Misfitmorgan's Journal - That Summer Dust

[misfitmorgan]

I did go pick up the goslings on Saturday and got them all set up in a pen until they decide this is home. They are big and fully feathered as i thought but only about half the size of our adult goose.

DH has the Poland China boar we are borrowing, in with Sara and Stubby as of last night.

My Bresse chicks are shipping today.

The sheep will be going to our friends to go out on pasture, we want to put them on our place however the goats have eaten almost everything the sheep would be able to reach already and we dont want them on hay all summer. They should be going this week and will be sheared at his place.

DH has hay equipment delivered to our hay field, and a baler at our friends to do a little maintenance work on. As soon as we get a window of no rain we will be out cutting, raking and baling. 100% small squares this year, so yep i'll probly die.

 

[misfitmorgan]

I think this guy must have gotten in over his head or something.

Butcher ready pigs for sale - farm & garden - by owner - sale

Heritage breed butcher pigs for sale. Mangalitsa X We have 40 available All pigs are between...

nmi.craigslist.org

I can't imagine selling 40 Mangalista pigs for $1.50/lb HANGING. We dont even raise heritage and we sell at $2/lb estimated live weight.

 

[Baymule]

Y’all have a LOT of poultry! I’m down to 7 EE hens and getting 30 Cornish Cross chicks August 12. We sell the meat and I have orders for. 14 at $6 a pound. My hay guy is getting 6 chicks to raise and well help him slaughter and package them for the freezer.

What breed is your giant ewe? Wool breeds can be a lot bigger than hair breeds. Sounds like you got good prices for your piglets. Feeder pigs around here have shot up to $100-$250 for a FEEDER pig!!

I’m sorry you lost Phoebe. It sucks. Big hugs.

Square bales around here are 60 pounds on the small side and 80-ish pounds on the regular side. That can make you tired in a hurry! Pick them up, stack on trailer, take to barn, pick them up, carry to hay storage area, stack them up. Stack in "hay steps" so you can lug them to the top of the pile. Yep, you're gonna die. Where should we send flowers?

 

[misfitmorgan]

Y’all have a LOT of poultry! I’m down to 7 EE hens and getting 30 Cornish Cross chicks August 12. We sell the meat and I have orders for. 14 at $6 a pound. My hay guy is getting 6 chicks to raise and well help him slaughter and package them for the freezer.

What breed is your giant ewe? Wool breeds can be a lot bigger than hair breeds. Sounds like you got good prices for your piglets. Feeder pigs around here have shot up to $100-$250 for a FEEDER pig!!

I’m sorry you lost Phoebe. It sucks. Big hugs.

Square bales around here are 60 pounds on the small side and 80-ish pounds on the regular side. That can make you tired in a hurry! Pick them up, stack on trailer, take to barn, pick them up, carry to hay storage area, stack them up. Stack in "hay steps" so you can lug them to the top of the pile. Yep, you're gonna die. Where should we send flowers?

I prefer to think of it as not a lot of poultry....just all the food groups covered

We will end up with hopefully a trio or quad of midget whites..I already know I have at least two toms cause they show off to me when i feed and water them.
We are saving back the Broad breasted hens...as DH wants to get heritage bronze next year to breed to them. But all the males will be butchered by turkey day at the latest.....any extra midget toms will be going too.
The meatheads will all be processed. All males but 2 pekin drakes and 1 swedish blue drake will be processed. The adult quail will be all processed as soon as the replacements are hatched, incubator is full. Anything over 2 Bresse Roosters will be processed.

So we should be down to smaller numbers by winter.

The new giant ewe is suffolk. I noticed the hair breeds were smaller when mike was giving butcher weights and ages awhile back. We need to get an actualy scale because i really wanna know how much this giant ewe weighs and our lambs weights at 6 months to verify we are doing things correctly. I know what a 150lb suffolk lamb looks like but confirmation would be nice. We could also run our pigs across it when we sell them. That big ewe is easily at least 250lbs.

Feeder pigs are high up here to, we have heard people paying $250 here for feeders now because every person who has never raised a pig bought all the pigs out. We didnt feel comfortable sellers feeders over $100.

Now for hay....DH says if the bale isnt over 75lbs it wasnt made right. I keep telling him keep in mind i'm only 5'4" with t-rex arms and have limited leverage. The squares he made year before last 1/3 of them were 100lbs or more. I asked him to make lighter bales this year for me like 50lbs, he said its not worth making so no. I told him he better hire help then. We do have two hay elevators, thankfully so not so bad.

 

[misfitmorgan]

On a side note i've been trying to get DH to buy a new truck...so far he is not going for anything new. I opened up a search page on kbb to look and he saw the 2020s in the sponsored section at the top and said wtf are you smoking(before i scrolled) they were $75-80k. I told him that was not what i ment when i said new. I told him no I just thought something within the last two decades would be good. He loves the F250 diesel and its really all he will look at but it must be the 7.3L. It's very limiting because it was only produced from 99-mid 2003. So I'm trying to get him to look anything without the 6.0L diesel. Maybe even a not diesel

 

[Mike CHS]

New truck prices give a whole new meaning to "sticker shock".

Katahdin ewe weight range is 120-160 pounds. Most of ours are in the 140-160 range with one that pushes 200 while carrying lambs and she has a normal weight on grass only at 180+ pounds.

 

[misfitmorgan]

New truck prices give a whole new meaning to "sticker shock".

Katahdin ewe weight range is 120-160 pounds. Most of ours are in the 140-160 range with one that pushes 200 while carrying lambs and she has a normal weight on grass only at 180+ pounds.

Very much so! I remember not to long ago when people were talking about the new trucks being 38-40k and people were seeming outraged....now 70-80k is common and ford has a 100k truck. I think these people really are insane....my house was 64k lmao I mean come on people. People where I work buy these trucks keep them a year and then go trade it in for the newest model(people above my pay grade) most here lease though. I never could lease I always felt like it was throwing away money like renting a place to live.

Our credit union has a new program called Flex-ride so i may look into that. You only pay on the part of the vehicle you are going to use. You've probly heard of it. They also finance tractors.........

I know hair sheep are not little per say just a smaller sheep breed. I love the suffolks but as we are starting to have worse and worse complications from our auto-immune issues we are seriously considering switching over to hair sheep. Now that the price is coming down to a reasonable amount. We are limited on how many wool sheep we can have based on how many DH can reasonably shear in a weekend without abusing himself.

 

[Bruce]

The squares he made year before last 1/3 of them were 100lbs or more. I asked him to make lighter bales this year for me like 50lbs, he said its not worth making so no. I told him he better hire help then. We do have two hay elevators, thankfully so not so bad.

Um ... if you are making them for yourselves aren't two 50# bales the same as a 100# bale with the exception that the former is something a person might actually be able to pick up and stack?

New truck prices give a whole new meaning to "sticker shock".

And having just purchased one, Mike knows!

You only pay on the part of the vehicle you are going to use.

So ... if you only use the trunk/cargo area 10% of the time the vehicle is being driven you pay less? And while my car seats 4, 3 of those seats are empty most of the time so I can pay less for that as well? And since it is a plug-in hybrid and the gas engine isn't running unless I go south to the populated area (can only make it half of the round trip on electric) I can pay less for the ICE?

Yep, I don't understand the concept.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Um ... if you are making them for yourselves aren't two 50# bales the same as a 100# bale with the exception that the former is something a person might actually be able to pick up and stack?


And having just purchased one, Mike knows!


So ... if you only use the trunk/cargo area 10% of the time the vehicle is being driven you pay less? And while my car seats 4, 3 of those seats are empty most of the time so I can pay less for that as well? And since it is a plug-in hybrid and the gas engine isn't running unless I go south to the populated area (can only make it half of the round trip on electric) I can pay less for the ICE?

Yep, I don't understand the concept.

Yes they are the same weight but extra twine and an extra bale to stack and move. Doesn't sound like to much really but then times it by the 1,500 or 3,00 bales we will have that is a lot of extra twine and stacking. DH is 6' 4" and has no problem lifting, moving, carrying, stacking bales at up to 100lbs. He prefers them at about 80lbs but adjustments and rebales sometimes change things.

Mike's thread is what reminded me to go look at trucks online again this week

No no Bruce. Say you get a I dunno 4yr loan, they take the average miles you will drive and the value of the vehicle at the end of that 4yrs and take that off your loan. For example you want a 30K car, they figure out the value at the end of the 4yrs is 17K so they make the loan out like your buying the car for 13K and base your payments on it. So your payments would be around $460 instead of $860. At the end of your loan you have 4 options. You can walk away and your free and clear, you can decide to pay off the 13K and keep the car, you can finance the 13k and keep the car, or you can use the car as a trade in and pay off any difference in trade in value vs the 13k left.

I assume we would want to do the trade-in option but i would need to take a long hard look at the flex loan option before I agreed to it. I am sure there are trade-offs vs a conventional loan.

 

[Bruce]

We keep our vehicles until the are about dead (or in the case of my last 2 cars killed by a negligent person running into them). Seems like the "keep for 4 years then walk" is paying the depreciation and getting nothing in return. Of course if you really don't like the vehicle or it had been unreliable I guess it works out. If after 4 years you drive fewer or more than the "average" they calculate when the loan is made do they modify what you owe or give some back?