It's hot. This is coming from Jill the heat lover. I honestly think I need a break back to the mid 90's. Just for a little bit.
Well, we moved all the coops yesterday. We try to move them every month or so to let the hens try out some near areas. The coops have an electric netting around them to keep predators at bay. Frank sleeps in the pasture at night with the girls. He is penned and is really too young to protect anything, but we're hoping the barking keeps predators on their toes. Or paws. The hens can squeeze thru the electric netting and fly over it easily. So they are free to roam the pasture. This is why we still have bird losses here and there. Hopefully when Frank is old enough, he can roam the pasture and keep everyone safe. In the meantime, we've turned our donkey Annette and her baby Whiskas out in the pasture along with the cattle. They get along well, and Whiskas is enjoying the calves. I guess we're just throwing all we have out there hoping there will be so much activity predators will steer clear.
If you didn't notice, we finally got around to naming the baby donkey. She has whiskers on her chin, so it stood to reason that Whiskas was a good name. She is so tame, and lets us and anyone else give her full body rubs. She will even follow you after you finish and beg for more. Her mother is still fairly skittish.
We used our chicken processing equipment for the first time on June 13th. The picture on this blog shows the setup. It went fairly smooth as we tried to figure out the perfect scald routine and the plucker. Ward got a routine down quickly and we processed 23 birds in 2.5 hours. Not bad from field to freezer first time. Actually they are drained overnight in the refrigerator before we vacuum seal them for the freezer the next day. Our next batch of broilers comes June 29th. We are learning quickly that the hardest part is raising the birds in large numbers. Fortunately we have friends that are sharing their struggles, and they probably don't know how much we appreciate them imparting their knowledge and lessons learned to help us ease our way. We intend on having our facility ready and our grant of exemption to process for retail within a year. Wish us luck! we'll need it............
Well, we moved all the coops yesterday. We try to move them every month or so to let the hens try out some near areas. The coops have an electric netting around them to keep predators at bay. Frank sleeps in the pasture at night with the girls. He is penned and is really too young to protect anything, but we're hoping the barking keeps predators on their toes. Or paws. The hens can squeeze thru the electric netting and fly over it easily. So they are free to roam the pasture. This is why we still have bird losses here and there. Hopefully when Frank is old enough, he can roam the pasture and keep everyone safe. In the meantime, we've turned our donkey Annette and her baby Whiskas out in the pasture along with the cattle. They get along well, and Whiskas is enjoying the calves. I guess we're just throwing all we have out there hoping there will be so much activity predators will steer clear.
If you didn't notice, we finally got around to naming the baby donkey. She has whiskers on her chin, so it stood to reason that Whiskas was a good name. She is so tame, and lets us and anyone else give her full body rubs. She will even follow you after you finish and beg for more. Her mother is still fairly skittish.
We used our chicken processing equipment for the first time on June 13th. The picture on this blog shows the setup. It went fairly smooth as we tried to figure out the perfect scald routine and the plucker. Ward got a routine down quickly and we processed 23 birds in 2.5 hours. Not bad from field to freezer first time. Actually they are drained overnight in the refrigerator before we vacuum seal them for the freezer the next day. Our next batch of broilers comes June 29th. We are learning quickly that the hardest part is raising the birds in large numbers. Fortunately we have friends that are sharing their struggles, and they probably don't know how much we appreciate them imparting their knowledge and lessons learned to help us ease our way. We intend on having our facility ready and our grant of exemption to process for retail within a year. Wish us luck! we'll need it............
I love that Ward is the model showing off your equipment - very Vanna White of him. The boots and shorts are perfect chicken processing attire too. Seriously, congrats on the first big kill (that's probably not the PC term).
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