ways to keep our expenses down

[Chook-A-Holic]

Please don't feed any animals gypsum board(aka drywall/sheetrock). People don't realize what is in this stuff. Especially since these days a lot of it comes from china. Oyster shell is too cheap. I realize there are ways to cut corners to save money but feeding animals building materials full of chemicals is not one of them. Remember a while back where people were getting sick in their own homes due to improperly manufactured drywall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drywall


Manufacture

A wallboard panel is made of a paper liner wrapped around an inner core made primarily from gypsum plaster, the semi-hydrous form of calcium sulfate (CaSO4·½ H2O). The raw gypsum, CaSO4·2 H2O, (mined or obtained from flue gas desulfurization (FGD)) must be calcined before use. Kettle or Flash calciners typically use natural gas today. The plaster is mixed with fiber (typically paper and/or fiberglass), plasticizer, foaming agent, finely ground gypsum crystal as an accelerator, EDTA, starch or other chelate as a retarder, various additives that increase mildew and fire resistance (fiberglass or vermiculite), wax emulsion for lower water absorption and water. This is then formed by sandwiching a core of wet gypsum between two sheets of heavy paper or fiberglass mats. When the core sets and is dried in a large drying chamber. The sandwich becomes rigid and strong enough for use as a building material. [3].

 

[Uzuri]

I don't do this because I don't butcher my own deer, but a friend has a nuisance license and butchers a couple deer each year. All the non-human consumable meat scraps get canned for the chickens.

 

[randomchick]

My frugalness includes my family and 2 pigs as well as my chickens so here is just a spittle of my for better or worse frugalness.
-I am the relative who brings the scrap bucket to family events, offer to clean up plates so I can scrap everything in the bucket, and jump at someone about to use the garbage.
-Everything gets composted or used in the garden. Everything! toilet paper rolls to hold seedlings, milk bags (yes we get milk in bags) get reused for sandwiches bags or waterproof liners in our boots, broken umberalls get turned into diaper liners, etc.
-I grow an abundance of sunflowers and dry them in the crawlspace, for a supplement for the birds in winter.
-socks with holes get sewn into a thick rug to place under the sink or bathtub.
-My pigs root any land I need worked. I plan on getting a few more pigs(through mating) so I can get more bush turned into pasture.
-I take broken tiles from my husbands work and make art pieces like side tables, then sell them.
-garbage collectors. That rusty old frame from a camper will turn into a very nice portable coop, old dresser into a brooder, etc.
-dog hair can be knit into a teddybear.
-Trade, Trade, Trade. I trade eggs for coffee beans, chicken for beef, pork for honey, sunflower seeds for garlic, babysitting for cooked meals that can be frozen.

 

[12GAGirl]

Ok my husband says I am so furgal I can squeeze a booger out of Wasington's nose on a dollar bill so yes I have thought of ways to cut down on my chicken expenses too. First, we picked up scrap pieces of lumber from our dumpster sight and we were given some materials from a friend to build our coop and nest boxes. Also, instead of buying a basket for my eggs I am using an empty Maxwell House coffee can with an old t-shirt in the bottom of it. In addition, I feed my chickens kitchen scraps from my kitchen and my parents' and I pick weeds and feed to them to cut down on the feed cost. The bedding in the two nest boxes is hay that falls from the rolls we feed our cows and I rake up pine straw to put in the bottom of their coop when it is freezing outside. This I learned from my grandfather, I use empty food cans for feed scoops instead of buying them and I recycled an old dog food bowl for my chickens feed pan. And using pellets instead of crumbles saves a lot of food since they can pick the pellets up out of the dirt easier than the crumbles.

 

[gryeyes]

Unfortunately, I am a profligate spender - when I have the money. Which I don't, very often. But when I do.... watch out. All these ideas are absolutely wonderful, and I do use some of them. (I'll use some more I've picked up in this thread.) But *me* as an example of being frugal? No way. It just doesn't happen. It's not that I refuse to be frugal, it's just that I have no flippin' resistance to temptation.

Last year I saw the cutest little rake and hoe for kids, and I had to buy them for myself. They are the perfect size for the raised garden beds I built. They were cheaper than buying "regular sized" garden implements, but my landlady had already told me I could use hers. That would have been free....

However, I do think it's really cool that I can pick up 5 gallon plastic buckets from the bakery at the local grocery store - FOR FREE, and use them for various things. I've built two gravity nipple waterers and a feeder out of 3 of 'em. So, perhaps there IS some hope for me....

 

[Ariel301]

My coops and goat shelters are made out of free stuff and 'trash' from around the property. The walls are made of pallets that I got for free at the local hardware store. I then lined the insides with old plastic painters' dropcloths stapled to the pallets--now they are like little waterproof greenhouses--very warm inside!. I stuffed old straw and hay scraps from around the hay pile into the pallets' insides for insulation. The roofs are made of an assortment of scrap lumber, unusable warped plywood, and a tarp that used to be a pen roof until the wind tore it up--now it's folded in half and nailed down as a roof over a coop. Plus it catches water, so I also end up with a free second water dish every time it rains lol. My nest boxes are made of scrap plywood bits I found in the dry creekbed behind our property. I use the hay the goats have wasted as bedding for the chickens, and then when it gets too dirty for that, it goes in the compost. I also watch craigslist for free stuff or cheap hay, etc.

I free-range my chickens for even just a few minutes at a time, any time I will be outside. I can't leave them unsupervised because of predators, but I let them eat all the free yard food they can get while I feed, milk, and clean up the pens. I'm also going to start asking local restaurants if I can leave them five gallon buckets to let them fill up with their vegetable scraps and I can pick them up once a week to use as chicken feed on top of the scraps I give them from the kitchen. I can get leftover grain mash from a local brewery for cheap, but the goats don't like it, so I will be getting grain from a local farm that mixes and grinds it for a decent price. The feed store keeps raising the prices and I cannot afford it anymore. I do recycle eggshells to feed the chickens, and I don't buy grit because our yard is entirely made of sand and small gravel, so the chickens get their supply that way.

I am raising animals and vegetables for my food supply on no income at all. My husband and I lost our jobs over a year ago and have not been able to find work since, but we prefer to buy as little food as we can from grocery stores and produce as much as we can at home.