Jackson Bradley

I use the "top down" fire method 95% of the time. That may be called the "fireplace fire" on the illustration.

Works great for just about any situation.

Timothy Norton wrote:For those who keep layers, how do you manage your flock to achieve your egg productions goals?

I've considered adding new generations of hens annually or biannually but I don't have a basis for making that determination.

Do you just raise a flock of hens until they live out their natural lives, do you butcher your oldest hens or maybe something else?

Our egg production goals are home based for our family of 8 and 2 neighbors. I like to have 22-25 hens laying to achieve this.

Due to having a dual purpose flock, my selection process is ongoing as I try to keep the larger hens and a larger rooster or two for meat and egg production. There are other selection criteria along with that but the gist is to select the best from my dual purpose flock and keep the 22-25 hens and 1-2 roosters in addition to tractoring broilers a few times a year.

I use plastic leg bands to identify different generations and genetics. As we go through the broiler season and selections get made out of the new generations, I'll cull or sell or give away some older hens. The rooster culling is an ongoing thing because we have a very hard time getting along with each other once they get to be older.

I prefer to sell or give the older hens away. Sometimes they have only been laying for 12-18 months and need to go because of the ongoing selection process. I really dislike processing hens after point of lay.

I did separate flocks for eggs and meat but it became unnecessary once we got our selection process going and it is much easier to manage one flock. You can select from one flock and incubate eggs from your own selections. From what I have seen as far as hatchery chicks, they appear to be selecting more for egg production than meat unless it is a dedicated meat bird like the Cornish X or rangers.

I say all that to say if all I wanted was eggs, I'd get white leghorns and hatch eggs to replace them every 2 years ,after point of lay.

I will also note that some friends of ours handle this question through the dreaded "chicken math" which we've been fortunate to avoid so far.  

Edy Ki wrote:
I would really appreciate hearing how I can feed my 40 rabbits without buying so much pellets. It is too expensive and with the fuel crisis there may be scarcity. How do you feed them?

There are a lot of really good threads on here like this one:   https://permies.com/t/180997/pellet-free-meat-rabbits

It is labor intensive compared to working a job for an hour and buying X amount of pellets but you don't have to do it all at once. I keep 4 does and 2 bucks for breeders and during the breeding season here, I end up with more than 40 at various stages of growing out.

You have to select for breeders that like to eat the things you give them. They will eat it no matter what if they are hungry but the enthusiastic ones put on more weight. Hay and silage are helpful during winter depending on your climate. You can plan your breeding season around the times of the year that have the most food available and get back down to your breeders only when that time is over.

I let some areas of the yard grow the grass up to a foot or two and hand cut it to feed. I also feed blackberry and raspberry canes that are plentiful here. I also am getting close to 200 comfrey plants and they eat all I can grow as well as the chickens eat it. Oregano, basil, most any garden trimmings. You can free feed a good hay all of the time if available and desired.

Comfrey is the main food for ours out of that list.

My observation from butchering various animals is that deer are leaner than rabbits as a percent of total body weight. I think a lot of folks have and do subsist off of deer meat but I am not sure about the health outcomes. I think the hunter gatherer peoples probably ate a very lean diet and here we are so I suppose it may be fine for most folks.

Here are my opinions and while we have been raising rabbits and eating them for a few years, I only have our experience to share.

The rabbit is very easy to feed without store bough inputs. You can select breeders that have more fat, grow well from what you feed them, breed well, etc. Typically a rabbit litter will display similar characteristics. When you start butchering, you can size up fat content and keep some breeders from that litter if you notice them having a lot of fat.

I have found that the older the rabbit is before you butcher, the more fat they have. 12 weeks verses 16 weeks for example. Of course this may eat into feed efficiency but if you can feed them from your land, it is not much of a concern.

I think at this point I have tried every rabbit butchering and cooking method that I could find. I have found to retain the most fat and use the animal in what I feel is the best way, I have arrived at a permanent method.

I do this: https://permies.com/t/283537/Deboning-Rabbit and save all of the bones for broth. I save all of the fat trimmings, edible organs, and grind it all up with the boneless meat in my grinder. It yields a higher fat content and is very versatile.

The poll results are interesting to me by way of "animals" being an option. We live in a rural area and have folks with all manner of animals in a 10 mile radius. Cows, goats, sheep, pigs. My neighbor 2 houses down rotational grazes 50 sheep on 60 acres. He bushhogs about 4x a year. I asked him why and he said there are things the sheep do not eat and if he does not bush hog, the grazing areas will continue to have more and more of these undesirables. Same comments from my neighbors with cows, goats and pigs.

We have 2.5 acres that I mow and bag with a 2 wheel tractor and 38" mowing deck. 2 wheel tractor was not a poll option...

It takes 3.5 hours to do the whole thing counting emptying the bagger. About 2 months per year I mow every week, otherwise I just hit the fast growing spots and from Nov to Mar, no mowing at all.

Why I really have a great attitude about it is because all of the clippings that I bag go toward a specific purpose. Chicken coop, composting them with wood chips, mulch for garden beds, cover for humanure piles, etc. Also, mowing grass is about the easiest and most mindless thing I do in a given week and I genuinely love the time to be in deep thought for hours at a time.

I have not excluded finding another use for some of these mowed areas but I am not actively pursuing other uses due to the tremendous benefit of that great source of compost material!

Blake Lenoir wrote:Could perennial onions such as walking and others work?

The walking onions are fantastic. In our climate, they are great 11 months of the year and would still be edible the one cold month we have if need be. They are very versatile and basically fool proof.  

I would rank them #2 after #1 Comfrey. Kale would be #3.

paul wheaton wrote: I get the impression that there is huge concern for people that are currently not growing food.  I feel like I have been trying to persuade people to grow their own food for decades, so I want to direct those people to all the stuff I have shared over the last couple of decades.  I do feel the best stuff is my most recent "automatic backyard food pump."

I share that concern due to the learning curve involved in growing your own food and meat. Some people, who do not garden, think it is as simple as going out in your yard and planting seeds and getting a couple of chickens.

Not even taking into account soil preparation, mulching, composting, you have to take a year (or more) to figure out what does well in your location and what your willing to baby that needs extra attention. You have to figure out what you like to eat or take the time to adjust your palate to what you can grow in your area.

For animals, a breeding program is very helpful unless you happen to get some excellent breeders to start with. Selecting rabbits to breed based on size, good mothering, litter sizes, and that they eat the fresh stuff you give them. The plan does not need to be formal or written down. Just mental notes about which rabbit does and likes this and that.

If you are raising non commercial chicken breeds, selecting for size is very helpful. Seeing how much of your livestock you can feed from your land. We know if chicken feed became unavailable, we need to cull down to about half of our flock number and then could keep them alive.

I am sure folks here can multiply examples.

I am saying these things as an encouragement, not a discouragement. The learning curve is a lot of fun and very satisfying to solve a piece of the puzzle every so often and try new things.

But the learning curve does exist and the encouragement from us would be to start now. Even if it is only a balcony or a suburban yard.

This deboning method is an absolute gamechanger!

It was quite a learning curve but I have the times down now. Not near as fast as the video but not bad and it is worth the extra time. It took about a dozen rabbits to really understand the video and all that is happening in the 5 minutes.

I processed some today and weighed them through the process to see how it works out. I weighed 2 grow outs:

5.5# each live weight
3# dressed (no head, guts, fur)
2.25# boneless

Mileage varies on how the ratios play out due to how you select your breeders. I prefer a stiff boning knife. I have a few that are semi-flexible but used the most rigid one and it did the best. The bones and little bit of remaining meat go to make broth.

If you've been underwhelmed with cooking options for whole or parted out meat rabbits, this is the solution.

Also, deboning the entire carcass at once yields more meat than deboning pieces. Pretty amazing.

How does this do in the room the heater is in verses the room on the other side of the window? Does one room have higher temp than the other or does it even out well?

R Cohen wrote:

Jackson Bradley wrote:If you will have 12" tall beds and you say it will be 3 planks tall, then the boards you are proposing must be 1x4. Where I live, I can get 2x for about the same price as 1x. If you use 2x6, the bed will only be 2 boards high.

Where I live, a 2x6x8 is $6. For a 4'x4'x12" bed, you'd need 4 of them.

What wood type are you using that a 2"x6"x8' is $6?  For me, that sounds close to the price of the generic SPF (spruce/pine/fir) wood I mentioned above.  This is part of why I was trying to figure out if using "SPF" (unnamed spruce/pine/fir) wood would work okay, or if I need to actually use wood labeled as pine.  Where I am, a 1"x4"x8' is about $9, and a 2"x4"x8' is about $20 for actual knotty pine wood.  That's why I was going for the 1x4's. (especially considering its small size, and that I may not stay in this apartment for that many more years anyway).

If I were to use the "SPF" wood, I could definitely use 2x4's, as those are $4 each.  I'm just not sure what that would entail for gardening or if it's recommended.

Thank you so much for the information!

It is from the local bog box store. If you use untreated, you could paint it before building to extend the life. Treated would last longer but you'll have to decide if you want that wood contacting the soil you are growing plants in. I do not think there would be much of a difference between spruce/pine/fir or #2 pine but others may be able to chime in on their experience.

How long the wood lasts would be very specific to your environment. How wet, humid, termites, etc.

I think the ideal material, if the goal is longevity, would be concrete blocks or bricks. With the concrete blocks, you could fill some of the cells with bag mix concrete and rebar driven into the ground.