Self Reliance Ideas

[BarredBuff]

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[me&thegals]

Cow, soapmaking.

 

[Beekissed]

Rabbits are cheap, not much work and a proliferant, lean meat food source. Quiet too. The manure is cold and good to mix with chicken poop for your gardens.

I often wonder why all these folks who want to have chickens in the city and can't because of noise and mess don't just grow rabbits. No one would even know you had them! And lots of meat can be produced by just one bunny in her lifetime.

Plus, you can sell the offspring if you find the right customer. I once had a man who would buy every young rabbit we could produce at $5 a head.

 

[miss_thenorth]

Cortunix quail? I also have muscovies but they are going (I have had 4 hens go broody a total of 6 times this year with not ONE duckling hatched !!). Next year I am looking into getting a trio of heritage turkeys.

 

[BarredBuff]

Cortunix quail? I also have muscovies but they are going (I have had 4 hens go broody a total of 6 times this year with not ONE duckling hatched !!). Next year I am looking into getting a trio of heritage turkeys.

I thought about heritage turkeys but we have lots of wild ones around and all of my birds free range. So I wasnt to sure how that would work.

 

[Dace]

I often wonder why all these folks who want to have chickens in the city and can't because of noise and mess don't just grow rabbits. No one would even know you had them! And lots of meat can be produced by just one bunny in her lifetime.

I can tell ya why.....eggs are easy, but butchering is a whole nuther ballgame!

I personally get the importance of it, and would if I had to or really had the option of raising my own meat.....but I am scared about crossing that bridge.

 

[xpc]

Around these parts if you can catch it you can chicken fry it - really doesn't matter what it is. Not as bad as Texas where they deep fat fry butter hoping that oaf winfrey may show up - the only known single animal herd.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

Well, do you order all your own beekeeping supplies or do you make some of your own. DH bought himself a nice little table saw a few years back and we are getting quite popular with removing bees and catching swarms, but you run out of hive bodies fast and after a while it gets expensive.
My brother mills oak, pine and cypress, so we frequently have access to free lumber, with the end pieces and oddly cut boards, which are just the right size for hive bodies. Regardless, DH has to construct some shudders to complete our Katrina projects and he is going to use some cypress we already have and we plan on using the extra wood to make more beekeeping supplies.
I figure if we start soon making hive bodies and slowly paint them and have frames ready, we will be all ready for all those phone calls we will get around February, when people are complaining of enormous balls of bees clinging to their rose bushes. It stresses me to realize that I have to hurry and put frames together or perhaps catch a swarm in an unpainted hive body.
Also, DH made some homemade frames the perfect size to hold ferral honey comb in a standard hive body and we are completely out and will need some more. There are only too many people needing people to dig into their walls to remove bee colonies.
I just love this kinda thing. Its like when I use my extra fabric to make doll clothes or quilts, only more macho.

 

[Beekissed]

you could construct a more simple top bar hive structure that would save on time and materials

 

[BarredBuff]

I will probably do meat chickens next year. We make most of our bee equipment (hives, frames, etc.). I actually want to try and grow a patch of Yellow Hickory King for chicken scratch and some White Hickory King for cornmeal. Anybody got other ideas?