Affairs of the Hearth

[theoutlands]

That's the name of my newsletter I planned to start up for homesteading/prep topics once upon a time. Never got it off the ground, tho. So, I'll just use it as my header to post general homestead news from Dun Coille.

Another rabbit had a litter yesterday. My crew didn't put a front wall/lip on the nest box, so the little worms are crawling everywhere and getting out of the box and ending up on the ground. I finally managed to get a semi-functional lip in place this morning using duct tape. Yes, I covered the back side so no little hairless wrigglers get stuck to it! It isn't pretty, but it works.

The momma is a large mini-lop named SnowLily, because she is solid white with pink eyes. A friend who raises meat rabbits up the road gave her an a New Zealand buck to me - said he just wasn't satisfied with how they were producing on his place. So, we bred the girl to our mini-lop buck - a charcoal-grey gent named James Earl Jones - and she delivered 9 babies yesterday - everything from solid white (pink) to spotted to solid black.

Sparkles, our other mini-lop momma, has 8 babies who are 3 weeks old and almost ready for homes of their own. Their ears are starting to droop - very finny to see this perky little rabbit head looking about w/ ears standing almost straight out to the sides of it!

Our 38 experiments in "growing your own chicken-flock" "thump" occasionally as the incubator's automatic turner moves them around. They have been in for one week today. The wait is killing demontot!

Well, that's today's "Affairs" - more as more happens.

 

[A.T.Hagan]

Last time I had a new batch of chicks in the brooder out in the workshop my daughter must have run me out there a thousand times to look at them. It was Chicken Television. I'd put a chair for her to stand on next to the box and she'd just stand there entranced, watching them run back and forth.

I haven't tried my hand yet with incubating my own though my step-dad down in St. Cloud does. In fact, he's gathering eggs now to hatch me out a batch. The incubator holds forty eight eggs so if he had his typical luck I expect he'll send me between thirty eight to forty chicks. They'll all be mutts, but they'll be chickens. Many of their ancestors came from DunHagan. One time when they came up we were outside inspecting the flock and he asked for eggs. Well, I had no shortage of those so sent him home with a dozen to try his luck. I had five breeds of birds then, all brown egg layers, so no way to tell what came from what and especially no way to know what rooster of the four I had then had topped the hen that laid the egg. So we ended up with a lot of hybrid vigor.

Be nice to have to have some birds back on the place. It's too quiet around here without them.

BTW, there is a fella by the name of Robert Plamondon who runs a pastured poultry egg operation out in Oregon. He's spent a lot of time reading old poultry manuals in the local college and has resurrected an excellent brooder originally developed in Ohio. He's got a lot of other really cool pastured poultry resources as well as several books that he has either reprinted from the early twentieth century or written himself. His site is very much worth checking out.

<b>Robert Plamondon poultry page</b>
http://www.plamondon.com/freerange.shtml

<b>Infrared Lamp Brooder</b>
<i>Brood 250 chicks in sub-freezing temperatures with only two heat lamps! This simple project takes only two hours to build and costs around $30. The brooder is made from a sheet of thin plywood, insulated with a layer of wood shavings. Two porcelain lamp sockets hold heat lamps that lie horizontally.
We have three of these brooders and they really work! Our chicks were warmer and we saved over $100 in electric bills.

This link takes you to a copy of the original Ohio Experiment Station bulletin describing the brooder. </i>

I built one and used it myself to brood about fifty chicks and it worked quite well. It's all self-regulating so the chicks never get too hot or too cold. Was simple to build too. Wouldn't be worth while for only a few birds, but if you're needing to brood a few dozen or more they're worth considering. Especially if you'll be doing it every year.

.....Alan.

 

[theoutlands]

5-30-04 edition

It has been a week since I reported last from Dun Coille Farm, so I thought maybe I should chime in again.

Thanks for the link, Alan. I had gone to his site from another thread here - looks like a great place to visit! Our eggs have one more week today - time to drag out the brooder and rehab it to be ready.

Rabbits are a mixed-bag this week. Sparkles' babies are doing very well and should be moved into a "grow-off" pen today. SnowLily is another story. When she was given to me, I was told she was a great momma and always raised every baby she had. Boy, I was excited when she had 9 babies! Today we are down to one baby in the nest-box and I'm not sure that one is going to make it. I heard from the previous owner's wife that this rabbit would raise several litters and then have a litter she almost totally ignored. Really frustrating, since she was pregnant when we got her and we didn't know it, so she lost that litter.

Our goat-boys are 9 weeks old and their momma is trying to wean them by walking off when they are nursing or by lying down and covering her udder. Between our two does, we get a half a gallon of milk a day, leaving milk for the three kids - all of whom are growing by leaps and bounds. We disbudded the youngest goat Friday evening - no horns to tangle in vines or fences nor to poke into herdmates or handlers.

Obviously, Spring is a time of fertility, as we discovered last week that LdyHerbs is pregnant. We ask for your prayers and positive thoughts for the health of her and the baby, as LdyH has had problems in the past. This also means her energy level is next to nothing - so things around the farm are going to slow down.

I dug the rest of the potato hills yesterday. We planted one pound of seed potatoes and all told dug up something like 25# of potatoes. Not a bad investment! The *bad* part is that the bed is full of fire ants! We're going to have to poison the ants before planting the next run of plants - we're looking at maybe a squash.

Speaking of fire ants and plants, the potted fig trees were full of them. We poured diatomaceous earth over the pots and the holes into the underground parts a couple of weeks ago. Bet I know where they went - the potatoes! Now, just one fig tree still has ants. Plans are to find places this weekend to plant the trees and make fig "bushes" out of them.

Ants in the woodpile, ants in the garden, ants under just about anything left laying on the ground. We've got a bag of grits that we are going to put to work outside and see how it works.

And those are this week's Affairs of the Hearth.

 

[Laurie the Mom]

>>Obviously, Spring is a time of fertility, as we discovered last week that LdyHerbs is pregnant.<<

Congratulations!!! Prayers on the way.

Laurie

 

[driveshesaid]

Congrats! Will be praying for LH and the babe.


drive

 

[theoutlands]

oh my gosh! Two weeks without a new issue! I'm slacking! I'll work on something tonight or tomorrow, I promise.

 

[Freeholdfarm]

I thought I'd post a little bit here, too. We got 24 pullets (19 Barred Rocks and 5 Australorps) and 10 free cockerels on April Fools Day. Two pullets -- Australorps -- and one Buff Orpington cockerel died, and three of the Barred Rocks appear to be cockerels, so we have nineteen pullets left. They are in a chicken tractor made of pvc pipe, which is slowly mowing the perimeter of our yard. I'm not entirely happy with the pvc chicken tractor. It is light enough for me to move by myself (which is why I used the pvc), but has a tendency to fall apart when moved. I'm going to build two more this week, so I can split the chickens out between them, and this time I'll use wood. I'll have to find some wheels and make a dolly, though, or I won't be able to move them. We'll be butchering most of the cockerels pretty soon, but I plan to save three for breeding. I'll probably save one Buff Orpington, one Australorp, and one Barred Rock, so any chicks we have next year will either be mixes or purebred Barred Rock or Australorp.

I just got two 10'x20' shelters (the tarp-over-a-metal-frame carport type) and am getting ready to turn one into a Raken (rabbit/chicken) house, and the other into a goat shelter. I've located breeders of Silver Fox rabbits and Kinder goats, and as soon as their facilities are finished will be bringing critters home. Also need to build a greenhouse as soon as possible, because my tomato and pepper plants are getting too big for their present space in one of these little bookcase sized greenhouses. Not to mention fencing the yard, building a garage, and so on! I will be so glad when most of the major stuff is done, so I can focus on something other than building infrastructure!

Kathleen

 

[theoutlands]

7-10-04

Hello, loyal readers! Yes, I know, I should be flogged mercilessly for not keeping up my postings. Well, here's an excuse - sometimes, ya just gotta know when to blow things off.

The eggs didn't hatch. Something about losing power twice during the incubation period might have had a little to do with it, I think. We do have a hen or two feeling broody, so we are going to let her go and see what happens. The chickens are going to earn their feed this weekend, as LdyHerbs fills a 5dz-egg order and a 2dz-egg order.

Son learned a valuable lesson with the rabbits last weekend. He discovered they *will* die if you don't feed or water them for 3 days. Fortunately, we only lost one young one to the negligence. Otherwise, they are doing well. Of seven babies, we have sexed three - and they are all bucks! I had been planning to keep the does for breeding for next spring, but I'm starting to wonder if I *have* any young does!!

Our neighbor bought a calf-bander and last weekend we banded our two young bucks.

Something I've been working on this week - as the chat-mavens know all too well - is a web-store for homesteading and survival goodies! Check out the Outlands Emporium at http://storewmoutlands.webincome.biz today! Yeah, I did post this over in Swaps & Sales, I'd forgotten.

One last thing this issue - a sponsor! The Outlands has a number of affiliateships with other companies, like Gurney's, Cheaper Than Dirt, Sportsman's Guide, Lehman's, and so on. Well, I'm going to try out a trick and see if I can imbed a graphic/link in my post.

<a href="http://www.qksrv.net/click-691102-10306017" target="_top" >
<img src="http://www.qksrv.net/image-691102-10306017" width="468" height="60" alt="$20 off $40" border="0"></a>

 

[theoutlands]

Would folks be interested in seeing this turned into an email-type newsletter, something like a monthly "farm-journal/letter" from the Dun Coille Farm?

 

[theoutlands]

Affairs of the Hearth
September 6th, 2004
copyright 2004 by Michael McNeill

A Journal of Life and Living on Dun Coille Farm


I am excited to be able to announce the first chick hatchings on our farm! We started our second batch of thirty eggs in our Hova-bator three months ago and on Friday afternoon, we discovered the first chick struggling to emerge. Its birth-peeps had been drowned out by the fifteen "store-bought" chicks being "brooded" in a cardboard box in the laundry-room. We hurriedly removed the eggs from the automatic turner and added water to raise the humidity. By Friday night, three more had emerged. The "store-bought" girls got put outside in an empty rabbit-hutch and their box burnt, then the new hatchlings got put in a new box in the laundry room.

[sad note - son went out to feed the "store-boughts as I was writing this. Most of them bailed out of the cage and hit the ground running. He managed to get all but one caught and put back in the cage before our terrierists ran one chick off into the woods. The way the boy was panicking and squealing when he came in the house, I'm impressed that he managed to get *any* of them back into the cage! The dogs are leaving this week, one way or another...]

It is very satisfying to me that the chickens have joined the rabbits and goats in reproducing on our little farm - I am finally starting to feel like "our place" stands a chance.


As for the rabbits, I gave the girls the summer off. Louisiana summers are just too hot and miserable to be delivering babies! Three of the four youngest rabbits found a way out of their cage early last week. I did manage to catch *one* as he was hopping about in the goat-yard nibbling greenery. One was dead some twenty feet from the pens with nary a drop of blood on him - I suspect my terrierists shook him to death. The last one turned up in the yard several days later as nothing more than a piece of fur and a couple of bones.


It has rapidly become obvious our yorkshire/cairn terrierists have to go. They have started trying to run the goats, who are steadfastly unamused by this behaviour, and the chickens. We haven't seen them actively kill a chicken, but with today's baby-chick episode, they have been observed in three episodes of suspicious activities with parts of dead chickens and they routinely are caught filching eggs. Then, of course, there are the two dead rabbits. They are nice dogs and *very* effective ratters and snake-chasers - but if they inisist on destroying farm-production, they must leave, one way or another.


For those of us trying to reduce our ties to "the grid," Northern Tool has an almost-unbelievable deal. Click on this banner:

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and search for item #339972. They have the price of their 15w solar-panel cut almost 50% and are offering FREE SHIPPING! They connect together up to seven panels through one charge controller (items 336606 or 336605) to provide off-grid power. Backwoods Home Magazine is running a series of basic solar-power articles right now - lesson 3: Inverters is posted on their website at http://www.backwoodshome.com/

 

[theoutlands]

now available as a mailing group!

AotH-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

 

[Willow]

It has rapidly become obvious our yorkshire/cairn terrierists have to go.

Since the dogs are only doing what they are bred to do you should be able to contact Cairn Terrior Rescue and get some help placing them in homes that don't have the temptations that your farm has and also be able to handle their temperaments. Hope their rehoming has a happy ending.

Willow