Graduation Day

No plan survives first contact with the enemy. All of our Thanksgiving leftovers were placed in a feeder, along with their normal ration of feed. Bacon jumped right into the trailer, Chorizo on the other hand wasn't having any of it. As we tried to coax him into the trailer, he figured out that the hog panels were no longer secured to the posts, and made his way under the panels in short order. Chorizo apparently is much more of a salad connoisseur than a lover of stuffing and cranberry sauce.

Much swearing ensued. I was a jerk to my sweet wife, honestly at times I don't know what she sees in me, but I digress. The 4 wheeler once again proved invaluable, that and Chorizo's lack of focus on cardio. I was worried I was going to have to shoot him if he made it out of the pasture. Disaster was averted as we got him back into his old pen. After a few more minutes of swearing and trying to coax Chorizo into the trailer, he finally made his way in. There was much rejoicing. And much apologizing to Andrea.

I picked up the Red Wattle hogs back on August 13th when they were about 10 weeks old. So the 28th of November puts them just shy of 6 months old. They've proven easy to raise. Happy in both the heat of summer, pouring rain, and coolness of early fall.

Raising them really couldn't have gone better, the pen was cheap to build, and they didn't escape until their last day on the Snow Compound. The last thing we have to do is load them and take them to the butcher. I'll let you know how much they end up weighing.

Learning From My Mistakes

There are so many learning opportunities on the homestead, and it seems as though I have one almost every day.

On electric paddocks with new born calves, I learned that I should have put the bottom strand closer to the ground.

I've learned that calves can get out of an electric paddock on a fairly regular basis, but rarely, if ever find their way back inside.

Whatever you tools/items you think about buying but don't you'll immediately need as soon as the store is closed, it's raining, dark, or a combination of the three.

Snakes will find your eggs, and your hatchlings. Wooden eggs will end your egg snatching, but it won't bring back your hard work on the hatchlings.

If you're buying a calf to introduce into your herd, always try to buy two instead of just one, they'll integrate a lot easier into your herd, and they won't be lonely. Nobody likes the emotionally needy.

Hogs are easier to raise than you think, don't be afraid of raising them.

Cornish Cross chickens are weird, but man they're tasty.

Finding a local butcher that cares as much about your meat as you do is like winning the lottery. Ask around, and listen. Start at the feed store, they hear directly from the farmer who does good work and who doesn't.

Finally, a Harvest!

My wife gives me a hard time because the last half dozen or so times I've gone hunting I've done exactly that hunting with no killing involved. So it felt great to come home with 137.4 pounds of meat today.

As I told the butcher, all my hesitations about raising Cornish Crosses evaporated when I saw how beautiful they looked naked... :-) I mean that honestly, the Cornish were not good looking birds when they were alive. About a third of them hadn't finished feathering out yet. We'll see how they taste.

Here's the breakdown on costs:

30 Cornish Cross Ideal nursery day old hatchlings delivered to our door: $48 (Caught a good sale.)

Feed: 14 bags at $18 per 50 pound bag, $252 (This is an area we can do better on next time.)

Butcher, vacuum seal, label, etc. $84

Total cost: $384. Price per pound $2.79. 

Takeaways: The snake losses, 3 birds, 2 chickens had wounds found by the butcher and condemned there, and the 4 birds that just died of no apparent reasons really hurt the overall price per pound. Assuming we could have kept 4 more alive and made average weight, it would have cut the price per pound by right at $0.50 per pound. That's a big deal.

The moving Salatin tractor is a must. The chickens didn't do a good job of keeping themselves clean. I've never seen chickens content to never scratch, eat laying down, drink laying down. I think being forced to move onto new grass will help considerably. 

Practice better predator control, the tractors are going to be built with hardware cloth, and we'll focus on snake proofing them each day until they're out of the danger zone.

I've got to do a better job next time breaking down feed costs. This time if anything I way overestimated our costs. Still we have to get our costs under $2.00 a pound if we want to be competitive. 

Feed costs themselves. I bought all of our feed this go round at Tractor Supply. I didn't know how much we'd need. I know there is a farm in Waxahachie milling their own non-GMO, non-soy feed for $14 a bag when you buy in bulk.

If we're going to do this it makes sense to do some geese and turkeys at the same time, then separate them as they get bigger. I think we might do a half dozen turkey's next year as well and see if we can create a market for those as well.