On harvest day, we focus on getting the live birds cleaned and into the ice water bath as efficiently as possible. We usually spend the next day on final cleaning, cutting the birds into pieces, and packaging the meat for storage. The plucker does a great job removing the feathers from the birds. In seconds, […]
Cutting and Packaging Chickens Read More »
The rainy weather has been a continuing frustration to our progress, since we have limited indoor work space. We planned on someday buying a carport from Costco, because they have been offering one that has all the features we would want. We didn’t get it in the spring, when they had it in stock, because
Preparing to Harvest Chickens Read More »
This morning, the humidity readings and temperature readings all checked out. So, I loaded 10 quail eggs into the incubator. The quail eggs will be kept at 99.5 F and 45% relative humidity for 15 days. During that time, the motor drive in the incubator will roll the eggs back and forth. On day 15
We currently have only a small incubator because we mostly hatch quail. It holds more 20-24 quail eggs and that has been sufficient. When we use it for chicken eggs, it holds 9 or 10. When we expand our business I will build a cabinet-style incubator and a separate hatching cabinet, but we aren’t at
Incubator Experiment Read More »
When I arrived to take care of the birds in the new pen, I discovered the black cockerel patrolling the perimeter. He was in no distress so I let him continue on while I was inside dealing with the food and water. When I saw him approaching the door, I opened it and stepped away.
We moved the first group of birds to the new pen in the afternoon. In this group there were nine of the smallest Big Red Broilers and three accidental roosters from the pullet pen. The broilers are so large, now, that they desperately needed more space. The pen has almost four times the area of
Filling the New Pen Read More »
Today, we harvested six male quail from our flock. We should have done it sooner, but this summer has been full of delays. Now that we are ready to move the chickens to the new pen on the farm site, we had to take care of these quail. Why are those things connected? Well… the
One of the reasons for our purchase of the farm site is that the land is zoned for agriculture. Currently, our operation is based on land that is zoned for general commercial use or residential use. Keeping chickens on these lots is legal (we checked!), but people live nearby and we don’t want to be
The New Chicken Pen Read More »
The smoke from nearby forest fires kept us indoors for a week. After that, the rain began. At first, it was welcomed because it was mitigating the smoke and putting out the forest fires. Unfortunately, the rain continued until it wore out its welcome. We had been making decent progress on the driveway at our
Last summer, our electric fence charger malfunctioned. While the smoke prevents progress on the driveway, I decided to cross a different item off my to-do list, and began the repair process. I perused some how-to videos and found the information that seemed necessary. Opening the case was, indeed, as easy as was indicated in the
Shipping to Alaska Read More »