Mountain Trail Challange

I took a day to play hooky yesterday. I wasn't at work and I didn't do anything on the farm. I was invited to go to a trail riding obstacle course to watch some friends compete. What a blast it was. I got sunburned, dehydrated, forgot my stuff in Carrie's truck, but I'd do it all over again. 

Goose Goose and Giblet go for a walk

   While Connie was in Utah, Giblet and the Goose got to take a walk with me down to the pond for a swim.  These two are the best of friends. The follow each other around, sleep next to each other, and the turkey even goes wading a few inches into the water while the goose swims.

It had to happen eventually

Five years I've been in Idaho. Four of them here on the homestead. Four years we've managed to avoid losing any livestock to anything other than a dog or two that were brought out by friends that snagged a chicken before we knew they were loose.

Adding to the homestead

I've made two mortgage payments on it, I have homeowner's insurance on it. I turned on the electricity, and the kids next door are gone. It's all ours. Five acres to add to our five acres, fenced, cross-fenced, a pond. There is a ton of work to be done over there. Heather will be here in two weeks with her kid, horses, dog, and all her crap.

Working Echo

Echo is finally lice free, she's gaining a little weight and starting to come around. I would have loved to turn her out in the pasture with the other two knotheads, but we ran into a snag. We couldn't catch the bitch. Each day she got a little harder and it took a little longer trying to get her to let us slowly inch our way up to her without her turning into a blowing, snorting, spooking idiot. Scott and I tried all the tricks we knew, but she was getting away from us. If we didn't get help, we were going to turn her into a monster.

Chicks get new digs

14 chicks, two goslings, two ducklings, and a turkey can make one heck of a stink in a 4x4x4 brooder in a week. Not to mention running out of space pretty fast. When we got back from Minnesota the little chickies went down to the new property. I kicked out the five teenage chickies to free range, and moved the little chickies into the coop down there.

Blog-a-Day

I did it. I signed up for Carolyn's Blog-a-Day over at krazoacres. She's noticed, I've noticed, we've all been guilty, of slacking in the blog department. We sat around all winter long dreaming of what we wanted to get done come spring and now I'm still stuck in procrastination mode. I have a ton of pics I've taken, a bunch of blog posts I wanted to write, and didn't get to any of it. So starting today I'm going to try and do a blog post as often as I can. I don't think I can hit one every day, but I'm gonna try.

I'm a math idiot, not a hatching idiot

So we almost gave up on trying to hatch out our own chickens. This was round three. I excitedly candled my eggs the day I took the egg turner out of the incubator. I had four eggs I was pretty sure had nothing but yolk in them. All the rest had a baby chicken in them. Monday last week I got hoping to see a baby chicken in my incubator. I saw nothing.

Echo gets an upgrade

This poor little mare came to EverStuff Ranch today. I'd been seeing her advertised here and there on the internet for a while. She was listed the first time for something like $1200. She's six years old, only halter broke. Cute little head, nice bloodlines. She's actually related to Spooker Dude, the paint gelding we used to have. I saw her listed again a few other times, each time at a lower price. I wanted to go take a peek at her each time I saw her. None of the pics I saw were ever really good pics.

Making babies, We're in lockdown

We're on try number three incubating eggs. Three days before they're due to hatch you're supposed to take the eggs out of the turner, if you have one, lay them flat, add water to the incubator to increase the humidity, close the lid, and leave them the crap alone. No opening it for anything. Not for the first few chicks hatched. Quit turning the eggs, just keep your damned fingers out of the incubator. Yeah, that's gonna be hell for me.

I want to see what's going on inside those shells. I want to shine a light through the shell and see what's going on. So I compromised. I candled them all after I removed the turner. Out of 32 eggs

Dirty, Dirty Birds

The temps are starting to get back into nice, but the nights are still cold. We had a spell of clouds and rain that lulled me into not draining the hoses at night. I just wasn't getting below freezing. It wasn't getting much above freezing either though. Now the clouds have moved out and it's been in the 20's in the morning. Like low 20's. Scott went to go fill the horse's water the other morning and nada. Frozen hose. So it's back to slinging them over the fork in the tree behind the chicken condo and draining the water out. The chickens like it and run behind the hose and peck at the mud left behind the hose as it snakes across the ground.

Speaking of mud and dirt

Granny Squares, burning pastures, new land owners

I fell in love with crocheting a few years ago. I think my sister Jeana tried to teach me to either knit or crochet years ago before I left Arizona and I was a dismal failure at. I watched a few videos on you tube. Made some hats and a scarf or two. I made this blanket that I was immensely proud of. It was just a double crochet and the sides are a little uneven.

Chickies

It's starting to feel a little spring-ish. The daffodils and tulips are starting to poke their leaves out of the ground. The robins have been hopping around for a few weeks. The killdeer are piping away at night and the red wing black birds are starting to hang out by the canals again. I even heard a couple of early frogs at night.

Spring means chick days at the feed stores.

One week in the Incubator, Traffic Jam in the nest boxes

Week one and we're still doing our thing. I took one Banty egg out already. When I candled it, I could see free floating bubbles in it. Ruptured air cell. I don't see any signs of life yet in any of the Banty eggs. I wonder if she's got such a fluffy feathered butt, and neither of the roosters are small enough to get the deed done.

Why does my hamburger cost so much?

As copied from http://ebeyfarm.blogspot.com/2014/01/small-beef-ranch.html
"............He sells his cattle for $3.50/lb hanging weight, but what I really wanted to know is how much profit margin he's making vs his input costs.  Kill fee and cut-and-wrap fees are included in that amount. 

HHW (hot hanging weight) is the weight of the warm steer immediately after slaughter.  This includes about 5% extra weight that will be lost as the animal cools and drains blood; typically beef is hung for two to three weeks after slaughter, and during this  hanging time the animal looses water weight.  Hanging weight includes the weight of the head and hooves; what is removed is the hide and the organs.  A typical yield for choice-grade cattle is 62% of live weight. 

So to yield a 900lb HHW you'd need a 1500lb or so live weight steer.  So from what was said it costs about $1.50/lb (grain, hay, corn silage) to put a pound of live weight on a steer.  One pound of live weight is .62lb of hanging weight.  So it costs $1.50 to put on beef that you'll sell for $2.17. 

Well, not really.  the quoted price of $3.5 includes kill fee and cut and wrap fees, which around here are about $60 for the kill and  $0.60/lb for the cut-and-wrap - so the gross proceeds to the farm aren't $3.5, they're $2.9.    And 62% of $2.9 is $1.79.  His gross margin is about $0.29 per pound - he makes about $0.60/cow/day.   If I were to pay someone to feed and water the cows, I'd expect that to take about an hour, or an hour and a half.  At $10/hour, that's a daily labor cost of $10 to $15.  at this rate, that's the entire profit from  51lbs of beef -- or 25 head.     Since I'd expect his production to be about 35 cows a year (70 cows * 50% bull calves) this enterprise survives on the profit from 10 cows after labor costs.  I don't know what he leases the barns for, or whether he owns or leases the other property his cow-calves are on, but there are costs there, too. 

My opinion?  Thats a vanishingly small profit margin.  If a cow dies or doesn't gain as expected, or the lease on the barn goes up, or any one of a number of other things go wrong, there won't be any profit from this entire operation for the year.  It's possible that he makes more money on selling breeding stock or show steers and that makes up for this small margin, but I think his prices are a bargain at his expense.  Great deal for the consumer, considering the beef right now in the supermarket is way north of $3.5 a pound for virtually every cut. 

I sell my beef at $3.5/lb hanging weight exclusive of kill and cut-and-wrap fees, and that extra $0.60/lb is the difference for me between making a profit and making a loss, after considering equipment, fuel, rent and other associated costs. 

He showed samples of his beef, and they looked great.    I'd buy some.  And honestly, after looking at these numbers and his operation, I just might.  I don't think I could produce beef myself any cheaper. 

I may have misstated some of these numbers; I'm going to go back to the farmer and confirm what I've written here to make sure I've got it down correctly........ "

After reading this, and contemplating the hardship of the American cattle farmer,drought, blizzards... I was so glad we started raising our own steers. The cattle ranchers have either had to sell off or slaughter what they couldn't feed, or freak blizzards killed thousands of cows. It'll take at least two years to come back from that, for those that can even afford to buy new stock, for the heifer calves to come to age to breed, and start calving. For most of the ranchers this last few years was it. They folded and went under. I count myself so lucky that we've started raising what we eat, and are on the road to being more self sufficient. 

Eggs in the Bator

Connie works for Valley Co-Op and got me a heck of a deal on a still air incubator. $30 for a brand new Farm Innovators model. I'd left 12 marked eggs in the nest boxes hoping to entice a hen to set them, and been holding a weeks worth of eggs on the counter at a time hoping. Every day I went out and no one seems interested.

 Don't these chickens understand that I lovingly go out every day and spread scratch grains and layer pellets for them? I make sure they always have fresh water to drink. I leave them to roam all over the property and never complain about stepping in a wet chicken turd when I go out on the porch at night in my stocking feet. I clean popped on shavings out of their chicken condo that Scotty built just for them so nothing will eat them in the night time while they sleep. Is it too much to ask for just one hen to want to settle her fluffy feathered ass on some eggs for me for 20 days?
So Connie got an incubator .

We set it up in the office and let it run it over night to make sure it held it's temp at 99.5, and put 26 eggs in the next morning. I have 9 green EE's, 3 olive EE's, 9 little Cochin, and 5 cream eggs from either the White Rock or the Austra White. The roo's are either my splash Polish, or the White rock.Today is day one, 20 to go, WOOT!!!

Here's the possibly Daddies

The Captain 

Einstein 

Mommas

Easter Eggers

Speckles- Austra White

Cochin Orpington 

The White Rocks, and the Austra White carry the Barred gene. The Polish carries the blue gene. The EE's have the blue/green egg gene, so it should be really fun seeing what I get out of these eggs.

Holy giant egg, steers at the butcher, finally had some snow

This winter has been especially dry. Last winter we didn't have to have our driveway plowed once. We managed to get snow on days we didn't have to work. This winter there just wasn't any snow. We had some flurries here and there. Nothing I couldn't drive the little green truck through to get out of the driveway. I had to drive the dodge a few times because of ice or slick roads from fog. Last week we finally got some snow. About 6-7+ inches of the white stuff. Still didn't have to plow the driveway, but we need the moisture so desperately.

Yay, finally snow.

Foxy snow pony

Foxy and Ben

The chickens got fed in the calf pen. They like to hang under there out of the snow and the wind.

I know the first eggs a chicken lays start small and they get bigger
the older a hen gets, but this was a little extreme.  I feel sorry for the hen who spit this out.

Easter Egger , Banty, and Holy Giant Egg

 And some pics of the rainbow of colors the girls are laying.

Two weeks ago, Scott and Andrea took the steers to Nate's house for him to slaughter for us. They've been hanging out in his shop in the cold to age for two weeks. We went over Saturday, late afternoon to help him cut and wrap our steer. Mostly he cut, Scott did all the grinding into burger, and I packaged. We brought home a fourth of the finished product Saturday night and we'll get the rest of it tomorrow. I think he weighed just under 400 pounds hanging weight. That means hide, head and innards removed.

This was a big 1000 pound bull that was hanging to age and waiting it's turn to be cut up.

Our little guy was not so big. 

Jersey T-Bone

We've made burgers from the ground beef, and man were they juicey. We're talking stand over the kitchen sink and scarf em down. So tasty. Last night we grilled ribeye steaks. Oh man oh man. They were so tender, and had so much flavor. Everything you hope you're going to get when you take that first bite of steak after smelling it grill. Scott seasoned them perfectly before grilling. I kept hearing people say that Jersey meat is so much better than beef cow. I don't ever want to raise anything else for the freezer again. Even if someone offered me a free angus steer, already on grass and just needs finishing. Jersey is the way to go. 

It's been Frosssty

The weather has been kinda crappy the last week or so. We'd had this inversion layer stuck overhead for over a week. The fog would roll in thick overnight and then the clouds would descend till you couldn't what was what. It was just the murky, gloomy yuck. No sun, just wet cold. The only good thing is, it was beautiful on the winter countryside.

Scott took these ones.

These ones were a few days before that I took.

Ice crystals forming on the hot wire

 One good day we had yesterday. We even saw the sun in the morning. The temperature has been holding pretty stead. Low 20's at night, mid 40's in the afternoon. The blankets are off the horses. I even turned them out on the front pasture yesterday to run around and pretend they were wild horses. Today, rain all day. I woke up to a sheet of ice on everything. Bleh. More of the same predicted for tomorrow.

Everything else is holding steayd on the homestead. Scott and Andrea took the steers to Nate's house Saturday afternoon. He was going to dispatch them that evening and let them hang for 10 days. Tuesday next week we'll go over and help him cut and wrap them. It's something I want to learn to do start to finish, but I'm good with learning the butchering part next week.

Norman is pretty upset that he's the only cow in the round pen. He didn't necessarily like the other steers, they were always chasing him away from their food, and trying to hump him, but he isn't happy being by himself. He lowled  and mooed all afternoon Saturday and most of the morning Sunday. I keep telling Scott, he wouldn't be lonely if I got a little dairy heifer. He looks at me like I a nutter.  

Little chicky outside, insulated chicken waterer, rainbow of eggs

Our little chicky and Mamma are full time outside. The weather has been holding nice-ish. Mid 20's overnight and mid 40's during the day. The little chicky is fully feathered and Mamma Speckles was wanting OUT of the brooder pen in the garage. The first night Speckles slept in the bottom of the condo with the little chicky, but she's wanted to sleep in the top with the big hens, and the little chicky is quite upset about that. I swooped her little feathered butt up the first night and stuffed her in the top of the condo. The second night she came flapping right back out and down the ramp. I watched for a few minuets and she headed back into the bottom of the condo and that's where she spent the night.

We had one of those heated base chicken waterers that plugs in and keeps the water unfrozen. I say had, cause I broke it. It was a pain in the ass anyhow. It did it's job and worked great, but in order to put water in it, you had to flip the thing upside down, unscrew the plug in the bottom and fill it turned over. Screw the plug back in and then try and flip it back right side up without splashing water on yourself and carry it back over to the coop while water is trying to drip down your pant legs from the base. It only held three gallons of water, and with 18 chickens, they were going through it every few days.

Back in the summer I ran into Chicken Nipples at D&B while I was in buying chicken feed. I saw on pintrest where you screwed these nipples into the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket and hung it up and voila, chicken waterer that fills from the top. So I got five nipples, and they sat around in the garage gathering dust. The rubber bucket I was using to water the birds was working fine, and we never got around to building the nipple/bucket.

And then I broke the heated waterer. I had broke the handle off the top a few days before (It was over a year old and only plastic in my defense) so I was trying to carry this three gallon waterer between my legs, by the base, doing the penguin walk across the yard. I got back to the coop, managed to spill a minimal amount of water over my pant legs. In flipping it back over onto it's base, it slipped just a little in my hands and smacked the ground. It was pretty cold that morning, like 14 degrees, and the whole blasted thing shattered, spraying me with water up to my thighs. .../sigh.

Scotty to the rescue. We'd bought a new heat tape before he dug out the frost free water hydrant. Pintrest again showed us a design for a bucket in a bucket with the heat tape in the middle.

Inner bucket with chicken nipples in the bottom

Cutting out the bottom of the outter bucket

 

Wrapping the heat tape, top cut off outer bucket

Finished heated chicken waterer

 Scott built a tripod out of some logs to hang it from. It took a few days before on of the hens figured it out, but once she did, everyone had to take a turn pecking at the chicken nipples. 

Using the chicken nipples

 

I've been getting a couple eggs every few days. The older black hens have been taking a break, they molted pretty hard. Only one of the easter eggers started laying before the daylight cut back, and she went on strike when they moulted a little around the head and neck. Last week I opened the box after not looking for eggs the evening before, and found EGGS! All colors. One of the other easter eggers is laying an olive colored egg. I've got creams, tans, pinks, green, olive and almost orange. I'm still missing the pink with grey speckles, but egg production is on the rise.

It was a crappy kind of day

This Tuesday, and last Tuesday were crappy days. This Tuesday I didn't haul near as much of it, but last week was a shit shoveling day. The weather got warm enough that the ground unfroze enough to start pitching cow pies.

With the steers up in the round pen getting fattened up for the butcher, there is a lot of poop. We throw straw out for them to bed in and that starts to get wet and nasty and has to come out too. The cow pies are perfect this time of year. Still a little frozen together, clumped in piles and not scattered all over the place. It took me 8 wheel barrow loads to pick turds and wet straw. I started throwing it right out onto the the frozen dirt in the garden. The rain and the snow will soak all that poopy goodness into the garden. What doesn't break down over the winter will be tilled in, in the spring.

The rabbits got their pens cleaned out, new hay strewn in for them to dig and burrow in. The weather warmed up enough to clean out the top of the chicken condo too. I'd only been able to throw new shavings over the frozen bird turds. What a wet stinky mess. The whole top stripped down to plywood, new shavings scattered inside. Only a few birds still sleep in the bottom of the condo so they got their bedding stirred around, wet spots pulled out, and new shavings over the top. The rabbit pellets and the muck out of the chicken coop went onto the compost pile. I know rabbit crap can go right on, but it was on the bottom of the wheel barrow with the bird turds on top.

Speckles and Chicky got to spend time outside too. Last week was pretty windy so I didn't let them out too long, but Speckles spent the whole time flopping around in the dirt looking like she was having a seizure. She hasn't had a super duper dust bath in ages.