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.