Bettacreek - New home? Plus a pic of some of the ladies here

[Bettacreek]

I have finally banished a LOT of the stress in my life. Not only with school, but with the birds, the food budget and the bird feed budget. Butchered out 17 cornish today, and I'm SO happy! It was a good bit of work by myself, but it was SOOO worth it. I was very relaxed about it. I changed to using the axe to kill them so that I don't have to see them in their death twitches, which is the part that makes me sick. The house is lookin GOOD! I busted my arse cleaning the last two days, even under/behind the books, the bar bottles, etc. AND, George should be home tomorrow night!!!!! No more sleepless nights!

 

[Denim Deb]

Wanna come and clean my house?

Good for you for getting it all done.

 

[Bettacreek]

So, the cornish cross are doing well. I still haven't butchered everybody off that I plan to butcher, but I'm taking my time with them, since the freezer is full of chicken and I haven't taken the time to get some of it canned up to make room. They're three months old now, and seem to be doing very well. I have about twelve of them left after butchering, and besides the issues with the kids, I haven't lost a single one. Well, I had one that was gimping around, it had the feathers all ripped out of its one leg and a scratch. The scratch wasn't deep, but it was badly bruised. After a few days, he went down completely, so I butchered him out. He had a LOT of excess synovial fluid around that knee, but the other one was fine. I've butchered out several more since then, and none have had the excess synovial fluid, so I'm assuming it was due to the injury. Anyways, the others are doing very well. They're still hogs at feeding time, but they're very active, forage well, etc. My main roo is getting pretty big though, so we'll see if they make it at least four more months.

I've also found a source for brewery grain, so I just have to figure out how to store it, otherwise I'll have to drive up on a regular basis to get more. But, it's free, and it's only a ten to fifteen minute drive, so it'll be nice!

 

[Bettacreek]

A few weeks ago (two or three), I bought a butcher lamb for $100. He's getting to be a PITA, but we're waiting to get him into the butcher to have him done (boyfriend doesn't want me doing it myself for some reason). I'm hoping for a lot of tasty red meat and to keep his pelt for tanning. I think the boyfriend has already staked a claim on the fleece, he wants it to recover the one harley seat. It's all his if he wants it, since I didn't have an exact plan for it. I had to buy a new freezer, because we have NO freezer room. It's a nice 14 cubic ft upright, and is giving me some nice fantasies of a full freezer full of meat, lol. In Novemberish, I plan to butcher out the three BBW turkeys we have here as well, plus the last six cornish cross that won't be kept for potential breeding. The roosters are about 15lbs each, and then hens are about 10lbs, so we should get a decent bit of meat from them. Plus, rifle season is coming. We're in the throes of archery, but I just didn't get out there and get everything I needed to get done for it. :/ I also sold some of my laying hens, plus today I traded two laying hens for eight muscovy ducklings. I have one leghorn chick, plus about a dozen more eggs in the incubator set to hatch within the next week or so. I'm trying to increase my leghorn flock and decrease the other random breeds I have running around. The leghorns simply eat the least amount of feed and produce the largest eggs and lay reliably every day. Can't beat that with a stick! Plus, when the Ameraucanas start laying, I'll have some "super blue layer" eggs available, which seem to be a hot commodity lately.

So, what I'm hoping to keep over winter:
9 laying hens (but have three of which I wouldn't mind selling off)
2 Leghorn Roosters
5 Ameraucana pullets
2 Turkeys (bronze/palm and a royal palm, though I'd be more than willing to sell the royal palm at this point, since everything here is MALE)
6 Pekins (5 hens, 1 drake)
6 Cornish Cross (1 roo, 5 hens)

8 Muscovy Ducklings (until genders can be determined and males are butchered out)
? Maybe a dozen or so leghorn chicks, only until I can determine genders. I don't know what I'll do with the roos, since they aren't worth butchering or driving to the auction.

 

[Denim Deb]

Sounds like a good plan.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I don't know why I don't have any sheep/lambs? Lamb is one of my favorite meats. And of all the fancy cuts - I think I love shanks most of all. In the crock pot, lots of onions/garlic, some rosemary and at least a half bottle of merlot - yum, yum!

Good luck in rifle season! Venison...my second favorite meat, lol! I think I'm coming to your house!

 

[Bettacreek]

Haha! I love the less popular meats. Duck is better than chicken, lamb is better than beef and of course, the best meat EVER is venison.

My breeding flock is a little different, but only in the fact that we added four new turkey hens.

As of right now, we have:

5 Turkey toms
4 Turkey hens
4 leghorn hens
2 leghorn roos
3 light brahmas
2 barred rocks
1 wyandott
7 ameraucanas (three males)
3 OEGB
12 cornish cross
6 pekin ducks
1 silkie

Then the managerie of chicks/ducklings in the brooder. So, really, we only have 50 birds outside. For some reason I was thinking that with the additional turkeys, the OEGB and silkies, we were back in the 60's or 70's. I guess we did have 7 silkies, which we sold most off, then one of the OEGB babies was eaten by something, so I guess we were at 58 anyways. I'll eventually be butchering out some more cornish and 2-3 turkeys, plus I'm debating on taking the ameraucana roos, the brahma hens and some chicks down to the auction.

 

[Bettacreek]

Ugh! I have had NO energy at all lately. Day before yesterday I scrubbed the house down really, really well (literally, used a scrub brush on all of the floors and a paint scraper on a few spots that wouldn't come up). Last night I didn't get any sleep. Was worried about my far-ranging group that completely disappeared. Found them this morning, lost behind one of the fields of corn, and they were as happy to see me as I was to see them. Two chickens, four turkeys and six ducks were in that group. I found fresh (still warm, yuck) bear crap and fresh fox tracks on the way to get them, so I know that it's purely a miracle that nobody was lost last night.

No more child support, so I'm at $0 income again. The bath bombs have been going like hot cakes, but they're SUCH a pain to make. I'm thinking about increasing my prices on them to make it a little more worth my while to make them. In all reality, I charge WAAAAYYY less than what anyone else charges, and mine have many more expensive ingredients in them than the competition. I had kind of removed them from my list of stuff I advertise, but have them on an old list and with winter coming up, they've been going like crazy. With the ingredients I use (the cost of the raw ingredients) and the time I put into them, I'm shortchanging myself hardcore. The worst part isn't mixing it up or anything, but I have to powder my oatmeal, then the mixing is the easy part, but then they have to be hand molded. To make 30 bombs (10 packs), it took me half an hour, and that doesn't count powdering the oatmeal! At $2 per pack, I guess it's about $40/hr, but that's NOT taking out my cost for ingredients, my packaging, my time to pack or make the labels, etc, etc. I'm guessing (my computer is broken, so I don't have the calculations), that I'm making about $0.50 per pack, so that's, what, $5/hr?! Of course, that's NOT counting the time to powder my oatmeal, design labels, MAKE the labels, pack, etc, etc. There's absolutely NOTHING I enjoy about making bath bombs. It's not like soap where I can handle a little less money, because I ENJOY making soap, it's just a hassle, a pain and no gain! The ONLY reason I even still make them is because they are so wonderful for the skin. If I didn't use them myself and enjoy the fact that people have such great results with them, I wouldn't make the damn things!

 

[Denim Deb]

Raise your price. And, do it in increments if you can. Still have them cheaper than the competition, but you don't want to shortchange yourself.

 

[Bettacreek]

Yeah, I'm going to have to increase them. I'd hate to take them away. There have been a few somewhat regular customers who use them for themselves or their children (eczema and other conditions), and knowing how miserable being itchy is, I can't just say "sorry, I am too lazy to make them, because they aren't worth my while anymore".