Four Day Weekend

Tomorrow starts my four day weekend and I still have not yet planned out every detail but I think I am going to try and squeeze in a round of golf if I get the chance. 

First off I want to show a picture of a couple of the new babies. I took pictures of several of the hens and chicks but they were moving so much they are a big blur. This was the only one I could use. Plus, a lot of pictures of the same thing, like baby chicks, does get boring. 
We still have more in the house hatching out plus some turkey eggs.

 I also wanted to show a picture of the Hydroponics Tomatoes. This is a little over a month of growth. You can scroll back to the old post I did and see the tiny little plants I started in this. I never would have thought they would be this big so fast.
Two problems I came across, one being they are too close together. All four plants have grown into one giant bush. The next time I will space them out a little better and secure them to grow more upright.
Second, they are using about five gallons of water a day. Yes I do have a drip or two here and there but the plants themselves are using a huge amount of water and my water tank could have been a little bigger. Every other night I add ten gallons of nutrient filled water to the tank.
These are grown outside instead of in a greenhouse and the water temp is a little higher than it should be. To help that next year I will either insulated the tank or bury it.

I was surfing around on line and came across a great website full of information on hydroponics if you are interested in learning about this way of growing. Next year I plan to do more tomatoes and some peppers plus build a horizontal teared system for the strawberries.
If you are interested in learning more about this check them out.

Guide to hydroponic gardening

Other than that, have a great 4th,
MDR 
 

Sunday Around The Mini Farm

Never Enough Time

If the weekends were three days long we would want four, if five then six. No matter what, there is never enough time to complete everything that was planed.

Early Saturday me and the youngest girl "Wee" took some roosters over to my Dad's for a good old fashioned chicken killing.
Some would turn their nose up to this and some would say this is cruel but it is a way of life. I think they call it Homesteading and I don't play it, I live it.   
When I talk about this to other people it is funny, everyone has a story about when they were little at their grandparents house. The story always ends with the chicken running around with it's head cut off. Our system is a little more modern than that.
Just to let you know, everyone who does this has their own way of doing it so I am sure if you process chickens then you do it a different way. Here is our process. I may be a little vague, but it is for a reason.

Take the head off the chicken and bleed him out in the kill cone. After he is done, dip him in 140 degree water and swirl him around for about twenty seconds. If you let him sit in the water to long it will set the feathers and it will be harder to pluck him. The same if you do it to quick.

 

When the chicken is good and soaked, throw him in the plucker. My dad built this out of a 55 gallon barrel. The bottom spins throwing the chicken up and spinning him into the rubber fingers that grab all the feathers off. It only takes a few seconds to pluck a chicken this way. This thing is fantastic!

If done right the bird will come out pretty, clean and naked.
Now onto the processing table where he will be gutted and cleaned.
I didn't want to show any of the pictures of the actual process because I am sure some would have threw a fit over it. I call those people the "bleeding hearts", but if you plan to do this yourself and have any questions you can always email me.

After the chicken is processed we give him one more washing and then into the salted ice water to sit overnight. This is kinda like a weak brine then will limber the chicken up.
The next day after another washing you should be able to fold the chicken into a little ball and put him in a freezer bag and into the freezer.

All and all we processed about 20 or so chickens. The more you have helping the better. You can create kinda of an assembly line and work more efficient.

This has nothing to do with chickens, but prom came and went. This is the middle girl "Boppie" in all her glory.
Saturday morning her new dress she bought still didn't fit so it was a scramble for her to get another one. Even if I wasn't killing chickens I probably would have found something else to do than to be around the house while this was going on. Don't let her cute little smile fool ya.   

After the chickens were done I made the trip to the old farm and got all the tin I could get. I will be putting it up in the bathhouse during the week.

A freak storm blew through with 60+ mph winds Friday night creating some damage to the Mini Farm so Sunday was spent on repairs and maintenance with the oldest "BEB" manning the weedeater. 

In the end it was a good weekend, but I still could have used a couple more days to get it all done.

Promised Picture

Here's the big boy.

This is the rooster that can't figure out heads from tails. He is a big beautiful rooster that should be doing his job. It will hard to replace him if he doesn't straighten up. I am ordering a couple more roosters in the same breed and with different colors but it will be a year before they are ready.
 

Stupid Rooster

 For the past four months our incubators, hatchers and brooders have been running. Total estimated cost to run them per month is around $60.00  to $75.00

Potential long term income from one months operation with a 100% hatch and mortality rate is around $3700.00
(that is hatching 210 eggs and selling those chicks at eight months old and does not factor in the cost of feed. For this post, I am just focusing on one months electricity use to continuity run the devices and re-setting)

I learned long ago that you never count your chickens before they hatch. You never really understand that statement until you do so and get burnt. Even taking that advise, I still count on a percentage. If I set 200 eggs and figure a modest 60% hatch rate then I can almost for sure count on 120 chicks.
Last year after building my own incubator, my hatch rate increased from 40% to 95%. That was something I could count on. It hit it every time.

Saying that, I counted on that rate this year as well. My first batch hatched at a neck breaking 1%. Thinking that it was just a first time goof, I sat another batch. That one hatched at 36% and the next one after that at 7%.
It is now coming down to the end of the third batch of eggs and I will candle them this weekend.
Everything is the same. My incubator is set right, with the right humidity, right turners, right everything. I am doing nothing different with these eggs than I was doing with the 95% eggs.
What has hatched out now will not even pay for the electricity it took to hatch and brood them. It will actually be cheaper to buy chicks than to keep doing it this way.

I have beat myself up really bad on this trying to figure it out until last night. I was sitting out back thinking what in the world is going on with these eggs and then I saw the problem, It's my rooster. I saw him do it five times in a row.

Last year I had to sell all my breeding stock and start over. All the chickens I have now are young and just started laying four months ago. That was one of the reasons I figured for the bad rate on the first hatch. Maybe they were all pullet eggs and not fertile.

The stupid rooster is mounting the hens wrong. He is mounting them backwards, head to butt. (Picture it so I do not have to describe it any further)
This is why when I candle the eggs just a few are fertile, but most are not. Sometimes he does get it right.
I know what I need to do, I need to get a smarter Rooster because I am not going to show him how it's done.
(Even though this is really not funny, it kinda it and deserves a good laugh)

Spoke To Soon

All that talk about my amazing fall gardens has now turned around and bit me in the butt.

It was only suppose to get into the mid thirties last night so I was not that concerned with the plants. The wife watered them in real good before dark and that was that.
It ended up getting down to 27 degrees. A freeze in Texas this early is rare and it took me off guard. The rest of the weekend it will be in the 70's. Go figure!
I doubt the plants will make it and if they do I don't think there is enough time left for them to produce.      
What a bummer.

On a good note, the first hatch of the season came in. We did not have that many eggs to set being we sold most of the breeders last summer, but this is a start to rebuilding the flock.
These little girls will laying by the end of March so we should have a couple of hatches from them before we have to shut it back down for the summer.