Larsen Poultry Ranch - homesteading journey

[SageHill]

My chicken run was a muddy mess as well - I dumped the alfalfa stems the sheep wouldn't eat into their run and everything in there is nice and pretty again. No more muck on my boots to get eggs. We really need to rebuild the coop/run soon - lots of ideas - then I looked at BYC and oh my gosh - some of those coops are amazing. Out of my league but it's fun to look at them. Maybe if I had a suburban backyard I'd try and copy one.
At any rate - the alfalfa took care of the mess for us. I even used some of the shredded stuff too.

 

[Mini Horses]

You think rabbit food is expensive? Try feeding 30 big goats and 6 old mini horses...plus 50 chickens! Yeah, hay and feed are keeping me in the work force!! sr horse feed is $30 bag, $23 goat feed+ $30 for 40# Boss, $25 a bale hay -- use 2 a day! my bill keeps growing.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

You think rabbit food is expensive? Try feeding 30 big goats and 6 old mini horses...plus 50 chickens! Yeah, hay and feed are keeping me in the work force!! sr horse feed is $30 bag, $23 goat feed+ $30 for 40# Boss, $25 a bale hay -- use 2 a day! my bill keeps growing.

I get it! I could probably pay a note on a shiny new truck with what I spend on feed every month...sheesh!

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

I'm paying $21 for a 50 lb bag of layer pellets and $30 for a 50 lb bag of rabbit feed. The hay at the feed store went up too, I used to be able to get it around $20 a bale, now it's at $30 for the orchard alfalfa mix. They had a Timothy bale listed for $36. I guess I'm better off than pet rabbit owners though, the pet store has a tiny Timothy bale of about 40 ounces listed for over $30.

Talked with hubby about possibly trying to grow a spot on the property to grow some hay but I don't know how difficult that would be, to keep the deer and wild rabbits out. There's a guy on YouTube who made a diy tiny baler machine.

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

Munchkin is outgrowing his giant play pen, so I ordered some long child fence/gate things. One for around the fireplace and one for the hallway to the laundry/den. I think we might need another to block off the kitchen but we'll see if installing all the child proofing things on drawers and cabinet doors will work instead. They are supposed to be delivered today so I know how we are going to spend our Friday night.

 

[Bruce]

I have the two Easter egger hens I hatched last year, they are laying consistently but their run is a huge muddy mess so I don't feel comfortable eating the mud encrusted eggs. I need to move their pen so it has better drainage, or maybe just list them for sale since their eggs are smaller than I'd like. The eggs are a pretty green color though.

What size do you want? My EEs typically lay 60g+ but if you hatched them last year it will take a few months for them to get to the larger egg sizes.

Talked with hubby about possibly trying to grow a spot on the property to grow some hay but I don't know how difficult that would be, to keep the deer and wild rabbits out. There's a guy on YouTube who made a diy tiny baler machine.

How much space do you have where you want to grow hay? How much deer and rabbit pressure do you have? We have both here and I don't know that either would be a big problem in a hay field. But of course it would depend on the answers to the questions

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

I'm spoiled by the white leghorn eggs, they are massive. The Easter egger hens are full grown so the egg size isn't likely to increase from what it's at now, they were hatched last year. I just was expecting bigger eggs since the leghorns are the moms but I guess the Easter egger rooster genetics brought the egg size down. They are fairly small bodied too, so I'm probably going to sell these and see what happens when I breed the leghorns to a heavier rooster with big egg genetics.

I don't know where we'd have the hay zone, the property is not very flat and there's a ton of rocks and trees/shrubs. I might try to grow in between the trees in the orchard, since we will be doing this by hand and not using a machine.

The deer waltz through the property several times daily, they know they are safe from humans. They even bed down within sight of the house sometimes. There's 3-4 momma's plus a bunch of last year's babies. There's actually quite a few bucks now that they aren't hiding because deer season is closed. It's crazy how they know to hide and only come out after they are safe again. There's 1-3 massive bucks and a handful of tiny pronged ones. The north neighbor sets out feed for them and has a trail camera so he gets a bunch of cool pictures.

 

[farmerjan]

A word to the wise on the deer and fruit trees. They will eat the tips of the branches, sometimes they will strip the bark, they will eat the fruit right off the tree just about when it is ready to pick..... I have gone out to get the fruit off some trees next to DS house and there were a few way up high and a ton of pits on the ground where the deer picked them off and ate them. I have watched them... they will ruin an orchard just like a garden...

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

Oh, and the wild rabbits are usually spooked by the car when you drive into the property, so you have to drive slow so you don't hit the idiot rabbit panic running in front of you instead of moving off to the right where there's no fence. I want to keep the wild rabbits separated from my rabbits since there have been RHD outbreaks in California within the last year and it's transmissible between the wild and domestic rabbits.

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

A word to the wise on the deer and fruit trees. They will eat the tips of the branches, sometimes they will strip the bark, they will eat the fruit right off the tree just about when it is ready to pick..... I have gone out to get the fruit off some trees next to DS house and there were a few way up high and a ton of pits on the ground where the deer picked them off and ate them. I have watched them... they will ruin an orchard just like a garden...

Yep, they damaged a lot of our young trees before we got bigger hoops installed around them. The deer, or at least one, figured out where to hop into my fenced garden and destroyed a lot of my plants last year. This year the garden is going to be in a different spot with 6' fencing, plus I'm going to try to put another string or wire above the fence to make it taller and add material so the deer can't see through the fence.