Nevadans?

[Jeeper1540]

ok, heres my chicken/duck math

3 Buff Orps
1 BR
1 Welsummer
2 White Leghorns
2 RIRs
1 Black Star

1 Pekin
1 Blue Swedush
2 Magpies

so 10 chickens+4 ducks= 14 Birds!!! And hopefully more this sprimg

 

[shanyalv]

Quote:
Not a pork eater here but darn that is a lot of meat! Congrats on the haul. If there was not a zoning ordinance against having a cow on less than 1/2 acre I would have a cow here. Good for dairy and meat for their calf once a year. Mmmm.... darn Washoe County zoning!

We would do a cow as well but I think my poor dogs would not know what to do. Someone here locally had a smaller cow ready for slaughter but I just did not have the funds to be able to buy it or I would have. I was raised on good beef from a reservation and my first time buying meat from a market when I moved out I got horribly sick.

Nevadaron I noticed that in your signature. I am jealous ! We actually do large pig roasts here so I will be down at Rc farms sometime in the fall to buy a whole pig to put in my caja box and roast.

Jeeper - Nice flock there ! How many are laying ?

 

[NevadaRon]

I'm hoping to do a cow soon - maybe next year. Now that I am on 10 acres I have the room for it. I was thinking of planting crested wheatgrass this fall. It only requires 8 inches of precipitation a year so there is no need to irrigate it. That would give me forage so I wouldn't have to buy hay except as a supplement.

 

[SunnyDawn]

Hi everybody!
Finally made the long climb up the stairs to say "Hi"! You all have been sooo busy. I've just been lying around all day with a couple of walks around the coffee table being my big "outings" for the day.

Lots of great info being passed around including a great recipe, a new coop (looks like a great start Eglyntine), hogs being butchered

, egg pricing (I charge $3.50, if they bring a carton to exchange, for extra large eggs), a great place to buy beef (thanks Nevada Ron) and new babies being hatched! On top of all that we have a new Nevadan on our thread!

Welcome to the Nevada thread, bergerj2!

Great to see our community growing some more! We have quite a few new folks this month.

Wonderful to see you all!

I also have eggs incubating, thanks to Genny (HF). I have 3 broodies that she has very kindly supplied with fertile eggs which are developing nicely so far. Not a great time of year for hatchlings but if the mommas are raising them they have a better chance.

I've got to get a place out of city limits so I can have a calf. Not interested in milk (love fresh milk but not into that much labor) just want the meat. A pig would be great if I could find someone waaaaay above par to process it. Folks that are really talented in this area are hard to find and I am super picky.

Well I'm gettin' tired again already so I'm gonna sign off. Just wanted to be sure and say "Hi" and thank you all for your good wishes. I really appreciate all the positive thoughts coming my way. They are doing me a world of good!!! Every day gets a little easier. THANK YOU ALL!

 

[Eglyntine]

Quote:
Happy to see you up and around. It's really good for ya to move around as much as you can after any big surgery or even small surgery. Gets the blood flowing and tells the brain to kick in on the healing.

I am very glad to hear you are doing well. I hope you keep up the good progress and do not stress yourself out too much. *hug*

Off to the parental units for dinner, you all take care for the evening and happy chickening!

 

[aubreynoramarie]

yay! glad youre feeling well!

hey i have a question. would it be worth buying a bale of hay to put on the ground in the run? would it get rotten and yucky if it got wet? i use straw in the coop and i love it so much, i just think it would be really neat to have in the run instead of just dirt and sand.

let me know smarty pantses!

 

[Peep_Show]

Wow! I've been out on assignment for nearly a week and it is amazing what's rolled on....

Sunny, I am SO sorry you had to undergo surgery, but VERY happy you're recuping well. I send you speedy "Get well" vibes across the sands. Take care of yourself and, by all means, delegate!

Welcome to all the new folks!

Eglyntine, that foundation looks SOLID. Any engineering genes in your background?

Funny story: My grandpa was a civil engineer (opted to design and build the Bay Bridge rather than work on Hoover Dam...which is why my family's from the S.F. Bay Area...but I somehow wound up in Vegas anyway, so go figger) and it's kind of interesting that half of his offspring were real engineer/inventor types. But of the grandkids about 75% of us got the put-it-together-better bug. Seems like as a kid I took apart a toaster or two. We're always figuring angles, rethinking the wheel, doing math and just plain counting. When bored we count.... I tend to figure out numbers of ceiling tiles, count knobs and books while sitting there in lawyer offices during depositions. Did you know there are 13 segments to a grapefruit? Dad, Sis and I all knew this.... Mom (married into the clan, not inclined to count) thinks we're nuts....or, at least, a bit odd. One of my favorite pasttimes is planning chicken coops.... I always love watching someone's progress, so please keep us posted with lots of pictures!

re: Hay. Hey! Lots of roadside retail pumpkin patches use hay bales in their construction, so come November 1st you could probably pick some up very cheap. But I've often found if you just need something to fill the nest boxes that feedstores will often let you sweep the hay storage areas for free.

Nevada Ron: So just how much meat does a 200 lb hog produce? Is there a lot of slaughter waste weight? I found with the lambies that a 99-lb lamb was good for about 55 to 65 lbs. of meat. The turkeys gave a real good ratio, though. I had a 75 lb. live-weight bird (long story of delayed processing gone too long, but I actually had two of them that languished in the barn past Thanksgiving until Easter....cost a fortune to feed) who dressed out to 63 lbs. of freezer goodies. Of course, at that size a drumstick and thigh was like serving a ham. Do you have a sausage grinder? The only thing that ever goes to waste with a pig is the squeal....

Aubreynoramarie, you can put straw in the run, but pray you never have to take it out. It will get wet and smelly and it can compact into a nasty mat that's real hard to pitchfork out. There's a reason folks like to put down shavings as bedding in the barn....it's easy to shovel out. Straw is good for an occasional horse bed (great for foaling), but for the long term you'll curse the day you started layering the stuff instead of mucking it out. Just my $.02 of experience.
Now, I loved putting down straw as mulch in the veggie garden because at the end of the growing season (and after lots of waterings) it was pretty easy to turn under for composting. Of course, had all sorts of interesting weedy stuff the next spring. But it was worth it to have soft footing to walk on that looked all neat and pristine and did a fab job at keeping the water in and the weeds at bay.


None of this is *really* interesting, but I bet y'all count a grapefuit next time you eat one!

 

[NevadaRon]

Glad to hear you are doing so well Sunny!

Peep_Show this is my first foray into pork production so I don't know the hard figures yet, but I'll post them when I do. My Storey's Guide says that you get 150 lbs. out of a 220 lb. hog.

I should be getting them back any day now. Can't wait!

 

[Jeeper1540]

All are laying, except the 2 drakes of course

Quote:
Not a pork eater here but darn that is a lot of meat! Congrats on the haul. If there was not a zoning ordinance against having a cow on less than 1/2 acre I would have a cow here. Good for dairy and meat for their calf once a year. Mmmm.... darn Washoe County zoning!

We would do a cow as well but I think my poor dogs would not know what to do. Someone here locally had a smaller cow ready for slaughter but I just did not have the funds to be able to buy it or I would have. I was raised on good beef from a reservation and my first time buying meat from a market when I moved out I got horribly sick.

Nevadaron I noticed that in your signature. I am jealous ! We actually do large pig roasts here so I will be down at Rc farms sometime in the fall to buy a whole pig to put in my caja box and roast.

Jeeper - Nice flock there ! How many are laying ?

 

[SunnyDawn]

Quote:
Took you this long to fess up to being a Math nerd like Ron and me huh? You are so funny! Yes I knew a grapefruit has 13 sections and I also count everything.

I tell you though, there are many times I wish I could shut it down and not overthink things so much! I'm sure there are lot's of times that those around me wish the same thing.

There are a lot of us critical thinkers here on this thread though. I think that's why I feel at home here.

I don't just design coops, I also learned enough to design simple house plans (which I love to do when I'm bored). Can't engineer a barrel ceiling or complex roof but I do enjoy tinkering with it. I take it you are an engineer? Or in a related field?
And Aubreynoramarie, I agree with Peeps, don't put straw in the run. It will look so great and be so nice to walk on (at first) that you'll think we were nuts... until it rains a couple of times and the stuff starts to rot.

You'll figure out real quick why most of us use DG (decomposed granite) or sand instead. Also put it out now. It never works as well if you wait until after the run gets messy.

Thanks for all the encouragement everyone! I am one of the few folks that the nurses had to tell to slow down! I was overdoing it. I argued, reminding them that they said to move around as much as I could, they replied that they say it that way because usually no one wants to move at all! I apparently have a very high pain tolerance because the Docs are always reminding me that pain is a signal... blah, blah, blah... now I'm boring myself! Even the pain pills aren't overriding the boredom! Must be time to go rest.