THESE Chickens are the Key to our SECURE Future!

good morning everybody Welcome Back To Living Traditions Homestead it is a gorgeous fall morning here in Missouri and we are so excited that you have decided to join us this morning today is going to be kind of a typical day for us here on the homestead with you guys uh we have a project to do this morning we're so excited to have you guys along for it but we're going to start with chores we're going to start with all the animal chores yeah it's been a while since you guys have seen a lot of the animals on the homestead we've been busy with other things you guys have been enjoying that but uh you know in the background the animals and everything else that goes into having a homestead continues to go on we've had some moving around of animals so we just want to take you guys with us this morning so you can see how everybody's doing and we'll give you some updates on things that you guys haven't heard about for a while so you guys let's get started on chores so let's start off with letting the birds out for the morning they are anxious to get out [Laughter] good morning ducks and a couple silkies next up are the chickens now we have a mixed flock right now of two different breeds of chickens both of them are Dual Purpose chickens that we are using for eggs he has layers and then they're also a meat breed as well so our plan is to keep a nice size flock so that we are always in a good supply of eggs but we can incubate those eggs and hatch them and raise their offspring for our meat chickens the first breed that we have in here are the American breasts chickens they're the white chickens with blue legs and the other breed is the cuckoo malines what they don't know is that today they are going to have new flock mates join them and that is the project that we're going to be working on with you today good morning chickens I know that you're excited to come out come on foreign we also have a small flock of silky chickens silky bantam chickens I think that they're so cute and fluffy last Mother's Day Kevin bought me some silky chicks we raised them up now they have their own little hoop coop here and uh we have them behind some electric because we have some calves some beef calves in here and it pretty it protects their food and if they're feeling a little threatened they have a place to run away and be safe [Laughter] foreign [Applause] up here in what we call our barn lot we currently have three calves these are calves that we weaned from their mothers just a few weeks ago about a month ago now honestly they've been living up here in the barn lot we call this the barn lot just because it's a little Paddock right here by our milking Barn it's really just what we use as kind of a holding pen when we want to separate certain animals so they've been up here in this Barn lot for about a month now and actually I think the plan is going to be to next week take them to our local livestock auction and sell them off so that's the plan for these calves they were born here on the homestead earlier this spring they're growing out really well but it's time for them to leave we have all the other herd in another spot right now so these guys are finally weaned you can hear they're not calling for their moms anymore they're very content up here all right there's nothing that we really need to do with them this morning let's head in and take care of the rabbits so these are our breeding rabbits right now we have three does and two bucks so we just recently bred them so we don't have any babies right now but all of our breeders stay in here in cages up off the ground because it's really the safest for them especially when they're having babies they're well protected from the weather here and they're also well protected from predators our morning chores with rabbits are pretty simple these days this time of year they're still all on water bottles during the winter we use rubber bowls like this but right now it's not freezing yet so we can use water bottles so we just go through see who needs water for the day if they need water we bring their water bottles we just keep a 55 gallon drum of water in here that way we don't have to walk back and forth to the nearest uh you know water hydrant very often this is how we do it even in the winter because typically these barrels don't freeze maybe during the coldest part of the winter occasionally a little freeze too much to be able to dip water out of but most of our Winters here we can still dip water out even in the winter I have to break a little ice on top but there's always water down in them so this is just the fastest way for us to be able to fill water every morning all right and we'll just go back give everybody their filled up water [Music] and then for feed for the rabbits we just keep one bag of feed at a time in here in a metal garbage can so the mice and things can't get it we'll use one of these rubber balls we don't free feed our breeder rabbits because they will get too fat and not be able to breed very well so what we do is every morning we fill just the bottom section of their feeder probably about a half cup or so feed every day per rabbit and a lot of times they don't even eat all of it in one day so that tells you that right there that they don't really need they don't need a whole lot they'll eat as much as they need but we don't want them to get fat [Music] and that's all we do with the rabbits every day I also in this same room the same part of the barn have some Quail that I'm growing out these are actually ready to process I've just been too busy to process them Quail are pretty simple to take care of every day too just give them one feet are full every day and looks like they need water this morning as well so we do water for them the same way we do for the rabbits just dip it out of the blue Barrel and fill their water back up and that water will last them probably three or four days before I need to fill it again all right let's head out and take care of the pigs good morning girls how are you this morning I'm herbal [Music] everybody hungry this morning well the pigs are doing well here in their new pan they have been very happy everybody has learned how to drink out of their new Barrel waterers uh you can see Linda is doing well after having her piglets last summer Myrtle's always doing well she's always fat and happy and then this little one that we're raising up right here her name is Shirley actually a piglet from our old Pig Donna's litter Donna ended up developing a hernia and we couldn't breed her anymore so we had to take her to the processor but this is one of Donna's babies we're evaluating her to see if she'll be a good breeder now we won't be able to breed her because we only have one uh boar which is her dad but if she ends up being a good breeder we will sell her down the road as a registered IPP breeder so that's why we're kind of holding her back to see how she ends up doing Linda this one here she will end up actually going in with Charlie or boar in a just a few more days so that she'll have a good litter of piglets for us in the spring speaking of Charlie let's go see how he's doing good morning Charles how are you this morning now you may notice as well that here at the new property we're not using the feeding stations that we used to use in our other pig pens and a lot of you have asked why we're not doing that I have talked about it before but just to kind of give you guys a recap the feeding stations ended up in some ways they were really nice they allowed us to be able to have one place to feed the pigs they kept them from doing as much rooting because they weren't trying to get every little piece of feed off the ground but because of the weather that we have here they just didn't hold up well so with the price of lumber I couldn't justify rebuilding them every few years and so I've decided to just go into back to uh you know feeding them on the ground they're pigs pigs love to play in the dirt anyway so they actually like to eat off the ground so it's not a big deal to feed pigs on the ground so that's why we've moved away from those feeding stations and we've also gone back to using the barrel style waterers we have them on these plastic pallets that way if any water does drip they've actually don't root around the sides of the barrel the water will drip into the pallet and they won't be able to you know root the ground up around the barrel so that's worked out really well now a lot of you have asked why we have the nipples on the barrels pretty far up why don't we put them all the way down at the bottom so that the pigs can drink the entire barrel full of water the reason that we do that is because by having them up like this it leaves enough water at the bottom of the barrel that these are heavy enough that the pigs won't push them around when they're empty if you let all of the water drain out of the barrel then when they're empty the pigs start to push them around and they'll break them and everything else this way there's enough weight in there that it will continue so we're out here every day twice a day anyway to make sure that they're filled up so it's not a big deal all right we've got a few things to do with cattle this morning first thing we're going to do is we're going to go try to find all of our beef cattle so that we can count them and make sure everybody is here and then our bull tax also needs a bale of hay this morning well looks like all of the beef cattle are up here right now so I'm gonna call them looks like they're done kind of grazing for the morning and they're just kind of lounging around so I've got some what are called cattle cubes here for them which are just a big grain Cube that looks like this I'm going to call them so they'll all come up and hopefully want to eat some cubes and then we'll be able to count if everybody's here we should have our 10 mama cows and we should have seven calves up here all right let's call them and see if they'll come up come on girls come on there we go go on foreign looks like they were excited about those we'll give them a few minutes for everybody to come up and then we'll start counting so they're all starting to come up they're excited to get these cubes because this is a real treat for them we don't give them cubes very often the only time we ever give them cubes is when we want to do something like this today where we want to get them all into one spot and count them or in the winter sometimes we'll give them cubes if we're feeding hay because it kind of distracts them while we get their hay bale out but in general our our cows are all 100 grass-fed so this is a real treat for them all right let's start trying to count everybody and see who's here now one two three four five six seven eight nine ten cows one who apparently decided it wasn't worth the effort to come get cubes she's just laying down over there all right let's try to count calves one two three four five six I see six let's look for number seven all right I found the seventh calf originally only six of them came up the other one is kind of down the hill a little ways over here probably just resting but I'm gonna go take a lot walk down there just to make sure she's also our youngest calf she was born actually about six weeks after the next closest one so she's quite a bit smaller than everybody else yet so let's go take a look and see how she's doing come on hey baby are you okay down here yeah you're just busy eating aren't you why don't you go up by everybody else you're getting big you're not little anymore no you're getting big there you go you need to go by everybody else so just as I suspected she was fine the thing is on the sides of the Hill there's still green grass so she was down there enjoying some nice green grass yet while everybody else came up here to get cubes so I guess she's a smart one now one thing I want to show you guys because I don't know if how many of you are aware of this but in Missouri we actually have prickly pear cactus and we have a lot of it growing on our place so I was just walking right here notice this patch of it right here thank you we actually have quite a bit of prickly pear cactus growing on our Homestead which I didn't know it would grow when we get you know as much snow and freeze as we get here but it actually does really well here's a bunch over here as well a funny story when we first moved to Missouri I had no idea there was cactus in Missouri and so we were out hiking one day on a nature trail this is before we even moved here and just to be funny I said to Sarah I said I'll give a million dollars to the first person who can find a cactus because coming from Arizona I didn't think there was any way we would find cactus in Missouri we didn't take 10 steps before Sarah goes there's a cactus and I thought she was just kidding looked down and there's a cactus so I still owe her a million dollars I'm trying to figure out a way to pay it off but hasn't happened yet but we have Cactus here in Missouri all right so it looks like all of the cattle are doing good the next thing we need to do is go give tax our bull a bale of hay because he's in a separate Paddock this time of year he's done doing his job for the year which is hopefully getting all of these girls pregnant and so he's off by himself for this time of year let's head over and give him a bale of hay before we go give Tex a Bailey hay I just want to tell you guys that that little calf that Kevin scared up the hill she's our youngest heifer calf and we'll be holding her back as long as she grows great we'll be holding her back to be a perfect permanent part of our herd she is the sweetest cutest calf ever I I really been struggling finding the perfect name for her she's just so sweet and so cute and I I just want like the perfect little sweet cute name for her we don't ask for suggestions on animal names very often but you guys could you help me find the perfect cutest sweetest little name for that heifer calf if you think of something just put it in the comment section below I'm really open for suggestions because I've been thinking about it for a couple months and just have not figured out the perfect name for her we brought a bale of hay over for Tex you can see Tex he's our big bull he's he's turning out to be a great ball he's going to stick around for a while now the way that we like to give Tex hay is that I like to distract him with some cubes so I'm gonna actually walk down this alley right here give him some cubes a little ways away so that we can get in here with the tractor Tex has never been aggressive but he gets very excited when we're bringing him a new bale of hay and he's so big that even though he wouldn't try to hurt you or wouldn't be hurting you on purpose he's just so big that if he gets too excited and runs into you he could he could hurt you he could even kill you because he's just so big and strong so it can always be better safe than sorry with an animal that size you can also see that the bale of hay that I'm bringing him today is kind of an ugly bale of hay two things happened to this bale of hay every year when we bail hay or when our neighbor bails hay for us there's one or two Bales where the wrap that goes around the Bale doesn't go on perfect this was one of those Bales but also one of our mama cows somehow got through the fence into the Hayfield right after we bailed hay and started to eat off this bale of hay so in the winter or in the fall when we start to feed hay we always try to feed these kind of messed up Bales first because if they get in the weather they're gonna not last as long so we're gonna feed this one to Tex today all right I'm gonna go give them these cubes and then we'll take his bale of hay in come on Tex what's going on here buddy there you go all right luckily he's a slow eater so by the time he's done with those cubes I should be able to have his bale of hay in there [Music] foreign one thing we haven't talked about in a while is our dairy cows this is Rose our dairy cow here this is her heifer calf she's actually just a full heifer now her name is babe we actually have a third cow actually it's a steer back here this is going to be our steer our meat for the next go around when we need to take a steer to the butcher we haven't talked with you guys a lot in a long time about these guys there's not a whole lot going on we have had Rose dry for quite a while now so that we could get through the summer the busyness of us moving from one place to another having the house delivered and all that kind of stuff and we are just going to be flat out honest with you about this we've had a really hard time getting her pregnant we have had her artificially inseminated or Aid many times we started shortly after she had her calf and they haven't taken we've wanted to continue doing AI with Jersey semen because we want her to continue having Jersey calves we want to be able to sell Jersey heifer calves as part of our business plan so we have not given up on her yet there's a very good chance that she's pregnant right now the last time we a eyed her was probably about 60 days ago and we have not seen any activity between the rest of the cows that are with her the steer and her heifer to indicate that she is not pregnant so as soon as we get the calves that are up in the barn lot sold at the livestock auction we can bring these guys back up into that area which will allow us to get her on the milking stand take a blood sample and send that off to see if she's pregnant we also plan on a eyeing babe soon to get her going in that process it's just been not high on the priority list for us while so many other things were going on we do still believe that having a dairy cow on Homestead is very important for us and we continue to work toward that but you guys I I just wanted to come out and and tell you what's been going on and some of the problems that we've been having and we're not going to give up we still want dairy cows on the farm and so we just got to keep plugging along it's over next to us we've got two of our chicken tractors we've been raising meat chickens and chicken tractors these particular ones for many years and they work really well for us we have our flock of American breasts chickens in here split into roosters and hens all of the roosters are in this pen and all of the hens are in this pen it's about an even split of 20 and 20. so we have about a total of 40 chickens now these chickens are all about 10 weeks old we showed you guys when we moved them out here so several weeks ago originally they were living in the workshop as chicks then as they got older we moved them out here to live in our Orchard area in the chicken tractors but now it's time to decide which of the hens are going to join our permanent flock as of right now we only have three American breast hens that are old enough to be laying so we're going to try to keep another dozen of these hens and now they're not going to be laying for another probably a couple months they may not even start to lay until spring because they're going to come kind of of the age to start laying over winter so they may not start laying till spring but that's okay but we're going to pick out 12 of them today that are going to join our permanent flock the remaining hens we actually have somebody from our church that's going to be buying the remaining hens and at least one rooster maybe a couple or a few roosters to join the rest of the flock and maybe for them to raise up for meat as well Our intention for the remainder of the roosters is to raise them up to you know full-size meat chickens and process them for the freezer now for those of you who aren't familiar with the American breast chickens this is a breed that we started raising last spring we have always raised the Cornish cross chickens as meat chickens and to this day I firmly believe that the corners cross will give you the most meat in the quickest amount of time for the least amount of money I don't think there's a bird on the planet that will replace the corners cross in those categories the major downside to the Cornish cross is that you can't have them reproduce on your own Farm they are a hybrid chicken there's certain crosses that need to take place and you just cannot mimic that in a homesteading situation the American brass Chicken on the other hand is a Heritage chicken they were originally from France they were imported into the United States in France they're called the French breast chicken in the United States they're called the American breast chicken and they grow very fast not quite as big as the um as the quarters crossed but they grow very fast they get to what we consider a butcher size in about 16 weeks and they also start to lay eggs at about 16 to 20 weeks which is faster than just about every other standard breed of chicken we have really enjoyed them we've had an opportunity to raise a very small batch which we still currently have that first batch like Kevin said only ended up having three hens had quite a few roosters which we have raised out you know a while ago butchered them tasted them they were fantastic right go back and watch that video if you want to see how they looked once they were dressed and how they tasted so we have been very pleased and are so happy to continue raising them as eggs you know layers and for for meat as well now going forward our plan is to not be raising them in tractors like this this is kind of a temporary thing right now as you know several years ago we built what we call our chicken moat it is a double fence that runs all the way around our Orchard and Garden area here it's about 900 feet long so it's six feet wide and about 900 feet long currently we have it divided into two halves and we have our ducks on one half and we have our chickens on the other half but what we've realized over time is that neither of them really utilize their entire half so we've decided we're going to actually divide it into half again so we're going to divide it into fourths and we're going to build two more hoop coops so that we can always have a flock of just roosters that were raising for meat and they will have a quarter of the chicken moat to be able to free range in that section the other quarter will be so that you know we can have basically two batches going at a time but we don't need to be adding young roosters to older roosters we'll have always have hopefully one free section that we can be moving new Birds into so those are all the reasons why we've pretty much switched over from Raising primarily Cornish cross chickens meat chickens to the American breasts which will also replace our egg layers or have replaced our egg laying flock so now is the time that we're going to we're going to pick out uh 12 of these hands well they're they're technically pullets right now 12 of these pullets we're gonna make those decisions based on size uh leg color and we think we're gonna pick the best that we can for our farm here and introduce them into our current laying flock yeah one thing that we'll be looking for Sarah just mentioned is leg color the American brass chickens are a red white and blue chicken so they have they're mostly white they have a red comb but they have blue legs if for some reason they don't have blue legs which some of them do end up with yellow legs those we don't want to keep we don't want to use those as breeding stock because that isn't how they should look so if any of them have yellow legs they will probably end up being processed with everybody else right so we'll pick out ones that have blue legs that will only sell ones that have blue legs so that's kind of the criteria that we're looking for right now we're going to try to pick out 12 of them that look like they're the biggest the strongest and they have blue legs and we'll go from there foreign [Music] [Music] foreign we've got the first six that we're gonna take over we're gonna put these in one of the hoop coops the hoop Cooper our current flock of chickens lives we've locked them out right now so these guys can go in the hoop coop and kind of get acquainted in there and then we'll let the rest of the flock in later now we have found that after years of raising chickens that um around 10 weeks of age is about the best time to introduce new chickens to A Flock so that's why we're doing these at 10 weeks ideally we would do this at night we would introduce them at night when the other flock was already perching we would just kind of add these in here on the purchase two reasons we didn't do that the first is because we wanted to bring you guys along and we can't record after dark the second reason though is because we want to be able to evaluate these during the day to be able to see which ones we wanted to keep and we really didn't have a way to do that during the day and separate them until night time so we just decided to do it all during the day I think it'll be just fine all right so we're going to take these hems out all right let's go get another six [Music] all right well so far there's not a whole lot of scuffling everybody seems okay uh we anticipate there is going to be scuffling everybody has to get used to each other and that's just the way it is with chickens well animals in general when we introduce new animals right and the hens need to establish a pecking order and that's where that phrase come comes from it's a natural order of who's in charge and who's not as long as they're not causing significant harm to each other you know they're not actually trying to kill each other and it's just a matter of them establishing that order uh we'll just leave them alone and everything should work itself out within usually 24 hours right so this is actually a really pretty big moment for us when it comes to this flock you know we've been trying to get to this place to have you know a very fairly sizable flock of the American breast chickens right yeah we were a little disappointed when on the first we ordered a dozen chicks to begin with straight run straight run and only ended up with three hands out of a dozen chicks so we were a little disappointed about that but then like we told you in a previous video it was such a blessing that we were able to get almost another 50 chicks from Buddy and Jen and North Star Farms and it just ended up being perfect timing and now we're able to get to the numbers that we want before winter so not only will this be a blessing for our family that we can become sustainable with our own chicken meat but it will allow us to kind of grow this part of our Homestead business right I'm selling fertile eggs and maybe chicks maybe pullets we'll have to just see how that goes but now we're in a really better position to get that all started right so you guys that's what we're gonna wrap up today's video thank you so much for spending some time with us today it has been a crazy few weeks here on the homestead and we're just so glad that you are along for it if you're enjoying our videos if you're enjoying the lifestyle that we live we hope that you will hit that subscribe button before you leave don't forget to give this video a thumbs up and as always the absolute best way that you can help us is just by sharing our videos on all of your social media until next time thank you so much for stopping by our Homestead take care and God bless God bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 335,997

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing

Id: XvlLHiMPdJI

Length: 35min 21sec (2121 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 02 2022