Took a day off to go to the auction
Looking at this damned computer screen all day gets old. After enough hours, it really causes some eye fatigue. Today I did the smart thing and just walked away from it for the day.
Instead of working, I went to the livestock auction in Whately, MA. It is the weekly auction where the local farmers sell off stuff they have raised or stuff they are looking to cull. Other farmers buy them, as well as representatives from a couple of meat packing places and custom butchers.
I came home with 5 weened rabbits that cost me $1.75 each, 43 bales of hay at $2.30 each, and a 98 pound lamb that sold for $85 per hundredweight (AKA $.85 per pound). The lamb should yield about 60% of it's liveweight in usable food, so it should work out to roughly 58 pounds of lamb meat that cost me about $1.40 per pound. That price doesn't include my time in fetching it or butchering it, but going to the auction and cutting meat I count as entertainment.
The bunnies are probably 3-4 weeks old. it will take less than half a $10 bag of rabbit chow to grow them out to full sized meals. I'll check them out tomorrow in the daylight and figure out who are males and who are females. For a small family like ours, the simplest breeding setup is to have one buck rabbit and two or three does. Managed well, each doe can produce a litter of four to eight babies every two months. Baby rabbits are called "kits"...the act of giving birth is called "kindling", hence the rabbit logo for those silly electronic book reading devices that are all the rage right now.
By comparison, full grown meat rabbits were selling for $8-$12 each at the auction. For a homesteader, rabbits are an efficient meat animal. You can even grow them in urban areas, either in your backyard or in your basement.
Instead of working, I went to the livestock auction in Whately, MA. It is the weekly auction where the local farmers sell off stuff they have raised or stuff they are looking to cull. Other farmers buy them, as well as representatives from a couple of meat packing places and custom butchers.
I came home with 5 weened rabbits that cost me $1.75 each, 43 bales of hay at $2.30 each, and a 98 pound lamb that sold for $85 per hundredweight (AKA $.85 per pound). The lamb should yield about 60% of it's liveweight in usable food, so it should work out to roughly 58 pounds of lamb meat that cost me about $1.40 per pound. That price doesn't include my time in fetching it or butchering it, but going to the auction and cutting meat I count as entertainment.
The bunnies are probably 3-4 weeks old. it will take less than half a $10 bag of rabbit chow to grow them out to full sized meals. I'll check them out tomorrow in the daylight and figure out who are males and who are females. For a small family like ours, the simplest breeding setup is to have one buck rabbit and two or three does. Managed well, each doe can produce a litter of four to eight babies every two months. Baby rabbits are called "kits"...the act of giving birth is called "kindling", hence the rabbit logo for those silly electronic book reading devices that are all the rage right now.
By comparison, full grown meat rabbits were selling for $8-$12 each at the auction. For a homesteader, rabbits are an efficient meat animal. You can even grow them in urban areas, either in your backyard or in your basement.
posted by MVTCoPete | 7:40 PM
2 Comments:
Hey Pete,
Just found your MVTC site and this blog. Now I pause to put in Systane lubricant eye drops. My ophthalmologist turned me on to them to ease eye strain and dryness from computer use at work. Extremely effective and quite soothing. Hope perhaps they would help you also.
Love what I've read about your passions in life. Thanks for sharing it with so many others.
Looking to get my family involved with War of 1812 reenactment, as we live not far from Sackets Harbor, NY.
Many blessings to you and yours.
Steve Long
Chaumont NY
Actually, I got to the root of the eye problem...it was a bad prescription for my eyeglasses!
I just got new glasses this week after struggling with my bad prescription for about 3 years like a stubborn Yankee and it immediately improved the quality of my life.
1812 events should start to grow as we are coming up on the bicentennial of it. There isn't much 1812 stuff in New England though.
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