Scott Leonard

My  question is why do you want to live trap a woodchuck?  If you see one there's more. I read somewhere that an empty woodchuck den is repopulated in 10 days or less in areas with a healthy population.  I shoot and bury them in the burrow to keep others out. Anything you eat, they'll eat, a descending order of preference of course but they don't go hungry.

The beauty of this country's system is you can pursue whatever "vision" you have to solve whatever problem you have or that you perceive you have, the original poster has a problem with egg breakage by birds, I don't have that problem, I've never had that problem in over 40 years, moreover generationally those that came before me didn't have that problem and did chickens and eggs for a living, very successfully I might add. The steps to attain that success to this day are the same, a simple recipe that if followed will produce repeatable results year over year. While simple in process the steps are nevertheless necessary, knit one, pearl two repeat. As someone that makes his living from agriculture along multiple avenues, chicken/eggs/ goat dairy/ greenhouse horticulture/field crops/grain production/produce there are enough avenues for improvement/extrapolation/experimentation without trying to fix something that's not broken.  In the end it's horses and water

And not to overly obviate the point, I've never had an egg breakage  issue

Nope...I grew up on a farm, gramp and then dad had 12000 layers, 6 flocks 2k per. I've scaled back and diversified into dairy and greenhouse as well, but will be at 400 layers this year. Debeaked ay 12 wks,  
done at night, under red lamps, electric debeakers, quietly, calmly, set to 1/4 the top and touch flatten the bottom, 2-21/2 hrs start to finish, about as traumatizing as trimming your finger nails. Scared fish don't bite and stressed birds don't lay, we always had and I have now over 90% lay production every flock

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:Small scale combines exist, in a price range around $3000.

Of my 3, the most expensive was $450, you have to keep an eye out

A book that's good for grains is "The Organic Grain Grower" by Jack Lazor, residing northeast Vermont. His is an operation that's at one end of the spectrum, but gets to the soil level simply and for a range of grains.
 That scything thing will do two things quickly, how little time it takes to work yourself to your knees and how far you have to go to be competent at scythe sharpening. Been there done that, the answer was buy several JD 30 pull combines, be a good attention to detail mechanic and then let John do the hard part

Matt McSpadden wrote:I would never recommend debeaking the birds.

Why?

Are the birds debeaked? Having a blunt tip makes it very hard to crack shells, also make sure there is adequate water