Avalon1984-Chicken, horses, pigs, oh my!

[Avalon1984]

I hope everybody had a good and productive weekend! We spent most of the two days shoveling poop out of the horse paddocks (they do a fine job of mixing the few bits of poop I miss during the week in with the dirt, so it makes a big mess every 4-5 weeks) and adding it to my sunflower garden up front. Last year we had 16ft sunflowers out front, what better way to advertise for our horse manure I also mixed in some chicken manure from our runs and cleaned out the chicken coops. My renter lady has put in her notice and I am working hard on organizing everything that needs to get done to put my house up for sale in the spring. That means a significant lack of income and large expenses. Just ended up paying over $1,000 for a new sliding glass door + installation. It was necessary and while my house is still rented out I can write if off next year, but still, the money is missing for now :/ So I am jumping on the bandwagon of figuring out how I can reduce my feed cost with the chickens. I simply cannot free range them for several reasons, many predators, I am hardly ever home to watch over them, theyd get into the horse pastures and poop onto the grass my pregnant mares eat off, etc. I have made enclosed runs that have worked perfectly for my use at this point and I havent lost a chicken to a predator yet. I am trying to figure out if there is a way that you could make your own chicken feed and still make sure that the chickens get everything they need, maybe buy all component separate instead of premixed? Either way, Id like to slim my feed budget down a bit. I also listed some of my excess roosters for free on CL so I can turn my rooster house back into a hen house in the spring. Yes, I have slaughtered roosters before but those guys are too old and pretty. Id rather find them a good home. Even if I were to try and butcher them, they are tiny and not worth the labor- and time, which I dont have at the moment. So once they are gone I will be able to turn my rooster house back into a more profitable building With 55 pullets coming this year I need all the room I can get. I also have 42 eggs in the incubator and I hope to sell those chicks in order to pay for my spring pullet order. They should be quite attractive mix chicks since they will be 50% Barred Rock and their daddys are a Polish and a Turken. I will candle them tonight and start tossing non-fertile eggs. I am hoping for a good hatch rate.

Once I have my chicken-keeping modified to be the most efficient possible, I need to get back and work on my horses. The yearly Who will get to stay, who will have to leave game will be on as I rotate my herd and try and cut excess that I cant justify feeding unless I get something back. I hate doing that for I would love to keep everybody but it is waayyy too much work and way too expensive to not work towards a profit at the end of the year. We will have some major expenses coming our way shortly between the new barn, more stud fees, vet fees for the newborn foals, a new horse trailer and a hay trailer, etc. So I want to make sure I at least stay within budget. If my little stud doesnt grow significantly in the next few months I will geld him, send him off for training and sell him. It sure will be interesting to see what happens with the hay prices this year. We had another mild winter so I am deeply worried about another drought year. This would put the nail in the coffin of a lot of troubled horse owners up here. Oh well, so much from me for now as I give myself a headache thinking of what to plant this year to not just feed husband and me, but also the chickens. The idea of a feeder pig keeps coming up but for now I have no room, no shed, never raised it myself and I really dont eat pork unless its in the form of biscuits and gravy. Thatd be a lot of biscuits and gravy though!