The Animals – Page 5 – Peacock Orchard

I rode a pig today.

I rode a pig today and I wouldn’t recommend it. Pigs are big and strong and can scream really really loud. I’m not sure who was more upset about the situation, me or the pig. The pig probably, I was decently amused I admit.

So there I was hunched over pouring 3 gallons of warm water into their rubber tub when B.L.T. shoved himself underneath me. This knocked me off balance and I landed squarely on top of his back. There was a second of frozen silence before he started screaming bloody murder and bucking as hard as a small pig can. I landed on my side with a nice view of angry pig prancing about.

B.L.T. calmed down when food was divvied out but I don’t think the turkeys we acquired the 23rd will ever recover from the trauma of it. The male did enough gobbling to make me consider putting us both out of his misery.

As for Rocker-Digger, he simply watched out of the corner of his eye as he gulped water like a pig left in the desert for months.

I am sincerely thankful for the lined Carhart overalls Husband gave me for Christmas. I was nicely protected from a rageful pig and the cold, hard ground.

Oh and as for why I’m not using my wonderful auto waterer it’s because I fear the pigs would break it. They love to drag things about and are particularly fond of things with any sort of cord.

Making your own Turkey Kill Cone

This is a guest post by my wonderful Husband who does far more farming than he ever wanted to do.

Readers Notes:

*If you are here solely for the supplies and instructions scroll on down for the TL;DR section of this post.

*Pictures were not taken of the original process. The pictures attached to this post are an example of what was done in smaller scale.

A couple of years ago we raised turkeys to sell as mostly organic, free range, farm-fresh, etc. turkeys. We harvested 12-15 turkeys that year, our first time. (The exact number alludes me, but it was a lot for a first time.) I was sorely unprepared for the killing part, the scalding part, the plucking part, pretty much every part, so I figured I’d improve that this time around.

Why would I make a kill cone? I hung the turkeys upside down with rope with pretty good success last time. Although once the turkeys get above 35 pounds, trying to put their legs in the slipknot of a rope can get tedious. After I took a couple of shots in the ribs from turkey wings I decided I didn’t want to deal with the pain and hassle of it this year. I figured it’d be easy to just slip the turkeys into the kill cone and let them calm down in there, plus they don’t move around as much in the cone as they do when they are hanging loose on the rope, so that’s another added benefit.

There are about 40 pages on google on how to make your own kill cone but all of them were for chickens. I had a problem finding actual directions on how to make a turkey sized kill cone. Reading through a couple different websites the best I could find was “well I’ve never made one, but if I did, I’d do this” and their dimensions were different from other sites dimensions. All the various chicken kill cone dimensions matched up, however.

I bought several pieces of 36″x48″steel flashing which didn’t list the gauge. I’m guessing this piece of sheet metal isn’t at that sweet spot of 26 gauge, as it felt like it was basically a piece of aluminum foil folded in half twice, or a little thicker than an aluminum can, but it worked just fine. I bought this at Home Depot, and the sheets were about $16 a piece. Most websites were saying to use tin snips to cut the metal. The tin snips this place was selling were $34?! more than the cost of the two pieces of sheet metal I was getting. I thought, “Screw it. I have a circular saw with a metal cutting blade, I’ll just use that.” Trying to cut a giant piece of basically soda can metal without a proper cutting work bench is a pain in the neck, and I wouldn’t recommend it at all. If you don’t have a pair of tin snips, don’t be cheap and just buy the freaking things (at the time of this posting we still don’t own tin snips, so listen to my “don’t be cheap” rant with a grain of salt).

The next hurdle I came up to was how to fasten the metal together. One site said to use tapping (self drilling) screws into a board, another said grommets (man, I really wish I knew how to do that) , another said rivets, and another one just said to use nuts and bolts. I bought tapping screws, which I didn’t use and some nuts and bolts, which I did use. Just buy the smallest size nut and bolt they have.

Now comes probably the hardest part if you aren’t good at math, which I am not: the trapezoid. You basically cut the metal into a trapezoid and roll it like you are rolling a newspaper to swat a fly, and that makes the shape of the cone. Now some sites will try and have you cutting these elaborate patterns that aren’t true trapezoids but a sort of trapezoid with some stupid looking tab you might see on a filing folder in a filing cabinet. You don’t need to mess around with all those extra cuts and curves, just cut a dang trapezoid, if you are lucky enough to cut on just two lines DO IT! But you’ll probably have to do three.

Now comes the difficult part of rolling the cone and putting whatever type of fastener on that you are going to use. For these turkey size cones, you will need help, trust me. Roll the metal, measure the head opening 7″ wide. Have someone hold the metal together, drill holes and insert your nut (flat side on the inside of the cone). Fasten the ends first. You can do the other 2-3 holes or fastening areas on your own.

And there you go, that is basically all there is to it. The “experts” on the other sites say you can do it in about 5 minutes. And you probably can, but for a first time without all the right tools, look at it being 15-20 minutes of your life to save you not having to deal with angry turkeys hanging upside down from rope.

Oh, and you’ll want to hand this thing up on a sturdy piece of anchored wood, to do that add a piece of metal from the scrap metal you have from cutting it. The metal I was working with felt too thin to use it so I folded it in half using an eyeballed 8″ x 3.5″ piece, I folded the metal and drilled that into the cone at the top of it so I cold use that tab to hang it on the beam. It worked OK, but if I had to do it again I might fold it 3 times so it’s thick enough to hold it without the threat of it ripping in half and the entire apparatus falling.

Picture of hanger for actual turkey cone

Size difference between turkey cone and chicken

———————————————————–

TL;DR section

Supplies

1 sheet of sheet metal (I used a 3’x4′ steel sheet flashing of unknown gauge)

1 box of 3/8″ nut and bolts (I got a 12 pack, but if I knew how, a steel grommet would be better)

Tin snips if you have them, something to cut metal if you don’t

drill and 3/8″ bit to make hole for the bolts if you aren’t using grommets

sharpie

screwdriver and/or ratchet for the bolts and nuts

Instructions:

Since I was working with a 48″ long piece of flashing I calculated 25.35″ and rounded up to 25.5″ for a final area of 25.5″ height x 24″ base1 x 48″ base 2

Draw trapezoid to fit the above dimensions with the sharpie or anything that will mark on the metal.
Cut the metal with tin snips or anything that will cut metal.
Roll the metal so that the opening where the head will go is ~7″ wide, the top of the cone will be wide enough for giant whites to fit in comfortably.
Drill the holes along the cone where the metal overlaps, people recommend 5 holes, I made due with 4, or use grommets, I don’t know how, so if you want to know google it.
Insert the bolts so the flat part of the bolt runs along on the inside of the cone (you don’t want the birds getting cut up by the bolts) and tighten.
There is a sort of ^^ since my sheet metal wasn’t long enough where the metal overlaps, I just tucked those down with some pliers and installed a hanger. to make the hanger I just took a long piece of extra metal left over from the cutting, folded it in half, and drilled a couple holes through the cone into the piece I made and put some bolts in there to secure it, and I put a couple more holes in the top part of it to attach a couple screws into the wood beam we were attaching it to.

Improved poultry processing equipment

I’m unsure the exact number of birds we have processed at this point. We’ve done 2 large batches of turkey slaughters (10+) and killed a lot of chickens. Thanksgiving dinner was to be killed by us again this year. We weren’t particularly sad about our turkeys demise either. They liked to bite and annoyed me most of the time with their “in your face, try to eat your fingers and eyeballs” attitude. These two turkeys were quite unique. The last turkeys we had weren’t nearly as brave as these two. Anyway, so we secluded our 2 turkeys and 10 of our adult chickens. Our chickens are eating their eggs so I had decided they must all go. My sister-in-law brought over her 9 giant white turkeys and help. Help is necessary when doing a large quantity of turkeys, in our experience. It takes about 3 people to do a large turkey processing because of the size and strength of the birds. Our last turkey slaughter required 2 men to scald a single 62 pound bird because of the weight of the wet feathers.

Moving on though, we improved our equipment this year. Husband made 2 turkey sized kill cones and he also insulated the scald pot.

The scald pot is a real issue for us. It doesn’t hold the temp very well and we’ve had under and over scalded birds on the regular. A usual processing required large pots on the stove, simmering to help with the scald pot. Not so this year. We finally have the ideal method!

Our scald pot is a large tamale pot. We heat it with this bucket heater. We keep the tamale pot off of the ground with a few cinder blocks. The tamale pot is a great size for doing large turkeys. The largest we’ve ever done was 60lbs live. So the tamale pot has now been insulated. Husband wrapped insulation and tinfoil around the outside and cut big foam blocks to put on the top and bottom. It worked a dream.

We’ve used quite a few thermometers from your basic meat thermometer to a pocket dial thermometer and have finally settled on Thisthermometer as the most accurate and sturdy, at least so far.

It was cold out so the people outside were all wearing gloves. This made scalding difficult as the gloves would get wet and then be useless. We were happy to have the Gator Gloves we discussed in earlier posts for keeping leather gloves dry.

The kill cones were made out of sheet metal and hung in our lean-to. The turkeys fit in them just fine. To modify them for chickens we took a milk jug and cut the top and bottom off. The jug could be inserted into the kill cones to hold the chickens.

Husband will do a guest post explaining the dimensions and process he used for making these kill cones at a later date.

The plucker we have got clogged up once with feathers but otherwise worked a dream plucking all the birds.

The plastic tub and buckets were used to put water into the plucker as it was too cold for running water.

Rope was hung from the rafters in our garage to store birds while they awaited evisceration. There were 3 men doing the killing and 2 people inside doing the eviscerating. With the kill cones the men were able to kill the birds far faster than we could eviscerate them. This method of holding them over worked just fine as it was cold enough outside it acted as sufficient icing of the birds.

We bought a knife kit from Wal-Mart and it’s worked just fine for the most part. A few pieces just broke and I really only used a single knife from the set. We’ve since advanced and I use This knife to do everything. It’s been great so far. We’ve also started using a bone saw this year. It’s done a great job at sawing off heads, usually the hardest part, at least when you’re doing the eviscerating on your kitchen counter and can’t go at it with a hatchet.

We’ve bought shrink bags before and I do recommend them. They work really great. However, this years turkeys simply went in garbage bags, as they’ll be eaten quickly. The chickens went in regular old gallon freezer bags. That’s working just fine so far as well. I’d say the shrink bags were easier in a way. We did wrap the turkeys in plastic wrap before putting them in the garbage bags. The shrink bags eliminate that step, but they do ad others. I think I’ll place a mass order of shrink bags for future processing, however. As far as where to get those, that’s a toughie. I’ve only ever found them sold by bloggers.

To weigh the carcasses we put them in a grocery bag and then use this Scale.

Lucky chicken and turkey foot recipient!

As far as our preferred cooking method goes, we like to dry brine before we wrap them up, fresh as can be. Turn them twice a day and keep them in the fridge until Thanksgiving. Then we use Gordon Ramsey’s citrus cooking method. It’s AMAZING!

This post contains affiliate links. These are products we have actually purchased and can attest to.

Farming means you sometimes have to do the unbelievable.

As I’ve already posted here, we got pigs on the farm. Two of them, small and of unknown age. We have grown to really enjoy the pigs, well I have. They make the most adorable noises and do the most interesting things. I like how excited they are to see us and how they sniff our shoes to smell the dogs (just like the dogs sniff our shoes to smell the pigs). Their eyes are almost human as well.

B.L.T has become quite comfortable being petted by us. He is a very friendly pig. Rocker-Digger isn’t as friendly but he’s not as skittish as he was either. At least he was getting to know us. He probably hopes I trip so he can chew my leg off now. What do I mean by that? Well we had our pig’s anus sown shut.

I’m amused just typing that. I shouldn’t be amused, it was awful, but it is kind of, sort of, funny. So I woke up to a nice snow on November 17. I went to feed the pigs and noticed the most awful thing on R-D. He had part of his anus hanging out of his butthole. I’ve tried to think of a nicer way of saying this but it can’t be done. It was bloody and big and red and be thankful I didn’t take pictures. It was nasty. I run inside and hit Google to find out what is going on. Anal Prolapse (don’t click on that unless you want to see graphic pics). I do some reading and it appears that you can push it back in and it’ll be ok. It is also suggested that spraying it with cooking spray may help it go back in naturally. So I grab some rubber gloves, cooking spray and what little dignity I have and go out to shove my pigs butt back into his body. I try to trick him with some hot oatmeal. He does want to eat it but not enough to let me touch his butt. I’m chasing him about when Husband comes in and helps me corner him. The internet had said to be rather gentle. So I tried gently pushing it back in but it wouldn’t budge. So I spray it generously with cooking oil.

We go inside and I decide that perhaps I should just call a vet to see what they think before going to work. I do and JEES. It’s far more serious than the internet led me to believe. The vet tells me to go back out, hold the pig up by his hind legs and shove his anus back in like I’m folding socks. I repeat this many times as I can’t quite believe what is about to happen. Husband goes back out with me and we play chase and wrestle with R-D until he is finally captured and hoisted up by his back legs. I shove his anus back in and it actually works. I’m so relieved. Husband lets R-B go and as soon as his feet hit the ground, POP, it’s out again. Crap! The vet said if that happened we’d have to sew it in.

I call the vet back and hours later we are at the vet, R-D very sadly in a cage in the back of the truck. The kids are with us and I have prepared them for what is to come. R-D is going to scream. He’s going to be in some pain. It’s ok though, we are going to make him better and we can give him extra juicy apples when it is all done. I load the kids up with books and toys in the Vet’s office and Husband and I go with the vet to restrain R-D for the procedure. So Husband has R-D’s legs and I have what may be the worst half, the biting half. I’ve thrown a sheet over his head in what may be ineffective to stop biting but makes me feel better at the very least. I’m sitting on a bunch of pallets with R-D’s elbows stuck against my leg, one arm under his throat and the other over. I’ve got this pig in a wrestling move. Boy he really doesn’t appreciate the local anesthetic being applied. He is screaming, I can hear the kids crying from the other room, R-D’s thrashing as much as he can against us. It was a real work out. So the vet pushes his anus in and stitches his butthole closed. We are told to give him a suppository for a few days and to use mineral oil in his food so his stool is incredibly soft.

I help Husband load the kids up and off they go to work and Daycare. I remain to take R-D back home. When we got home I thought I was going to need help from our neighbor to get him out. However, as I’m preparing his seclusion center I see him alert and sniffing. I think he knows where he is. So I open the door to the cage and he slowly walks out onto the tailgate of the truck. I pick him up, he screams, BLT screams, everyone screams. I put him in seclusion and watch him as he gulps down his body weight in warm water. BLT is still screaming. He hasn’t figured out where R-D is yet, he just heard him yelling. When I left R-D was wearily laying down under the heat light I provided him. It was a hard day for him.

My day hadn’t even started yet. I shower and dress and go to work for a few hours before going home to check that everything is alright. R-D broke out of seclusion, figures. R-D hopefully will not have a relapse. If he does we were informed we’d just have to eat him. Life is tough when you’re a pig.

Interestingly this episode appears to have made R-D more friendly. I had no problem touching him and getting close to inspect him. I was sure this episode would make him terrified of us. Apparently touching his anus just brought us closer. HA!

Rocker-Digger (R-D)

B.L.T.

While I was taking pictures these chickens were fighting over sleeping position.

Meanwhile the peacocks were glaring at me from above.

Mini-Krater gardens first snow.

I’ve been intensely interested in how much snow our Kraters may collect. They’ve done pretty well with rainwater collection and I assumed they’d fill with blowing snow, but wasn’t sure. The results are in after our first snow.

Deepest Krater with pawpaw island. Had about a foot of snow all around.

Largest Krater in circumference. Snow only collected on one side.

Goji Krater, did the absolute best. For some reason this Krater is just in an ideal location. It always collects the most water, the plants here did the best and it collected the most snow. I’ll have to think and observe why this krater has done so well.

Just for fun here are a few more pics of our first snow collection and fun:

This is our newly renovated driveway drainage ditch. Filled about 3 feet with snow.

This is another driveway drainage earthwork and the path from the garage to the ditch filled pretty well with snow. Enough for the kids to enjoy fully!

As you can see from this pic the snow blows and sometimes we will have 0 snow on large amounts of the property as there is nothing to catch and keep it. We experimented with our earthworks, which work well, and also selective mowing of our incredible sweet clover sections. Selective, on contour mowing harvested a ton of snow. It was far from the house, and the kids were happy where they were, so I didn’t get pics of this. I’ll try to later on.

My kids are so adorable!

I convinced them to go to the barn to feed the pigs and they did this while I was busy doing chores.

Our akbash is such a weirdo. He doesn’t know what to do with the pigs. He just stood there wagging his tail and doing this high pitched whine that the pigs didn’t like at all.

Such cute little piggies! Getting friendlier every day.

Meanwhile, thanksgiving dinner keeps threatening me.

An unexpected opportunity

Even with my No Freeze, No Fuss, Automatic poultry waterer I was not looking forward to watering 22 ducks over the winter. Ducks are messy. I’m sure you are all shocked to learn that. So we decided we would keep 7 ducks, 6 hens and our welsh harlequin drake. I placed a Craigslist ad for the remaining 15 and was flooded with responses. I was iffy about promising the ducks to any one person. Husband and I decided a first come, first serve mentality was the best, as we’d been stood up by buyers before. However, I was contacted by a very persistent man who wanted all 15 immediately. When discussing the price he casually mentioned he’d like to do a trade. He had pigs, goats and donkeys available. Pigs, oh yes oh yes!

Now, to convince Husband that instead of getting money to help feed the other birds over the winter we should take on 2 more mouths. That went smoothly and it was arranged. While our kids were enjoying themselves at a Halloween party we loaded 15 ducks up in boxes and set off to meet up with our pigs.

This duck was a real PITA. I’d cut slits out of an abundance of caution. We did not want anyone suffocating. There were 2-3 ducks in each box, plenty of space. This duck though, she just had to make a fuss the ENTIRE trip. She annoyed her box mate so much that she jumped ship to another box half way through the journey. I kept crawling back to shove her head down and she’d just pop right back up quacking like a lunatic. Luckily she never figured out how to escape, or we’d have had a loose crazy duck running about the vehicle. Husband would have been thrilled!

At our destination we got to pick between 3 pigs. A larger pig and 2 cute small ones. I went with the two small ones. We loaded them up in the back and set off. They were calm during the journey. Unloading them was a bit of a trick as they didn’t want to be touched. I managed it and they are happily tucked in now.

I originally intended to keep the pigs separate from the poultry. I have 2 connecting runs, one was intended for the ducks, and had a pond, but the pond leaked and the ducks always stayed in the barn with everyone else anyway. I never bothered putting a gate up between the two runs though and so I had a pallet temporarily blocking the entrance.

The pond needed removed, it was cement. I did not want the pigs to slip down and be unable to get back up. So we spent an afternoon removing the cement. The kids helped pick up the small bits, for a price, while we broke the cement into large chunks. We were under constant turkey supervision.

It is now a giant dirt hole that the pigs have no problem navigating. I’m really hoping they gley this pond for us and will be watering them in the bottom of it.

While I was slipping into the barn to turn on the electric fence (dogs kept trying to get at the pigs) a pig followed and…I figured that was fine. They show no interest in the birds and the man we got them from said his chickens go in with his pigs all the time. The pigs are happy to graze on all of the grasses and such in the poultry runs. The birds never did scratch down their runs as they were far too busy begging at the doorstep. I’m not sure how long the grasses will hold out before we have dirt runs, but I’m hoping they can last until spring.

The pigs prefer the duck area. It’s extra muddy!

I am free feeding the pigs, as directed, but this brings about the challenge of keeping everyone else from eating the pig food. I’m mostly just waiting until butcher time when 80% of our birds will be removed.

The kids named the pigs. Son named the bigger pink one Rocker and Daughter named the small black and white pig BLT. Well she said B.L.E. but I suggested we change that to a T and she said that was good. She is desperate to pet them but the pigs are desperate to stay away from her. I hope they adjust in time to each other.

I put 2 feet of hay in the duck hut turned pig shed and the pigs happily slept there their first night, buried in the hay. In fact I couldn’t find them the next morning and was freaking out about it. Thank goodness Rocker snores!

So that is the amazing story of how I turned 15 ducks into 2 pigs. I love my man!