding for the "roof" (very creative!) you...

I personally would take a less organic approach: I would buy a bottle of cut stump and vine killer at the farm store and then I would take my pruners and cut each vine as close to the ground as I could and coat the fresh cut ends with the vine killer. then once its all brown I would go and pull...

A couple of thoughts here, first its a clever idea! next, if anyone is going to make one of these pay a little extra to get a porcelin bulb holder. they will handle much more heat than a bakelite or plastic one. just a little extra safety factor. another thing I thought is to use a smaller...

Matt, all you need for babysitting is a neighbor who likes fresh eggs. we have a neighbor kid who is going to start 4-h poultry this year, he sat our chickens and some chicks we had in the brooder while we went on a cruise and we just let him keep the eggs laid that week and gave him a $10...

I know of a TSC store where you could have gotten 100% roosters from a bin of sex link pullets! I pointed out to them the error and they seemed to agree, but they still sold them as pullets. I think they will have some unhappy customers in a couple months. Jerry

Aha, we have a winner!

I recently attended a talk by a retired AG agent who was assigned to the area around Grand Rapids, Michigan which contains the majority of Michigan's large poultry operations. He recommended that small flock poultry operations should use a 1x1 elevated wire floor over concrete. this way the poop...

they will order them for you all year long if you just ask. maybe if you get a couple others to go in on an order you could do multiple batches together? good luck Jerry

seems to me that you are probably NOT the only one looking on CL for one or two chicks, no ads = opportunity knocking. I think you should just buy some chicks and then offer the extras on CL. I bet that by the time the chicks are ready to get out of the brooder you will have resold the extras...

google: yo-mill grazers nottawa michigan and you will find the phone number of the place. there are several other CSAs in the same area, but I do not know if any of the others do processing. Jerry

yeah a chicken can, thanks to ~160 million years of evolutionary pressure. cheers Jerry

buy a quality incubator, plan to do a few hatches to get it figured out, that is what i have been doing. I hope it goes well, and post some pictures of your success. good luck, Jerry

my daughter and I have been learning to hatch and I would say that realizing that you will need to do a few hatches to figure out how your incubator works should be part of your plan. You should try to locate some local fertile eggs, even if they are just barnyard mutts. That is what I have been...

don't bother, my wife bought some and the went in the trash after the first try. Jerry