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Chickens and Chicken Coop, May Leave post 2

OK at this point we needed to switch gears, so far we had lost 3 of our 50 chickens from what I understand that is not a terrible amount considering they were mail order, what we quickly evident is that the small starter brooder we made was not going to last long they were growing so fast, as we did not have coop yet and meant another intermediate brooder.  Part of the scrap wood that was left with the house when we bought it was 2 boards about 10 feet long and roughly 18 inches or so high.  The chicks very much seems to like all the extra space, and they seemed to thank us by increasing their rate of growth!  It was very quickly evident that we would need to come up with a normal coop very quickly. Out intermediate brooder when we first moved them! about 23 March The previous owners did have a small coup but it would not fit our needs at all, they only had a couple chickens (4-5) compared to our 50 (well 47 now).  Their coup also had an overabundance of nesting boxes but no r

Cattle

I have to admit this is the part of Homesteading I am most looking forward to but also the part that has me the most nervous.  I have wanted to do something with raising cattle since probably about 2000.  At that time we were in Texas and various car salesmen I worked with had acreage and a few head so it was enough to pique my interest.  Of course in Texas you did not have to worry about sub-0 temperatures when you thought about what kind of cattle to raise so when trying to put my plan together for Minnesota, well I did not have a lot of people I could turn to for advice so it has been a lot of research!  On of the reasons I want to raise cattle is to put it bluntly, I like beef, but I do not like paying almost $5 a pound for hamburger, especially when I am not even sure what I am getting anymore! From all the research I have done I have pretty much decided to primarily raise Galloway cattle.  Galloway's are a heritage breed originally from Scotland .  I decided on this breed f

April is Gonna Suck, Embrace the Suck!!

Well this week’s blog is more a personal update then the last few have been.  It is about 7 weeks until I start my terminal leave from the Army, I will leave the Army for home for the last time on Good Friday and get home right before Easter.  The timing is not lost on me that my next chapter will start in full on Easter.  We started doing our taxes today and part of that was figuring out how much we have already put into the farm, not including property or the truck we are over $35K in and that does not even count most of the livestock which we will not have  or purchase until this year.  That is buying mostly second-hand equipment folks and I still have some major pieces to buy, farming ain’t cheap. That being said, I am still confident this was the right move.  I ran into one of my former NCOs from when I was a detachment Sgt in Korea for lunch this week, he was one of three buck Sergeants I had, who basically made my job easy there (except they could not help me for the 2 AM p