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We are a
small family owned and operated farm located in South Arkansas.
I am Travis, and my wife is Crystal. We have three beautiful
children Jordan, Katie, and Levi. We operate our own homestead
complete with a farm stand coming soon!!
This program is designed to help as you learn from our experience
as well as our mistakes in the process of starting your very own
homesteading journey.
Grab a cup of coffee and sit back as you read through the You
Can Homestead Series
Table Of Contents
Chapter 1 Intro To Poultry 7
Chapter 2 Chickens
Chapter 3 Turkeys
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Chapter 4 Ducks
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Chapter 5 Quail
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Chapter 6 Pheasant
Chapter 7 Geese
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Chapter 1
Introduction To The World Of Poultry
As far back as the pioneer days people have been
raising self-sustainable flock of poultry. In the days of
our ancestors that was the only choice they had. It is
our personal goal to take our homestead back to the
self-sustainability of the pioneer days with most of
the comforts of today. For instance, we hope to Live
completely off our land eventually and also have our
homestead be our only source of income. Now dont
get me wrong, it is A LOT of hard work and
determination on the path to selfsustainability, but I
promise you will save tons of money, your family will
be healthier and happier, and who doesnt want to
work for themselves? (More to come in later issues!!)
The first question you should ask yourself is What
type of poultry do I want to raise? As I said earlier,
we are currently raising chickens, turkeys, ducks, and
quail. We also want to add pheasant, and geese.
Next, you need to decide the purpose for raising the
breeds you have selected. We raise the breeds we
have on our homestead for several reasons. We eat
the meat from all of the breeds we raise. As for the
eggs, We eat chicken and quail eggs and probably
will pheasant as well. Everything else we hatch to
raise to either replenish our flock of breeders (more
on that later) or raise to harvest age for the freezer.
Chapter 2:
Homestead Chickens
Probably the most popular poultry breed on
any homestead would have to be the chicken.
Chickens are great for both meat and egg
production.
In this chapter we will teach you all about
CHICKENS!!! Everything from buying your first
chicken to housing to harvesting the meat. We
want to help you with every step of
establishing a flock of happy healthy chickens
on your homestead.
How Many Chickens Do I Need?
We have done lots of figuring between my wife
and I about how many chickens to keep in our
flock. We have come to the conclusion you
should have about 2 hens per family member.
Our family of 5 has 10 hens giving
approximately 8 eggs per day. That is 56 eggs
per week. We plan to hatch and raise 60 birds
for year for meat and the rest of the eggs we
will either consume or sale to offset feed costs.
We also hatch a few extra chicks for local sales
also to offset our feed cost.
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Chapter 3:
Homestead Turkeys
Turkeys are a lot like chickens when it comes to
housing and feeding. And you can actually
keep them in the same cage if you want. We
currently have our turkeys in with our chickens
but are working on separate enclosures.
Here at the farm we used the same basic
formula for figuring out how many turkeys you
need. Figure up how many turkeys you eat in a
month and multiply by 12. That gives you a
rough estimate of how many you need to raise
until harvest. For my family I figured we will
need 24 turkeys per year or two per month. We
eat a lot of sandwiches and love the home
raised sliced smoked turkey breast!!
Turkeys can lay an estimated 100 plus eggs if
you dont let them hatch their own so a pair or
a trio would be more than enough for a family.
If you let the birds hatch the eggs you will need
more hens to produce the number of birds you
will have for harvest. Hatch the ones you need
for harvest or to replace your breeders and
sale the rest or eat them.
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Chapter 4:
Homestead Ducks
Raising ducks is really no different than
chickens or turkeys. The incubation period for
common ducks is 28 days like turkeys.
Muscovy ducks, which are what we have on our
farm, take about 35 days. I have no idea why it
takes so much longer for Muscovy ducklings to
hatch, it just does lol.
I dont hatch my duck eggs in the incubator. I
allow my girls to hatch their own ducklings. Our
Muscovy ducks are great setters and are even
better mothers. They will attack in a New York
minute if they think their babies are in any
danger at all.
Even though our mothers hatch the ducklings
we take them away and put them in a brooder
after they hatch. The big world is tough on a
baby duckling and we try to lose as few as
possible. Pulling the ducklings from the
mothers also encourages them to lay again a
lot sooner than if they were brooding chicks.
This usually gives us two hatches for each hen
per year and sometimes three depending on
how the weather is here in south Arkansas.
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Chapter 5:
Homestead Quail
Quail are raised a little different than the other
types of poultry. Quail are super small and can
be kept in a fairly small area. Here at our farm
we custom built a cage (complete plans and
pictures coming soon) that is 8 feet long by 2
feet wide and 1 foot tall. This is then divided
into 5 sections 1 foot wide and 1 section 3 feet
wide. So I have 5 breeding pens and 1 grow
pen.
In the five breeding pens we have 3 hens and a
rooster in each one. That gives us 15 hens
which can produce up to that many eggs
everyday. Depending on how many quail your
family consumes you can decide from that the
number you need to raise for harvest every
year.
The eggs you dont hatch can be turned into
pickled eggs. We have several recipes we use
at our farm. If you dont want to eat them you
can sell the eggs for hatching or you can hatch
and sell the chicks to offset feed costs. Once
people find out you raise quail you will be
surprised at the number of people that want to
buy some especially if you do the harvesting.
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Chapter 6
Homestead Pheasant
That leads us to pheasant. There are several
different breeds of pheasant. From the
standard ring-necked pheasant, to the beautiful
yellow gold, and melanistic pheasant.
Pheasant care is much the same as for the
other breeds of poultry. I recommend building a
long and fairly tall flight pen for your
pheasants. Pheasants are very jumpy little
critters. If one of your birds gets spooked its
instincts are to fly up and away. If your cage is
too short you risk the chance of the bird flying
into the wire and breaking its neck. Believe me
I have learned this from experience.
The number of breeder birds you have is again
based on the number your family will consume.
A pair or a trio should be sufficient for a family.
If you want to make sure you have enough to
sale you can always add a few more hens to
your flock.
Incubation temperature is the same 99.5
degrees. Pheasant eggs take 23-24 days to
hatch. As for brooding chicks we follow the
same brooding schedule as our chickens.
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Chapter 7
Homestead Geese
Next on the list of poultry comes the goose.
Unless your homestead is a good distance
away from any neighbors I dont recommend
geese because they are LOUD! Geese are
probably the noisiest of all the poultry breeds.
They will start honking at ANYTHING especially
if they feel threatened in any way.
As for the incubation, the temperature is the
same 99.5 degrees. It takes between 28 and 35
days to hatch your goslings.
If you decide to let your geese hatch their own
eggs you need to pull the goslings as soon as
they hatch and brood them yourself. IF you
dont remove them the hen will think she is
done and leave the nest after the first one
hatches.
Follow the same brooding techniques as you
would for ducklings. Once they are feathered at
around 6 weeks of age they can be moved
outside to a covered grow pen. The extra
goslings can be sold to pay the feed bill.
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