# The Sheep Shape Shire….A journey of sorts….



## Legamin (Feb 22, 2022)

When we first bought our farm we had just passed through our home being burned to the ground, our business collapsing in the chaos after the fire and unexpected forced retirement.  We bought the farm to restore the 105 year old farm house and set up an antique furniture restoration shop that had always been a hobby/dream and my wife hoped to just have a quiet place to live out the rest of our lives…seemed like a plan.  I had a career in medicine and physics and my wife in bookkeeping so we were ready to be our ’authentic farm selfs’!  
My suspicion was that after sitting on the front porch rocker and whiling away the morning in a good book and watching the neighbor’s farming activities I could ‘putter’ in the flower beds and walk the perimeter of the property admiring the nice things that nature offered us…that was my thought.
But on my walks I began to notice that all four of the barns needed some carpentry…no just paint and a bit of patch…but real carpentry!  One of them had no sides…just great poles lifting a roof into thee air at odd angles covering a concrete pad.  I saw in this silage barn the potential for a new lambing barn!….so we ordered siding….
On our quest to be more independent, ‘self-sustaining‘, ‘organic’, hippy yippie and generally just ‘healthy’ we planted a garden (which failed) and bought some goats and sheep (that became beloved pets) and …well….pretty much everything went counterclockwise down the porcelain trail…..
But it was FARMING!  And ’Farmers’ reinvent themselves like a well loathed politician!  So we researched for a couple of years, watched infinite U-toob videos, read a RAFT of books and eased the goats and sheep into the freezer (heaven?), replanted the garden and focused.
We bought Leicester Longwool Sheep…a critically endangered breed with about 1000 breeding quality sheep left…and joined in the mission to bring them back from the brink.  They are large, lovely, funny, loving and gentle…but they are still sheep.  Last year we added chickens to the menagerie…someone told us that by turning them loose with the sheep that they would help aerate the barn straw and keep fly larvae down…I should never have listened!  Chickens LOVE sheep’s grain!  At night, instead of the perches and nests that I put up they opted for sitting around the lip of thee sheep’s water all night adding their particular brand of filth to the liquid refreshment.  I tried to relocate the chickens when it all became a bit much to clean up daily (they Ignored the nests and laid eggs in the once neatly stacked hay that is used for sheep feed…then hid them by covering them) but they insisted on returning to the foul the barn and water at night like newborn ducks stupidly imprinted on the sheep!  Well my sheep had ENOUGH!  So I build a chicken coup and yard…where they happily used the nests, turned right around and ate the eggs….(did I buy stupid chickens or wretched cannibals?). So this last week I breathed deeply before buying a 3 nest box from which the eggs neatly roll out from under the hen into a secure covered drawer and our 9 hens FINALLY are giving us 6 eggs per day….I swear if I knew who wasn’t producing there would be chicken dinner for three straight days!
But the sheep are happy, the chickens are happy…and I AM HAPPY to be doing 3 hours less work per day cleaning up after CHICKENS!
I’m facing our first major lambing in a few weeks (Days?) and we are setting up an Apiary…because we weren’t busy enough….but I’ll write about that later.


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## Baymule (Feb 23, 2022)

I'll be following along on your journey! Free range chickens, TOTALLY free range chickens, can be a nuisance. Letting them out after they lay, yes. What breed are the chickens? Some breeds are not daily layers, but every other day, then daily, then not. If all of them have bright red combs, then the egg hormones are flowing. In the fall, when they molt, the hormones turn off and the combs are a pink color. They need protein to regrow their feathers, a handful of dry cat food seems to do the trick, in addition to their feed, plus they love the cat food. It's a good way to train them to go back to the coop to get their treat. 

I'm so sorry about your home burning to the ground. That is truly devastating, fire leaves nothing. Your business collapsing on top of that, your world just fell apart. You and your wife are resilient and are finding your way, sounds like true happiness in your sheep. I admire your tenacity and refusal to give up and feel sorry for yourselves. Just reinvent yourselves as sheep farmers! Sounds good to me!


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## farmerjan (Feb 23, 2022)

Another trick for telling who is laying on top of the bright red comb and wattles.  Hold the chicken in one hand, palm up, with the feet between you fingers, head tucked into your arm/body.  Where the egg hole is (poop hole too) take and put your fingers against the 2 pelvic bones.  Vertically.... If there is only space for 1 or 2 fingers, the hen isn't laying... if there is a spread wider... say 3 fingers, then the hen is laying eggs. Yes, some lay daily, some less often... but if there is little space between the pelvic bones, she is not laying.  
Overly fat hens often do not lay or lay very little.  It is not hard to get the feel for it. Once you do, you will never forget it.


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## Legamin (Feb 23, 2022)

farmerjan said:


> Another trick for telling who is laying on top of the bright red comb and wattles.  Hold the chicken in one hand, palm up, with the feet between you fingers, head tucked into your arm/body.  Where the egg hole is (poop hole too) take and put your fingers against the 2 pelvic bones.  Vertically.... If there is only space for 1 or 2 fingers, the hen isn't laying... if there is a spread wider... say 3 fingers, then the hen is laying eggs. Yes, some lay daily, some less often... but if there is little space between the pelvic bones, she is not laying.
> Overly fat hens often do not lay or lay very little.  It is not hard to get the feel for it. Once you do, you will never forget it.


That is soooo much information about handling a chicken in a seemingly inappropriate way that I’m not sure what to make of it….so I’ve decided to try it tomorrow!  So…find the ‘vent’ and see how many fingers between the  egg bones…got it!  Thanks for the info.  I think we have 4 ‘red ones’ an 5 ‘Buff Orpingtons’…I may not have that right…but we bought them almost grown and they have been utterly uncooperative since then…the coop made all the difference!  The ‘Free Range’ thing was just a mass church chicken dinner potluck waiting to happen!


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## Legamin (Feb 23, 2022)

Baymule said:


> I'll be following along on your journey! Free range chickens, TOTALLY free range chickens, can be a nuisance. Letting them out after they lay, yes. What breed are the chickens? Some breeds are not daily layers, but every other day, then daily, then not. If all of them have bright red combs, then the egg hormones are flowing. In the fall, when they molt, the hormones turn off and the combs are a pink color. They need protein to regrow their feathers, a handful of dry cat food seems to do the trick, in addition to their feed, plus they love the cat food. It's a good way to train them to go back to the coop to get their treat.
> 
> I'm so sorry about your home burning to the ground. That is truly devastating, fire leaves nothing. Your business collapsing on top of that, your world just fell apart. You and your wife are resilient and are finding your way, sounds like true happiness in your sheep. I admire your tenacity and refusal to give up and feel sorry for yourselves. Just reinvent yourselves as sheep farmers! Sounds good to me!


Thanks, great to have you along. This has been an interesting time for us.  My dream was to continue our lives of traveling the world as we did with my job and my wife wanted to settle down.  Our adult children had settled and with 6 grandchildren that settled it for us as well.  The fire was interesting in it’s timing.  I have been retired early since the early 90’s and my wife wanted to retire as well.  When we moved from city to country it just fell into place.  We are going to build a larger ’tent structure over the garden bed where we put the 10 tons of sheep doo from the barns each Spring.  It will cover 1/3 of the garden and I’ll hook up the tractor so that every Spring we move it to cover a new area while uncovering a chicken scratched…and enriched..1/3 of the garden.  It’s a 1/4 acre garden so I have some architecting to do but I think it will work out better than the fixed coop that needs cleaning and has a fixed yard for them.  This will give them a deep scratch layer to work through fresh each year and for us it means a richer garden!  They have proven so untrustworthy for returning home in the evening in the past that I think we will stick to the year round coop with fenced yard…they seem to understand the limits of their capacity to roam and intervene in organized farm life when they are free…and that just doesn’t work well for me.


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## farmerjan (Feb 23, 2022)

Sorry, didn't mean to make it sound like it was a crazy way to hold a chicken.  Basically the chicken's main body is sitting in the palm of your hand... and by slipping your fingers between it's legs while sitting there, you have better control and they can't try to scratch or get loose.  The same for holding their head close against your body, with their head near where your arm is against your body... like tucking their head under your arm so to speak.  It keeps a chicken quieter if they are not frantically trying to get away from you and to hold them securely like that,  they are less inclined to fight you.  This is the proper way for a poultry show judge to hold any chicken as they take them out of a show cage and to examine the bird during judging.  Believe me, it beats having them get all squawking  and flapping their wings as they are handled.  That also allows you to handle them one handed so that you can check the vent and the space between the pelvic bones... also handy for examining a chicken for lice or mites or anything else like that.


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## Legamin (Feb 24, 2022)

farmerjan said:


> Sorry, didn't mean to make it sound like it was a crazy way to hold a chicken.  Basically the chicken's main body is sitting in the palm of your hand... and by slipping your fingers between it's legs while sitting there, you have better control and they can't try to scratch or get loose.  The same for holding their head close against your body, with their head near where your arm is against your body... like tucking their head under your arm so to speak.  It keeps a chicken quieter if they are not frantically trying to get away from you and to hold them securely like that,  they are less inclined to fight you.  This is the proper way for a poultry show judge to hold any chicken as they take them out of a show cage and to examine the bird during judging.  Believe me, it beats having them get all squawking  and flapping their wings as they are handled.  That also allows you to handle them one handed so that you can check the vent and the space between the pelvic bones... also handy for examining a chicken for lice or mites or anything else like that.


I understand…my mother, who is quite elderly, was the family chicken guru and explained what you meant.  I had discovered that by holding them upside-down while carrying them they were less likely to fight, scratch and otherwise misbehave.  Our rooster can be turned upside-down and he falls right off to sleep.  I think if I set him down that way he might just stay there for a nap…. I think we’ve decided on welding a very large tent frame of 12g x 1-1/2” steel tubing and ordering a massive billboard canvass to cover it.  This should let enough light through, be stiff enough to mount some vents into it for Summer and last through our very high speed wind storms for about five years.  I think 100’L x 50’W by 12‘H is the goal size.  It will only weigh about a ton and can easily be moved by the tractor.  It is essentially a portable barn for under $1000 in materials and a single day’s labor.  And my wife gets her dream of more chickens!  While I will set up the ’old’ chicken coop as a rabbit hutch and start a meat production line of rabbits.  The garden is the part we have to organize.  This last year only one crop flourished…PUMPKINS!  And BOY did they flourish!  I’ve never eaten so much squash, pie, pudding in my life!  And the sheep eat them as if it were Crack Cocaine!  It saved in feed as this last Summer was a pretty epic drought and we had to start feeding early.
thanks for the info on the chickens.  I am always learning on this site as it is a fact that there is ALWAYS someone with newer, better and more information that me no matter the subject!  That was the basic understanding that had to be learned in my scientific discipline and it carries over into farm life!  Book knowledge is never quite sufficient.


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## farmerjan (Feb 24, 2022)

Book knowledge is wonderful, but it has to be tempered with the practical hands on.  And that comes from someone that has been there/done that.  
My chickens go nuts when they are upside down, it is not a calming thing at all.... Everyone's react differently.  Plus, the show chickens you do not want them to be flapping their feathers or getting ruffled up in any manner... so this is the standard carry method for most show birds.  Plus, show chickens get handled more;  they are actually handled to be able to get them to pose and stand to their best advantage and to exhibit the type in a cage that is considered to be their ideal breed type. For that you want a somewhat calm bird also.  Just like showing/exhibiting any kind of livestock... the more they are trained and handled, the better they show their "best side"....
Glad your mom could explain it to you... it is so easy to show but hard to write it down.


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## Legamin (Feb 24, 2022)

farmerjan said:


> Book knowledge is wonderful, but it has to be tempered with the practical hands on.  And that comes from someone that has been there/done that.
> My chickens go nuts when they are upside down, it is not a calming thing at all.... Everyone's react differently.  Plus, the show chickens you do not want them to be flapping their feathers or getting ruffled up in any manner... so this is the standard carry method for most show birds.  Plus, show chickens get handled more;  they are actually handled to be able to get them to pose and stand to their best advantage and to exhibit the type in a cage that is considered to be their ideal breed type. For that you want a somewhat calm bird also.  Just like showing/exhibiting any kind of livestock... the more they are trained and handled, the better they show their "best side"....
> Glad your mom could explain it to you... it is so easy to show but hard to write it down.


Yep, I get that.  In my work I had to read hundreds of pages of ‘new information’ daily…it became a life habit.  But I come here to ask the questions that I’m just not sure of and find that there is always someone who knows more than the book!  It has been very helpful.   I appreciate your input.  Mom, at 92, has slowed considerably but loves to get calls from her children, brightened right up when she began to recall her ‘chicken glory days‘.  Having had a serious head injury a few decades back I rely on family to help remind me of much of my past.  Of course my wife can keep me up to date on the last 40 years or so!  But her (my mom) recollections of when she had many chickens growing up on the farm in Bluffton, OH are so clear and she remembers the individual chickens and how they responded to various treatment and handling.  I hope my memories are so pleasant and clear at that age.
I don’t handle our chickens much but we are consistent and gentle always and they have always been very calm when we need to handle them.  We have lice checks and treatments coming up to get ready for the warm weather and plan to vaccinate as well.  I think some sort of B-complex supplement to make up for the general lack of sun might be helpful in their feed.  But they are in great health and very productive since we cut off the availability of cannibalism.
I sincerely hope to avoid ever having to show any type of livestock but I do prepare my sheep for those who will in 4H and Future Farmers of America.  We put them in harness every day during feed time and lead them around a bit just to keep them ‘used to it’…but for the main body of sheep that will stay in my flock I leave them to do what they do best….Sheeping!  They are one and all experts at that and I wouldn’t want to change a thing.  I love the natural personality and habits of the animal that lives on instinct.  It is beautiful to watch.  Chickens are no exception.  I do enjoy watching the children proudly show their animals at the many fairs that we attend in Summer and Fall and it prepares them for their future work with animals.  I think we desperately need more dedicated farmers and herders.  When this becomes a critical shortage of knowledgeable workers and the older generations die off there will be a near total reliance on unknown sources for our food.  That is a fatal mistake for any nation.  I think it is a set up for future collapse of a society.  I think what we do is critical to world stability…without any overstatement.
One more question: I have been reading about a chicken producer that claims that he uses a “captured bolt stunner” to humanely kill his chickens….that seems like WILD overkill to me…but I know I could be wrong.  Have you heard of such a thing?


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## Baymule (Feb 24, 2022)

A bolt stunner for chickens does a good job for those who have a hard time with other methods. Personally I would not use one. I use a killing cone and cut the throat with a sharp knife. They are unconscious in seconds. The brain tells the heart to keep pumping and they bleed out. I feel it is the most humane way of slaughtering a chicken. The cone holds their wings against their body, they don’t flap around. They may kick with their legs, I just hold them snugly until they quit kicking.


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## farmerjan (Feb 24, 2022)

We have never used a bolt stunner.  I hate to cut throats, but that is the way we do it.  Quick, and as @Baymule said, fast bleedout, I agree that it is the most humane way.  Using the cone is preferable so they don't flap and flop around and no bruising of the meat.  I mostly have mine killed by a Mennonite farmer that has a mechanical plucker and all... it is too time consuming for one person to do... and when I am raising up meat birds that I get from a couple of commercial poultry houses when they come in and get them all... I get the "left behinds" that are often smaller... and they grow out quite nicely in a more natural "free range" type set up... and they are past the heat and brooding stage... There are usually 20-50 at a time that get done.  It is worth it to pay $3 a piece to get them killed,  plucked, cleaned, and in vacuum bags, chilled in the cooler; ( I can get them frozen also for a little more but usually do not since I can spread them out and get them frozen in my freezers  and in a couple hours or the next day,  I go pick them up.  I do not have the time nor the facilities to do them myself in those quantities... Have done many over the years.... Plus they will do turkeys for a little more and they can be harder to handle..  I don't mind paying a fellow farmer for a service like that.


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## Legamin (Feb 24, 2022)

Baymule said:


> A bolt stunner for chickens does a good job for those who have a hard time with other methods. Personally I would not use one. I use a killing cone and cut the throat with a sharp knife. They are unconscious in seconds. The brain tells the heart to keep pumping and they bleed out. I feel it is the most humane way of slaughtering a chicken. The cone holds their wings against their body, they don’t flap around. They may kick with their legs, I just hold them snugly until they quit kicking.


I’ve seen that on homesteading videos.  It looks like a great system…something I could put together in my machine shop.  Probably the way we will go.  Thanks again


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## farmerjan (Feb 24, 2022)

Know a guy who got some "throw away" cones from the state DOT that were damaged,  and cut off the bottoms and used the skinnier end as cones for killing....


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## Legamin (Feb 26, 2022)

I suppose I could go back to the beginning to explain my desire to surround myself with animals and the beauty of God’s creation…as seen through the modified lens of ‘The Farm’.  While I have lived abroad for my career and spent much of my time traveling my life has not always been like that…at least that is not the way it started.
As unsavory as it all seems now, I am a Southern California born boy from back when that state was a beautiful place with shiny new highways and sprawling suburbia and even farm land right up close to the beaches of La Jolla just 20 minutes from the San Diego Zoo!  Our little 1 acre farm, which was sold to my blue collar dad for $17,000..(a  small fortune to a nurse…and a cop…in the late 1950’s) was a dream come true for our family of 6 plus nurse-grandma who worked a tough job in the city psychiatric ward..and helped with the down payment on the property…and lived in the tiny shed converted to a house down the hill from the main house (where I spent most of my time).  Things were much different then.  55 years ago I could walk 1 mile to school through San Diego streets without concern for my safety.  It wasn’t downtown or anything but that same area is now prickling with condominiums that have long fallen into sorry disrepair in neighborhoods best untraveled by tourists or those valuing their personal safety…those condominiums with no yard now selling for $2.5 million.…things have changed a great deal in my lifetime.  Back then the brown haze over the downtown area was called ‘Smog’ and it was only loosely related to industry, shipping and cars (smoking and backyard trash fires)…mostly it was just ‘Smog’…and we knew we didn’t want too much more of it.  Now there are gases of all colors and chemicals somehow dangerous that we ought not to breath..all very much more complicated than ‘Smog’… Of course now the skies over San Diego are much cleaner and brighter and it is the streets that have become dangerous in which to breath…
But I digress…
My parents were very health conscious and decided that they would return to their roots and start a menagerie resembling the farms of my mother’s youth.  So animals were sought out and added to the makeshift hutches, cages, pens and sheds that littered the area behind our house.  Goats, rabbits, chickens, ducks and a large Turkey named Sam…who might have been ‘Samantha’…because of our general lack of expertise we will never know any more than after a year of making Sam our delightful pet…he or she…was DELICIOUS!
Our lives went on with the garden (which was the jungle through which my plastic preformed army men fought bravely) and the menagerie which supplied our weekly ‘big meal’..and leftovers for several days..and the milking stall, (a particular favorite of mine because the cat and I got alternating squirts of warm fresh goat’s milk) which provided endless lessons from my father in biology, hoof management and swear words with which my five year old self was grossly unfamiliar…but knew better than to repeat in Sunday School.
THIS was my introduction to the wonder of ‘Farm Life’ those 55 years ago.  It lasted for about 6 years before we moved to Lake Tahoe for a job opportunity for my father and our lives took a dramatic turn for the different…as we adjusted to small city life in a tourist town.  It was here that I learned so much more about the wonder of the ‘National Forest’ where I spent most of my days wandering aimlessly checking each different tree and learning the names of every flower and bird from my ever present and wise grandmother.  I learned a great deal about nature and the Bible on those daily afternoon meanderings through miles and miles of ‘Natonal Forest’ (I neither understood nor cares why that particular forest was ‘National’..)
But during the home farm days in San Diego I learned many things that plagued my mind throughout my life.  no matter who we are, where we come from, what our parents do for a living, we are all connected deeply to the land.  Even living in the middle of a rapidly growing city who’s skyline is defined by ‘Smog’ and where the downtown streets and university campuses are filled with ‘unrest’…it was a different time yet I learned everyday as I checked off my list of ‘chores’, carefully tailored to the skills of a five year old, that everything…animal, mineral or plant…has a unique purpose for being and it was somehow partly MY responsibility to be a ‘good steward’ of the parts of it that were closest around me and placed in my care.  This meant a little less play and a little more dirty work.  It meant smells that I didn’t like…smells that would bring back fond memories throughout my life every time they wafted across my path…and it meant daily life lessons that would inform my values, shape my thinking and press me to ask questions constantly whenever I came across something in the world that I did not understand.
My early life on our small city bound menagerie has shaped the last 55 years of my life for the better.  And only now as I return to it.  Mull it over.  Massage and ‘improve’ some of the stories and facts of my misspent youth for the benefit of the ‘Interweb’…do I realize the significant impact that those animals, those chores….those SMELLS…have had on every facet of my life since then.
So now you know where I started and you have a rough idea of where I’ve ended up.  I hope as time goes on I can share just where i…WE…are going.  Because I don’t feel alone at all on this journey.  I don’t feel as if this experience is just mine.  It is as if this were a shared consciousness…a story that is being observed through windows of thought, literary device and shared experience with the animals which touch our lives as we herd..and are herded by them.
God bless you all as we travel this dirt road together.  I think we will have a wonderful day together!


farmerjan said:


> Know a guy who got some "throw away" cones from the state DOT that were damaged,  and cut off the bottoms and used the skinnier end as cones for killing....


makes good sense..those are available cheap all over the place.  I have some galvanized sheet steel in my machine shop begging to be used and that’s ‘free’..and very permenant!  Thanks for the idea..I’m not above using the creativity of others for my own benefit!


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## Legamin (Feb 26, 2022)

farmerjan said:


> We have never used a bolt stunner.  I hate to cut throats, but that is the way we do it.  Quick, and as @Baymule said, fast bleedout, I agree that it is the most humane way.  Using the cone is preferable so they don't flap and flop around and no bruising of the meat.  I mostly have mine killed by a Mennonite farmer that has a mechanical plucker and all... it is too time consuming for one person to do... and when I am raising up meat birds that I get from a couple of commercial poultry houses when they come in and get them all... I get the "left behinds" that are often smaller... and they grow out quite nicely in a more natural "free range" type set up... and they are past the heat and brooding stage... There are usually 20-50 at a time that get done.  It is worth it to pay $3 a piece to get them killed,  plucked, cleaned, and in vacuum bags, chilled in the cooler; ( I can get them frozen also for a little more but usually do not since I can spread them out and get them frozen in my freezers  and in a couple hours or the next day,  I go pick them up.  I do not have the time nor the facilities to do them myself in those quantities... Have done many over the years.... Plus they will do turkeys for a little more and they can be harder to handle..  I don't mind paying a fellow farmer for a service like that.


As we consider how to expand and where to push (or withdraw)our efforts I think we will be looking at some of the tools that make life easier.  A basic $1000 ‘defeatherator’ with quality machined parts would pay for itself in about 2 years.  With my home built cone and a knife I think I could add this to our ‘clean room’ (where animals are butchered (slaughter occurs outside), carcasses are readied for the freezer and then meat saw, and where honey is extracted after a thorough cleaning and bleaching.  We have about $6,500 into the clean room including the structure and machinery and the product that comes out of it will have reimbursed us for all of it within 2 years…which is kind of our goal for any and all purchases when considering if it will make our expansion easier.
honey extractor, 3 ton hoist with galley for movement, stainless cutting table, dedicated meat bandsaw, freezer, knives, possibly soon ‘defeatherator’ and we are thinking about a dedicated meat grinder….we’ll see how things go…. But we are looking at rabbit hutches which is far more efficient, clean and ‘reproductive’ than chickens and has a much higher POS profit point with a far wider market.  I can’t compete with wholesale prices of chicken for our local restaurants needs but I CAN produce rabbit quickly, cleanly and in large quantities to meet their needs for about half of the local wholesale price point….and still make about $15.00 per carcass.  Less feed, less work to clean and faster processing and scarcity of available product in the area all point to much higher profit margin for my efforts.  But such production would mean year round production and I would have to wire in a $1,200 electric heater in the ‘clean room’ for year round work…something unnecessary for the two seasons of slaughter for lamb and one season per year honey collection…so it’s all in the works!  Cost/Benefit….more lists….more work!


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## Baymule (Feb 26, 2022)

Are you going to raise your rabbits in hanging wire cages? They are much easier to clean than wood frame hutches.


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## Legamin (Feb 27, 2022)

Baymule said:


> A bolt stunner for chickens does a good job for those who have a hard time with other methods. Personally I would not use one. I use a killing cone and cut the throat with a sharp knife. They are unconscious in seconds. The brain tells the heart to keep pumping and they bleed out. I feel it is the most humane way of slaughtering a chicken. The cone holds their wings against their body, they don’t flap around. They may kick with their legs, I just hold them snugly until they quit kicking.


If you get into chicken production on a larger scale there is a very lucrative market in the combs, waddle and foot cartilage of many breeds of chicken.  The standard is high as it is a medical procedure product but you could essentially toss the chicken and sell these parts and make good money (no one would do that right?).


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## Legamin (Feb 27, 2022)

Baymule said:


> Are you going to raise your rabbits in hanging wire cages? They are much easier to clean than wood frame hutches.


The short answer is yes, premade wire cages suspended in large wooden support frames under cover.  This way I can put up canvas walls for Winter (no insulation or heat is needed down to -20F) and so it can coexist under one end of the large mobile chicken shed and carry 200 rabbits at low capacity and 800 maximum.  I would probably have the full 800 and hire stunner/skinners/cleaners and do the butchering myself.  A four man team can process 200 rabbits per day and just have one ship out date every 4 weeks.  Keeping the rabbits revolving on a 16 week maturity date and 30 day breeding cycle this means once per month part time workers at a total cost of about $1400 per day.  As long as the market holds up this is a great way to outsource labor and hire local people part time.  I hate book keeping so that would have to be hired out or sent to a company like ADP…something simple for stupid and slow brains like mine.


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## Ridgetop (Mar 9, 2022)

I suggest you start smaller than 800 breeding does.  We had a 100 hole (cage) semi commercial rabbitry before the children converted it to a goat and sheep barn for their 4-h projects.  DH showed NZWs and was extremely successful in producing high quality rabbits. He had people coming to him for breeding trios from all over southern CA and that before websites and the internet!  Since we only kept the very best ones for breeding and showing we were selling a lot of fryers.

Feeding, breeding and keeping records of kindling dates, palpating for pregnancy, bedding and putting in nest boxes, checking on kits, removing and sterilizing next boxes, weighing and weaning bunnies was my job.  Also all paperwork, getting feed and mixing the grain formula we fed the does, making sure we had shavings and straw for the next boxes, checking automatic water lines to make sure they were working, all repairs, and annual cleaning and burning of the cages was also my job.  It took about 3-4 hours daily. DH sorted the bunnies since he was good at telling a truly good rabbit from another.  That took another couple hours once a month along with tattooing the rabbits that we were keeping as breeders and show prospects.  I bred the does on an accelerated program and fed 18% protein feed to the does that were pregnant and lactating.  

800 breeding does will be a full time job so you might want to scale down.  Instead of hiring someone to butcher, check to see if you are on the route of any commercial rabbit buyers.  These are guys that follow a route buying live fryers from producers.  They take them live which avoids any health rules you might have regarding selling butchered animals.  You need to check the state and county laws before planning a butchering business.  Some areas require a Grade A facility with regular health inspections.

DH will start a rabbitry in our new home in Texas.  He will be using Californians since we have come to prefer them to NZs.  California does are about 2 lbs. lighter than NZs which make them easier to handle when breeding.  They are also more docile which makes them more pleasant to work with.  While most NZ kits need 10 weeks to reach 5 lbs (optimum weight for fryers) Cals will reach 5 lbs at 8 weeks.  Feeding fryers for 8 weeks instead of 10 weeks is important for a commercial operation.

Rabbits are seasonal breeders so you will need to run lights either full time or on timers in the rabbitry to keep them breeding through the winter months.  Likewise in the heat of summer rabbit bucks will often go temporarily sterile.  Heat is a killer for rabbits, but low emit misters around the exterior walls do a great job of lowering the temperatures.  You will want to keep junior bucks for summer breeding and pan to breed before the heat of summer.  By cutting the amount of bedding in the nest boxes you can lessen the danger of heat death to the kits.  Or pan for the does to be bred before the worst of the heat so they will be kindling when the temps start to go down. Depending on the orientation of your rabbit barn, you will be able to decide how to adjust these dates.

Shade cloth on the western side in the summer and canvas covers - painter's drop cloths with grommets you can add yourself are perfect.  Either of these can be rolled up when not needed and tied up with hay ropes.  

Use worm pits under the cages.  You can also sell the manure in the pits to gardeners, especially organic gardeners if you can't use it all yourself.  Use automatic drinkers but be sure to either bury the water lines leading to the drinkers, or insulate them so the water stays at a drinkable temperature in summer and doesn't freeze in the pipes in winter.   Don't free feed.  If a rabbit is not finishing up his ration check the drinkers to make sure they are working.  Rabbits are night feeders so empty the feeders every evening before feeding. If rats get in the feeders they will pee and poop on the feed and the rabbits will refuse to eat it.  Screen backed feeders will keep the feed free of "fines" - the dust that will accumulate in crocks or solid backed feeders.  Rabbits won't eat that dust and it can cause respiratory problems

You will want to start with good quality breeding rabbits.  Show rabbits may seem expensive but several of these used as herd bucks will improve the carcass quality when bred to poorer does.  Show rabbits are judged on how much meat they carry which is why I suggest them for breeding bucks.  

One good way to get a lot of good rabbits quickly and cheaply is to visit your local Fair and put up notices in the rabbit barn saying* you will buy all unsold meat pen trios.* Many fairs only allow the Champion and Reserve Champion meat pens to sell.  Other fairs will allow only a certain number of the top placing pens to auction while still others allow the kids to enter 2 pens each but only auction one pen.  These rabbit pens will be abut 8 weeks old, but are a good way to start with lots of good to excellent meat does. Many of the pens will be higher quality.  We used to offer to buy all unsold pens and usually brought home 30-45 bunnies from the fair at rock bottom prices because the kids had other litters at home and many families looked at the bunnies as pets and wouldn't butcher them.  Ask if the kids have any others they want to sell when doing this since many families won't eat their rabbits and the pet market can only handle so many meat size rabbits.  Use the does as your startup herd and butcher the bucks for your freezer or for private sale.

Once you have the rabbits housed and are breeding you can cull out the ones that don't produce well or that don't produce the type of carcasses you want.  Build up gradually to the number that fits with the time you want to put into them.

I loved breeding rabbits and DH loved showing them.  We hope to get back to it.  I have kept a dozen cages, automatic watering stuff, along with all our other equipment and will be taking it to our ranch in Texas where we will set up one of the outside wings of our barn as a small rabbitry.


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## Legamin (Mar 11, 2022)

Ridgetop said:


> I suggest you start smaller than 800 breeding does.  We had a 100 hole (cage) semi commercial rabbitry before the children converted it to a goat and sheep barn for their 4-
> 
> 
> Ridgetop said:
> ...




Wow!  Lots of info.  I probably wasn’t as clear as I could have been. 800 breeding does would be far too many for me!  I am thinking of a number closer to 100 breeders with a total of 800 rabbits including all the bunnies maturing at varying stages and gaining for market.  They would cycle out at about 200 per month and I would only breed enough rabbits at that time to replace the outgoing number.  I have a well set up barn that is currently not in use but hate to move it all indoors.  But that is not out of the question as it would simplify the water, food and lighting/heating during the coldest parts of Winter.  We ran into the same issue with chickens and found that heated water and controlled feed bins solved many issues…we had wild birds flying in and making off with over 5lb of food per day more than the chickens could eat!  We installed a light system to trick them into laying all but 3 weeks during the Winter…the shells got thin for a few weeks but then firmed right up.  I’m pretty methodical so moving through 800 total rabbits twice per day would just add a few hours in the morning and evening.  The bees are the least predictable as far as time consumption because with them you have to wait and see and then act quickly when the time is right for splitting, queen breeding, etc. etc.  I just about put myself out of commission the other day out frost planting our back acreage.  There is an area that all had to be done by hand that I thought would take a few hours….suddenly it was 15F degrees, high winds, dark and getting colder and my artificial knees didn’t want to move very well…and I was a mile from the house with 80lbs of gear to haul back.  My wife came out and found me and I spent two days recovering from hypothermia and dehydration…dumb mistake…lost track of time while enjoying my work!  
I don’t want to grow too quickly as I will be developing a customer base and hate to waste or store too long…that takes the profit out of it.  For the first year I want to focus on breeding and carcass size and getting the system simplified for my own best benefit.  Once we get that going it will be like the bees…start with 4 hives and work towards 300.  I put everything on a 5 year plan and if it takes longer I don’t sweat it.  I also have to consider the inevitable issue of farming from a wheel chair.  There is no set time on that but I have to plan everything around that firm eventuality.  And and gravity will have us all.  I’m no exception….unless that CBD oil advertisement was RIGHT! (Sarcastic laughter).  Thanks for all your information.  I’m printing it up and putting it on file to go over as I plan and put things together.  I’ve got to reside the house, reside a new sheep barn, renovate a goat barn and set up a new sheep handling system as well as build out a new portable chicken coop to increase out chicken population by 10 fold.  Somewhere I have to fit in 3 miles of new fencing… so with all the normal gardening, field harvest, pasture movement and stuff….like finishing our home’s hardwood floors and building new kitchen cabinets…It should be busy Spring/Summer/Fall!


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## Mini Horses (Mar 11, 2022)

"Busy" doesn't begin to describe that list!  😳👍 Wow.


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## Ridgetop (Mar 11, 2022)

100 holes (cages) of breeding does is completely doable.  Since you would have them on a rotation schedule of breeding and kindling, you would have groups of rabbits ready for sale at manageable times.  I do think you should check into the traveling rabbit production buyer that picks up live fryers by the lb.  I believe that your profit margin would be higher than if you were paying someone to butcher.  Also, you would not have the huge amount of offal and skins to dispose of.  Selling live fryers in bulk would not prevent you from having several private clients to whom you could supply dressed rabbits.

In SoCal we can't sell dressed meat carcasses without a license, however, you can get around that by selling the fryers *live* and dressing them out as a *"favor"* to your customers.  DH did that and the additional benefit is that we were able to keep the livers and hearts for our own freezer.  

*Easy Rabbit Liver Dinner*
1 lb. bacon - strips cut in 4 pieces
1 onion chopped or sliced thin
6 rabbit livers (these are large double livers so you can divide them in half) & hearts
Flour and seasoning to taste
1 can cream mushroom soup (or make your own tye of gravy)

Fry bacon and add onions.  Saute onions then remove bacon strips and bacon from grease. Dredge livers & hearts in seasoned flower to coat.  Saute in oil till lightly browned. Remove livers and add to bacon and onions.  Use rest of dredging flour to make a roux.  Add can of mushroom soup to roux and add half a can of water to make gravy.  Add more or less water to gravy for desired consistency.  Once gravy is simmering add the livers, bacon, and onions.  Cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes on low heat.
Serve over rice or mashed potatoes.


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## Legamin (Mar 12, 2022)

Ridgetop said:


> 100 holes (cages) of breeding does is completely doable.  Since you would have them on a rotation schedule of breeding and kindling, you would have groups of rabbits ready for sale at manageable times.  I do think you should check into the traveling rabbit production buyer that picks up live fryers by the lb.  I believe that your profit margin would be higher than if you were paying someone to butcher.  Also, you would not have the huge amount of offal and skins to dispose of.  Selling live fryers in bulk would not prevent you from having several private clients to whom you could supply dressed rabbits.
> 
> In SoCal we can't sell dressed meat carcasses without a license, however, you can get around that by selling the fryers *live* and dressing them out as a *"favor"* to your customers.  DH did that and the additional benefit is that we were able to keep the livers and hearts for our own freezer.
> 
> ...


That does sound much easier if there is a “traveling rabbit production buyer” in our area.  I in an outlying area from the city (700,000 pop.) and closer to several small towns of 25,000 or less.  Many of them have only a one local non-fast food restaurant.  Currently there is no rabbit for sale in the outer area and is difficult to find in the city.   My goal is to fill the need for the outlying areas which could easily consume 100-200 per month.  I do need to find a certified butcher as there are only a few restaurant owners who would buy live and let an unlicensed butcher dress ‘as a favor’.  Currently we are in critical shortage of butchers in our area and getting an appointment for slaughter/dressing is a wait of 1-3 YEARS.  It is not ideal….so there are some people willing to work outside the system just to have meat of any kind at a fair price.  I will probably have to work towards this rather than just ‘set up shop’ but I’d like to see it operational within a year.
Thanks for the recipe!  looks great!  I definitely screen shot it and saved!  For a start I already have about 40 people who will privately purchase one to three ’live’ bunnies per month so the basis of the operation is moving forward.  By the time I make all the arrangements and get the health license I will have enough customers to justify full production.


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