Kit Perez has a blog called Montana Homesteading. There’s not a lot on it at present but I hope she stays with it. She has recently had some success raising chicks from eggs – something I haven’t even tried yet – and put up a really good article a few days ago on how to get and hatch the eggs.
That’s something I want to try sometime, if I ever get a line on an incubator. “Where are my next chickens coming from” is a question I have to deal with every couple of years.
They say that Louis XIV had the inscription Ultima Ratio Regum cast into all the cannon of the French Army. It means “The Ultimate Argument of Kings,” and that always struck me as one of the most honest and up-front things any ruler or would-be ruler ever said. “We can dress it up prettier than this, but when it comes down to the unvarnished truth this is what it’s about: You’ll do as I say or I’ll send my goons to kill you.”
I thought about that for a long time. If there’s an ultimate argument, it seems only logical that there must be an ultimate answer. For years I thought the ultimate answer must be the bullets in my rifle, but it never seemed quite right. I’ve got bullets – he’s got frigging Cannon Balls. I mean, if there were three hundred million rifles throwing bullets at him, then maybe. But we all know that’s not going to happen. So if there’s an ultimate answer to his ultimate argument, it sure as hell ain’t bullets.
It finally came to me – and that’s when I abandoned the city and most of my stuff, and gave all that was behind me a good stiff Randian Shrug.
The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.
Little Bear 2009-2018
Laddie the Amazing Torso Boy 2011-2020
"Freedom Outlaw. It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it. It’s an attitude — from which actions always follow. It’s a do-it-yourself occupation. And a lifetime vocation."
- Claire Wolfe, Backwoods Home Companion, 6-07-10
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
- G. K. Chesterton
"If every Jewish and anti-Nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and the will to use it, Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history of the Weimar Republic."
- Aaron Zelman
"Authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force."
- Barbie
"Never underestimate the ability of shit to find a fan."
- F. Paul Wilson
"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." The sophistry of villains - Bah!
- Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star
“Truth is, I’m not specifically interested in an armed society. What I want is a free society.”
- George Potter
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
- D. H. Lawrence
Aristippus passed Diogenes as he was washing lentils.
He said, “If you could but learn to flatter the king, you would not have to live on lentils.”
Diogenes said, “And if you could learn to live on lentils, you would not have to flatter the king.”
Sandy Hook was a Gun Free Zone. So was the Westroads Mall. And the Aurora Theater. And Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Should I go on? They were all Gun Free Zones.Â
– Reality
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
- Robert A. Heinlein
"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
- Ayn Rand
If ever a man should ask you
For your business or your name
Tell him to go and fuck himself
Tell his friends to do the same.
For a man who'd trade his liberty
For a safe and dreamless sleep
Doesn't deserve the both of them
And neither shall he keep.
- Frank Turner
Don't be afraid to try something big, just because you're an amateur. The Ark was built by amateurs. The Titanic was built by professionals.
- Anon
"Nothing scares a police officer more than the threat of being treated the way that they treat people every day."
- Anon
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."
- Gen. James Mattis
"Lust for power is the most flagrant of all the passions."
- Tacitus
"The man who knows what freedom means will find a way to be free."
- F.A. "Baldy" Harper
"The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude."
- William James
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
- Viktor Frankl
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.
- Milton Friedman
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
- William Faulkner
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
- Ernest Hemingway
"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
John Moses Browning - The most badass Mormon who ever lived.
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"
- Ronald Reagan
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
- James A. Baldwin
"It is better to be a warrior in a garden than to be a gardener in a war."
- Anon
“I tried to live in such a way that, when dying, I would rather feel happy than scared.”
– Witold Pilecki
Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.
- Sallust
"Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark."
- Lazarus Long
Read, every day, something no one else is reading.
Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
– Â Christopher Morley
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.”
-Frederick Douglass
ESSE QUAM VIDERI –
To be, rather than to seem
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
“A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
– Ida B. Wells
Do what thy manhood bid thee do; from none but self expect applause.
He noblest lives and noblest dies, who makes and keeps his self made laws
– Sir Richard Burton
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
– Winston Churchill
“Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Dance as though no one is watching you. Love as though you have never been hurt before. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth.”
― Father Alfred d’Souza
Do you have a rooster at present?
Nope. Seymour attacked a couple of hens and became dinner.
That’s how I remembered it, but wasn’t sure.
Soooo . . . the plan would be to buy fertilized eggs and start from (almost) scratch, right?
Hmmmmm
If one of your hens tends to go “broody,” you don’t need ab incubator. I’d wait until next Spring when you’re past any cold weather.
Cheers
After a quick search for information makes me an instant “Internet Expert”…
Unless it can be done the natural way as JN suggests, hatching your own sounds like a LOT of trouble. It looks like the job doesn’t really scale, so hatching ten eggs is about the same trouble as hatching a hundred eggs, or even a thousand.
Yeah, but my one attempt at acquiring chicks locally ended very badly. I’ve gotten all my successful mail-order chicks through Landlady but that requires buying at least a dozen and she’s not sure she wants to continue. So I’m looking for alternatives.
And none of your other neighbors want chickens? Even if you agree to off them when the time comes? For folks living a hermit lifestyle chickens are a low input eggs and meat source. You all share tools and work skills and help each other so much, how about a sort of centrally located chicken facility with everyone taking turns doing the work or doing it as they can? Wouldn’t Landlady’s place be a good location for this facility? It has electricity to power refrigeration for the eggs and to keep the vegetables fresh that the chickens should be eating, for lights to keep the hens laying in winter, for heat if they need it, a barn to store the hay and feed so you don’t have to depend on trips to town. People can buy an egg and chicken-ready-to-eat share, or help with the chickens and earn a share. And Joel, you might even offer cooked chickens for those too busy to cook for themselves. Set up a grill or electric cooker in the barn and have hot chicken take out. Seems like an ideal place ready to use for a chicken and egg facility. I can even visualize a drive-in chicken and egg take out stand open four hours or so a day. It would need a large fenced and covered pen for a dozen chickens to roam, but she has the space, yes? Or you could build large chicken tractors that could be moved with the Jeep, at least in the non-snowy months. This sounds as if it could be a wonderful benefit to the gulch residents and a money maker. Landlady, is this a go???
Yeah, and you can have Marketing Directors and Production Managers and on-site sales facilities with 7/365 staffing and a Human Resources Department and a Governmental Domestic Fowl Procedures Assurance Supervisor and his/her staff and of course a Project Manager.
To start with. You can always grow the operation. And go public.
Yep . . . fun.
Going off to hang myself now…
Wait, you have to be the Project Manager . . .
🙂
I have an older incubator that I’d be happy to send you when I dig it out of storage, sometime before spring. It doesn’t circulate air or turn the eggs, but I had good luck with it. It probably doesn’t look all shiney and new, being stored and unused for 10 years. It’s like this one if I remember correctly;
https://www.ebay.com/itm/HovaBator-Still-Thermal-Air-Egg-Incubator-1602N-GQF-Chicken-Quail-Duck-Goose-/231988098062?epid=14003308614&hash=item360391740e:g:K0gAAOSwymxVLW2V
Let me know if you’d be interested since I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting back to raising poultry. It wouldn’t be up to the task of undertaking Zelda’s proposed business plan, but oh well.
I don’t know anything about incubators, but that looks like one. I’d appreciate it. Wonder how much power the heater pulls?
I don’t think the power useage is too high. It was no problem for our off grid solar home back in the day. I don’t know if the manual is with it or if I even still have the manual. When I get it out of storage and if I can determine the brand, I can probably find manual and specs online.