Michigan Thread - all are welcome!

[kimmie6067]

I still have the rouen duck up for grabs if anybody would like him. He's 15 weeks today. He gets along with our other drake & ducks just fine. DH only wants 1 drake for the 2 girls, so the 2nd boy needs a new home. If we can't rehome him in the next few weeks, he will be processed. Let me know. (If you want him for your freezer, I'm fine with that too.)

Here's a picture. The one that needs to go is the one walking behind the other drake...

Hi there where do you live?

 

[kimmie6067]

Kimmie what kind of incubator did you use.. and what temp and humidity did you run.. i hatched out 18 keets last month..

forced air 99.5 to 100.5 humidity 40 to 50 percent it must have been wrong then I read up on it and thats what I did.

 

[kimmie6067]

Good morning everyone. I haven't been around much at all, I think I just ran out of steam in the poultry arena. But I've got chicks and keets hatching which amazes me as we lost power for 36 hours last week after the "non-tornado" ripped through town and had to emergency transport the incubator to the in-laws' farm over bumpy dirt roads to be able to power it back up. I had it covered in blankets till we got there and it was probably turned off for about 5 hours yet only dropped about 3 degrees. I do wonder if I would have had a better hatch if this hadn't happened.There are 8 chicks and 10 keets in this photo. 5 more chicks fluffing in the incubator

Anyone else up north get hit by a similar storm on the 18th? They won't call it a tornado but with 2 inches of hail, hundreds, if not thousands of trees down, some on houses and cars, power out for days for some, it was darned close! AFAIK no one was hurt, at least not in my town.

Are you selling the guinea's because I can't seem to hatch any.

 

[RaZ]

Hey... Guess what... another new part on the jeep! WOOHOO!

Same here with my old truck.
It's gets rough trying to keep an old vehicle running.

 

[NovaAman]

At least the part was the easy one to do. Power steering and pulley. 4 bolts, one nut. Well two nuts if you consider the nut doing it. Lol. The pulley was the pain in the rump part. Getting it on...

I signed and shared the petition on FB.

 

[RaZ]

The first "official" face-to-face meeting of the Michigan Small Farm Council took place tonight. There were 8 people there, which I think is tremendous since we come from all over the state including the UP to advocate for small farm operations.

The Board of Directors was affirmed, officers were nominated and approved and a couple of committees were formed. That may seem kind of dry and boring but it is necessary in taking the steps needed to be recognized as a legitimate concern. Rather than just a handful of backyard chicken keepers.

The point is that we are voices for all things farm-related.
We are looking for first-person stories of why people are raising chickens, spinning wool, breeding heritage swine, contributing to local farmer's markets, growing fruits and vegetables, producing wine or maple syrup and even using farm critters as out-reach and therapy animals.

Let me know if you would like to help.

 

[yorkchick]

That made me laugh. 

Oh, Raz, if you thought the Rasputin crack was funny, sometime when you have half a day I'll tell you the whole story of this blasted roo. Stewie. He was dancing on the edge of culling since the day he was hatched. In fact, he came from an ugly egg. (People say, "What? How can an egg be ugly?" Well, he was an Easter Egger. So really their number one reason to exist is pretty eggs. And the egg he hatched from was an ugly dull grayish tannish green).

So let's count all the charges against him. (Which I freely admit are just evidence of how willfully slow I was about the culling--I knew what I should do, I just put off doing it):
1) poopy butt since the day he hatched in May of last year--not diarrhea, stool that hit the ground was normal, just a LOT of it stayed in his feathers, got worse as he got older; 2) managed to get pooped on by another chicken and develop maggots, I spent hours one night cleaning him up, then six weeks with him healing up in our guest bathroom (right next to our bedroom) just as he began crowing; 3) "Ninja Rapist" (to borrow a phrase from NovaAman)--terrorized two of my Sebright hens to the point they would not even leave the coop and one of them was not just bald but quite bloody on her back--at this point (instead of culling!!) I isolated him in a small coop/run. I meant to cull him. And then I meant to process him and stew his bony little self. But somehow day by day I just kept feeding and watering him an cleaning his coop and occasionally cleaning his poopy behind. And then in the winter I ran an extension cord out so he could have a heated waterer.

Yeah, and don't get the idea we were bonding over any of this, either. Cleaning the maggots out, and the butt baths I've given him, did not make Stewie love me (not that I can blame him for that...) Living inside for six weeks and getting handled daily didn't either. I even went in and sat with him every day for awhile, brought something to read, and let him run around the bathroom out of the cage. Can't say it made us any fonder of each other. Only chicken I've had that I had no liking for. I have two other roosters, same hatch date, that are great.

Anyway, we come to strike four. A week ago last Monday, Stewie got maggots again, this time from his own poop. Yeah, not like I have anyone but myself to blame, for putting it off so long. And I was neither going to make him a house chicken nor give him a butt bath every day, just so he could continue to live in solitary confinement. So that's why I had to do it that day, and quickly. I always kept a close eye on him and his unfortunate nether regions, so I know the maggots had not been there the day before, but maggot are no joke and if I wasn't going to treat them then I wasn't going to let him suffer. And I'd been planning to cull him for months. I'd done all kinds of reading, on BYC and elsewhere.

Yeah. About that. I think I won't go into detail. (Anyone who would like graphic details for educational purposes or to write a scholarly paper invoking comparisons with Rasputin can PM me), Shall we say that theory is good, and reading is wonderul, and it's great to know five different ways (on paper) to kill a chicken? And then can we perhaps agree that it would be preferable to know as a hands-on skill just a single way to do it competently?

I eat meat. I eat the chickens from the factory farms that led short horrible miserable lives. I think if I'm going to eat chicken, it would be so much better to raise my own, give them a good life, and they'd have only that one bad day. I always thought that if I did try raising meat chickens, I would also want to do my own processing because I would want to know it was done in the most humane way. I can't say I came anywhere close to that ideal with Stewie.

 

[yorkchick]

I used this method when the dogs got into our meaties.  It went pretty well, even with my dull knives.  I did cervical dislocation, and then chopped their heads off after they were done twitching and hung them up by their legs to "drain" for about 10min before I skinned them.  Don't know if all that was necessary, but I did it anyway.

This is a good video for skinning, thank you. I had planned to skin Stewie actually, back when I kept putting off the whole thing. Then when I couldn't wait, I also decided I couldn't eat him (maggot problem, sigh). There wasn't much meat on him, but I wouldn't have wasted it if I hadn't delayed so long... Anyway, I'm glad to hear that skinning worked well for you. (My favorite part of the video is the cat begging for the innards).

 

[EverMystique1]

My poor little isa brown is so beat up by my ee roo (rehomed) she is bald, bloody and limping. Poor girl. She would go after him when ever he went after another girl so she got the brunt of it all. Hoping she heals up well. On a funnier note, my silkie roo was just terrorized by a butterfly. Squaking and running away from it. Literally pooed himself with fear. Funniest thing I've ever seen. Wish I would have caught it on video.

Terrorized by a butterfly had me snorting, trying NOT to laugh obnoxiously, as my DH is sleeping. Not nice to wake him up with outrageously loud laughter.

At least the part was the easy one to do. Power steering and pulley. 4 bolts, one nut. Well two nuts if you consider the nut doing it. Lol. The pulley was the pain in the rump part. Getting it on...

I signed and shared the petition on FB.

Really, Nova? You could so fit in at work. I heard on the radio tonight, "Brandon, did you find your nuts?" Lost it. Standing by the boss, and he lost it, too.

Oh, Raz, if you thought the Rasputin crack was funny, sometime when you have half a day I'll tell you the whole story of this blasted roo. Stewie. He was dancing on the edge of culling since the day he was hatched. In fact, he came from an ugly egg. (People say, "What? How can an egg be ugly?" Well, he was an Easter Egger. So really their number one reason to exist is pretty eggs. And the egg he hatched from was an ugly dull grayish tannish green).

So let's count all the charges against him. (Which I freely admit are just evidence of how willfully slow I was about the culling--I knew what I should do, I just put off doing it):
1) poopy butt since the day he hatched in May of last year--not diarrhea, stool that hit the ground was normal, just a LOT of it stayed in his feathers, got worse as he got older; 2) managed to get pooped on by another chicken and develop maggots, I spent hours one night cleaning him up, then six weeks with him healing up in our guest bathroom (right next to our bedroom) just as he began crowing; 3) "Ninja Rapist" (to borrow a phrase from NovaAman)--terrorized two of my Sebright hens to the point they would not even leave the coop and one of them was not just bald but quite bloody on her back--at this point (instead of culling!!) I isolated him in a small coop/run. I meant to cull him. And then I meant to process him and stew his bony little self. But somehow day by day I just kept feeding and watering him an cleaning his coop and occasionally cleaning his poopy behind. And then in the winter I ran an extension cord out so he could have a heated waterer.

Yeah, and don't get the idea we were bonding over any of this, either. Cleaning the maggots out, and the butt baths I've given him, did not make Stewie love me (not that I can blame him for that...) Living inside for six weeks and getting handled daily didn't either. I even went in and sat with him every day for awhile, brought something to read, and let him run around the bathroom out of the cage. Can't say it made us any fonder of each other. Only chicken I've had that I had no liking for. I have two other roosters, same hatch date, that are great.

Anyway, we come to strike four. A week ago last Monday, Stewie got maggots again, this time from his own poop. Yeah, not like I have anyone but myself to blame, for putting it off so long. And I was neither going to make him a house chicken nor give him a butt bath every day, just so he could continue to live in solitary confinement. So that's why I had to do it that day, and quickly. I always kept a close eye on him and his unfortunate nether regions, so I know the maggots had not been there the day before, but maggot are no joke and if I wasn't going to treat them then I wasn't going to let him suffer. And I'd been planning to cull him for months. I'd done all kinds of reading, on BYC and elsewhere.

Yeah. About that. I think I won't go into detail. (Anyone who would like graphic details for educational purposes or to write a scholarly paper invoking comparisons with Rasputin can PM me), Shall we say that theory is good, and reading is wonderul, and it's great to know five different ways (on paper) to kill a chicken? And then can we perhaps agree that it would be preferable to know as a hands-on skill just a single way to do it competently?

I eat meat. I eat the chickens from the factory farms that led short horrible miserable lives. I think if I'm going to eat chicken, it would be so much better to raise my own, give them a good life, and they'd have only that one bad day. I always thought that if I did try raising meat chickens, I would also want to do my own processing because I would want to know it was done in the most humane way. I can't say I came anywhere close to that ideal with Stewie.

I can't even begin to list the things you had me cracking up from. I know it could not have been fun for you to go through, but your way with words made this fun to read.

 

[Maah]

Quote:
In NE Allegan County... approx 20 min or so south of Grand Rapids.