Michigan Thread - all are welcome!

[eatwhatyougrow]

Does anyone have or have experience with meat rabbits?

As my wife tells the story....my father in law raised meat rabbits but the kids thought they were pets....one night for dinner the oldest was like wow mom this dinner is really good....and the youngest who had witnessed the slaying earlier that afternoon pipes up, yeah its your rabbit fluffy, she is tasty huh? Okay maybe not the experience you were looking for.....

 

[eatwhatyougrow]

 @eatwhatyougrow
 Nope! Never raised meat birds before. We have hatched before and I know the smell. :-/ I wanted a batch to process before I go camping Memorial Day Weekend. Otherwise I would have waited a bit and housed them in the shed/coop. I am tempted to move them out there once they have feathers and just make sure the lamp is secure. They are in a freezer box right now and I see a few are starting to get feathers. 


We read about the 12 on and 12 off. We had planned on that. Good to know that works well. As to how many... 25. Processing myself? No. That is more work than I want to do. Well, more like I am not positive I could kill humanely and then quickly butcher before my autistic child escaped my SO. When we took care of Stew last year, my dad came out and took care of him. We (I was learning) skinned him to get that part done faster. No plucking. I found a place in Holland who will process them. Although I know we have an Amish couple at the Muskegon Farmer's Market who sells chicken. I may ask them about butchering.


I am still reading on the fermented feed. Tips?

 

There are a couole good threads on here...I did the fermented feed thing last yeqr and I noticed improvement in both my meat birds and the layers...but it does take a little work to get it set up..but once u have your system going it works well I had a three bucket system where I always had three buckets fermenting at any given time so that whatever I was feeding had been sitting for three days...like I said there are a few threads on here that have s ton of good info on the topic...

 

[eatwhatyougrow]

Oh forgot to mention mine have been in the barn under two h6ndred watt bulbs for two weeks already...of course there little broder is fully insulated so it does okay even with the low temps we had the last few nights.ill have to snap a picture next time I'm out there...

 

[Farmerboy16]

Finally Poor Myrtle gave birth to twins today! The black one is a girl! Def a keeper!!! The white and brown is a boy! My lovely wife named the girl, Pepper, a perfect name!

 

[jlynnet]

More cute baby goats!!

My son keeps hatching chicks. If anyone needs Bielefelders, Jubilee Orpingtons, Tolbunt Polish or Swedish Flower Hens let me know!! The boy has an obsession!!

Nice warmer weather today, but snow in the morning. Mother Nature needs to get a hormone patch, so her temp stabilizes.

 

[cabutler13]

We have 2 chicks, currently about 5 weeks old, in a brooder. They are our only chickens right now. Our first chickens! We are only allowed to keep 4 hens total.
We built a chicken ark for them and were planning on getting 2 hens also but now we're thinking 3 will be the limit on the ark.(the more I read on here the more I learn!) Can you have a single hen and then add 2 chicks or will the hen get mean? One chick is an isa brown and the other is Americuna or we EE( not sure if it's actually Americuna...) They've been together for 3 of their 4 weeks of life.

 

[cabutler13]

 

[Brennigan]

Finally Poor Myrtle gave birth to twins today! The black one is a girl! Def a keeper!!! The white and brown is a boy! My lovely wife named the girl, Pepper, a perfect name!

 

[Trefoil]

Aww. I almost flagged you for cute.

 

[preciouskitty]

Welcome to the newcomers!

Love the cute baby goats & all the chick pix!

I'm giving some eggs to a guy at work this week..his kids want to hatch "cute fuzzy things". He picked up an incubator & will set the eggs Saturday. Made sure they already have homes, as I can't take them (his brother has a farm & needs more chickens).

Still don't know what to do with the PR getting beat up. Pretty sure she's not sick (tho I am). She's eating, pooping fine. Laying her daily egg. Yesterday I threw her outside, when the fighting began I grabbed the offender & threw HER inside. Another simply took her place. Poor beat up girl has so much Blu Kote on her face & comb. I just don't know what to do. She can't stay in the house forever; but I don't want to come home & find a bloodied half dead girl in the run...knowing she suffered all day would kill me. Chickens sure can be evil.

I don't like the only option I've come up with, either...unless someone wants a really sweet, good laying PR....