The Modern Homestead - Sustainable Living in YOUR Backyard.
Livestock Losses on the Homestead
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- Created on Thursday, 04 August 2011 01:49
- Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 August 2011 04:10
- Published on Thursday, 04 August 2011 03:55
- Written by Bob Senz
- Hits: 1340
If you have livestock on the homestead, you either have dealt with or will have to deal with losses due to predation. Predation doesn't just happen in the country but can happen in the backyard urban or suburban homestead as well. Predators vary along a wide line of the standard wild animals that we think of, like coyotes, foxes, weasels, wolves, bobcats, snakes and in some instances bears (think bee hives here). The Modern Homesteader, since they may live anywhere, and not just "in the country", have to also deal with predators that many people don't think of, predators like opossum, raccoon, rats, dogs, cats, or even the two-legged variety like neighbors. Recognizing that, at SOME point, you will experience predation, doesn't ease the feeling of loss when you discover your prize hen was killed or that you lost all of your month-old chicks.
So, although we may not prevent predation from ever happening we certainly can (and must) limit it. There are many things to consider before taking on the responsibility of being the care-provider for animals. When we place an animal in a cage, or fenced in area, we limit the natural defenses that God has provided His creation with. Whether speed, stealth, flight or cunning, by taking an animal from it's natural habitat we limit it's ability to defend itself and take that responsibility into our own hands.
Not only do we have a sacred trust of being the provider of safety, there are simple economic issues associate with losses on The Modern Homestead. There is the monetary loss. Let's face it, a replacement animal, production lost from the killed animal, feed lost and time invested all add up to big dollars, even when considering the smallest loss.
If you are like me, one of the biggest issues you have on the Modern Homestead is both time and timing. What I mean by that is the time you have to do things is limited by the timing to do them. Example: you've just lost the chicks that you had incubated a month earlier. They were a month old when you lost them to that nasty ol' coon and they took twenty-one days to hatch in the first place. They were set to start laying in August. You lost them in April. If you start with new eggs, that very same day, your best hope for laying hens is October.... right around the time they begin to wind down their laying for the coming winter.
Super Coop Chicken Tractor!
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- Created on Thursday, 19 May 2011 02:41
- Last Updated on Thursday, 19 May 2011 02:45
- Published on Thursday, 19 May 2011 02:41
- Written by seedspreader
- Hits: 670
Build An Attached Greenhouse. (Part I - The Pad)
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- Created on Wednesday, 29 June 2011 03:43
- Last Updated on Wednesday, 29 June 2011 03:43
- Published on Wednesday, 29 June 2011 03:43
- Written by seedspreader
- Hits: 488
We have a big hole in our kitchen floor. It started as a small hole, but I kept digging it back and finding rotted wood... so, just like a dentist with a bad tooth, I had to get to "good area". That took about a 3'x5' space. It's still sitting there. It's located where the refridgerator is SUPPOSED to be. The refidgerator is in the breezeway that connects the garage and the house. I need to fix the floor, but there was no use fixing it until I fixed the problem. The problem was that the breezeway roof funnels rain from the garage and the breezeway roof right to the foundation. It literally just dumps right there. The breezeway floor (a concrete pad) would actually get water in it also. It would soak the carpet. It was one of the most stupid things I've ever seen in construction and housing. It's a pretty big problem. So the only way to fix it (practically) is to put a pad in outside the breezeway door. There was a small pad and it, ever so slightly, slopes back toward the house... (ARGGGHHH). But in order to fix the problem we had to fix the drainage problem. 
So today after church, we began to pour our pad. It's about 10 feet by 5 feet and we (due to costs and the ability to move the current pad) left the old pad and just poured around it. It took 12 bags of 80 lb. quickrete. Quickrete is difficult to work with on large scale in the best of situations because each mix is slightly different moisture.
It's especially hard if you don't have a wheel barrow to mix it in. 
I don't have a wheel barrow. It's a long painful story, but to give it quickly, someone stole it from me... not once but twice. So we still had to mix the concrete and we had to use what we had... which was a plastic tote. Not exactly ideal... After two bags, we found it was easier to get a good mix with half a bag each mix, which was slow... but at least somewhat more consistent.
I had my 15 year old neighbor, Tyler helping. He actually wanted to. He's a good kid. Pray for him. He's always home alone and his dad isn't around. He eats dinner with us at least once a week and he helps out on projects around here. He likes to learn and I like to share new things with him. He thinks we are exciting because we have chickens and goats and make apple cider and Amy cooks and my kids are all friendly to him. We stared the day with Tyler and Noah mixing the concrete (after I showed them how) but that didn't last long because their idea of a thourough mixture was not up to snuff. Enter my wonderful wife. She really is a blessing. She told me tonight that she was happy to do it because she got to learn about concrete and had never done it. Wow, I am blessed. Perhaps it's all the cookies and cakes she has mixed, but she and Hosanna were good at mixing the concrete up. So Noah and Tyler were relegated to manual labor... pick this up, move this over here, carry this, dump this, get water... all needed jobs and all thankfully fulfilled.
It was funny the motivating factor for the continued dillgence to the job (besides my yelling... "work doesn't stop to take a break in the concrete business") was the RIGHT to put in palm prints and names. I told them up front that it was illegal to do until the project was finished. We were one bag short (That's the picture above... one bag short) and Amy ran to the lumber yard to grab one... it was tough marrying it to the other, because it was beginning to set. But we got it and finally, we were able to put in our names. Our whole, extended family... including Tyler.
Now this is important because it allows us to move forward on our hole in the floor and just as importantly is that we are able to convert that pad to our new, attached green house. Yes that's right, we are putting in a greenhouse there. We are excited. More pictures will be forthcoming, but know this, I found the conduit I am using back in the "bone yard" junk pile on my land. We bought plastic and I have an old screen door in the back also. We hope to have fresh lettuce through the winter and a good early start to our seeds this year. 
The pad cost about 48 dollars for the concrete (12 bags in a mini van along with 7 landscaping ties are heavy) . The plastic cost around 15 dollars and I bought landscaping timbers for the bottom of the greenhouses that tallied 27 dollars. So I hope to fix our drainage problem, have the new patio pad, and have a greenhouse for less than a $100.00 It's wonderful when things that HAVE to be fixed (drainage and pad) fit in with things that we WANT to do efficiently.
A Multiuse Chicken Brooder
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- Created on Thursday, 28 July 2011 04:08
- Last Updated on Thursday, 28 July 2011 04:08
- Published on Thursday, 28 July 2011 04:08
- Written by seedspreader
- Hits: 1270
I bought the Little Giant 9200 Incubator with the fan and the egg turner for around $115.00 shipped from ebay. We have an older version of one of these but I wanted to get the egg turner and fan so I went ahead and just bought the unit all at the same time on ebay from www.incubatorwarehouse.com. It hasn't paid for itself completely yet, but it's well on it's way with it's first hatching of 13 chicks and the next batch cooking now.
Chickens hatch in 21 days from incubation and I don't want to focus too greatly on the incubation (maybe on another post at another time) but I want to focus on the incubating. There are a lot of possibilities for incubating. Some are simpler than this, but I like something that is readily usable when I want it and that's sturdy and proven. So, that said, this is just what I've done. It's not "right" or the "the best" but it's right for me and the best for me. So, enough about hatching the chickens, let's assume you get some chickens hatched but then have to figure out what to with them? they are o.k. for a day or three in the incubator, but eventually, they get messy and have to go to a nice safe warm place. Now is you are like me, you may have, just occasionally, bought, hatched or otherwise secured animals without having proper shelter made for them. Well, that trend carried over with our first batch of chicks that we picked up from Meyer's hatchery years ago. There are tons of options for quick and easy brooders that include simple things like rolled cardboard in a circle, plastic swimming pools, etc. They always say to avoid using boxes or things that have square corners to avoid "piling". Piling is when chicks are cold and attempt to cuddle together for heat and they can crowd each other into a corner so tight that the innermost might suffocate from not being able to breath.
All that to say... "circles are good" for brooders. My first brooder was just cardboard on the garage floor with newspaper on the floor. (Another no-no according to the experts because it's slick and the chicks can develop knee and feet problems... actually to the point that they are crippled). The chicks ended up jumping out the top fairly quickly and I had to rig a better setup. I still didn't have a coop for them that was ready to put the chicks into. A couple of lessons learned from that first occasion was to never put chickens on the floor. They are messy, it's hard to clean up and it leaves a stink. So after the first batch of chickens picked up from Meyers we did a few different things on the next couple of hatched chicks. Boxes and various containers were made to work, but I continually had the issue of keeping the top covered and then accessing to feed and water them daily. Finally, if we started to get too elaborate, like making one out of a storage tote, or wood, or anything else, it was pretty much exclusively used for that as wood and plastic don't clean up too well and a tote is not as handy if you have to cut or drill holes into it. So I wanted something that met my needs of being circular, easy to clean and have other uses.
My 401K - It's Always Going Up!
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- Created on Saturday, 27 August 2011 04:44
- Last Updated on Saturday, 27 August 2011 04:45
- Published on Saturday, 27 August 2011 04:44
- Written by seedspreader
- Hits: 2113
You may know that we have recently purchased some bantam chickens. Well, like all good homesteaders (how often do I have to do this before I get this right???) I purchased the chickens and THEN worried about housing them. Well, let me correct that, we have a shed, that was a former coop, that will be a coop again... but it was filled with a TON of crud. All the crud is sitting on the lawn right now, and the chickens are in... well, I suppose I should back up a bit. As I've posted before, we like to make things from things that are here and reconfigure them for bigger, grander and extended purposes. In that back shed, there were two long rails with 2x2 ballisters in between them. They may have been used in the house at one time before they put up the railing that is currently being used. I don't know.
One thing I know is that most people looking at them probably wouldn't have thought much about them, but as soon as I took them apart, I began envisioning a chicken tractor. So I sat down and thought out how to put them best to use... how to make this chicken tractor a good quality tractor that was practical and utilatarian, with a bit of beauty built into it. (Hey, I was using stained wood...) So this is what I put together. Keep in mind that when I tell you the prices, that I know that if YOU build this tractor it will cost you more because you don't have the materials I do... but that's not the purpose of this writing. My purpose is to motivate you to look around at what you have and design around it. So, with that said, join Noah and me on our journey. I named the coop my 401K because it's our investment. If the stock market continues it's spiral... I'll still have eggs. Plus now every time I move the tractor I can tell people that i've been moving my 401K around.
