Old Tractor Tradeoffs

This will be the second winter for the old Massey, and though we've had out share of ups and downs, she has been a solid part of our farm since we bought her.

She's got some issues. Her carb leaks if she's not running, so we fixed that with a shut-off valve in the middle of the fuel line. Had to replace the starter, battery, spark plugs, wires, coil, breather, a few hoses, put new LED headlights on her, and it's time to replace the front tires as well.

She fires up everytime, and with the beauty of internet you find owners's manuals, and every how to video imaginable on YouTube, so I've felt like everything that's needed fixing was pretty straight forward. She's a simple machine, and that makes her even easier to trouble shoot. She's a bit too light in the front end to easily handle round bales, but for two years now we've managed to get the job done.

Overall, for the money, couldn't bee happier with the Massey Ferguson 135. Don't hesitate to buy one if you have the time and patience to do some work on them.

Incubating Chicken Eggs

Justin Rhodes' "Great American Farm Tour" has really inspired us to get serious about our production, across the board. As I wrote about yesterday, Jack the Ripper set us back a bit with the great Chicken-apocalypse of 2017 by murdering a dozen chickens.

Life goes on, and I loaded up the incubator with another 27 eggs, and they started hatching out 20 days later, by the end of today, after following instructions this time, we had 23 hatchlings out of the 27 eggs. Can't say enough good things about the incubator that Andrea bought me for Father's Day, it seems bullet proof. It helps that we have 3 roosters that are taking care of the hens.

Lessons learned: 1. Mark on a calendar when hatch is going to happen. 2. Don't open the lid unless you're have to add water to increase humidity. 4. A soaked paper towel is better for steady humidity than simply adding water. 5. You can help the chicks out of their shells after a couple of hours and still have them live. You just have to go slow and be mindful of not hurting the chick. The chick has to get itself out of the egg, you just have to help clear a path. If you attempt to pull the chick out you're likely to kill it.

We're going to try to increase the numbers of eggs we're producing and try to produce some extra laying hens to sell as well, so the incubator is probably going to be running non-stop for the next several months. I'll let you know how it goes.

You can find the incubator here: on Amazon. 

Jack, the Ripper.

Sweetest looking killing machine you'll ever see.

It's not all ice cream and cotton candy on the farm. Every single thing in Texas exists to kill other things, or so it seems. After doting on the eggs in the incubator for 3 weeks, or being surprised by the hatching of the eggs mid-week. In my defense, this snafu was due to me placing them in the incubator when I was working a variety of shifts during my Squadron's support of hurricane relief (Harvey, Irma, and Maria).

The chicks hatched out well, all things considered with 18 out of 27 hatching. That number isn't ideal, but since I lost track of the hatch schedule, they hatched without turning off the auto-rotation or adjusting the humidity upwards.

They did well in the brooder, and as soon as they were feathered they were introduced into the main flock in the middle of the night. Though small, they were accepted more or less the first day. The problems with young chickens is that they don't have a momma hen to scold and corral them. This is where disaster struck.

Jack is a terrier mix, looks like a Yorkie/Chihuahua blend of some sort. Like all terriers, his prey drive is extremely high, and basically anything that's his size or smaller, it's on like Donkey Kong to the death.

Enter the new baby chickens, oblivious to the cold blooded killer in front of them, and ignoring the rest of the fleeing flock, they apparently didn't give him much sport. We found his victims all within 15 feet of one another, after leaving Jack unattended for no more than 20 minutes. Lessons were learned, money was lost, tears were shed, a new nickname was earned (one of the fellows at work dubbed him Jack the Ripper, and I think it's going to stick), and life goes on.

Thanksgiving on the Hoof

Today Andrea helped me load up 6 of the turkeys we raised at the buttcrack of dawn. I took them over to Cobb Creek Farms for processing, and I just can't say enough good things about Grady and his team. If you're anywhere nearby they're worth your hard earned money.

We learned a lot from this turkeys. First, with new poults, we put them with two to to three week old chickens. The chickens (who were both hens) taught the turkeys how to eat and drink, this really is invaluable in getting them to live.

We learned that turkeys really are as dumb as their reputation, but in spite of this they're pretty bullet proof by the time they can fly. We learned that they do really well in our area free ranging. We had a goose that imprinted on them and really kept them in line.

We learned that you should never, ever, under any circumstances or for any reason stand under a roosting turkey. Ask. Me. How. I. Know. They poop an unbeliveable amount.

We learned they are very capable and competent foragers, though the older they get the further they roam from the roost.

We learned if you don't keep the wings clipped they are very competent aviators, though they do not seem to know the difference between automobiles and trees.

We learned to not park cars near they roost. They thought our SUV was a portable jungle gym.

We learned that turkeys, after falling into a pig pen in the dark, and being nibble on by pigs will simply try to ignore their situation and hope things get better. We learned that pigs will eat live geese/turkeys without hesitation.

Quite possibly the most important thing we learned was that after being free ranged, turkeys do not do well in a confined space, no matter how good your intentions may be. When I dropped the turkeys off this morning it looked as though they'd been running a poultry version of Fight Club in the big coop.

We learned that turkeys start laying at around 7 months of age.

We learned that free range turkeys will dress out at around 12 pounds on average.

If you have any questions, please let me know. I'll do anything I can to help you.

Rib-Eye's in the Freezer Now

Rib-Eye graduated to the freezer early in October. He only yeilded 340 pounds of meat, which was split with a buddy. I learned a lot with Rib-Eye. Primarily that short horn cattle are not my favorite breed of cattle. We learned that buying a single head of cattle and introducing him to a closed herd can go poorly.

Rib-Eye was never accepted by the herd. He was bullied by all of the other cattle, even the younger and smaller calves. He was a bit forlorn to be honest. This led to him jumping the electric fence from time to time, and eventually just walking through all the electric paddocks. He didn't get as much to eat as the rest of the cattle, and I have to believe this played a role in his lack of finish weight. Hopefully he tastes good. :-) I'll let you know.

Hog Wild

Redneck Pig Pen

This years hogs were an accident. I'd pretty much set my heart on a KuneKune breeding pair, then we went out to buy some rabbit hutches. After we offered to buy the hutches, the folks asked if we wanted to buy the two sows they'd been raising for a couple of months, as they were soon moving out of state. $40 for the pair. Couldn't pass it up.

These ladies were a LOT more active and fun to raise than the neutered Red Wattle/Duroc crosses I brought home last year. They also put on a lot more weight, faster as well. I did add a lot more ration to their daily diet, and we did a little better job of getting all of our table scraps out to them, but I really can't put my finger on why they grew so much better. 

The extra growth may have been the extra ration, or it may have been my pet goose they ate after she wandered into the pen. Thankfully none of us were there to see that. I was outside working on Brisket when one of the turkeys decided he'd had enough of this world and tried to kill himself by flying into their pen at night and then playing possum. Thankfully Andrea got the flashlight out quickly enough and I managed to grab said turkey by the neck (after quite a few feathers had been lost) and throw him out of the pen. The pigs were not happy with me at all. 

I sang, "Piggie, Piggie, Piggie can't you see, sometimes your bacon just hypnotize me" (set to the tune of Notorious B.I.G. each night when I fed them. They seemed to enjoy my singing more than my wife. They were diggers, and one of them escaped briefly about two weeks before they went to the butcher. As is usual when my wife and I herd livestock together, there were tears and profanity. 

We're supposed to get them back from the butcher this week or next. I'm sure I'll post more about them then. 

Update on the Homestead

I can't believe it's been three months since my last post. It's been a long dry summer since. July 6th 2017 was the last hard rain we've seen. Since then, we've only had .9 of an inch of rain. The place is brown and crispy right now. We started feeding hay in late August as the pasture just had no moisture left to grow. We hemmed the cattle up next to the barn, but eventually it got so dry that the big steer figured out that the fence wasn't shocking him anymore, and being 800+ pounds, there wasn't much the fence could do. So it goes! :-)

There's been rain all around us, a lot due to Hurrican Harvey, just not much here. For the year most measuring stations are more than 2.5 inches of rain above normal. Our little homestead has to be more than 4 inches below normal. It really has affected everything on the Homestead. We lost a couple of trees, the chickens laying has gone down, and the pasture is pretty beat down. Hopefully the Japanese persimmon will come back in the spring. 

The orchard swales kept that area producing far long than anything else. One of my goals for this fall is to put 3 swales in the back of the place to slow down rain run off and to direct all the excess rain into the pond. 

I'm a Believer - Broiler Chickens for Beautiful Grass

I grew up in Arkansas, and perhaps being as close to Missouri as I was a bit of the Show Me state rubbed off on me. Joel Salatin, Justin Rhodes, Jack Spirko; the list goes on and on of folks who talk about the value add of grazing broilers. I never imagined it would be as big as this picture is, it still doesn't do justice to how amazing the grass is where we had the broilers, just a few weeks ago.

The most lush, thick grass on my place is where the chicken tractor was. No weeds, jut tasty grass. If I wasn't looking at it with my own eyes I wouldn't believe it. I'm fully committed now to both the laying hens and further meat chickens. If I can just break even on the chickens, the benefits are amazing.

Thanks for reading.

Tractor Upgrade

The best $36 I've spent in a while on these LED Headlights from Amazon. After my buddy Gabe hooked them up I knew they'd be bright, but I had no idea how bright they'd actually be. It allows me to actually work confidently at night now. If you have an old tractor, and working at night sounds better than roasting in the midday sun, drop less than $40 and upgrade your ride!

Thanks for reading!

Raising Turkeys

All we heard about raising turkeys was about how dumb they are and how the tend to find new and exciting ways to off themselves. For whatever reason though, to date, we've had an easy time with them. The day we brought them home I pulled two of the three pullets out of the brooder and slipped them in with the turkeys.

The pullets, by simply eating and drinking, showed the turkeys how to feed themselves. A few days after picking up the turkeys we found two Buff geese on Craigslist and introduced them into the fray. The two chickens have graduated to the freezer with the rest of their brethern, but the turkeys abide. If you're going to get some turkeys having a couple of established (think month old) chicks to show them the ropes. Once they're eating and drinking, if you can keep them from running away or killing themselves, you're halfway home.

Final note, baby turkeys, are not cute. At all. Not even a little bit. You've been warned.

Self-Reliance and Resilience

So, if you've been working on your Homestead as a while, this post will be old hat, if you're new to Homesteading or about to head down the path hopefully this post is for you.

You're going to be overwhelmed for a while, but don't start another project until you've completed the one you're working on. I wanted to do everything all at once, but ended up with a lot of half done stuff, and no real production to show for it. As time has gone on we've added one thing to the next, function stacking as best we can. I'm beginning to see real, tangible benefits from both the chickens and the cattle on our land, and can't wait for the fall garden and the rabbit manure to add into our soil.

You're going to have bad days. The bull is going to walk through a fence and end up in the road. Feral dogs, or skunks, or hawks are going to decimate your chickens. Your brooder is going to be too small and you're going to lose chickens to snakes and smothering. Your pigs are going to dig under the pen in search of better accomodations. You're going to forget to turn the water off and come home to a pig version of a waterpark, twice. Your tractor is going to break, repeatedly. You will be ok. Ask me how I know.

The Homestead is a metaphor for life. There's a line from a Keanu Reeves movie, "Half of life is just showing up." The Homestead demands that you show up everyday. Rain shine, hot or cold, dry or wet, or any combination thereof. Failure is the greatest teacher I've ever had. I've had my share of failures in life; relationships, jobs, teams I was on and teams I coached but one few gifts I have is tenacity. No matter how many times I've been knocked down, I've gotten up one more time.

Keep getting up. Reach out to folks and ask for help. Learn from every failure and give thanks for every success. The good days eventually outweigh the bad. :-)

Final Thoughts on Freedom Rangers

Graduation Day for the Freedom Rangers

So the Freedom Ranger experiment went fairly well. Once we got them out of the brooder we didn't lose a single chicken. That's a big deal. Our big takeaway from the brooder this time was to double the size for the next batch and we hope we can cut down mortaility from how active the chicks can be. Between the Cornish and the Freedom Rangers mortality was a push, though with a larger brooder the Freedom Rangers probably would have won out.

In the end it comes down to efficiency, and the Cornish Cross win hands down. Even having fresh grass and being moved everyday, I couldn't see a noticeable difference in activity level between the Freedom Rangers and the Cornish. We butchered at just over 11 weeks, and the average weight of the straight run roosters was still considerably less than the mixed run of Cornish that we sent to the processor at 7 weeks.  With the Cornish ready to go to the butcher a month sooner, and doing so with less feed, we'll only be doing Cornish in the future.

Again, I can't say enough good things about Nealy Farms' feed over in Waxahachie, and Cobb Creek Farms that processed the chickens for us in Hillsboro. Both are first rate places in what they do. Thanks for reading.

Our Paddocks Are Finally Complete!!!!!!

Spring is, by far, our busiest time on the Homestead, and to my 3 regular readers I'm sorry for the sporadic postings since March. With the heat comes more time to write as we do our best to avoid the Texas heat outside.

Minus 3 strands of wire and 6 handles, we've finished our electric paddocks. The 2.0 joule energizer (AC plugged in inside the barn) has proven to be more than enough to convince the cattle to stay inside the paddocks. After accidentally touching the hotwire while working on part of the physical fence, I can understand why. I felt it in my soul. (And screamed like a little girl, to be perfectly honest.)

Even though we only started the paddock project back in late March, I've learned enough that I'd probably change some things if I had it to do over. I wouldn't do 3 strands again. That said I don't know if the Belties would be contained with a single strand either. I tried that on a few paddocks and though the bull and adult cows didn't abscond, both mornings I went out to check cattle I found calves in the adjacent paddocks. I know what you're thinking, "They'll go back in there right?" Apparently not. I think the dew that comes with morning made going back too painful, so I came out to bawling calves each morning.

The other thing we learned was the plan to pick up 3 strands of poly wire and move it every couple of days, while doable, was a pain in the keister. Running traditional wire is cheaper than the polywire, but the polywire is super easy to work with. Since we decided to make the rest of the semi-permanent paddocks with traditional galvanized wire. As I've said in earlier posts, the grounding component is the single most important part of the electric fence, and once we moved our grounding rods to our moistest soil we have had no problems convincing the Belties to stay home.

Raising Freedom Rangers

Last year we raised 25 Cornish Cross broilers. After 8 weeks and a couple days they dressed out at an average just over 6.5 pounds. They were so strange to range after being around regular chickens for so long. They were content to sit all day, eat and drink, then sleep, then repeat the whole process.

They tasted amazing though, and after swearing to never raise them again, eating the first bird made me rethink that promise. This year we went with Freedom Rangers. They are a bit more "chickeny", but they're still not the normal chicken that roams the homestead making a living. They were fully feathered and ready to go into the tractor about a week earlier, but they're gaining weight much slower in comparison.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. So we'll see how they taste, but right now my guess is that we'll go back to straight run Cornish Cross that give us two distinct sizes, and allows us to be down with the process in under two months.

Free Range Chickens - Successes and Failures

We ordered 25 of the Ideal 236 chicks (they were all supposed to be females) back in late September of 2016. 26 arrived alive and they did very well for themselves as chicks. We lost 3 to snakes early on, and then discovered two roosters amongst the survivors, which were were happy about to be honest.

Testoterone is a heckuva drug, and both of those young roosters decided to test their kung fu versus hawks in a death match. Hawks 2 - Roosters 0. We lost another 2 young pullets to coyotes before they learned the difference between our friendly Pyranees cross dogs and the jokesters of nature. The flock has stabilized at 19 laying pellets, and we haven't had any more losses since early February 2017.

They are completely free range now, coming and going as they please, making a living for their food each and every day. They all have the ability to fly on top of a 20 foot tall barn to evade coyotes and talk smack once they're up there. We've done our best to plug the holes in the fence around the pasture. That, coupled with the electric paddocks has cut down on visits from both coyotes and feral dogs.

Before several went broody (which isn't a bad thing as it helps us have a self sustaining flock) we were consitently getting 17 of their white eggs each day. With 4 broody now that number has gone down to about 13 per day. They lay medium to large white eggs, with beautiful orange yolks. We couldn't be any happier with the quality of the eggs themselves, though I think our customers would like to see more brown eggs in their packages.

Moving forward we think we have enough demand to merit another 12 hens, and the plan is to get 6 Americaunas and 6 Buff Orpingtons to add variety to the egg colors. We've had the Easter Egg laying Americaunas before and really enjoyed them, and hope the broody reputation of the Buffs, along with their brown eggs will be a good fit for us.

Embrace Your Inner Lunatic

Ermbracing your inner lunatic. You have to. The journey Andrea and I embarked together 6 years ago was destined to be unconventional from the start, after all it involved a pug dog and 4 of the first 5 years of our marriage living apart.

By the time she, the Reds, and the pug dog made it to Texas the vision of the Homestead was fuzzy. I’d planted more than a dozen fruit trees on our third of an acre lot in Idaho, along with grapes, raspberries, a very productive raised bed garden, ducks, and chickens to help us get ready. Don’t let anyone tell you that stuff doesn’t matter, it does! After you get a little experience there it’s easier to scale when (if you want) to get bigger.

Here’s the down side of your journey. You will have people not like the way your paddocks look, or understand why in the world your chickens get to go wherever they please. They will be offended by the lack of uniform grass because you’re paddock shifting your livestock. Some of them will let you know in no uncertain terms that: You’re crazy; Your place looks trashy due to the wildflowers you mow around in your yard; You’ll never make money this way. Haters gonna hate as they used to say. 

Some folks you can explain what you’re doing for a bit, and the light will come on. Some folks will see the progression and they’ll want to learn how to emulate what you’re doing. Some folks will simply choose to ignore you. The final group will confront you, be unwilling to listen, or see, what you’re working towards – it is here my friends that you have to unleash your inner lunatic. Put on your craziest smile, pick up the chicken nearest you, and do your best Joel Salatin impression, with all the love in your heart tell them you’ve got a chicken tractor to move by hand and move 1000 pound cattle held in by nothing more than a single strand of 14 guage wire and voodoo, then excuse yourself to go eat some amazing food with the people you love. 

Maniacal laughter is always appropriate.https://www.instagram.com/p/BTiE5ckha9a/