What’s really going on at the homestead.
I’ve returned to the homestead after being gone for a month. I was helping a family member move and hang out with them in their new place. It was great to be with family. Not only did I learn tons, had fun, but I also starting thinking about what needed to be changed and perfected on the homestead.
Our goal of healthy fresh food wouldn’t change. Our goal to help others learn to grow isn’t changing. We are selling more off the homestead to help other, not have waste, and add more to be able to change some things on the homestead.
Or goal of more freedom isn’t changing. Our idea of freedom is getting a facelift. We want the ability to have the animals, garden, and homestead while being able to visit family together. This means organization and automation.
What’s up on the Homestead April 13, 2025
Today was rabbit butchering, decision making, and rabbit follow through.
Butchering Day
We butchered two Does that were not breeders. Our Does (aka female rabbits) are now all the New Zealand breed. We have two bucks. One is a New Zealand, the other is a Californian. They are all pure bred rabbits.
We loved our old rabbit breed, the Silver Fox, but we weren’t getting the kits (babies) we wanted. Plus, we wanted more meat per animal. New Zealand and Californian rabbits are larger animals and have larger litters than the Silver Fox. Plus, we are no longer interested in saving the fur and using it, which was one of the main reasons we switched to the Silver Fox.
The two butchered rabbits will be a delicious slow cook BBQ rabbit for dinner tomorrow.
Decision Day: Chickens and Rabbits
Once we finished butchering the two rabbits, we walked around the barn, making some decisions about the chickens. We need to add another rooster to our flock to have a higher rate of fertilization. For optimal fertilization, the ideal rooster-to-hen ratio is one rooster for every eight to ten hens. We have 27 hens in our main flock.
We kept one of the roosters from our daughter’s flock. This means this week we would need to butcher five roosters to simplify our homestead, put meat into the freezer, and quit feeding roosters which were full grown.
Plus, we continued to collect eggs to incubate tomorrow. We are getting eggs from the flock we are chicken sitting, and a select few from our main flock. This means watching the hens lay a little more carefully to get the eggs we want to incubate.
Today we bred one set of Does. We put one Doe in with each buck. We do a hybrid of colony and cages. Part of this video (starting about 28:58) shows how we now raise rabbits. The Does live in colonies. While the bucks live in cages. At about eight weeks old, we remove the kits from the moms and separate them by sex for growing them out. We have two grow out pens for outside and two grow out areas within the barn.
We think they were bred, but couldn’t tell if the buck was successful. The Buck is supposed to fall off and he didn’t. We are leaving the Does with the buck for the night, just to be sure. We will also need to put the does back in with the bucks in a few days to be sure.
Rabbit Follow Through
It may sound funny that we have to have a follow through. You can make all the plans in the world, but if you don’t follow through, it’s futile.
Rick fixed two outside rabbit tractors for our grow outs. Usually we are fire fighting and fixing everything as we need it. Since we want to be able to walk off the homestead and leave our adult grandson in charge, we have to get ahead before it’s a firefight.
All that needs to be done now for the rabbits is cleaning out the colonies, breeding them, which we’ve started, and clean out the two inside grow out pens. These pens need some alterations we haven’t decided on just yet.
It’s been a great day, and no we didn’t just slave on the homestead. We also watched the stars, listened to some podcast, and relaxed. Tomorrow is another day.