There are all kinds of articles out there talking about meat after SHTF.  You want to know what is missing in a lot of those articles?  Exact details.

Awhile back we talked about how many chickens would be needed for SHTF.  I would like to do this article in the same manner as the chicken article.

Lets start with one very important question, and that is how much meat does the average person eat?  To find the answer lets turn to the US census.

Per Capita Consumption of Major Food Commodities

Average US meat consumption in 2009:

For right now lets exclude eggs and focus on red meat and poultry.  We will talk about eggs later.

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An update to how the rabbit hutch and hideaway boxes are working out. The hideaway box is working well, but they are moving their food bowls around and spilling their food.

To fix the food bowl problem I ran a screw through the bowl and into the 2×4 under the bowl.

I used a 10 penny nail and hammer to poke a hole in the bottom of the food boil, then secured the bowl with a 2 inch outdoor wood screw.

The doe seems to spend an equal amount of time inside and outside the box, while the buck spends most of his time on top of the box.

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A rabbit hideaway box serves several purposes – it provides a place for the rabbit to hide, provides the doe with a birthing box for her litter, and provides a high place for a lookout point. Rabbits are prey animals, and as such will want to hide when they are scared.

The rabbit hutch was built a couple of weeks ago, so now it is time to build the hideaway boxes.  One box will be built for the doe and one box will be built for the buck.

The first hide box was built 20 inches X 24 inches.  After the box was placed in the hutch it seemed a little large.

The second box was built 16 inches X 20 inches.  Even at 16X20 the box seems a little big.

I may cut that down to 12 X 20, but it will be after the rabbits are grown.  Right now the boxes seem a little large, but the rabbits still have a lot of growing to do.

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My wife and I started the rabbit hutch last weekend. And as things happen in life we ran out of time and were unable to finish the hutch. This weekend we were going to be a little pressed for time, but I was hoping to get it finished. Besides the hutch my wife and I had a pageant for my daughter in Newton Texas on Saturday, then a birthday party for two of the grandkids on Sunday. Saturday was a no-go, so we only had Sunday to work on the hutch.

Sunday morning my wife and I moved the rabbit hutch from in front of the wood shed to under a large oak tree in the back yard. When my wife asked why we were moving the hutch to work on it, I asked her if she wanted to work in the sun.

The drops from the legs are long enough to make cross members for the floor. When the floor was being built a cross member was placed every 2 feet. This left a space of 2×3 feet that was not supported. As a result there was a lot of slack in the floor. After the extra cross members were installed the floor was reenforced and the extra slack was removed.

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Have you considered raising rabbits as part of your long term SHTF survival plans?  Rabbits are easy to raise, do not take a lot of room, do not make a lot of noise,, what is there not to like about rabbits?

A couple of weeks ago my wife and daughter got a two Californian white rabbits.  The rabbits can not stay in their cage in the kitchen forever; the time has come to build a hutch and move them outside.

Instead of building or buying some simple wire cages, my wife and I decided to build a solid rabbit hutch.  This is something that will fit into my chicken coop plans with no change of design or other major alteration.  The rabbit hutch my wife and I built this weekend is a total of 8 feet long, divided in half gives each rabbit a space of 3 feet by 4 feet, for a total of 12 square feet.

If I am going to keep rabbits and chickens, I want to make sure they are treated humanly, protected from the elements, and have plenty of room.

Bill of material

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For the sake of discussion let’s say that some kind of SHTF situation occurred.  Whether it is widespread civil unrest, nuclear war, financial collapse,,, something has happened to disrupt food shipments as well as infrastructure.

How do you plan on providing fresh vegetables, fruit and meat for your family? In other articles we have discussed gardening, beans, squash, potatoes and chickens (only to mention a few topics we have discussed). So lets talk about rabbits for a little bit.

Why Rabbits

Easy to raise
Eat a variety of grass
Reproduce like crazy,,, well, they reproduce like rabbits
Easy to butcher
Easy to cook
Do not require a lot of space
Do not make a lot of noise
Large enough to feed a small family
Poop makes excellent fertilizer

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Easter is next weekend, April 31, 2013. If you live in the burbs or in a rural area you may see people selling rabbits and chicks on the side of the road. Or you may be seeing ads in the local paper for chicks and Easter bunnies for sale.

Public Service Reminder, please think before you buy live animals for Easter.

Those bunnies and colored chicks are cute, but they will soon grow up.

The majority of live animals bought for Easter will either be abandoned, or will die before they turn a year old.

I have bought my kids bunnies for Easter before. But we also built the rabbit hutch and took care of the rabbits. It was a fun project for the whole family.

But then again, not everyone wants to invest the time, effort or money into building a rabbit hutch. Keep in mind some cities prohibit keeping rabbits and chickens. It would be a shame to buy a couple of chicks, then find out your family will not be able to keep them.

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Over the past couple of years I have looked at several chicken breeds to develop a self-sustaining chicken flock. Some of the breeds I have looked at are the Barred Rock, Buff Orpington, Dominique and Australorp (only to name a few).  This article will focus on the Barred Rock, which is part of the Plymouth Rock family of chickens.

Why should we care about the Barred Rock? It is a good dual purpose chicken which has been raised for well over 100 years.

I do not consider the Barred Rock a high egg producer chicken, as it only lays around 200 eggs a year. There are breeds out there that lay well over the 200 egg mark. The Barred Rock makes up for its average egg production with its size, hardiness, and its meat quality.

While looking for information on various chicken breeds I came across this youtube posted by FarmRaised which talks about breeding the Barred Rock.

This video brings up some good topics for discussion:

Separate the chickens into groups based on desired traits.

Breed for size and traits.

Weigh the roosters and hens so your flock maintains a steady size.

Related Article – How many chickens for SHTF

Some of my long term plans

There are some of my personal plans and are not based off the video.

Lets start out with around 15 – 20 hens, and either 3 or 4 roosters.

Divide the hens into 3 – 4 groups based on various traits.

Use a cable tie to mark the various groups. Cable ties are cheap, easy to put on, easy to take off and are available in a wide range of colors.

Then its a matter of breeding the flocks so the parents do not breed with their children or grandchildren.

Forum Thread – Lets talk about the Barred Rock

There was once a time when Uncle Sam (the U.S. Government) wanted people to raise chickens. This was especially true in times of war when our troops needed food.

Unfortunately those days are far behind us. If a city dweller tried to raise chickens today, they would probably be sued by the city and forced to get rid of the flock.

What does that say about us as a nation when we turn away from time honored traditions of raising our food, only to become dependent on a grocery store?

I often wonder how the typical city dweller would act if the grocery store shelves were empty? How would society react if the government started rationing food like what happened in World War II?

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Over the past year and a half I have read and watched a lot of videos about chickens. This the best video I have seen about chicken behavior.

From a survivalist point, the video talks about a lot of important points. It is estimated mankind domesticated the chicken about 8,000 years ago. There has to be something that has allowed mankind and chickens to thrive together.

During World War II eggs were rationed. “If” we ever go to war with a major world power, do you want to be on the rationing end, or do you want to have fresh meat and eggs?

In England, it was not until the 1950s that chicken became a staple food. People are more rabbit then chicken.

Selective breeding has improved certain traits.

Chickens can learn rather quickly.

If you have a spare hour to watch the video, please take the time to do so.

Can yall believe it’s been a whole year since my wife and I got our first chicks?  For the first few months I posted several videos about building the coop and how the chicks were doing.  After the chickens start laying, there is not that much to post about.  They are chickens, they do their thing, they lay eggs and that is about it.

Now that the hens are a full year old I thought it would be good to post some kind of up date to let people know how things are going.

Between the last weekend of February and the second week of March 2012 my wife and I bought 15 chicks.  Two of the chicks died a few days after we got them.  After those first two died, we have not lost another chicken.

As some of yall may know chickens are part of my long term SHTF survival plans. In the next few months my wife and I are looking at moving to the homestead. After we get moved we are going to build a 30 foot X 75 foot chicken yard, along with a 20 X 16 chicken coop, then expand the flock to around 50 hens and maybe 5 roosters.

My experiences from the past year will help me build the next chicken coop and chicken yard.

Observations Over The Past Year

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Lets talk about a good breed of meat chicken for the homestead that does well on free range.

For the sake of discussion lets say that some kind of SHTF / TEOTWAWKI situation has happened. Whether its some kind of new SARS virus, wide spread civil unrest, nuclear war with China, hurricane, blizzard,,, something has happened to disrupt food shipments.

You go out to the chicken coop, survey the flock for dinner, what kind of chickens would you see? Did you focus on egg production, meat production, or both? Did you buy hens that go broody, or did you go with breeds that do not go broody? If you butcher a hen, will it be replaced?

What are some of the traits we are looking for?  Lets start with heritage breeds that have a proven track record of over 100 years.  The older the breed the better.

Lets look for chickens that weigh at least 6 – 7 pounds before processing, because do we really want to butcher 2 or 3 small hens for a single meal?  We want a hen that can go broody, is a good mother, raise her chicks for the next generation, is a good forager and will feed a family of 4.

Dominique – There are lot of other breeds out there that are larger and lay more eggs, but, how can we argue against a chicken that has fed America since the colonial days?

The Dominique is a result of chickens that were brought to the new world by early settlers. It is considered Americas first true chicken breed.

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One of the things I would like to do after my wife and I get moved to the homestead, is to get some kind of milk and meat producing livestock.

Cattle was one of my first choices.  My wife and I cook a lot of beef – ground meat, steaks, stew meat,,, just all kinds of different cuts of meat.

Goats were my second choice.  Cattle eat grass, goats eat weeds, so they would not compete over the food sources.  Unlike a cow, when a goat is butchered I would not have to deal with a 1,000 pound animal.

Then there are sheep.  Unlike goats, sheep produce wool that can be used to make clothing.  The breed of sheep I was looking at (under the suggestion from my brother) is hair sheep.  Hair sheep look like goats, as they have short hair instead of wool.

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For you forum members out there, lets do a running total of how many chickens we have as a community.

I have 13 chickens at this time.

4 – Rhode Island Reds
2 – Silver Laced Wyandotte
2 – Barred Rocks
2 – Australorps
2 – Black Jersey Giants
1 – Speckled Sussex

Next poster add your chickens to my 13, post the total, next poster add your chickens to the total before yours.

Lets make this a year long project. If you add chickens to your flock, add them to the running total.

If any of your chickens die, subtract them from the running total.

Forum Thread – 2013 chicken count thread

The nation is screwed, and I mean royally screwed.

National Debt

The government is so far into debt, there is no way future generations can pay off the debt. As of the posting of this article the US Government is $16.4 trillion in debt. With credit card debt and student loan debt, we owe more like $58 trillion.

We are throwing millions of dollars to illegal immigrants. Between 2009 and 2011 we spent around $91 million on health care for illegal immigrants.

Social Security disability is expected to go bankrupt by 2016.

Congress is looking for ways to allow millions of illegal immigrants to become citizens.

If the nation is broke, how are we supposed to bankroll millions of new people collecting benefits?

Kidney stones suck

We were supposed to go to the homestead this weekend.  But on friday I started having pains so bad I had to take some Vicodin – which I have a prescription for.  The stupid stone did not pass over the weekend.

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