Sunday, July 22, 2012

Don't forget the first.

With all the calls to infringe on our second amendment rights coming as a result of some asshole in Colorado, lets not forget our first amendment rights. 

The endless attention the media gives this tragedy will result in copy cats.  It happened before with the school shootings.  It will happen again.  The media is partially to blame.

Why isn't anybody (besides me) suggesting we put a muzzle on the media?  Lets get rid of all of our freedoms.

Chicken Math

Raising your own chickens for meat is stupid.  You have about $1.50 per pound into them and you can buy chicken for 69 cents per pound on sale.  Well you could; who knows what the high corn prices are going to do to our food bills.

Then you have the work of raising them and butchering them.  I did 8 yesterday.  It took 4 hours.  It is a shame that I feel the need to raise chickens every few years to remind myself why I don't raise chickens.

There are some things that could make it better.  I need a better setup to raise them.  I could let them free range, and feed them less.  They can eat bugs and graze, and perhaps my feed bill will be lower.  I also need a better setup to butcher.  Specifically, I need to build my own tub plucker.  That would take about 60% of the work and time out of it.  Probably cost a hundred bucks, and then I have to raise even more chickens to justify it. 

On the plus side, I now have some home grown chicken.  It just tastes a little better.  Also, my four year old daughter helped me butcher.  Mostly she just got dirty, but she did help hold the chickens while I trussed their feet and she helped pull some feathers.  I think it is good for her to understand where our food comes from, instead of growing up into a urbanized wuss who would starve to death if she couldn't get her chicken in the form of a nugget.  Either that or I am raising her to be a homicidal terror.  She seemed to be enjoying the process. 

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Chickens on the roof

My barn is falling down.  This does great harm to the chicken pen inside*.  The door frame is warped due to the barn taking on a lean, leaving a gap under the door.  Some of my chickens found the gap, and were outside the pen when I came to feed them.  I had blocked the gap with a roll of chicken wire but somehow they moved it.  So I figured I'd leave it open and let them free range.

Oops.  I come home and the fat broilers are there but the layer chicks were not.  Two were on the barn roof.  Several had climbed up to the hayloft where a section of it had fallen partially down.  Once there, two had taken the further step of going through a hole in the roof to get onto the roof.  The rest of the chicks were still in the hay loft. 

I chased one off the roof by spraying water with the hose.  The other wouldn't come.  By nightfall, they were all at least off the roof.  Which is good, there are owls about. 

This morning some were back ready to be fed, but about 4 were still up in the loft.  By a rough count, I haven't lost any yet.  I am guessing they will come down when they get hungry enough.  I am not going up after them. 

*  I do have another pen in another building.  I just need to butcher the broilers and the mean rooster and then the layer chicks can be integrated with the hens I have now.  That should happen this weekend.  How the heck I catch the little buggers I don't know. 

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Leftists is so stupid

Scranton Pa is out of money.  So the mayor cuts everyone's pay, including his own, to minimum wage.  The liberal solution?  Same as always, sue. 

That'll show 'em.  I'm sure when they win the city will pony up.  The math will bend to fit your whim, libs.  The unions broke a few big companies.  The big companies decide to go overseas.  The unions decide to go after the government.  Big win boys.   The government isn't going to leave at least.  At the end of the day, those city employees work for the people, and the people are eventually going to start wondering why government employees make so much more than they do, and quite often don't work as hard for it.

Some funny comments after the article about how we need to tax the rich more.  I don't know how they run things over there, but here our city runs on sales tax, and to a small extent, property tax.  So there is no power to tax the rich, other than increase their property tax.   I'll bet that will work.

Coming soon to a city near you.

Thursday, July 05, 2012

Torpedo away

Eric Holder may have avoided the contempt prosecution, but he had better resume his zig zag:


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