Testosterone is a Heckuva Drug

In the pictures above and below are all the earthly remains of my two Ideal 236 roosters. Testosterone will allow you to grow big and strong. Testosterone will give you the hubris to fight the established cock of the walk and challenge him for mates. Testosterone will give you the confidence to explore, face danger, and expand your empire. It will also make you feel bullet proof, which outside of Luke Cage, none of us are. 

I was hoping that one of the two roosters would survive into adulthood to help meet our goal of a self sustaining flock. Alas, 'tis not to be. They survived almost 4 months free ranging in Texas, that in itself is no easy feat. If only they'd believed me when I told them everything in Texas is trying to kill you. 

Finding a Feed Store

You'd think that as much as I read that finding a dedicated feed store would have been obvious, but the thought didn't occur to me until AFTER we'd taken the FrankenChickens to the Butcher. For this first batch of broilers we bought 100% of their feed at Tractor Supply. Running the numbers after stopping in to get a quote we would have been able to cut our total price per pound substantially.

To be honest $2.79 a pound raising our own chickens wasn't a good deal. For considerably less we could just go to CostCo and fill the freezer with whole chickens someone else grew. To be truly self reliant we have to get the price down to LESS than what we'd pay retail. The reality is that I have to have these systems in place before we retire if we're going to be able to continue our standard of living post jobs.

I'm going to look at feeding spent brewers grain and non-soy non-GMO feed next go round just to see what the total costs would be. I have to get a tractor built between now and next March to get them on grass to supplement feed and keep them from laying in their own filth as they're prone to do.