This weekend marks the beginning of summer! Woot!
Friday evening will kick off the swimming season at our pool and we’re looking forward to it! It’s going to be in the 90′s all weekend, excellent pool weather!
We’ll be busy with another family birthday and graduation as well! I am looking forward to making memories with my family and relaxing just a bit!
Before all the busyness begins for the weekend, I’ll be taking my first batch of meat birds to be processed. I must say that I am ready to be finished with these gals. It’s been quite a learning curve, that’s for sure.
4 weeks old
Just days short of 8 weeks
Meat chickens are very different from layers! They are, frankly, not very enjoyable. Aggression has been a constant issue, I’m taking 4 meat birds that only have one wing, due to fighting among them. (I’ll spare you the pictures)
My birds aren’t going to dress out as large as I would have liked. Next time, I’ll start them out with ‘turkey starter’, which has 30% protein. The balance is to get them to the weight you desire within 8 weeks or so without creating coronary disease. I’ve certainly learned a lot, and I’ll be sharing in my “Raising Your Own Meat” series.
Along those lines, I have not forgotten about my “Raising Your Own Meat” series! On the contrary, the amount of wonderful research that I asked readers for has been more than I expected to work through and organize! Awesome problem to have!
That said, I am really excited to bring the complete series to you, hopefully next week.
Other posts I’m working on for next week include foraging for and dehydrating berries! After you’ve made all the jam and froze berries for all the smoothies you can consume for the next two years, dehydrating your berries makes sense! More next week.
I want to close by introducing my 4 new layers that a friend was gracious enough to sell me, due to our severe loss due to a fox in the area. I am so excited to finally have three Americanas (also known as “Easter Eggers” because they lay colored eggs!) and one Buff Orpington! Here’s my new girls….
Miss Priscilla
Georgia
Caroline
Virginia
I named the “Americana” girls after states, I thought that was kind of cute!
Mr. Fox has been held at bay these last two weeks and hopefully has moved on to other ventures.
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Good job, Kelly! I, also, have layers and meat birds. We tried growing layers for meat last year, and we were disappointed at how long they took and the fighting roosters about drove me nuts! This year we are raising Freedom Rangers, from Freedom Ranger Hatchery, and I love them. They are butchering size in 9 to 11 weeks, and are very gentle birds. We are in week 8 and could butcher some now, I think. We may do a 2nd batch this year, to help our kids, and are hoping to feed them organically. Let us know how yours turn out!
Marsha,
I’ve looked at the Freedom Rangers and I think they’re in my future. Keep me posted about yours too, ok?
Inviting you the Carnival of Home Preserving on my blog today and every Friday. Hope to see you there. Laura Williams’ Musings http://laurawilliamsmusings.blogspot.com
You need to get you a Great Pyrenese puppy. They will watch over your little flock and you want have to worry about Mr. Fox anymore.
LaRue,
I know, I know…..I’m working on that, it’s in the 2013 goals.