Routine
How does McLovin know not to try to make babies with the new ones once they are older?
I let the two flocks intermingle last weekend, and at the end of the day McLovin tried to mount one of the 7-week-old Ameraucanas, the pervert. I let them mix again yesterday, because the young ones are bigger now, and he attacked one of the Don Kings with his spurs (that did NOT jingle-jangle-jingle). She limped for a while, but seems okay today.
If he keeps up these shenanigans, or hurts one of the chicks due to be born this week (I candled today, and there are 5 that should hatch in the middle of the week. We also had a second buff go broody, so I stuck several eggs under her, too, and they’ve got another 10 days or so), McLovin will become dinner. We have plenty of replacement roosters in the garage.
How are you going to know which are dinner chickens and which are keeping chickens? Are you going to keep them sequestered or put bands on them or what?
They’ll probably be kept separate, and will definitely be killed while they’re still smaller than the big ones. If you’ve seen a “fryer” chicken in the grocery store, that’s probably about the size they’ll be when we process them. Maybe a little bigger.
…are the new chicks mongrols? And if so, do that affect what you plan to raise them for???
Yep, they’re mutts. Cute, but mutts (most of them look like one parent or the other, though). I don’t expect their muttness to affect their flavor. 
I cant remember but were the pigs the same size when you go them? One looks much bigger than the other one and I wondered why?
The big pig started out a little bigger, but once he figured out he could bully the smaller one their size grew more disparate. For a few weeks, he would plop his fat ass in the trough length-wise and lay there eating until all the food was gone, keeping the little one from getting much.
On the occasions I found him doing this, it gave me great pleasure to whack him on the ass with a stick to make him move.
Finally, I had a pretty good idea: I lowered one side of the trough so they could get to the food easier, then slid the trough back under the electric fence so porky couldn’t get into it any more. The little one is growing a lot faster now, but he’s still smaller.
Speaking of the electric fence, I finally got zapped by it last week. I’d touched it plenty of times, but since my shoes have rubber soles all I ever felt was a little pulse. This time, however, I was leaned over the field fence and had a good ground contact in my armpit. Suffice it to say that I now know why the pigs yelp when they touch the fence.
Life’s become something of a routine recently: get up, tend to the animals, go to work, tend to the animals, tend to the garden, watch TV, go to bed. We’re deploying a huge new software thingy at work, so the days have been long. There’s nothing particularly new or notable going on (except our 50+ year old septic system is history, and should be replaced sometime this week), so I thought I’d share a bunch of pictures from Crooked Acres.
The garden:
The blackeyed peas finally came up (left), and along with the navy beans they should fill their little fenced area right up:
The green beans continue to be happy:
I spent last Sunday making 54 (!) tomato cages out of a 330′ roll of 47″ field fence. Making my own was cheaper than trying to buy pre-mades, and mine are made out of woven wire instead of flimsy welded stuff. I should be able to use these for years and years:
The cages are connected to each other and to t-posts running the length of the rows. I defy anything short of a tornado to knock them over:
The squash plants (of which we have about 30) are starting to look like squash plants:
The silver queen corn is looking nice. I never did shoot a crow — no more showed up after I fired my single shot out the back door. The yellow corn (not pictured) is about 3 inches tall.
The potatoes are blooming now:
The teenagers are starting to look like chickens now.
The pigs:
About the pigs.
Earlier this week, I was reading a “need help butchering a pig” thread on a forum I visit, and someone recommended this video from “Ask the Meat Man.” The video shows a man turning a side of hog into its various meat cuts.
Holy shit, is it complicated.
I thought you just, like, cut off the front leg and called it the shoulder; cut off the back leg and called it the ham; cut off the belly and called it bacon, and so on. It’s not like that at all.
He was all, “Find the flanxilingus bone with your thumb, then slide the blade under it and carve it just like this. Then, separate the unctilious superior muscle from the venous clavicular and insert your finger into the space so you can use it to leverage the knife into…”
Yadda yadda yadda. Having never carved up an animal, I didn’t realize getting it into parts was that complex, with finding specific bones and such. Granted, he was making professional cuts, but still. It looked like a huge pain in the ass.
Sometimes, I tend to not think things all the way through before I decide to do them. Like announce that I’m going to kill and process a pig myself.
I called the processor that’s about 10 miles from my house, and they charge .45 per pound (hanging weight) to turn a living pig into small frozen packages wrapped in paper. It looks like I could get a full-sized pig done for about $100, maybe a little less.
One of the reasons I wanted to process the pig myself was because I feel like if I’m willing to eat an animal, I should be willing to kill it. As obnoxious as the pigs are becoming (see story about big pig above) (plus, they try to take a bite of EVERYTHING [including me], not because they’re aggressive, but because they think it might be food), I have no issues at all with the thought of killing them. Hell, some days I’d probably enjoy it.
I haven’t decided to take it to a professional, but I’m leaning that way. My friend, who grew up on a farm and was going to show me how to do the processing, is perfectly willing to go to the processor too. He said it’s a lot of work to process a pig, especially when someone else will do it so cheaply.
I have to dither about it for six months before I make a final decision.
Until recently, I worried about stressing the pigs out by putting them in a trailer and taking them to slaughter. Then I watched this video from the same guy that shows the slaughter of a pig. There’s a second pig in the pen, and when he shoots the first one and cuts its throat, the second one looks up briefly from the grass it’s eating, then resumes eating. I figure if that doesn’t stress a pig, a little ride in a trailer can’t be all that bad.
The babies continue to be exceedingly cute. Of the 22 that hatched, the only death we had was one of the ones that I helped hatch. It would have died anyway, so all I did was prolong the inevitable. We had a little bit of a scare last Saturday when one of the chicks appeared to start exhibiting symptoms of avian encephalomyelitis (stumbling, resting on hocks, wings limp). I separated him and waited for the others to start showing signs. I figured that all my washing everything with bleach had been for nought, that there was still AE virus all over the brooder.
Then, on Sunday, he appeared to be perfectly normal again. I guess he was just weak, or something. So far the remaining 21 look healthy.
Interesting trivia for you: when you mate a Rhode Island Red rooster with a Barred Rock pullet (or hen), you can tell the sex of their offspring just by looking at them. The females look like a normal Barred Rock, but the males (like the one below, and above) have a white spot on their head. Genetics is cool stuff. Note this guy is already getting a comb and some tailfeathers:
Last week when I was cutting the grass, I found something cool in the backyard: two tomato plants. What made it so cool is that they were growing in the semi-bare spot that was underneath where the chicken coop used to be.
Which, of course, means they’re CHICKEN POOP TOMATOES, from seeds that were shat out of a chicken.
All those maters in the garden, and the only one with flowers is a poop tomato that sprang up in the yard.
This is how you know I’m gay.
