wyodreamer - we're not in Wyo any more

[flowerbug]

Actually, I do pretty well speaking his love language. He just doesn't speak mine so well. I know this, respect it and it is only this time of year that I have some slight problems with feeling appreciated. I don't have any friends around that I can do things with and my sisters are all over an hour away and have their own family (kids & in-laws) to interact with. Just the ordinary Christmas Blues and these too shall pass. Garden planning starts in January!!

i'm so ready for spring too, but i really need this time off to get ready for other things and to finish up things i didn't get done this past growing/harvest season. beans to sort and to get ready for the seed swap.

 

[baymule]

Today is warm and sunny. High of 50ish, low tonight 28*. Hibernate? I would go nuts. I can't be inactive, I MUST go outside! A couple days of rainstorms and I am climbing the walls. I spent most of the morning outside, had a new lamb last night and I hung out with the dogs and sheep. Then I had to come in to wrap Christmas presents for our grand daughters, going there tonight so they can open the presents.

 

[wyoDreamer]

DH and I are mostly done with building our chicken tractor. It will be finished first thing this spring, as soon as the snow melts. That sucker is HEAVY!! Good thing i have the little tractor for moving it.
I plan to use it mainly for meat birds - I like the Cornish Cross for its ample supply of white meat. It may take a little trial and error to get a good system set-up to do this efficiently and end up with a good product. The 2 batches of cornish that I raised so far have only been in the barn, but they were always busy scratching in the bedding looking for treats (BOSS and Cracked corn) so I think they will do OK outside with moving the tractor every day or so.

DH has a couple of friends that would like to raise chicken but do not have the space or legal right to do so (city dwellers). DH has proposed that after we have our first batch of Cornish-X raised and butchered, we do another batch to split with a friend form college. That would be great - he was a farm boy and would love to come help butcher in exchange for meat. But, DH has also talked with a friend from work about raising chickens for him. That would be a "you pay for the feed and you help butcher - then you get your share of the chickens" agreement. Not sure how that will go as I will need to determine how much I would take out of the batch for my effort of taking care of them every day for 2 months or so. At least this friend is a large game hunter, so even though he doesn't know how to butcher a chicken, he wants to learn so he can start duck and goose hunting, lol. Willing help is a good thing.

3 batches of Cornish-X will be a lot for one summer - maybe too much - But only time will tell.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

I do think it's only fair that you be recompensed for your time and effort. even going to pick up feed can be tiresome, not to mention the gas. True, you will be picking up feed anyways for your other animals. Still, you should get benefit from all the work you will be doing. Perhaps have the meat recipients exchange some extra labor to make up for your labor? Who maintains gardens/animals and wouldn't appreciate an extra set of hands now and then?

 

[wyoDreamer]

@Lazy Gardener I am fairly sure the work friend would be willing to loan me his 2 sons to help with the labor aspect, but how much work could I expect to get out of a 4 and 5 year old? ha, ha. They are good kids and love to come over and wee the birds.

 

[CrealCritter]

It's a beautiful sunny day in the low 60s today in Southern IL. Good day for target practice

 

[wyoDreamer]

oops, it was "SEE the birds", not wee the birds.

We are forecast for a high of 38 today. With mostly sunny skies. Too bad I had to work, but have to be able to pay for the chicken feed somehow.,

Last time the kids came over, I had the chickens out free-ranging. The boys asked my DH if they could go see the chickens and went running around the barn and startled the chickens. They scattered everywhere. Just as I stepped out of the house, I saw a chicken come flying over the milk-house roof and land in the driveway, lol. Now, the dirt ramp for the hay-mow is behind the milk-house, so the bird only had to fly up about 2' to get on the roof - so it wasn't a big deal to get up there, but that chicken wasn't very happy about the get down on the other side.

 

[baymule]

How many birds per batch? 10? 20? 50? 3 batches of 50 chickens would be a lot of pickin' chicken.

 

[wyoDreamer]

It would be about 15 max per batch of meat birds. I do 10 or 12 for myself because I like them huge before I butcher them, lol. But I think the tractor would hold 15 just fine.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

What size tractor?