Eric sent us this: Deep recession feared in U.S.– Falling business sentiment fuels gloomy outlooks
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John S. flagged this: U.N. Conference Promotes Insect-Eating for Everyone From Famine Victims to Astronauts
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Hawaiian K. sent this: Former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan Says Dollar Peg for Gulf State Currencies ‘Needs to Go’
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Yishai sent this link: Scanned 1962 Fallout Shelter Handbook
"The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations … This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution." – John Adams
Jim,
I’m a newbie to your site and I love it! Read it every morning instead of the newspaper. I’m a single female horse rancher living in Alabama (not originally from Alabama). I attend a home church and have been preparing for our future events for several years before reading your blog. After reading the blog I realize how much farther I have to go. Especially in the home defense area. I own two .22 rimfires and a BB gun. LOL! Thank you so much for all the time and information your providing us. I’ve referred many of like mind to your site.
My main question to you is about whole life insurance. I recently received a [whole life] plan through my parents (something I would never waste my time acquiring). They’ve paid into it for over 30 years. I did a archive search to see if there are any articles on this subject and found none. Do you have any recommendations? Cash it out? Borrow against it? Leave it alone? I’m thinking something like this will become irrelevant in the future. Any thoughts or reading material you could give me? Thanks for your time. – Merry
JWR Replies: It is apparent that you already recognize the difference in value between whole life and term life insurance plans. (A lot of people are clueless, and waste money on whole life plans, which are not appropriate for the circumstances of most folks.) Unless the value of a whole life policy is appreciating faster than the rate of inflation (currently 18% in the real world, versus the “official” Commerce Department statistic), then it is losing net value.
Since you are single, your only “after assuming room temperature” concerns should be your burial expenses and settling your debts. I recommend that you cash out that whole life policy and set aside roughly $12,000 in precious metals (which would cover your burial expenses), pay off any car loan and credit card debt, and invest the rest in preparations (real “life assurance“) and various investment barterables. Since you know horses, your tangible investments should include hay ground, brood mares, tack, and vet supplies. Your knowledge of horses has value, so capitalize on it. In a world with scanty and expensive gasoline, if you have extra horses (with brood mares to produce more) and extra tack you will be considered very wealthy.
Since you are lacking in the area of self defense, give purchasing priority to firearms, ammunition, spare magazines, gun cleaning equipment, holsters, scabbards, and web gear. (Web gear is tack for people. You need a comfortable and practical way to regularly carry loaded spare rifle and pistol magazines, a pistol holster, and a canteen.)
Proper training is just as important as the guns themselves. Budget for training with one of the top-notch training organizations. Here are some suggestions. I haven’t attended all of these, but they come highly recommended by SurvivalBlog readers):
Front Sight. Pahrump (near Las Vegas), Nevada. The biggest and the best, in my opinion. They are particularly successful at training women, since they eschew the macho posturing and drill sergeant bullying used by some of the other schools. Try to schedule your class dates from October to April, to avoid the summer desert heat. They also have a training facility in Alaska (“Front Sight North”), if you can only get away in June, July, or August. FWIW, I was a strong proponent of Front Sight’s training long before they ever became a SurvivalBlog advertiser.
RWVA/Appleseed Project. Inexpensive but very effective rifle training.
Western Rifle Shooters Association (WRSA). Inexpensive but very effective rifle and pistol training.
Badlands Tactical in Oklahoma. They specialize in long range shooting.
Yavapai Firearms Academy Louis Awerbuck is a mobile trainer that specializes in defensive shotgun shooting. If travel expenses to attend a school seem prohibitive, then watch the Yavapi training calendar. (The training may come to you!)
Defense Training International (John and Vicki Farnam)
Lethal Force Institute (Massad Ayoob)
Suarez International A very high intensity school. They specialize in the AK-47.
Thunder Ranch Clint Smith is the inventor of the ‘Urban Rifle’ course, and a great instructor.
E.A.G. Tactical Pat Rodgers is a master of the carbine.
Range Master (Memphis, Tennessee). Tom Givens has been recommended to me by readers from the midwest and in the southern US.
Holland’s (Powers, Oregon.) Darryl Holland specializes in long range shooting. He is soft-spoken and has a real gift for sharing his knowledge and skill.
After reading yet another article about how guineas do no harm in the garden, I thought it was time to toss in my thoughts on the matter.
First, guineas do not do nearly the damage a flock of chickens will do. However…
When mine were free to roam the garden, they dug their dust pits right at the base of plants because the soil under plants is cooler from both shade and watering. Be prepared to sacrifice plants to exposed roots.
They walked up and down the rows of strawberries and pecked at all the green strawberries, which then just lay on the dirt because they didn’t taste good and were too small to ripen.They also did this with all the pinto bean pods long before the beans ever matured. And they found each tomato as it began to turn red and from the side that was red, pecked out the entire inside so I was left with what looked like a hanging green ice cream scoop. They did this as high as they could reach. They pecked at squash and melons and when they pecked deep enough, either they liked it and ate it, or ants found the wound and made short work of the whole thing.
They pecked every red raspberry they could reach and apparently didn’t care for them. This didn’t stop them from still pecking off every berry they could reach and just leaving them on the ground. Every day.
I no longer have grape hyacinth all over my yard, because the guineas graze them off like little lawn mowers. I think they can see very tiny things, because I rarely get chigger bites and only get ticks from the cats when they’ve been in the tall grass.
Guinea hens will not sit on any eggs they might lay if they are penned up. You have to put the eggs under a good mother hen, best being a game hen. Guineas hide their nests and if you don’t find them, you will probably lose the nest and the hen, as they will not leave the nest when threatened. They will be lost to skunks, raccoons, possums and dogs. Armadillos will also take the eggs, but I don’t think they harm the hen.
Guineas usually make turkey appear intelligent by comparison, but they can be smart in some ways. I have seen them send a youngster to go get a lost keet peeping in the tall grass, and lead it back to the flock. I have only one left now (he is called “Little Schumer”), and he talks to me. He hangs with the chickens now that he’s alone, and doesn’t wander so far, but he gets really naughty about going into the henhouse at night. His last remaining brother got killed by an owl and I hope to keep this little “tame” one around a long time.
I put thick, slippery plastic sheets about 30″ high around the three trees the birds chose to roost in. These won’t stop owls, but since being installed they have prevented any more losses to opossums and raccoons.
Here’s a helpful hint. Use the poultry to help, not ruin a garden. Stagger plant potatoes in a three foot wide row, barely below the surface of spaded soil. Cover generously with straw, and then roll out a length of 2″ x 4″ welded wire fencing, four feet high, flat on top of the whole bed. This prevents the chickens from digging it up, the straw means you don’t need to hill the potatoes, and the chickens and guineas will eat all the potato bugs and not touch the plants because they are poisonous.
I hope this is of help to anyone who plans to get guinea fowl. – Carol in Arkansas
Mike found a web site from a builder of modern-day castles. Sadly, their extant castle projects seem to be designed for “fantasy” looks rather than tactical practicality. They have far too many windows at ground level. At least the walls are two feet thick. If I could ever afford to spend that much on a castle, I would want a real portcullis –not a fake one that is nothing more than a flimsy door.
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D.K. sent us an article which updates first mention in SurvivalBlog more than a year ago: Biodiversity ‘doomsday vault’ comes to life in Arctic.
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Reader Mark K. suggested this mail order firm as a very inexpensive source for spare eyeglasses.
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Reader “CalgaryShooter” suggested this piece of market commentary: The ultimate sell signal–Resignation of top GAO official directly impacts your portfolio
"When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home." – Chief Aupumut, Mohican. 1725
The high bid in the current SurvivalBlog Benefit Auction lot is now at $60. The auction is for three items: a 120 VAC/12 VDC BedFan Personal Cooling System (a $99 retail value), kindly donated by the manufacturer, a Thieves Oil Start Living Kit (a $161 retail value) donated by Ready Made Resources, and a copy of the latest edition of “The Encyclopedia of Country Living” by the late Carla Emery (a $32 retail value). The auction ends on March 15th. Please e-mail us your bids, in $10 increments.
Hi Jim
What are your thoughts on the advantages of basements for cool storage, elevated construction for flood protection, sod roof/earth contact for insulation versus steel roofs for water collection?
Perhaps some of the SurvivalBlog readers may wish to submit hypothetical retreat layouts with advantages and disadvantages and why they would choose a particular layout design. Regards,- JG
JWR Replies: A sod roof or earth-berming creates some contradictions in retreat design goals, most notably that they typically block the defender’s view of one entire flank. This can be partially mitigated by properly placing supplementary defensive positions. Sod roofs are also contradictory with the goal of rainwater catchment. My general advice is: Unless you also expect your roof to provide gamma (fallout) shielding, then use metal roofs in dry climates.
There are several distinct approaches to retreat architecture. These should all be modified depending on your local climate and the particular threats that you anticipate.
In an area with a high water table, earth-sheltered houses can only be considered if you start out by building above the existing grade, and build up embankments from there. Details on underground house architecture and design are fairly well described at the Davis Caves web site.
In a dry climates with deep wells, water catchment is a paramount concern. In those areas, I generally recommend one story house designs (to maximize roof surface area), and metal roofs for the house and all outbuildings, with rainwater catchment systems for all of them. Even small sheds should be equipped with gutters and rain barrels.
Anyone living in a high population density area or that is along a potential refugee line of drift should make the need to repel looters one of their primary design considerations. This means large cleared areas in all directions (“clear fields of fire”), ballistic hardening (most easily accomplished by sand or gravel-filled bags–see my comments later in this post), infrared floodlights (for use in conjunction with Starlight scopes and NVGs), and plenty of defensive concertina wire or razor wire. In essence, you want to make your house a “tough nut to crack”, so that looters will quickly decide go find easier pickings.
A completely different approach is to make your house blend in with the terrain and go un-noticed. Outside of heavily-wooded areas, this is very difficult to achieve. Furthermore, the goal of self-sufficiency brings along with it the need for barns, greenhouses, wood sheds, photovoltaic panels, and various outbuildings such as hen houses. It is not realistic to expect that you can make all that magically disappear. But at least if you live on acreage in wooded country, you can make the entrance to your property look nondescript. If you have one of those fancy driveway entranceways, then recognize the fact that they scream: “Here is the home of someone wealthy.” My advice is to tear it down. If anything, you want your entrance road to look as much like a disused logging road as possible. Plant additional screening trees. Plant native shrubbery to make the entrance narrow and uninviting. If you have a perimeter fence, you might want to make your entrance gate look as much as possible like nothing more than a continuation of the perimeter fencing.
Regardless of where you live, it is important to black out all visible light. Odds are that in a grid-down collapse, you will be one of the few people in your area that still have electricity. Any visible lights at night will thus attract looters. So bes sure to lay in the supplies that you’ll need to completely black out your windows and make a light-proof “airlock” for any frequently-used exterior doors. (A wooden framework that is a bit bigger than a phone booth, covered with blankets, works fine.)
As recently mentioned in the blog, extra thick masonry construction is the best choice for ballistic protection. Another great option is an Earthship tire house. But even well-reinforced masonry and Earthships are problematic in earthquake country. There, wood frame construction is ideal, given its inherent flexibility. But what if you live in earthquake country and you want ballistic protection? What a quandary. Unless you are a multimillionaire that can afford hundreds of yards of Kevlar, then the only viable solution is to be ready to build small sandbag-reinforced fighting positions inside of your house, set back several feet from the exteriors windows. This will not earn you any Martha Stewart style bonus points from your spouse, so don’t consider doing this before the balloon goes up. Just keep all of the requisite materials handy. That big pile of 3/4″-minus gravel can be explained as “some extra rock for maintaining our driveway.” OBTW, unless your house is built on a slab, you will probably have to heavily reinforce the floors beneath your planned sandbagged positions, to allow them take the extra weight. If you aren’t a do-it-yourselfer, then have a story ready for any workmen that come to do the job. For example, you might tell them that you have a bad back and are planning to buy a king size waterbed.
Regardless of your design approach, give it some serious thought and prayer. Life is full of trade-offs. If you can’t afford to build a retreat that is way out in lightly-populated country, then recognize the fact that there will be lots of hungry, dispossessed people wandering by (or through) your property in the event of a “worst case.” Plan accordingly. Defensive architecture by itself will not be enough. Defending a retreat will take 24/7/365 manpower, and that of course necessitates teaming up with other families.
The possibility of a worst case situation complete with “mutant zombie bikers” is of course very small. Rather, the odds are that in the next Great Depression the lights will stay on, crime will be relatively under control, and most of your attention will be focused on your garden and orchard output rather than perimeter security. But if and when things ever do get truly Schumeresque, then the best words of guidance that I can give in a nutshell are: to think: “medieval castle.”
Hi Jim,
In an e-mail, you had asked me “can guinea fowl can be kept in the garden or do they exhibit the same characteristics as chickens?” Our guineas free range into our open gardens all summer. They will eat small shoots, such as garlic and chives, and they do eat bean plants so we do need to protect them while young. They don’t seem to bother either tomatoes or squash/pumpkin plants. Once the garden plants reach mature height, they tend to leave them alone. I think they go after the small plants early in the season because there is a lack of insect food around. They do love garlic and chive plants and I have chives planted all over the place just for their enjoyment.
Overall, I think you would be okay with guineas once the plants matured. They will randomly check out your plants, rip off a leave or two, but I never get any significant damage. We have lots of Japanese beetles here and they do a great job taking care of them. Our area also has a large deer tick problem but I rarely see them on ourselves or the dog around our property. Guineas also love to kill snakes. They don’t eat them but go after them with a vengeance! I often have to rescue small garter and brown snakes from the angry mob. I think they would very much enjoy the grasshoppers you have.
They do make quite a bit of noise when spooked and anyone within a half of mile from you will know you have them. They are also great watch dogs and will let you know if anything is different on the property. I had a couple of C-130s do a terrain profile fly over the other day and my birds went nuts for a half hour. They are fun to watch as they have a definite routine they go through every day. Mine raid our wild bird feeders in the morning, head over to visit the neighbor’s (who feed them and enjoy having them visit) by noon and then take their afternoon dust baths by three pm.
My dog is a Yellow Lab/Australian Shepherd cross and it is her job at night to round them up and put them in their pen. They tolerate her herding instincts and obey her pretty well. The guineas are her responsibility and she takes it very seriously. She won’t let any visiting dogs anywhere near them.
If you plan on raising them from keets, make sure they don’t get damp. Being African birds, they don’t take well to it. Chickens will raise guinea fowl chicks as their own without a problem. When they grow up, the hens tend to be the wanderers and the cocks are very protective if one wanders off too far. They will separate into small groups during mating season and the hens tend to lay a large clutch in the brush. I had one hen disappear this last September. She walked back in from the woods with 19 fluffy keets following her, a month later. Guineas tend to not be good parents but this hen has raised a brood for me nearly every year.
Pretty much everything in the “Gardening with Guinea Fowl” book is spot on. They are very interesting birds. I have never ate them but they are supposed to be very good meat birds. I’ve seen Guinea Fowl on restaurant menus at some high end places. The eggs are also edible but they have very thick shells. I can throw one across the yard and it bounces like a golf ball.
Let me know if you have any other questions. – Rob
James
Since I happen to be one of the people who made the decision to relocate overseas I hope have a useful take on the topic.
Other than people who have a direct familial connection with the place they are planning to relocate to I generally am against overseas relocation. The only exception that I would consider is New Zealand but that is only if you have a skill that they are in need of right now and you fit their criteria.
Leaving your familiar surroundings, culture, and language is very difficult even if you have the money to smooth the path. Without family that feels responsibility for you you can become really cut off especially outside the Anglosphere. Expect that to be much worse in tough times if you are the foreigner taking away relief resources.
Israel is a very special exception which is only open to Jews. I highly recommend that Jewish readers at least consider this move since history seems to indicate all minorities including Jews end up on the bottom during economic hard times. Remembering recent hard times there was a cutoff in the 1930s where Jews were no longer allowed to escape to Israel, the last escape for Jews in Europe. Right now there are very nice assistance programs to help new Jewish immigrants both financially and with getting settled. See this site for the largest of these Israel
assistance programs.
For other minorities I wish there was good advice to give them. I seem to remember that in the 1930s white unemployment was over 50% but black unemployment was around 98%. I urge all SurvivalBlog readers to remember your brothers and sisters of different appearance or ethnicity and to take this into account both when hiring and and giving charity. – David in Israel
[JWR Adds: David is SurvivalBlog’s correspondent in Israel, currently a Torah student. He and his wife were American born, but emigrated to Israel as adults.]
RBS flagged these two articles: Price of bread rising on wheat shortage and Wheat prices could defy a recession. Remember what I wrote about investing in productive farmland?
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Also from RBS: As Economy Slips, Yacht Sales Skyrocket. Of course, a portion of the buyers could be buying some of the smaller yachts as a G.O.O.D. contingency.
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Another sign of the times. Catalytic Converters Stolen. (Of course, with platinum at $2,169 per ounce, one can understand the temptation.) Thanks to Josh W. for finding that article.
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Seven readers sent us links to articles published on both side of the border on this topic: U.S., Canada military ink deal to fight domestic emergencies
“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue – and thoroughly immoral – doctrine ‘that violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.”
– Robert Heinlein (in a lecture by Colonel Dubois in the novel “Starship Troopers“)
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Hi Jim –
I am a “ten center” and read your blog every day. Just wanted to say that I thought Keith in Minnesota’s article on “Survival Chickens” was outstanding. A really good example of maximizing what you have (and leveraging Mother Nature) without spending huge amounts of effort or money to get a major benefit. – John
Jim and Memsahib,
Regarding the recent blog entry “The Home Chicken Flock for Self-Reliance”, I have a few comments. I have been raising chickens since I was young and continue to this day. Having a source of fresh eggs is great and I do agree that they are not free. They are of a much superior quality and taste and they are right there in your backyard. That makes them worthwhile.
I do disagree with a couple of care issues from the article. I always lock up the birds at night. Poultry cannot see in the dark but their predators can. Giving your birds a safe roost at night is trivial and you just need to make closing them up at night part of your routine. If you are relying upon them for a source of food, you can’t afford to waste them by making the predators fat. In addition, most predators will remember where they got their last meal and will return time and time again leaving you with no survival stock.
Another item I differ from is the cleanliness. Clean water and a clean coop is crucial for avoiding numerous illnesses. There are many methods to coop cleaning and I lean toward the every week method. Ammonia from decomposing manure build up can occur under damp conditions and the birds can develop serious respiratory issues. In the cold weather, you can be a bit more relaxed with coop cleaning if desired as the bedding usually freezes solid. Make sure the coop is not drafty but good ventilation is a must to keep fresh air flowing inside. As well as being beneficial to the birds it will dry up the bedding and eliminate the ammonia smell.
Some other tips:
Many bantams chickens tend to be better foragers than standard breeds. You also get smaller eggs but bird weight to egg ratio is pretty good (read: less feed required per egg). Bantam roosters are much cockier than their larger counterpart and will stand up to dogs. (But they don’t always win!) Bantam hens are great mothers who will incubate and brood any other type of poultry you’d like to raise.
Bringing in new birds to your flock should be handled with care. I recommend at least a two week quarantine before introduction. Chickens don’t always telegraph their illnesses and you may need to allow a disease to work through a more advanced stage to be able to see it. Of course, the situation allows for it, you should have some medications on hand to assist in the prevention/recovery. Don’t forget to sanitize shoes/boots and clothing after visiting another person’s coop. You can easily bring home diseases from the manure on your boots.
Chickens will eat nearly any table scraps you produce. We do not give ours any onions (it will transfer the taste to the egg) or meat. Our birds get insects, worms, and grubs for meat protein. These scraps will greatly reduce the amount of feed required.- Rob
JWR,
Keep up the great work! I’m proud to be a double ten-cent subscriber and continually amazed at the wealth of new topics that come up on your site. The recent post on survival flocks is an excellent example of a concept I had not considered before, but could be lifesaving.
Regarding the survival flock, did anyone else notice that the traits Kevin in Minnesota breeds into his chickens are pretty much exactly the same traits we work towards in ourselves and search for in group members?
1. Can you provide for you own food?
2. Do you have the ability to defend yourself from predators?
3. Are you smart enough to avoid predators in the first place?
4. Strong immune system?
5. Raise your own “chicks”?
I got a chuckle out of rereading the entire “survival flock” article and applying everything in there to people. And for me, preparedness can be summarized as Keith states, it’s pretty easy to separate them into two flocks, the dinner flock and the survivor flock. Which flock will you belong to when the Schumer hits?
Speaking of Schumer, I’d like to comment on the recent Sanitation letter, and the treatment of Schumer, the home-grown kind, not the political kind. I take a different view on “The Humanure Handbook” than you. Yes, there are risks in composting your own manure, but no more risk than kerosene, chainsaws, and firearms. Each of these three items have inherent risks that are life-threatening, but easily avoided thru training and safety precautions, just like humanure. And fortunately, the “Humanure Handbook” is available free on-line, and it provides all the details, and scientific studies that prove this is safe, and how to do it safely and easily. I will not go into the details of how, it’s all there in the book. But I will stress the advantages for people like me that plan to build a retreat, but don’t have a fortune to spend.
1. Huge Cost Savings. Not having to build a septic system will save thousands of dollars.
2. Comfort and Convenience. No trudging outdoors thru the weather to a dark and cold, or hot and bug infested, outhouse. And when done correctly, there is no smell!
3. OPSEC. No need for everyone, several times a day, to expose themselves to prying eyes to visit the outhouse. Have you ever seen the Academy Award-winning movie “Unforgiven” starring Clint Eastwood? The outhouse scene amplifies my fears. This especially applies to your observation posts if hidden. Do you plan to drink hot liquids to stay awake during sentry duty? If so, you will want a bucket system as described in the”Humanure Handbook” to stay hidden.
4. Simplicity. No pipes to clog up and backup. No need to pump/store/waste precious water on flushing. No reliance on a septic pumping company. Even in your own outstanding book, “Patriots”, the septic system became overloaded, and had to be reserved for emergency use only. Why not skip it altogether?
5. Thrifty. Why waste perfectly good, home-grown fertilizer?
But to be fair and balanced, there are some minor drawbacks.
1. Sawdust and Hay. You need a “pickup truck” supply of sawdust per year per family. The sawdust, or equivalent leaves/moss/hulls, is used to cover your deposits, after each and every deposit (this is what prevents all fumes). Fortunately, I love the smell of sawdust! But some planning/work is necessary to ensure easy access to cover material (like sawdust). You will also need about 8 bales of hay (or equivalent yard waste) per year per family to cover/protect/oxygenate your compost pile.
2. Gray water System. If you have no septic system, you will need some kind of gray water system to handle your wash water. Wash water can be from vegetables, clothes, or your bath. Fortunately, these are easy to build, but are best thought out in advance. Many sources of information are available on the internet.
3. Another Household Chore. Approximately weekly, someone must haul the full buckets out to the compost pile, wash the buckets, and monitor the heat in the compost. But this should only take 30 minutes at most. This is not labor intensive at all.
4. Humility. You will need some humility to admit you use this system. But this is good for you.
5. Fecophobia. Yes, there is such a word. Yes, your family/friends/neighbors may shun you until you convince them. But this system works! How do you think the Chinese have farmed the same land for centuries without external fertilizer inputs? But Your Mileage May Vary (YMMV).
As a side note, the excellent book by John Seymour titled “The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It”, describes a similar humanure system, but without buckets. So if the only thing holding you back is the buckets, I would also recommend John Seymour’s “Loveable Loo” as an alternative. Always learning more, – Rookie
Dear JWR and Memsahib,
I wish to offer some helpful comment regarding the article prescribing “Hardening Chickens”. I have raised chickens and other poultry in a free range setting for 20 plus years. My pre-retirement career was that of a health care professional. I have also worked and volunteered in community health care projects and health education in several third world countries. I still volunteer my services when the need arises and I am able to respond. While I strongly agree in the practice of free ranging chickens and all poultry for that matter, for an aid to general hardiness and convenience of caretaking and the overall natural health benefit of the poultry and the superb quality of their eggs. I however must also warn us all of the severe health consequences caused out of human negligence and lack of proactive caretaking responsibility to ourselves and our farm animals which are being used for human and other farm animal food cycle sources. When TEOTWAWKI occurs, and I believe it will sooner than later, medical care and resources will become infrequent if nil to obtain in hinterboonies regions and rural isolated areas and very questionable at best if you are not fortunate enough to have networked adequately beforehand for that valuable and crucial medical person to come on board, or at least viably reachable by travel and who is also agreeable to being available for your survival group in a worst case scenario. My prime concern here is advocating a proactive responsibility in maintaining and keeping humans and their animals healthy in as natural as possible using natures sources of availability. The practice of poor to absent hygiene practices advocated by the author of the article is questionable for the good health outcome of both species. Even in third world countries, the incorporation of holistic health practices of a sanitary or “clean environment” for human and animal hygiene have statistically shown vast improvements in the populations affected by those health practices and significant reduction of diseases and mortality rates related to them. Thus, their overall quality of life improved. Note, I am not refuting the issue of immunity. That is a whole other issue of whether it is acquired or natural or artificial immunity, passive or active. Diseases caused specifically via harmful bacteria, viruses, protozoans, fungus or the vectors like flies, mites, mosquitoes, and fleas that carry them into contact with us or our animals, must be discouraged. Practices to reduce those harmful populations must be performed in earnest.
Never plan to dine on an animal that had or has questionable health issues. Never feed their caucuses, milk, eggs, or any byproducts of questionable health animals to your family or other animals. Do not put them into your compost pile. Incinerate them. Here you will find just a sampling of multiple diseases causes and effects from an unclean environment. Botulism is more common than we hear about in unclean environments, which is potentially deadly and is transferable to the egg. If you practice the dirty litter suggested by this author, then you had best take heed and caution. Coccidiosis is caused by a protozoan parasite, which are deep tissue invaders occurring in the meat of the bird and eggs laid by it and harbored in moist, old litter. You could treat the poultry with Sulfa based medications which is also then passed on to you in their meat and eggs. Or, you can keep a clean hen house for proactive prevention. Erysipelas is caused by a soil borne gram positive bacteria which enters a break in the skin. It is spread by poultry being bitten by biting flies which are attracted to manure. This is also a human transmittable strain and also transmittable to stocked fish in ponds which are used as free range poultry water sources. It can also transmit to your pigs, sheep, mice and your other yard poultry. Encephalitis is caused by vectors of migrating mosquitoes and biting flies near or on open water sources. The flies lay their eggs in the poultry manure or spilled food. The disease list goes on. Most, if not all can be avoided by your proactive responsible health practices of cleanliness.
I highly recommend the World Poultry web site for its accuracy of abundant information; ease of reference, and on line pictures. It would take volumes for me to describe the offenses and diseases that are caused in poultry alone by these harmful organisms. But, I have high objection and researched validation to show the negative consequences to cleaning a coop of its litter and manure only once a year. All that manure is valuable as garden composting, only after it has cooked to a usable loam state. Never apply green manure directly to your garden or plants. It must be allowed to compost cook to kill off harmful organism cycles. Wear your gardening gloves to protect yourself from live harmful organisms. Wear them over a pair of disposable gloves or rubber gloves when applying compost to your plants or for that matter anytime you work directly in the soil. If you’re kneeling in the soil, wear knee protectors. The object is to protect your intact skin. For the coop cleaning process remove all the eggs and the poultry out and away from the coop. Wear a specifically designated outfit for this clean out, preferably a Tyvek type zip jumpsuit to protect your whole body surface. These can be hosed off and reused many times as long as there are no punctures to the fabric or stresses to the seams. Get a size that is one size larger than your normal size of clothes. If this is not available for you, use a heavy denim type or high denier cloth type military jumpsuit that zips in front. Don latex, or nitrile gloves if you’re allergic to rubber, make sure the gloves cover over the sleeve of the jumpsuit so you have created a skin seal. Last, wear a face mask that also fully protects your eyes, nose and mouth when you clean out either your coop or the nests found randomly constructed on the outskirts of your property. My husband makes use of his light weight welding helmet for this purpose over a disposable nose and mouth mask. This actually provides whole head and hair and ear protection as well. Those feathers can go into the composter as well, unless you are sanitizing them and using them for some other project. Note if you are finding these frequently, your poultry are talking to you. They’re telling you they either need fresh litter or the hen house nest boxes are being occupied when they need to use it. This will usually happen most during brooding season. Listen to them and fix the problem.
Just because you can’t see the bacteria, protozoa, fungus, mold, spores, and the most virulent harmful organisms doesn’t mean they are not there. They are. Most of these become airborne during the clean out process and are unknowingly inhaled by you and your chickens. Even if you have a great immune system response, it does not work well for another or the very young or the elders or the already infirmed that you will come in contact with. These organisms can be passed on by humans performing the human or animal care. This becomes possible by touching contact with the harmful source, or by any natural anatomical open orifice on your body, or unnatural open orifice of skin, like a cut, scrape or burn, for them to enter or be inhaled. You need on hand all these suggested items in ample supply anyway in your survival storage for the more virulent strains of viruses to come.
There are nutritional issues that need to be considered in this important food cycle as well. The poultry must receive a daily minimum requirement of good vegetable protein, vitamins and minerals in their natural habitat if you’re going to only free range. Just like humans. Remember, we’re going to eat their bodies and eggs. The practice of supplements is a good one if you are living in an area where the soil or vegetation is lacking these. Test your soil. Do some study on safe for poultry forage consumable vegetative sources which will provide natural vitamin and mineral supplements. The primary ones to consider are Calcium, Phosphorus, Vitamin D3 and Folic acid. While it is a fact that chicken feces does provide Phosphorus if consumed, eating unnaturally high colony counts of bacteria or viruses which were allowed to incubate for months, could easily infest and kill your entire flock inadvertently. Also, the practice of supplementing back raw egg shells for calcium as a feed supplement should be discouraged as it encourages egg cannibalism. A plot of Spinach plantings and castings are a much better choice. Without adequate intake of these supplements, either natural or store bought, the poultry will poorly develop and are subject to many other maladies related to growth, bone development, skin, and vision. Thus are poor consumables. Those hip fractures described in the article may be related to more than a jump off the roost. My chickens get calcium via crushed oyster shell and have a perpetual spinach plot. They have jumped off the roof of their 10 foot hen house and don’t suffer broken hips. We must always be responsible and accountable to our animals who serve our needs so well. Unlike humans, they can’t tell us that something is wrong. We have to conduct daily routine observation of their behavior and bodies to detect a problem and insure a proactive and ongoing active level of maintenance and responsibility to protect and care for our animals. If you are not willing to make this level of commitment, perhaps it would be better to skip the poultry for you and your family’s sake of good health. Cleanliness is truly next to Godliness in our triage of practices on the homestead.
Once you’re finished with the cleaning process and are ready to leave the coop, please follow these infection prevention practices in this order. Remove the garden gloves and hang them up. Leave the rubber or disposable gloves on until you’re totally finished cleaning your other personal articles. Remove the face mask, and hang it up or throw it away in the trash if it is a disposable. If you’re not using a whole face mask, then wear at least eye goggles and the mask must completely cover your nose and mouth and be one that will protect you from tiny viruses. Read the label. Remove that organism laden jumpsuit that’s protecting your underwear or clothing, by peeling it off at the shoulders and backwards away from your clean body and step out of it. Tug on the bottom exterior of the suit to get your legs and arms out if you need to get it over your washable boots. Avoid turning the soiled side to make contact with your clean skin. Hang it, zip it up and Hose it down in the yard near the coop and away from your home. Scrub your washable muck boots on a boot cleaner outdoors and hose them off and then remove them in your mud room or garage. Keep another pair of clean shoes or scuffs to slip on to wear inside your home. Remove the disposable gloves and dispose them. Wash your hands well with soap and water before you reenter into your inner home. Shower as soon as possible.
God Bless you and yours, this of course includes all your fortunate animals. – KBF
Eric sent us the link to an Op-Ed piece over a the leftist Washington Post: Wall Street Bank Run. My, my, my, after only seven months the mainstream media is finally starting to catch on to the full implications of the global credit collapse.
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The Western Rifle Shooter’s Association (WRSA)’s first event scheduled for 2008 is a two day defensive handgun course, in Brookings, Oregon on March 15 & 16. The WRSA offers high quality training for very little money, so be sure to take advantage of it. OBTW, don’t overlook the many free online resources at the WRSA’s blog site: Look at the left hand navigation bar: They have have basic weapons training videos, an excellent series from Zak Smith on long-range shooting, and a host of other useful downloads.
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Reader H.J. sent a link to an interesting article at Snopes about the history of cellucotton–first used as bandages, and later as Kotex brand sanitary napkins. BTW, they still make good would dressings. Stock up. They are a multipurpose barter item.
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KAF found this: Homeowners Losing Equity Lines. We raised this issue several weeks ago in SurvivalBlog. The easy money is going away. This spells a deeper, longer recession. (Note: Again, the background of the picture tells a thousand words.)