Just went for the evening feeding of the animals and discovered I have several more, my black doe kindled and I can see 6-8, minutes old babies. That puts me currently at 20 rabbits, I think?
Also my first hatch of quail are near six weeks old now and I have the hens separated to keep as egg layers, 22 of them all the roosters are in the big pen. Was time to butcher my spare roosters from my initial hatch since I have a pile (24?) now so 4 got the to see the inside of the fridge
After a quick warm water bath I rough plucked and the boys finished them up, then I taught them how to clean them prep for a meal. Was a proud dad moment for me teaching my boys where there food comes from
Do you always pluck the whole birds before you gut them? I don’t have the patience for that. I skin them and spatchcock them (cut the backbone on both sides from neck to tail). I got it down to just under 3 minutes per bird on a production line from head off to cold water brine solution.
What is your favorite cooking method?
Interesting. Will try that next time. Guess since l usualy braise them skin doesent realy matter much. Occasionaly we fry them whole. These defenetly must have skin on.
Iv been just trying different things, the first few i skinned and spatchcock then just for speed efficiency, but I love them baked just like Cornish game hens so I like having the skin on. It is very labor intensive to pluck them by hand, these last couple I blanched in 150f water for 20 seconds and it cut time in half if not more, but I intend to build a plucking machine hopefully. Intention with those birds is to fill them with stuffing and baked thanksgiving style, I’m just trying as many recipes as I can just trying to find what ways the family likes them
Just sold a whole hatch of 2 week old birds to the local feed store I buy all my feed from, 58 chicks at 2$ each. Covered my feed cost for all the rest of the flock and the rabbits for this month and that’s my only goal with the farm animals is cover my cost while having plenty to feed my own family
I’m calling that a big win since I haven’t even started selling eggs yet but I did just get a shipment of egg cartons that are made for the jumbo line that lays a little bigger egg then a standard quail, so now to make a flyer I can post around town to advertise fresh quail eggs for sale
You should talk to a pet store. where you work seems like it has more people and might have one. According to AI, they are fed to cats, dogs and reptiles for their nutrition. It might give you a place you can drop off a bunch of eggs at a time.
Nice build Marcus, you may want to install some wooden strips they can stand on while you move it. I think there are videos of the ones Joel Salatin built.
I was going to use the slats like he did but it added about another 30$ in lumber cost and when I got to the lumber store they were out of the 1x2 so I did a wire floor instead
Rabbit tractor number 2 built this weekend, all power tools were powered by the new free generator cause why not? Has some really old gas in it that needs to be used up, I had it running for about 8 hours yesterday and works great. Didn’t have enough jam to run my air compressor but I didn’t expect it would and that’s fine runs all the saws and charges makita batteries nicely
