Jackson Bradley

Looks like black soldier fly larvae. They are good reducers of the material. They don't produce castings like worms but I like having them in our compost piles.

I think there are some mixed opinions on them. I put a shovel full in with the chickens for them to eat, every now and again when they are thick in the compost.

Thomas,

Is the heater still meeting your expectations? Very few indoor models are battery and propane only and I am considering the model you purchased. Thanks!

From websters 1828 dictionary:

RAN'DOM, noun

1. A roving motion or course without direction; hence, want of direction, rule or method; hazard; chance; used in the phrase, at random that is, without a settled point of direction; at hazard.

From Black's law dictionary:

RANDOM
Events or data that acts of its own accord. It will show no recognized pattern or direction that can be plotted for the anticipation of future actions. A random event or action

No, nothing is random.

Abigail M Johnson wrote:Any tips on getting kida involved without traumatizing them?

My kids have a natural interest in what I am doing so they usually watch and I let them "help". After seeing the process a few times, they think it is normal. It takes time to make time they say.

My oldest daughter was bothered initially seeing the deer, chickens, rabbits being processed but she is not bothered now. I talked to her about the options and she told me she "likes meat too much to quit". She went through every animal and decided she like to eat them all so it was a process we had to work through. I am unsure if that is normative or not but most are so young that this is just a fact of life.

Being organized has been a big help. I have made a few changes/additions to the butchering area.
A wall mounted fan, some shelves, additional buckets, kill cones, paver spots for the scalder and plucker. I also set a post and ran a beam with gambrel hook for deer.

I butchered around 50 chickens last spring and around 30 rabbits. The kids aren't quite old enough to help much and my wife is busy with what needs to happen for us to get through a day so I basically do it all myself right now. It was a "heavy" spring will all the dispatching but things are better this year due to being more organized and overall being better at butchering.

I went to the kill cones for chickens after using the chopping block on about 30 of them. It cost me too much time to have to hold the chicken over a bucket while it bleeds out verses the kill cone where I just need to be there long enough to make the cuts. I drilled a hole in the cone and cinch their legs up with a piece of paracord in case they work out during the death throws.

I was dispatching in one area, going to another for scalding and plucking and then back to the dispatch area for evisceration. Now everything is spaced out within a few steps and that helped a lot.

I tried a few evisceration methods and through trial and error, found one that works well for me and that I can be pretty fast at.

I found out through the bop and bleed rabbit dispatch method that some rabbits have harder skulls than others. They were all dispatched immediately but sometimes I broke their skulls and the bleeding out was not as effective they had a broken skull. Cervical dislocation using a piece of rebar has a very consistent result compared to bop and bleed and I have moved to that method.

So far this year, I limit myself to butchering 4-6 rabbits at a time and 8-10 chickens at a time. For me, that has improved my overall attitude and care when processing.

Quail are actually very enjoyable to process and basically process just like a chicken except much faster.

I wanted to update and share a few things that we've learned over the year because interacting here https://permies.com/t/367559/Rex-doe-kits brought some things to mind.

Sometimes a first time doe will have a kit outside of the box. This has happened and if I catch it fast enough, I move the kit into the box with the others. That has not been an indication of bad mothering skills as long as it is not happening every time a doe kindles. I think having a kit outside of the box can lead to the instincts kicking in for the doe to cannibalize the kit. I check the expected mother does out every 30 mins to every hour on the expected morning especially if I have a first time mamma.

The does we keep as breeders have 10+ kits reliably. Sometimes, that same doe who gives up 10+ kits later may only have have 4-8 the first time she kindles. We wait for a few rounds to see what we have as far as number of kits.

I like to breed 2 does on the same day if I have 2 bucks or a day apart if I have 1 buck. Especially if I have an unproven doe. If a doe only has a few kits, I combine them all together with a proven mamma and rebreed the other doe a little faster than usual. This is a two edged sword because if you have a bad mamma, you want to be able to identify those kits if you have combined them so that you grow them out and cull if you have a bad mamma.

I believe we have retained all good mammas and this has been passed down in our short experience so it does not concern me to combine the kits. Otherwise the best way I found to identify them is with a fat red marker mark on their backs. Again, I think we are passed that point but we'll eventually need to bring in some unrelated animals unless we decide to line breed.

We try to keep a moderately intensive breeding schedule due to not breeding in the hot summer months. We breed a doe, let her kindle, rebreed 4 weeks after kindling, remove the kits around 6-7 weeks old and repeat. We do not breed from May-Sept.

Billy Weisbrich wrote:I have no source to back this up, but a well-respected poultry farmer in our area recently posted about the whole daylight and egg-laying thing. His claim was that a hen experiencing a longer day (whether naturally, ie: summertime, or from lights in the coop) will eat more since she is active for more hours of the day. Chickens sleeping on their roosts don't usually come down to eat in the dark, even if there is food available. He claimed the extra eating would result in more eggs being laid.

Your chickens may be experiencing something similar but, by feeding them very nutrient-dense food, it sounds like you can skip out on the lighting!

I have never used lights. For those that do, does it keep the chickens from going to the roost early? If so, the observation here makes a lot of sense.

I agree, also to do with protein. Last winter, our hens were on 16% protein layer feed supplemented with winter veggies, deer carcasses, chicken scraps. Laying slowed down around the solstice.

This winter they have been on 20% protein layer feed with winter veggies, deer carcasses, chicken scraps. All the way through the solstice, they ate less and gave me almost an egg per hen per day.  Barely noticeable that they slowed down.

paul wheaton wrote:I love this graphic



In the end, if you care, you do the things you can do.  

This reminds me of something I read a while back.  

The positive statement is that change happens first with the individual, then the family, then the community, etc.

The (or one of many) negative statement(s) would be that if anyone or any entity seeks to diminish the individual, then/or the family, then/or the community, etc. then they confirm the positive statement.

Not necessarily to exclude the attempt to change things through government whether local or larger scale. That is all well and fine if the positive statement is met or if you're seeking to support it being met by those avenues.

When I interact with a person, entity, group, party etc. I ask myself if they are promoting the individual, the family, the community, etc. or if they are diminishing the individual, the family, the community, etc.

Usually, if I have answered that question, I know what I need to know about that person or thing.

Seems to fit in with this graphic, to me anyway.

There are a couple areas in our life where this is very challenging.

Kids, we have 6. The default is for folks to buy or gift us endless plastic junk toys. We have sat everyone who does this down and explained our thoughts on this topic and that we would like to avoid that stuff. If played with outside, it is ruined (I guess from sunlight) in about 60 days. We have to repeat this conversation about every 2 years because a holiday or birthday will come around and it is like we never said anything about the plastic junk toys. We understand why this is the case and we try to be lighthearted about it.

Starting a homestead or adding a new category of animal, equipment, food preservation method, etc. The amount of things you need will be highly subjective to so many factors such as time and ready cash available. Buying used normally does not involve the original plastic packaging, shrink wrap, packing material, etc. Other than that, we don't have a say in how folks ship us products we need if we cannot find them local or used. If local, they probably received them in the same packaging and just unboxed them to some extent.

Like John mentions above, seeking out higher quality products that will last longer and are made of other materials is a good idea. Usually those products are more expensive because they are higher quality and do last longer. Over time, it is more economical but sometimes you may not have the budget for a quality item early on.

If recycling is analogous to repurposing, that can be a lot of fun.