Putting 150 Chickens + Turkeys Out to Pasture

It looks a hair gloomy. Hopefully that holds off because I want to get the turkeys and the sea monsters out to pasture.

How could we do my chickens? Um, can we, um, go start milk?

Yep. Beefcake, did you deplete your grain? I think you've uncovered and eaten all your buried grain. Time to start feeding you again. It was a good 6-week run. Yeah, of course you could do more digging.

We could spread grain on it.

I think they'll only work so hard for the amount of grain that's in there. Of course they could have buried it, you know, maybe it's fluff. There's probably still some at the very bottom, but we mixed corn in that bedding before we put pigs on it. We wanted them to stir it to help break this deep bedding, which was the cows, into compost. Maybe she's not. Oh, maybe she is hungry. Yeah, would have cared less about the food before because she had all she could eat corn. These guys have to start getting fed. You don't think there's any corn left? Not that they're willing to go after it. Look at Beef trying to go at it. Never mind, I'll just get a porch. We're on a standstill on our remodel. Hopefully this week. You think it'll happen this week? We're waiting on our trusses. I'm gonna redo the whole roof to bring it up to code. While we're at it, we're gonna raise it 2 feet. That's gonna be good. Beautiful one can get more windows. One cool thing about the chicken tractor designs is you can pull that egg crate out and it becomes a basket. In this case, we're carrying hay. I'm looking at my pasture. Is it ready to be hit again? I think so. Here's a trick: you can look at your clover, look at a patch, and if 20% of it has gone to seed. That means you're ready. That's about where we're at right here. How's your shawl holding up? Chick Shawl 5.0. How they doing on eggs? She's growling at you, buddy. This one does need a little bit more hay, doesn't it? How you doing? You broody? There's all the eggs. I don't know, she knows I'm in the back. Hey, did you want to hatch more chicks? I could if she's broody tomorrow. We could just save a variety of chicks right there. The rooster's in here. We lost like 20. I mean, 8's better than nothing though, right? You only want to hatch 8 at a time under a hen. Hey, you gonna do that by yourself? Heck yeah! By the way, the Kickstarter for the book for these plans is crushing it. You guys have spoken. You guys wanted it, you're getting it at homesteadbuilds.com. I love and appreciate anybody who's backed it, and I'm so happy for you and your homestead. Josiah ready to cover some trees, wondering what is trees, what's not. Some of these weeds are as tall as trees. This is a tree that needs covered. It used to have a pallet around it. Pallets do not work, and then when they rot, you got metal in your field. Not a good idea. Cows will accidentally eat that. And then this is one, Josiah. I think that's it. Our chickens need greens and our garden needs weeding, so it's a little wild yet, but we made some progress. Hey, my man, good morning! And look at this, Josiah, your corn has come up and not too many weeds have come up. My man, the most relieving factors of making weeding Worth it. The joy it brings my chickens. Yeah, I think so too. Weather's got to hold off. Yeah, look, these guys are overdue, and then these guys are overdue. This look all ratty-patty in here, man. They need to get to the pasture. Henry happy?

Kind of.

Cool. We start right here. We go through our yard and then start heading out with our sea monsters, our meat chickens. They are overdue a move and they're running out of room in that brooder and getting sort of nasty. We've got to get them out before people get sick or fail to thrive. You want to get those garden stakes and drive them in, Gideon, with your hammer right there to keep the fence down on the ground? Good boy. You driving a stake? Keep going, keep going. Oh, I wouldn't hold it while you do that.

Yeah, I wouldn't hold it either. Why, Henry? Henry, no, you can't! What if you miss and hit your pants?

There you go. Nice. Oh, you bent it over. Henry's asking for water. We got to take a water break. It's hot out. Did you get all the stakes up?

Stakes up.

In. We didn't go all the way around. You want to get the rubber mallet, or is the metal hammer working good?

This is working good.

This could turn into an unfortunately long pit stop if we don't just— let me go in, get you guys some water. I'll come right back out. There you go.

Have a look.

Aqua. Oh, Darth helmet! Yeah! You want me to hammer the rest of them in, or you guys gonna do it? Get in, you all. He put in the stakes, I'm gonna go get the meat shawl. Notice something different about the meat shawl? I raised it to pretty much sheep shawl height. I did that in hopes that this could be multi-purpose, because the sea monsters use this thing 5 weeks out of a year. I mean, we do 2 batches of 10 weeks. Still, that's only like 20— that's only like 10 20% of the year.

Why is this thing so tall?

Because I want it to be able to accommodate sheep or pigs. I guess somebody could even do turkeys under it.

They don't watch porches, but if they— there's a porch right there.

You can build this thing for your sea monsters and then run anything you want in it other times of the year. It begs the question, well, why didn't I make this taller in the first place? I actually had it as low as this axle. My thought on that was more protection from predators. The taller we get, the easier it is for something to get into the side, like aerial predators. People be completely safe underneath, but maybe on the edges a little less safe if the roof is tall like that. I was happy with my short minimal coop, and then I had Joel Salatin out for a consult and he said, that coop, you need to raise it up, the chickens are going to get hot. Did you put rings around this whole thing, Gideon? They didn't seem any more susceptible to predators, so now I'm thinking, what if it could be tall enough for a sheep? Now with the guard goose and tube man, we have some extra protection. I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful enough to make an experiment, and if that works, we'll include that new design in our book Homestead Builds, and you can build Technically, this first book— there's going to be a second one— but this first book of a dozen-plus designs are technically for gardens and chickens. But wouldn't that be cool if you could get the meat shaw design, and if you didn't want meat chickens, it could be your sheep shaw? You just add minerals. What's wrong? What happened? I doubt he got stung by it, but he'd be screaming. Okay, we're almost done. Oh, you hit your foot? You stubbed your foot? Yeah.

Okay, all right, all right.

You want to come You want to come with me to put the Energizer up?

It's not really going in much.

I went and got our trough. Gideon says we're done. Dude, you already set this on it and everything?

Yeah.

Wow, you set it on there good. Good job. Can you get under it?

Yeah.

Pinch it to the ground.

What, is it going to electrify?

No, not unless you turn the button on. Good. Bzzz! Fathers, don't exasperate your children. Whoops. Whoops. Uh-oh, threw it there and put it back in. Look at Henry just watching everything. Look at him watching and learning. Play him to the end. You spread it, okay? So 2 troughs holds 1 full bucket.

Me and Henry will start a journey to play.

Shall we get the chicks now?

Yeah.

You like that?

Yeah.

Shall we get these dirty chickens out of there?

Yep.

Or just fool around on the shavings? Is that Mom? Nope. All right, let's do it before it is Mom and we have to take a break for lunch. I guess we'll count them going out. Okay, it'll be easier. Yeah, but we're gonna count, see if Tube Man can save our sea monsters too. One more thing we gotta do, but first we gotta take a break for lunch. All right, how many sea monsters did you get?

It was 100.

Why? 121? Did we order 125 because we wanted 100 at the end?

Did Andrew get—

Andrew got 50.

He did get 50. Maybe we did order We were just gonna do one run, and then we decided to do a second.

Okay, we have 121.

So we've lost 4?

Yeah, we've lost 2 at least. I fed Winnie, then we probably lost some in shipping. Yes, we have 121 now. Can we get 121 to butchering? Probably only about 4 more weeks.

I think we could get close to that.

I ate some of the berries out in our berry patch.

What were they?

Black raspberries.

Oh, are they nice?

Well, I ate them all. There was like 10.

There's gonna be a movie show.

Yes, yes, they were right.

Henry, let's go do turkeys. Come on, Mom, you coming later? Yeah, Henry, it won't take long. What's this? You gotta hook up your hydraulics. What's the problem?

Can't get the hydraulics hooked up.

Were you able to get that far? Well, I got it. You didn't— you got right in frame. I think your whole head covered the Frank. There we go.

There we are.

Si, you done? Man, it looks so good. Everything looks so good. Good job, my man. You want to get the turkeys? Yeah. I don't think he knows what he's signing up for. Hey, you want to pick up that big iron rusty piece of metal and put it over your head? He said no. Okay, good. Henry, do you want to pick off all these cobwebs? Off the brooder? He's confused. Gideon, do you want to pick up all that mowed pieces of paper off the grass? No. Hey, best day of your life, birds. Gotta get the tea birds out. Well, thanks, Henry, for putting shavings right there. Hey, he's doing something. Who cares? As long as he's doing something, even if it's wrong. That's what counts. Hopefully the turkeys aren't too big for this. Why are you doing that? Let's take it to the metal stall. Shut it down. Look who came to help. Although I don't know how much help she'll be because he wants me as soon as you come out. He's nuts for you. Look at this clover and alfalfa. Whoa, let's put the turkeys out, Henry.

Alfalfa.

No, it's just we have alfalfa planted in there. I was wanting to put them out right here, but now I'm thinking we really need— hold on, no, no, I wasn't going to do it yet. Shut it. I'm thinking we need to get them some water and some feed right there, buddy. What you doing back?

Weeding in the boys' corn patch.

They have it, don't they? They do. Look at little Henry.

Make sure it gets fed real well.

He's picking up this—

he's picking it up.

You're being so helpful.

He's such a helpful— he saw me doing this. He's got involved.

Lift it! They're actually standing.

9, 10.

There's a lot more at the—

Oh really?

Birder. Okay, cross our fingers that they stay. Oh look, they're eating that. They like the alfalfa. But I figured the tall grass will help them be protected from aerial predators. They're still kind of little, certainly not going to get got by a crow. Probably not by a hawk. How did you plant that corn so straight?

It was the Johnny seed planter, but we didn't have the right size for the corn, so like 2 stalks came out— 2 corn kernels, or like 4 kernels would come out at a time.

Yeah, but how did you do straight?

Oh, I just eyed it. Eyeballed it straight down the row. That was not the answer you wanted.

What answer did I want?

You wanted me to get the strings and the posts. It was a quiz. Remember how you say every question's a quiz? Yeah, you have 50/50 chance getting around. Well, that's what you were doing.

Somebody already went through. 2 people, huh? Oh yeah, it's got to be not even connected. Well, there you go. They have all that green and they're pushing the fence and getting greens on the other side. This is probably our best patch out here. Something's wrong. That one pushed through and then backed out. 2.9. Should be hitting that before I connected one of the grounds in there.

9.

What's it hitting? 9. Okay, now hook it up to the fence. That makes a big difference to have one of the batteries not connected. Now test it.

0.6.

Okay, Jonah, do you know where our string trimmer is?

It's gonna be—

just— I have it.

I'm gonna guess it's because it's so It's just grounding out everywhere.

I have got to get this hitting harder. I think it's because there's so much weed pressure on it. It's not even hitting at 1. Not gonna keep the turkeys in, and it's certainly not gonna keep the predators out. It's funny what grows in 2 weeks here in the rainforest.

Maybe you can electrify them.

It'll be better. So much better, and they're staying around the turkey shaw.

I'm over here.

So that's good. That's better. 2.8. It's gonna start too, man. They have enough chicken sense to run away from Tube Man. Get in, get in, let it fly. There's actually 122, Rebecca. I found another sea monster. Let me get it. We've been losing about 15% in the field. I'm kind of wondering if Tube Man is gonna help prevent that. Look how they've already mashed the grass down. Look at this. This is going to eventually be our commercial slash farm kitchen. Yeah, we've blown the budget for now, so that's gonna have to be a phase 2.

The door will be over here in between these two doors. That— they'll be shut up. And then a bathroom here that you'll enter through this way or this way. There'll just be a toilet and a sink down here. And then the kitchen was— is going to be over here. And like this with an island, it's gonna be good. So if we did the cold room over here, it would just be a long workspace.

We are demoing this and constructing it, we're not finishing it.

Correct.

We're just not buying— not buying the second stove for down here and the dishwashers and the—

you know what, are we gonna—

but, but while we're getting everything, you gotta plumb it, plumb it, and electric. It.

What are we gonna do about this?

It's not gonna do what you call finish it.

No, look, the concrete, it's one side's taller.

Oh wow, we'll fix it. Well, you have to, because this is the cold room. I'm gonna put a drain in there.

Then maybe it is good that it's shorter like that, so then it would—

all the water.

We're gonna have to drain it, and then it's gonna have to go slope to the drain, so it's fine that it's lower.

There's already some turkeys out. Wrong way. I don't remember. Does this take a learning curve? There is a learning curve. Jonah, looks so good! How'd you rake it smooth like that?

With the grapple.

It has a little— really?

Really?

That looks Looks good, my man. Okay, next rain we're gonna burn this. Lily, what'd you make us?

I made Mexican rice and Mexican meat without any chili powder because we didn't have any.

Oh really? Yeah, we have chili powder, it's right here. Okay, we have to do chili powder, and then that's gonna need to heat it up again. Did you do cumin?

Yeah.

I got a surprise for you all. Bucci gave us some free samples. Of their new soda. It's a healthier version of soda. He's gonna try root beer float.

Okay, literally try it.

Cut trees. Yeah, you can cut trees with this. Watch, watch.

Was it bad?

Yeah.

Mommy's gonna try it.

It's like, it's like spicy and then way too sweet. Yeah, way too sweet.

Spicy and it's heavy.

This is coming from people who've never had soda. It's very stevia-ish. Next up, strawberry cream. You went and rinsed your cup out.

I did.

You're so proper. It's real good with ice cream.

Yeah, who wants the ice cream?

Yeah, no, you're not.

My turn. It's very light.

Light?

It's a nice taste.

It's a nice taste. Terrible.

Very bubbly.

Does it taste stevia-ish?

I don't know.

There you go.

I'm not done.

Okay, well, we're moving on, honey.

Oh, that one's very sour. I don't like root beer.

Here, Josiah. I have some.

You want to try it?

I like root beer. I might like kombucha better. It's just like weird. I don't know why.

It's just soda.

Our kids don't have any soda experience.

Y'all didn't like that, you're probably not gonna like this. Lemon lime. Becky's got a new glass for every situation. You dork. This is like going to the Atlanta Coca-Cola factory and drinking all the drinks. Isn't it? So right now the strawberry is leading.

Is that the last one?

I like root beer, I think.

I like this one too.

This one tastes like Sprite.

No, not that much.

I like this one.

This one's better.

You can have it.

I'm gonna have a fourth of this.

This tastes like Sprite.

One more. Ooh, cream soda. That's gonna be a winner.

Do I have to eat that?

Nope, don't pour it out. We never thought we'd ever have the Atlanta Coke experience ever again, did we?

Mmm. It tastes kind of like marshmallows.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

I think the cream soda is where it's at. Is that what they're called? Wild Pops? Mm-hmm. Oh, it's a kefir soda.

Yeah.

It's got kefir culture in it.

Oh, that's nice to know. Well, that makes me feel better. We just drank kefir.

Yeah, it's not soda. I mean, it has kefir culture, so that's—

It's a healthy soda.

Uh-huh.

Nice.

This has apple cider vinegar in it.

I hear a lot of— chirping. That's the sea monsters. What's going on? We also need to check the T-birds to see if they're still in. If you want to build that turkey shaw, if you want to build the meat shaw, maybe it's going to be able to serve as a sheep shaw. HomesteadBuilt.com. We're launching our next book. We're doing a Kickstarter on it. That's until the end of the month. We got a lot of specials going on till then. You can get all the plans as we complete them. What is going on? Okay, I think they're just stressed out with the— just the newness of it all. What's going on? They're out and about. I think I'll leave them on for an hour. You watch over them, guy. Watch over them. Sea monsters seem to be okay, albeit a little stressed. Let's see what's going on with the turkeys. You want to get in on the Homestead Builds Kickstarter? Better because it's helping the project making happen. But you'll also get the plans even before we go to print. Print is like— oh gosh, I thought I saw a snake. Print is like these, but it, but it's these Velcro straps. Print is, um, turkey shaw coming this year, meat shaw slash sheep shaw coming this year, and everybody's here. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Yes! And everybody's perched on the turkey shaw. Turkeys don't need walls, they don't need a solid roof, they don't mind the rain. Sure, it's hitting good. It'll keep predators from coming into the side. The roof keeps air predators away, the net keeps land predators away. I couldn't do this regenerative homestead like I do without the turkey shaw. The chick shawls way out in the pasture. The meat shawl, the sheep shawl, everything must be shawl for me. The raised beds. Essentially, I've found and discovered something wonderful, and I just want to share it with you. It completes my joy. Check it out, homesteadbuilds.com, link in the description.