I’m looking forward to all of this as are my boys. Iv heard a mix on the hardware cloth size, one reason I kept the floor removable if I want to change the wire size if the poop becomes an issue
Crane is working out pretty good so far, brought home the old motor from the Toyota that needs re ringed (I promise I’ll get to it one of these days) and my spare tool cart full of random bits a pieces of projects and parts. Tonight will be the real test, bring home the v10 that needs rebuilt out of the dodge. That’s a heavy darn motor
Good luck. Looking good so far.
Came across a couple rabbit posts on MEN in case there is anything of use in them.
Awesome job Marcus.
When I built the roll away nestboxes for our chickens we had a steeper angle, around 13 degrees, I think, to be able to roll the eggs but we had the industrial astro-turf type of mat in there just to keep the eggs as clean as possible (any type of net bottom in the nestboxes is illegal here).
We noticed that it was a very fine line between getting the eggs to roll away nicely and not having them to pick up too much speed. Then they get non-visible microfractures (only visible when candling) in the shell from hitting another egg, not sure if this applies here with the smaller quail eggs but levelling out the roll-away where the chicks can’t reach the eggs anymore slowed them down enough for us, also I put a strip of astroturf on the wooden stop end. This was for selling eggs, the unsellable ones we ofcourse used for ourselves.
Great video series, anyone can just watch your videos and get a running start
We are always glad to see people doing well with laying hens. In the spring when the eggs are in abundance, we preserve them for the next winter. the old term is water glassing, but we use a solution of hydrated lime and water. We have found that for us we use wide mouthed 1 gallon jars. These store well in our pantry and are easier to handle that when we used to use 5 gallon buckets. Clean eggs that have not been washed get submerged in this calcium and water solution. They are shelf stable at room temperature for 1 to1.5 years. This gets us through the late fall and winter with lots of home grown eggs.
Also each spring we fill an incubator with our own eggs and hatch them out. The half females to replace the flock or to give away, and half males we raise until fall or winter when our outdoor work load lessens from the end of the garden canning. Then I butcher and put half a rooster in a wide mouth quart jar and pressure can for 90 minutes.
Kent
I already have 3 friends on a list that I’ll be hatching out chicks for to get them up and running with quail as well
That’s something I’ll be watching for and I was thinking about adding some kind of bumper there to keep eggs from bumping together and cracking, good to know I’m on the right track!
Quail are all coming along nicely
The salmon has been piling up, already went through one batch of smoked last week, several fillets in the freezer, a few dinners fresh
Another batch in the brine (sweet and spicy) and both smokers running and I’m headed to the river to get more
Smoked Salmon YUMM!! #smokedsalmon #smokedmeats #homestead
Even made my first attempt at salmon egg caviar
Not to bad little salty for my taste
Also made a batch of “ikuri” I think is the Japanese name, it’s a soy sauce lime and murin brined egg commonly used in sushi which I’ll be giving a taste tonight
It looks like you will have a nice ratio of speckled breasted hens in that batch of quail. I put a rheostat on my heat lamp so I can gradually reduce the heat as feathers develop so they don’t have to bunch up in corners to evade the heat. They are looking good!
I like the idea of a rheostat…. I’ll have to see what I can find
We just hang the light on a chain and raise the light higher to reduce the heat.
kent
That was my initial plan but they wanted more heat initially so I ended up putting the light inside, it will probably get moved outside today and sit on top they are feathering out very quickly
Clever, I never thought of that. We did as @machinemaker does and just raise the lamp to control the heat. It never even occured to me to do it any other way.
You can get all sorts of ‘dimmer switchs’ at building supply stores. Its the same thing as a rheostat, just a different name and it uses 110VAC. Here I have one spliced into a 6 ft extension extension cord. I use it for all sorts of things, blower speed control, soldering iron temp control … Just don’t use it with any AC motors, it’ll kill them.
Rindert
That’s a killer idea to splice it into a chord, I can think of several uses for that!