Category: Livestock, Feed, & Fencing

Two Letter Re: Our Experiences with Raising Meat Chickens

Mr. Rawles: I had to respond to the article about meat chickens. We have raised laying hens from chicks many times. Last year we too decided to try Cornish Cross chicks. The company we chose only gave “straight run”, so we couldn’t choose their sex. We got 16 and filled out our 25 chick minimum with new laying hens. One died the day after we got them. We brooded them in a large black poly water trough with paper covering the litter in the bottom. And we had a heat lamp over the top. Plus even though it was also …


Our Experiences with Raising Meat Chickens, by Pat O.

Our family has raised about two dozen laying hens each year for several years, and we felt pretty confident in our poultry capabilities.  Learning more about meat breeds of poultry, we felt it was a good time to try our hand raising some of these birds to evaluate their value and quality.  Cornish cross chicks are well known for their rapid, almost freakish growth rates, so we found a large, reputable source online and ordered 50 of their male chicks.  We had to wait almost a month for the male chicks, because of availability – everyone seems to want the …


Letter Re: Dairy Goats 101

Dear Editor: I read your article on dairy goats, and would like to share some of our experience with dairy goats.  The article paints a two gallon a day picture, but it does not tell the whole story, and anyone reading it, I feel, should know there are drawbacks.  We had two goats for over a year and a half, and it was great, with five kids, and three of them under the age of four, we went through the full gallon a day that the two goats provided us.  it was a good experience, and the milk was fantastic, …


Letter Re: Observations From a Canadian Farmer

Hi Jim:  I have been reading SurvivalBlog.com for several months now and have found it very interesting.  I purchased a 640 acre farm in 1970 in the Little Clay belt in Northern Ontario and started from scratch.  I was 25, not married and knew no one in the area when moved from a large urban city, six hours drive away.  It was daunting and I learned a lot of lessons the hard way.  Since I used up all my cash I also had to work out to make ends meet. Here are some of my thoughts in no special order: …


Dairy Goats 101, by Country Lady

For those of you on your retreat property and wanting to add sustainability to your food supply, I present this article to give you an overview of goat-keeping.  Why choose goats?  The advantages of goats are manifold: • Goats are smaller, therefore require less feed, space and fencing than a cow. • Goat milk is less allergenic and more closely resembles human milk than cow milk. • Dairy goats typically produce two quarts to a gallon of milk per day – a usable amount for a family, especially if no refrigeration is available. • Goats kid (give birth) five months …


The Process of Preserving Meat by Curing: From Curing Salt to Finished Bacon, by Stefan M.

A dehydrator is a great way to preserve meat for long term storage. Until the power goes out. Maybe you’ve built a solar dehydrator. Great! But what if you live in a climate where humidity and rainfall  make dehydration a real challenge? Stored food will run out eventually; at least for most of us. No matter how stocked up and well prepared you may be, the time will come when it becomes essential to preserve meat. In a survival situation, a recently killed hog or buck must not be wasted, and cannot be easily preserved. Thousands of years ago, man …


The Hard Truth About Starting Your Survival Homestead, by Mitch M.

I have noticed a frightening trend being used by many of the “survival seed” companies that have started up in the past several years. The same trend shows up on many “survival/ prepping” web sites. This is pushing the idea that in TEOTWAWKI one merely needs to open the bucket and have an instant survival homestead. That isn’t necessarily so. Does buying the latest fancy rifle with rangefinder, laser pointer, and fancy toilet paper holder make you a marksman? There is a range of preparations and skills necessary for running a successful farm or homestead. That is why our forefathers …


Realistically Raising Chickens for Meat in a Survival Situation, by B.R.

As both an organic, pastured chicken farmer and someone very interested in preparing for any possible future disruption in the food chain, I have given much thought to what it would take to keep my flock going if everything went to heck in a hand basket. Eggs or Meat? Over the past several generations, chickens have been selectively bred to either grow fast and put on lots of meat quickly or crank out eggs like a Pez dispenser. The problem with this specialization of breeds is that it has created fragile, problem prone chickens. The modern breeds require high octane …


Recognizing Societal Fragility and Making Substantive Preparations, by C.P.

I was raised in a small town outside the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois  A normal kid in the 1970s, I really didn’t care about anything except getting out of high school and moving on with my life.  I hated history class, geography was alien to me, and other than having to know the constitution in order to pass out of eighth grade, politics didn’t mean much to me, either.  I did, however, try to get my fellow classmates to vote in a mock presidential election in 1980.  My family didn’t discuss worldly events.  In essence, I had no clue.  After …


Letter Re: Advice on Raising Meat Chickens

Mr. Rawles: I’m planning to raise up a big batch of chickens this Spring and Summer, just for meat. (I’m traveling next Fall, so I won’t be wintering over any laying hens.) I plan to butcher the whole flock in September. Is there anywhere I can get just roosters, for a reasonable price? Thx, – Pat B. in Arkansas JWR Replies: Yes, I recommend Murray McMurray hatchery. They sell reasonably-priced chicks via mail order. They have umpteen breeds and ordering options available. You can select all roosters, and all heavy breeds, for example. We’ve been Murray McMurray customers since the …


Everything Happens for a Reason, by Leep

In 2006, I left my job of 20+ years as a maintenance mechanic and construction designer, my wife left her job of 10+ years in real estate, and we cashed in a pension and a 401(k), to buy a small farm. At the time we were deemed crazy. We thought so too and to this day can’t really put a finger on the exact reasoning. This farm was one of the last small agriculturally-zoned properties in the area. The rest is sub-division. It was only five acres, but had a large 8-stall horse barn with a large loft & a …


My First Year Raising Broiler Chickens, by R.W.L.

I’m writing to share stories and lessons from my first year raising chickens for meat for my family and for sale. Knowing the tricks to successfully raising your own meat could really be a game-changer post TEOTWAWKI, so I want to spread this wealth of information I’ve gleaned in hopes that others may benefit.   I followed the model popularized by Joel Salatin where the chickens are put into mobile pens that move along the ground to a new, fresh piece of pasture each day.  Receiving day old chicks in the mail from the hatchery and watching them grow is a …


Preparing for the Aftermath–Lessons from the 1930s, by J. E.

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It’s one or two years after an EMP attack and you are safely tucked away in your retreat somewhere in the middle of nowhere.  Your storage foods have mostly been used and your high tech electronics is useless.   The really bad stuff is mostly past.  Now it’s try to stay fed and alive and pray that civilization as you know it is coming back.  You’re going to have to work your environment to live.  Ever wonder what life might be like?  What would it really be like to have no running water, electricity, sewer, newspaper or Internet?  No supermarket or …


Letter Re: Evacuating Wisely — With Livestock

James, Growing up and living on the Gulf Coast, for about 50 years, has given a lot of evacuation experiences to me. The most educational evacuation for us was Hurricane Rita. We thought Rita was coming inland way south of us. A family had evacuated to our house. Got a early morning call, that Rita had grown and was heading right at us. Visitors were sent on their way and we began loading up. Now loading up is a major logistics operation, as we have a farm. We successfully evacuated 4 equines, 3 dogs, 3 people and 3 vehicles. 7 …


Retirement and Surviving TEOTWAWKI, by Pat M.

All over the Internet are articles on surviving really hard times that are expected.  I note with some humor that most of these articles are talking to about 28-46 years old age groups, at least under-50 somethings.   I have seen nothing directed to the under 26 year-old or much over the 50 year-old.  Considering that we have a problem with what has been termed as an aging society retiring, what about us folks that can no longer throw on a 70 lb pack and hike 20 miles into the wilderness, or no longer have a sufficient income to prepare a …