Self Reliance On A Small Homestead
Do You Have Too Many Chickens? Almost anyone who keeps chickens will tell you that they can be addicting. You start off with a half dozen hens for fresh eggs and before you know it, you’ve got 50+ chickens, ducks, turkeys, and guinea fowl roaming your backyard. Do you have…
Are My Hens Laying Eggs? One of the most common questions from chicken newbies is ‘How can I tell if my hens are laying eggs?’ You might have noticed that there are fewer eggs in the nest boxes and, naturally, you’d like to know who is slacking off! Before you…
Butchering a Cornish Cross Hen I wouldn’t normally recommend keeping a Cornish X meat bird past the normal butcher age of 6 to 8 weeks. If you can believe it, the hen on the left was a runt and wasn’t large enough to butcher at that age. I kept her…
Do You Have Too Many Chickens? Nothing puts a damper on keeping chickens like a high feed bill, too many aggressive roosters, and a flock of unproductive hens. Yet many chicken enthusiasts find themselves faced with just this situation. Some of them will find new homes for their old and…
For Full Instructions on Dressing Your Bird, Visit My Post ‘How to Butcher a Chicken.’ Fall Butchering Season Will be Here Soon Fall is traditionally the time of year when extra livestock on a farm or homestead is butchered. The simple fact of the matter is this…farm animals are…
Chickens as Livestock? Or Chickens as Pets? Earlier this week I discussed my chickens as livestock. You can read about it in “Butchering an Injured Chicken.” Keeping chickens for pets is a relatively new pastime. With the switch from an agrarian culture to a predominantly urban and suburban culture, most…
Butchering An Injured Hen One afternoon I went out to the chicken coop to lock up the hens, give them fresh water and feed, and collect the eggs. I noticed one of my older White Leghorns had blood on her feathers. I inspected her carefully for signs of vent picking.…
Marek’s Disease We moved to this homestead in 2010 and I jumped headfirst into the chicken raising project. We had chickens when I was a kid and they free ranged around our yard and garden…no big deal, right? So how much trouble can chickens really be? I started out…
Chronic Respiratory Disease In December of 2010 I purchased 12 chickens from a lady on Craigslist. She was a teacher and hatched the eggs for her classroom. When the chicks were no longer cute, she brought them home and kept them in a drafty little coop behind her rented farmhouse.…
How to Butcher a Chicken Do you want to know how to butcher a chicken? I butcher my home-raised chickens so that my family has access to clean meat that was raised and slaughtered humanely. I’ve been doing this for years because my family is opposed to the inhumane treatment…
Culling the Flock and Butchering Old Hens Monday morning I butchered some of my old hens. The oldest hen in my flock was one of the unlucky ones. She was an Ameraucana from my very first flock of 10 purchased the summer we moved here (2010). She was about 3…
I sat down over the weekend and made a list of tasks I need to complete in January and February around our homestead. It almost seems too late to be including January, but I want to get started on this list asap, so here it goes! I’m sure there is…
