Consolidated Kansas

[Trish44]

Hawkeye, yes my DH is running this weekend only he's just doing the half instead of the whole marathon this time. He didn't feel like he had trained enough this time to do the whole one. For once he used some sense! I'm not sure whether I will come or not. I hate getting up that early & he told me I didn't have to go if I didn't want to. Since he's only doing the half he should be in good shape to drive home, he runs that amount of miles all the time. He told me after this marathon is over he is going to concentrate on just working on the coop to try to get it done, yay! I was about to give him a talking to about it, he must have read my mind because I've been really aggravated about very little progress getting done on it. I told him this weekend we need to get it closed in before bad weather gets here. Speaking of that, we got OSB for the roof to use under the Ondura roofing, but I got two clear skylights in that material, so I will have to leave two spots without OSB or what good will the skylights do. Do you all think those two spots will be OK without roofing underneath them? I don't know what that will do to keeping the warmth in, but I need extra light in there since it's a very shady place where the coop is. Any ideas anyone?

 

[sapphireblu76]

I have read a lot about people getting food for their birds from the co-op. I don't like how much "dust" I get when I buy a bag of food from Orscheln's, so I'm looking into getting food from the co-op. I have 9 ducks and a goose. What do you suggest I get from the coop? I don't have enough birds to make it worth buying in bulk, but losing less food to dust/crumbs would probably make it worth the switch. My co-op said that they don't have any mixes that they sell specifically for birds but that they could custom-mix something for me. Any suggestions on what I should ask for?

I noticed the bag I got from the co-op is pretty dusty. More so than what I was getting at Orscheln's, but they eat it out of the feed pan, so I guess it's not going to waste. I think it just depends on the co-op on how their feed turns out. Our requires a 1 ton minimum order for special mixes. Again, depends on the co-op. Ours will deliver, but we don't have the barrels or anything to put it in. I'm working on collecting some, so that around tax time, I can buy a ton or 2 and save some money.

I am sorry not to respond to everyone's posts this morning but we started the day off in a very bad way. With the coyote scare last night I decided to leave Lucie off the tie out all night in case Molly needed help. She has been off a few other times overnight and been fine so I didn't think much of it. When I went to bed I told DH I needed to rustle up her invisible fence collar in the garage and put it on her tomorrow. She usually sticks to the back pasture so it hasn't been an issue.

Well apparently sometime late last night or early this morning she decided to cross the road and was hit by a car. DH hollered up to me in a panic that Lucie was hurt. I raced downstairs and the poor dog was laying across the street next to our mailbox. We got her wrapped in blankets and into the car and gave her two different kinds of pain medications and DH hurried down to Andover with her. She is fairly stabile on fluids and pain medications and she had x rays of her chest and hind end. Her chest is clear but she has bilateral femoral fractures. Essentially she has two broken hind legs. I am just heartbroken and sick over it. I feel like it is all my fault. If I had tied her back up or found her collar this never would have happened. I am so angry that someone would hit her and leave her there on the side of the road. The only people who travel our road at night or early morning are our neighbors. And she has a bright red collar on with a tag with our numbers and address. If they had pulled over they could have looked at the tag and seen she was laying right next to our mailbox. We are waiting to hear back from the orthopedic surgeon to see what his recommendations are. I am devastated. I feel like I failed her in every way. I have never had a dog hit by a car and to see her laying there in the cold, frosty grass with two broken legs. I can't hardly stand it.

Oh no! I hope she will be okay

HEChicken, I feel mean talking about eating our birds but it's the reality of it I guess. I can't go in debt on this endeavor. If we eat the extra roosters, not necessarily breeds intended for meat, but evertime we eat one that's taking $5 off of what I spent to keep them. There are also other benefits of course, but they save me more money if we eath them rather than giving them away and someone else eating them. We still have a lot of mouths to feed around here and we are so close financially to getting over a hump but it's a make it or break it kind of thing. I always consider saving money the same as making money. If we save it, we have more for other things. You know how it goes. So specifically what I want to do is remove the 5 mo old roosters from the coop, it's causing a little aggression anyway having them all in the big coop but nothing that has been a problem. I want to put these roosters in another pen and let them have some relax time before the dreaded big day. I still have a hard time with this, I'm thankful the kids deal with it better than I do. I seriously about passed out when we did the first rooster. Then I saw a pic of him a few days later and I lost it. It's hard, but it's life and it's necessary and I hope this just helps us appreciate our food even more.

A lot of us eat our birds, nothing wrong with that. It only seems mean because in this day and age, we've gotten so far away from our food sources. My mom always says she would just rather buy from the grocery store because she just doesn't want to know where it comes from. I'm the complete opposite. I WANT to know where my food comes from and what went into growing it. I usually keep all my butcher roos in their own pen, just so they are easier to find when it's butcher time. Right now, they are just running around with the rest of the flock because I'm short on pens.

Don't feel bad. Many of us here have processed or do process our birds, and the ones who choose not to, I think understand that it is a reality. The way I look at it is that 50% of chicks hatched are male but at best you need 1 rooster per 10 hens for fertility but since so many people cannot or choose not to have roosters, in reality the number of roosters for whom there is a home is even less than that. The commercial meat industry abounds with birds treated callously and kept in terrible conditions, living miserable lives. So I figure if I raise a cockerel where he has access to sun and grass and bugs and dust baths and good food and water and the company of his flock, until he is big enough to eat, then he has had a much better life than any chicken raised by Tyson. I will never enjoy processing but it is a reality and yes, I eat my excess boys too. So don't feel you need to apologize.

The only thing I would add to that is that IMHO, it is better for the cockerel to get plenty of exercise because that way he is building up muscle rather than fat, and the meat will be healthier for you.

Exactly. I agree with all of the above.

I plan to hatch next spring and I am going to take my extra roos and process. It will not be fun or something I am looking forward to because I am the ultimate animal lady. But the truth is I would rather raise and process my own meat just like HEchicken says and know where he lived and what he ate and that he had a great life and for me in my religion(not sure if anyone else make point to do this) thank that animal with providing myself and my family with meat to sustain our bodies. It kills me everytime and I cry but I feel better serving that meat than store bought,,,,

So I took eat little chick and with a warm wet paper towel soaked the bottom and then cut it with cuticle scissors, it seemed easier to cut that way. Now it is gone and the fuzz is no longer in the way..

Thanks guys

Again, I agree. I am going to try the life cycle in a bucket with my offings next time. Better than tossing them off into the tree line, which is what I did last time. There wasn't much that we didn't use, but I still felt guilty tossing it.

Thank you everyone for kind words. I am an absolute mess over this. She is stable and on fluids and morphine. Running a low grade fever but nothing too bad. We are still waiting to hear back from the orthopedic surgeon but the good news is that she has deep pain (meaning she responds to a toe pinch) and she withdraws her leg and can wag her tail so she doesn't have major nerve damage. There is still a risk that even with surgery she may have a poor outcome but the fact that she still has neural integrity is really good news. A healed broken leg with no neural information is pretty useless. I have seen so many animals with fractures from being hit by cars but I have never had to deal with one of my own. I feel like I am still in a state of shock from it all.

Glad to hear she is stable. I look forward to hearing how great her recovery is going!

I can't get caught up right now on reading all the posts since I've been gone, but Josie I did see your post about Lucie, I'm so sorry. It's not your fault, it happens, but I just don't see how people live with themselves hitting a dog & then just leaving them lay there injured like that. I just couldn't sleep at night If I did something like that.

We just got back late last night from going to Missouri to see my DH's family. His mother is back at the nursing home now, but on the regular care side now since she is no longer able to stay in the "apartment". It's pretty obvious by seeing her that her alzheimer's is progressing & she is getting kind of lost & more confused. The family is now having to make some hard decisions that it was apparent they aren't really ready to make. She still somewhat remembers people, especially the ones she sees all the time, but those of us she only sees occasionally are a different story. She didn't remember that my DH lives in Kansas & he has lived there since the 80s & was asking him what he did there. She is kind of reverting back to more child-like now & often sings nursery rhymes. She thinks it's 1945 when you ask her what year it is. It's pretty sad to watch someone go downhill like that & really hard for her family.

I let the guineas out awhile ago & they all were up in the tree above the hoop coop at one point. I took a pic of them that I will post later when I get time, it was pretty funny seeing them all up there lined up in that tree. It seems that all of my birds made it through the cold snap OK, I was kind of worried about the ones in the grow-out pen, but they were fine this morning.

That is so tough. My grandpa just passed last month. He had Alzheimer's as well and never remembered who I was. I felt guilty for not visiting him more often, but he just could never recognize me. It just hurt me more than it helped him, so I quit going. I was sad when he passed, he was the only father figure in my life, but it seemed like he had been gone for years already, so it was a little easier for me when he did pass. I'm just glad he's no longer suffering, that was the worst thing to see.
Funny about the guineas. Looking forward to seeing the pictures.

 

[sapphireblu76]

Does anyone here raise their own meal worms? I've been researching it and really want to do it.

 

[maidenwolfx80]

I also am interested in meal worm farming....

 

[HEChicken]

Does anyone here raise their own meal worms? I've been researching it and really want to do it.

I raised them for years. I used a variety of substrates, from wheat bran to oatmeal to corn cob bedding. They did best on the bran and oatmeal - they are, after all MEAL worms

. I never separated them, as there isn't a very easy way to do it. The worms and larva and beetles were all in together and I really didn't have any issues with doing that.

 

[HEChicken]

Hawkeye, to answer your question about where I learned about the life cycle in a bucket, it was so long ago I really don't remember now. I read a blog and the guy described something similar and I thought it sounded like a neat idea, so I tried it and it worked like a charm. I've been doing it on and off ever since. If we found fresh road kill (rabbit, squirrel) while driving along, we'd stop and pick it up and set up a bucket. I used to use a coffee can for the smaller animals - it was easy to drill a bunch of holes in the bottom and I'd hang it from a tree limb by an old shoe lace. After I shot the fox, DH and I looked at each other and said "well, should we?" and the next question was "But in what? He's too big to fit in a coffee can". That's when I hit on the idea of drilling holes in the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket, and the rest is history.

Rather than increase the fly population, I think it actually decreases is marginally. I figure the flies are going to be attracted to road kill and lay their eggs in it regardless. But this way, since the chickens eat the maggots, there are that many fewer flies around because they never get a chance to morph into their adult form.

 

[mommahen10]

Hawkeye, ha ha, if I posted a pic of our new coop everyone would surely laugh at me. We used old tin siding from another shed we are tearing down. We bought some new lumber to build the frame, but some of it is boards from an old bed frame. It has new shingles, and a recycled storm window. The door is actually an old window screen but it's plenty tall enough for a door. I will cover the door if necessary. The tin siding worked out great because this coop was built attached to the barn and it matches the siding on that side of the barn becuase that part is an addition. Talk about hillbilly, but it looks like it's supposed to be there. We did get the concrete on the floor, and it works and is quite functional. I'm happy it was done in 2 weeks. My entire family wants me to shoot but I tend to panic with guns, someone close to me was killed by a gun years ago and I think it stems from that. I start shaking when they ask me to hold it so they can do something.

I hit two puppies once. I saw one on the left side of the road in the ditch and I slammed on the breaks and of course my eyes were pretty focused on the puppy and then 3 more ran across from the right side. Two puppies died, I removed them from the road so they wouldn't be hit again, I was crying and shaking and I walked up to the house. All of my kids were in the van too, they were crying. I knocked on the door and explained what happened and apologized all over myself and the lady was yelling at me that I got her two favorite ones and she followed me back to the van and continued to yell at me and the kids were a bit startled. I do think it's the right thing to do to tell the owner, but geez. I'm so sorry about Lucie, that was just wrong to leave her there. I wish there were easy answers, I'm sure they didn't mean to hit her. I'm just so sorry.

I think with the butchering thing I'm really lucky, my boys have initiated it all without any prompting. They asked to do it, but meat has been scarce and I think they're just hungry growing boys.

Trish, what's OSB?

Sapphire, it seems easier to not know where it came from and just eat and try to ignore that you know nothing about it. It feels safer and more responsible to know what we are eating and where it came from. One thing for sure, our family has wasted much less knowing and appreciating it.

I was thinking about doing meal worms too. We are also considering planting wheat for the chickens. HEChicken, do you have a good source for the how to's? Where do you get the starts for that? Isn't oatmeal cheaper than wheat bran?

My dh is going to Great Bend for 2 days, boo. I hate it when he's gone over night but it's not as bad as it used to be now that the boys are big enough to do big people things. I won't be scared anyway. I'm not very tough but I'm getting tougher. When we first moved to the country 12 years ago I wouldn't even go into the chicken coop, now I can't live without them and it's a treat to go play with them for a while. I go out there, and I don't want to come back in.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

JosieChick and Trish44, thinking about both of you this evening.

So here's some pics to take your mind off things. Here is my new turkey "Tom". He's half Bourbon Red and half Royal Palm. Isn't he just cute? Oh, another silly piece of information. Did you know that hen turkeys will sometimes grow a beard like the males? Well, mine has a very small beard and the kids and I had no clue any turkeys grew beards! LOL! We freaked! I went to the internet and calmed down. It's like a long fibered brillo pad! It's totally ridiculous. At first I thought it was some major burr stuck in her but then I noticed it appeared to be growing from her. Anyway, I'm always learning something and laughing at myself for being so ignorant.

If you want to see larger versions, just click on the pic.



Here are my new German New Hamps and Wellies I bought this past weekend.




Here are those plus the ones I hatched from my own birds all together. Aren't they cute little curious things?




JosieChick, here's Bertram perched in the tree after making a great escape! No problem for my Chicken Whisperers! He's back in the coop, safe and sound. We've kept him in the pet kennel until I can lower my rooster population. We don't want him getting hurt. He has calmed down considerably since we have easy access to him.




Danz, here's Lucy. She is the most affectionate little bird with DS. DS was so upset the other night because he couldn't find her to put her in. I told him not to worry, she was a very clever girl and had probably found a good safe spot. Sure enough, the next morning she was out and about just a perky as usual. They found her hiding spot so now she doesn't get by with spending the night outside.The kids love our Seramas!

 

[HEChicken]

Hawkeye, ha ha, if I posted a pic of our new coop everyone would surely laugh at me. We used old tin siding from another shed we are tearing down. We bought some new lumber to build the frame, but some of it is boards from an old bed frame. It has new shingles, and a recycled storm window. The door is actually an old window screen but it's plenty tall enough for a door...

Trish, what's OSB?

I was thinking about doing meal worms too. We are also considering planting wheat for the chickens. HEChicken, do you have a good source for the how to's? Where do you get the starts for that? Isn't oatmeal cheaper than wheat bran?

Obviously you haven't seen my "My Coop" page - talk about recycling! My coop is NOT cute like some of the cute coops you see in the coop pages but it is everything I wanted in a coop otherwise. I never had a plan - it just kind of went together and I went along, depending on what materials I was able to access. My roofing was donated by a friend who had it leftover from a barn re-roofing project. My siding I found under the pole barn at our new place, leftover from another barn project that the previous owners undertook. The windows are storm windows I got at Habitat's ReStore, and the doors were freebies that were out at the street for trash pick up when a neighbor was remodeling the inside of their home. The concrete pad already existed on our property. So the only things I purchased new were the lumber and OSB. (I'm not Trish and don't know what OSB stands for, but it is what we call in Australia, chipboard, or particle board in other places here. Basically they take chips of wood and press it into a sheet. Its not as strong or expensive as plywood but comes in sheets and is easy enough to work with. On my coop I did the framing with 2x4 lumber, covered it with OSB and then put the siding over the OSB).

Sorry, I don't have a source for how-to's for mealworms - I tend to just dive in so I set up a plastic sweater box with bedding, bought a couple of tubs of mealworms at the pet store, cut a potato in half and put it in there for moisture and then sat back and waited to see what would happen. One thing I did learn is that they like it warm, so they do best when they are at about 85 degrees. I don't keep my thermostat anywhere near that in winter but DH's office was kept uncomfortably warm so for awhile they lived at his office in the winter and I brought them back home in the summer. In Australia wheat bran is dirt cheap. At the grocery store, you by a kilogram (2.2lb) for about 46c. Here, the only place I could find it was in the organic section and it was over $4 for a tiny little bag - like maybe half a pound. I've heard that some people buy wheat bran by the 50lb bag at the feed store and its not that expensive that way, but none of the feed stores near me carry it. I actually had my parents bring me over several kilos of wheat bran on their last visit, just for the meal worms LOL. When I ran out of the wheat bran they brought me, I switched to oatmeal but any more its not that cheap. It used to be about $1.80 for the big canister at the grocery store but the last time I looked it was $3.65 for that same size canister. But no, there is no inflation. Grrrr.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Okay, so just adding my 2 cents on the pasty butt removal procedure. I used to be a soaker but turned into a plucker. Either way, the poor babies do not look kindly on me.

I've had far less of it since raising my own birds but I had a case from the birds I bought this weekend. Not fun, but done.

I have also processed between 70 - 80 birds this past year. The first one was by far the absolute hardest thing to do. It took me about 45 minutes to get the courage up. The kids and I thought home raised was so much better than store bought but DH doesn't care for it. His attitude has improved slightly but I don't see him getting excited about my raising meat birds specifically. I will process excess roos, though, unless I've managed to get attached. I'm sure the dogs won't mind eating DH's share! Ha! Kidding. There are more than enough kids here willing to do that.

More than the taste, I like knowing the bird had a life before death and I like knowing everything about what went into growing that bird. I believe I'm teaching something really valuable to the children about where their food comes from and the realities of commercial production.

Who knew I would love the silly creatures so much. They are such a joy to watch and work with. I've also met lots of really nice and interesting people along the way as well!