Livestock Thread

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That helps ease my concious. I have no problem with killing an animal to eat but I feel like a monster if I think I caused an undue amount of pain. I was planning on getting that cone next time I harvest a chicken.
I settled a while ago on a non-islamic, non-inner city youth beheading. Just a clean slice.
Did it today, there will be a few seconds of spasms and that'll be it. Much better than letting them bleed to death IMO.
 
I settled a while ago on a non-islamic, non-inner city youth beheading. Just a clean slice.
Did it today, there will be a few seconds of spasms and that'll be it. Much better than letting them bleed to death IMO.
Most of the time bleeding them to death worked pretty well. The spasms were minimal.

The thing that I found immensely bothersome the last time I culled it wasn't just the spasming. It fell off the cord I tied it up with and maybe its just me but it looked like the chicken tried to stand up. I dont have any plans to harvest a chicken any time soon but next time I will be investing in the cone for a quick clean beheading.

I don't have any moral issues with killing my food. But I'm not okay with making its death more painful than it has to be.
 
Catching up, I have one of those cones for my birds and it is the best way for draining them.

From what I've read draining is supposed to be better for the bird but it's culling either way, learn how to properly sharpen a knife.

My cone from Tractor Supply has stood through 3 seasons of 20+ birds a season and staying out all year on a tree.
 
How do you guys deter foxes? Europe, so they're not protected but my license isn't up to date and I just wish I'd never have to talk to our local government hunters again.

While I was gone for ten days my partner didn't give a shit and we lost 80% of our hens.

Anyone have any success with "electric fence energisers" (that sounds so wrong but it's what translate says) against foxes, raccoons, etc? How do I calculate what strength I need? I assume meters? Just.. electric fencing?


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Super, super unrelated, but since something dug up the literal corpses of my dear hens— clearly killing them wasn't enough, let's desecrate their corpses too.. Putting one of those on top of it, how would you go about hiding your smell besides a proper green wood smoke down? And how would I cover it? Should I build some sort if natural funnel?
 
How do you guys deter foxes? Europe, so they're not protected but my license isn't up to date and I just wish I'd never have to talk to our local government hunters again.
9mm or 45 would get the job done, you aren't hunting if it's attacking your livestock (your laws may vary)

Anyone have any success with "electric fence energisers" (that sounds so wrong but it's what translate says) against foxes, raccoons, etc? How do I calculate what strength I need? I assume meters? Just.. electric fencing?
Our turkey's stay outside on pasture all season long protected only by temporary electric netting and an energizer. A turkey got bit through the fence because it was sleeping up against it but that's only happened once. There are multiple netting types, check the specs for the hole size I believe the chicken net is 4"x4" keep the netting electrified while it's up or they won't respect it and will push themselves through. Here's an exampleimgp_136.jpg

That's for temporary fencing, useful for moving them around a pasture. I'm waiting on the ground to thaw before I can start my permanent chicken fence, I'm planning to use regular chicken wire as the fencing and install plastic standoffs to hold the electric fence wires a few inches away from rest of the fence.

As for the energizer pretty much all of them will tell you the amount of fencing they can power, I do not recommend the self contained solar units, I assembled a small solar charger with a 50w panel, a 12v 35ah gel battery and a Speedrite 1000 energizer for slightly more than a cheap self contained unit. Here's the specs on the model I used, I have 2 - 164' long 4' tall netting sections hooked up to it with a single 4' ground rod and it's HOT
imgp_137.jpg
how would you go about hiding your smell besides a proper green wood smoke down? And how would I cover it? Should I build some sort if natural funnel?
We put ours in the compost pile, sometimes animals will still smell them and dig them out but a few have been successfully composted.
 
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Catching up, I have one of those cones for my birds and it is the best way for draining them.

From what I've read draining is supposed to be better for the bird but it's culling either way, learn how to properly sharpen a knife.

My cone from Tractor Supply has stood through 3 seasons of 20+ birds a season and staying out all year on a tree.
I took a traffic cone from off the side of the road and cut part of the top off. If it’s free it’s for me. Fits chickens and ducks.
 
How do you guys deter foxes?
If they get to be a problem I kill them, though I hate to since they are pretty adorable little bastards.

Have you figured out how they got in? For us we had a set of fencing enclosing our's but they dug a hole to get in. If this is the case for you burry some fencing under along the perimeter of the fence if it's a permeant installation kind of like a root barrier you'd put round a tree.

This can be anything really though so long as it's not easy for them to dig through and burry it about a foot or two below ground. Could use tin roofing/siding, etc. if you use brick or rock I'd say maybe mix in some mortar to bind it all together.
 
How do you guys deter foxes? Europe, so they're not protected but my license isn't up to date
Getting your liscense updated is really the best play. Once they figure out that there is free food available, they'll keep coming around like the local panhandler until you stop them. This goes for the corpses as well.
Over the time we had chickens. I killed 3 racoons and 2 possums, its the nature of livestock ownership to kill predators, since again, they don't stop coming. Even when you get larger animals, wild dogs become a big threat.

One more thing: though it does sound weird "electric fence energizers" is the correct english term, though most of us in NA call them "fence zapppers"
 
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If a tree falls in the forest.....
Yeah, I genuinely find it miserable to kill something though so I usually just chase it away when I see it.

On the bright side, my rooster has done a good job of keeping the hens safe and my dog often lays out side and watches over the chickens. People on here shit talk pitbulls but my little mutt is really great with my birds, I'm proud of her.

I cant go firing off a shotgun in my neighborhood cause I live in a semi rural suburb, but if predators turn into a serious issue I got a plan to make a sling shot that can take out small game.

If a coyote gets in my yard, I'm fairly certain its legal to use a gun in that circumstance but so far coyotes tend to stay away cause my neighbor has like 8 german shepherds that go ape shit when they get a whiff of a coyote.
 
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Does anyone have any experience with introducing new ducks (probably similar with chickens and other poultry) to the old flock?

All the articles I can find give ultra generic advice of "introduce them gradually start by having two separate enclosures and slowly progress to letting them share one" but I did all that and it just didn't work. Honestly I feel like most of these articles are written by chatgpt.

In the end I had two separate flocks for almost four weeks. Whenever they were getting even remotely close to each other old ducks would just run away and when cornered would even get aggressive, so I didn't force them to sleep together fearing it would escalate. While old ones sleep in enclosed and safe space I housed new ones in the greenhouse (hoping it would be just temporary), fox dug into it, you can guess the rest. I'm at my wits end. I don't want to have to build two coops when the one I have is already big enough for all the ducks I could want. Why can't these little fucks just get along. Anyone have any experience with similar problems? Are my ducks just assholes and it should have worked or did I do something wrong? Besides not properly securing the greenhouse, I'm retarded, I feel bad about it, I got complacent.
 
Does anyone have any experience with introducing new ducks (probably similar with chickens and other poultry) to the old flock?

All the articles I can find give ultra generic advice of "introduce them gradually start by having two separate enclosures and slowly progress to letting them share one" but I did all that and it just didn't work. Honestly I feel like most of these articles are written by chatgpt.

In the end I had two separate flocks for almost four weeks. Whenever they were getting even remotely close to each other old ducks would just run away and when cornered would even get aggressive, so I didn't force them to sleep together fearing it would escalate. While old ones sleep in enclosed and safe space I housed new ones in the greenhouse (hoping it would be just temporary), fox dug into it, you can guess the rest. I'm at my wits end. I don't want to have to build two coops when the one I have is already big enough for all the ducks I could want. Why can't these little fucks just get along. Anyone have any experience with similar problems? Are my ducks just assholes and it should have worked or did I do something wrong? Besides not properly securing the greenhouse, I'm retarded, I feel bad about it, I got complacent.
Bump.
I wish I had an answer.

I had old ducks push out new ducks to be picked off by predators or kill the new ones themselves after some time.

I never had problems like this with chickens.

Not a good answer but when I usually get a whole new flock of ducks and just put the old ones in my freezer.
 
How do I go about getting them used to the coop in the backyard?

I built a chicken coop out of pallets and scrap wood and a 20 foot by 8 foot temu run in our backyard. We raised 8 chicks in our second bathroom and now they're cozy in an old dog kennel in the garage with heat and shelter.

We put them in the run every morning and back in the garage every night for the past 2 weeks (since it's nice enough outside and they're almost 4 months old). Started leaving the feeder in the coop and throwing dried worms on the steps and inside but they mostly just finish eating the worms and leave the coop and wait in a corner of the run for me or my son to carry them to the garage. Jewgle says to lock them in the coop for a week straight with food and water but my wife says no because that'd be cruel. All other answers on Google are related to adding new chicks to an already existing flock, so I feel hesitant following those methods too
 
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How do I go about getting them used to the coop in the backyard?
I've gone through this with multiple groups of hens that stay in a mobile coop over summer, sometimes they learn quick and other times they don't. The group in it now has been put in by hand for over a week now which is the longest we've had that problem.

Yes you lock them in with food and water after moving them. It's not cruel as long as they have room to move around, they're dumb and need to be taught it's their home. I haven't locked them in for a week straight before, usually 1 to 3 days is enough.
 
I've gone through this with multiple groups of hens that stay in a mobile coop over summer, sometimes they learn quick and other times they don't. The group in it now has been put in by hand for over a week now which is the longest we've had that problem.

Yes you lock them in with food and water after moving them. It's not cruel as long as they have room to move around, they're dumb and need to be taught it's their home. I haven't locked them in for a week straight before, usually 1 to 3 days is enough.
Thanks. 3 days seems like sufficient amount of time. If they're still being dumb, they can go back in for a bit longer.
 
Yeah, I genuinely find it miserable to kill something though so I usually just chase it away when I see it.

On the bright side, my rooster has done a good job of keeping the hens safe and my dog often lays out side and watches over the chickens. People on here shit talk pitbulls but my little mutt is really great with my birds, I'm proud of her.

I cant go firing off a shotgun in my neighborhood cause I live in a semi rural suburb, but if predators turn into a serious issue I got a plan to make a sling shot that can take out small game.

If a coyote gets in my yard, I'm fairly certain its legal to use a gun in that circumstance but so far coyotes tend to stay away cause my neighbor has like 8 german shepherds that go ape shit when they get a whiff of a coyote.
Try owl and crow decoys. Or get a pellet gun from Walmart, they have some pretty high powered gas rifles that can take care of birds without any noise, if you decide to go down that road.
 
behold the miracle of life, we finally had some lambs!
baby.webp
honestly thought our ram was a little too young back around christmas to be able to service our lambs but i guess his pecker was working fine lol
we've had 4 so far, and i think one may be be pregnant still, but hard to tell. she hasnt filled in in her udder yet so its just a guess that our ram serviced her around the same time as the others.
we got enough boys so far that we'll be eating lamb for christmas so thats really nice

so far ive found that having the sheep bred in november/december is perfect in my area, as i want the moms to be eating free, fresh grass when they need the most feed: when milking.
our grass only really starts growing crazy in mid may, so its really nice to not have to pay as much in feed when they need the most of it.
all things considered, i think so far my sheep have been cheaper to raise than my chickens have been. i dont have a bug farm for them yet so they get bag feed, and that shit is expensive.
compared to the sheep, i think i payed all of $400 for hay the entire winter for 8 sheep, and that includes bedding and a lot of loss from a sub-optimal feeding setup. next winter should be even better.
 
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