Electricity-Independence: Raising Meat w/o Electric Incubators

UPDATE: Silkies are gentle, kind, come in different colors, and are a famously broody favorite, compared to than the world's quietest hen, the Orpington chicken breed which, TBH fam, doesn't tolerate heat well. Southern states and hot climates should take note, provide shade, or select electricity-free breeds of brooders that work for chicken feed and/or table scraps, hatching your meat birds for you 100% unattended.

UPDATE #2: Ok. So if you raise rabbits for meat, they won't need incubators. But I don't want to recommend any of the Bible's unclean foods because God keeps turning out to be right about these things. Creativity can keep you elecricity-independent and refrigeration free.

UPDATE #3: Coronavirus. Being independent of cheap Chinese incubators that don't need be plugged in proved prescient than the EMP thing. So far. This blog is getting more popular. Hmm.



Update: May 4, 2020. The price of Silkie chickens has almost doubled in my area since publishing this article, now viewed more than 4,175 times since it was first published in June, 2019. Please allow my team of frugality experts to help you drive down the price of start gardening to make up for it.

I like chicken. Especially the dark meat. But for some damn reason, even though the food bank always has plenty of cupcakes with icing to try to kill me with, they're almost always short on poultry and beef.

The damn Muslims (some of them Arabians!) are trying to stick me with all the pork! Always plenty of pork, but God told me not to eat it.  He told me to sell it to the heathen instead. (And charge them interest. That's how I know God secretly hates the filthy heathen savages.)

When incubating birds, most people plug in a machine and forget about it. [I've since ordered one of those because it's cheaper and more convenient to order fertilized eggs than to track down birds locally. EMP-proof Silkies included.]

They conveniently forget that the complete collapse of civilization (already in progress) is the whole reason why they're raising birds in the first place. Otherwise, you'd just go to the store.

With incubation, you can go electric or non-electric. Natural or artificial. Or both.

Frankly, either way is fine. Until the lights go out.

If your incubator breaks, you might want to replace it with a chicken.

As the poor-man's Russell Crow, our Australian quail-raising brother says, you don't have to be self suffient at everything. You just need to be self-sufficient at something.

Cigarettes may be a decent currency in prisons. But out here, we trade chickens. The chicken-backed coupon (or gift certificate) might be worth more than the fiat dollar some day, now that we're off the gold standard.

Chickens have down-sides, too. They like to find interesting new ways to commit suicide.

It's true. Just like commies like to get themselves tortured and killed and masturbate themselves to death, cheap Chinese electric incubators like to break.

So even if an EMP doesn't strike, God will smite your cheap Chinese incubator, you sheckel-pinching cheapskate.

Since it's cheap junk that's probably lgoing to break anyway, and since you'll probably screw up the humidity by letting it go dry, and since you'll get tired of flipping eggs to make meat birds, you should probably consider a natural option.

Yes. That's right. It's the fully-automatic chicken.

It's true. Chickens are not built by the filthy God-forsaken Chinese who get themselves caught in machinery and go thump-thump-thump all night until the cleaning crew shows up, makes a phone call to 911 to complain about the blood, and then figures out they don't live in a country that has any 911 emergency services.

Chickens don't need to stay plugged in.

Chickens don't screw up the humidity. They take a sip when they're thirsty and keep the eggs at the exact right humidity and temperature for you. And they work for less than minimum wage.

Chickens don't get tired of flipping eggs. They do it for fun. It's paradise. Makes them happy. It's the most fun they can have with their clothes on.

You want to gamble with dominoes and throw dice. They nuzzle the egg again. Nice egg. Are you the same egg? Yes. You are the same egg. Do I have all my eggs? Yes. I still have my eggs. Just like 5 seconds ago.

How about now? Yes. Still have my eggs. They like warm eggs. Don't like cold eggs.

(Don't microwave the eggs to warm them up for the chickens, BTW.)

Chickens don't suddenly break and fall apart on day 15 of incubation. They don't clog full of dust and stop working. They don't suddenly turn off if there's a wind storm. They don't dry out and suddenly become an egg dehydrator.

Contrary to popular belief. Chickens don't necessarily make lots of noise. As usual, you were thinking about a different animal. A rooster. You're always thinking about roosters when I said chickens.

As white nationalists have figured out, some breeds of animals are much better than others. Chickens are no exception.

They can be extremely fluffy, docile, friendly, and sweet, if you pick the right breed.

Chickens don't disregard their own eggs, but don't much care whose eggs they've got. They can hatch anyone's eggs.

Want ducks? Get a chicken. Want quail? Get a chicken. They'll hatch about anything but an ostrich.

They work day and night, night and day for weeks on end. Which is exactly the job we're asking them to do.

Meanwhile, you pop in once a morning and dump a scoop of grit and slosh some water in their water trough and they're happy.

Especially if the water gets a bug in it. Then they're deliriously happy.

If you buy a cheap incubator, it probably needs to be kept inside a ventilated, but well-insulated box, such as a styrofoam cooler.

Then the heater and fan can keep up. Hopefully.

Sounds like a lot of work. And it is. But one day, when the filthy, greedy commies jack up the price of food, collapse America, and declare war on every kind of sanity, you'll be glad you opted out of their insane, self-destructive system.

You'll be hungry. Hungry for chicken.

Animals are easiest source of food ever. Much easier than plants. And they grow faster than a field of potatoes. Instant gratification. Almost.

Quail is the poor man's chicken.

We love that they're quieter, take much less space, can be kept indoors, grow very fast, eat only what they need, require no refrigeration, cook fast and easy, lay plenty of eggs and cost less than store-bought chicken.

There are places that don't allow birds.

If you're playing outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes because Longshanks hanged your whole family, you could still keep them "outlaw" birds and without your in-law room-mates knowing it.

Quail is something you can keep almost as quiet as your internet browsing history.

If you have quail and something to feed them, you'll never starve. You'll always have meat.

Well, almost. You'll always have eggs. You see, to raise meat, you have to hatch some of those wonderful, delicious eggs.

Over the past couple thousands of years, quail have lost their broodiness, and will rarely hatch their own eggs without a little prompting.

But they can be taught how.

Hatching quail without electricity or electric incubators is potentially a problem.

Just like not having 5 gallons of cheap wine was a problem. One I solved very, very easily with a 5-gallon bucket, a bag of sugar, a packet of yeast, and some patience.

As the Russians know, you can drink away decades of communism pretty easily. If you've got alcohol, a farm, and the wisdom of the Almighty, then you don't necessarily have a communist problem.

But while electricity seems like a necessity of life, it's one of those wonderful things none of our ancestors had.

Without refrigeration, the krauts came up with sourkraut and other fermended foods that store for a long time.

I'm not sure if you know this, but a bird stores itself for about a year without refrigeration. Clucks and coos right up until the moment you snip its head off. (Quail butcher in minutes with a knife or an ordinary pair of scissors.)

No electricity means no meat. I don't care how much feed you have. No hatch, no meat.

If you want to be able to hatch eggs for meat, then you're going to need a solution.

Luckily, I'm kind of a solution-oriented guy. I don't just complain about problems. I do something about them.

So when the evil monsters come to kill your family, unless they take all your birds and bird feed, (Which they might. Read your Bible and see) then you'll have an excellent source of cheap, delicious food that makes you grow up big and stronk like bull.

You want to be strong like me, right? Of course!

The easiest way to survive the moral collapse of your stupid, stupid neighbors is to start buying chicks and multiply them.

There's good news.

They're cheap. It's easy to start. No electricity needed if you're buying hatchlings. They've passed most the danger of infancy. They're only a few bucks apiece, and you can start multiplying them right away.

Your electricity-free options to hatch quail eggs have existed since the dawn of time.

One would be a surrogate mother:

Using a chicken who's willing to adopt the eggs. A chicken who trusts you is helpful. This can be a chicken you've raised from a chick, hatched, or perhaps some  homeless chicken wandering by.

A duck can also be a surrogate mother. Moscovoy ducks are big, warm, and taste like roast beef. (In nature, everything is multi-purpose.)

Ducks run on slugs and grass instead of electricity. They'll show you a bill, but you don't have to pay it.

Chickens scratch and till up the ground and eat bugs. Lots of bugs.

(Other things that eat bugs include bats, which eat thousands of mosquitoes, and will happily move into your habitat to lay waste to the malaria-carrying mosquitoes if you provide them a bat house.)

What About Lard Energy?

Any animal droppings that emit methane or stores fat or oil provides you with free energy. And it's significantly easier to harvest than sunflower oil. Animal fats aren't an ideal lamp oil or vehicle fuel unless you're riding or being pulled by the animal that's currently burning it, but it's possible that some sort of external combustion engine or steam vehicle could run on your surplus bacon grease.

Anything that composts produces heat and humidity, even in winter, and that includes animals and their droppings. Some of this heat and humidity could theoretically be used for incubation.

But an incubator also needs oxygen, eggs need to be gently turned at least twice a day, and need to be kept free from harmful bacteria, including potential cross-contamination from other eggs, and need protection from predators.

All of which they would get from their mother if people hadn't bred out all their nesting instincts.

Last option:

Teaching a quail how to be a mom again.

As it turns out, all the mothering instincts aren't gone. But they're dormant.

In rare cases, patient homesteaders have succeeded at "teaching" hens how to nest again.

Apparently, this takes exposing them to young hatchlings and raising them with their own mother. Which is quite a big project.

And then there's the Fair Use option.

It's not tested. Just common sense.

Never mind teaching the stupid things how to be mothers. Just cram the stupid female idiot childless communist momma hen into a cage so small, she's sitting on those f-ing eggs whether she likes it or not.

Much easier said than done. You need the eggs to collect but not the poo, and the male quail has to be able to access her so he can commit reprehensible acts of endless rape.

Which they sorta do anyway.

Eventually, she won't need to be crammed into a horrible torture chamber and forced to brood her eggs.

But the infinite, unnatural, inhumane BDSM solution results in giving you free meat with a minimum of effort and no electricity.

It also gives your children free lessons in dishing out infinite cruelty for selfish reasons. Just like they learn in public school.

But you might not be as cruel as the man the Lord your God has sent onto the earth to save you from the inevitable famine that will destroy all the enemies who hate you.

In which case, you can still use a bantam chicken method, a duck, or something akin to the sadistic communists, transforming this wonder-filled, beautiful, exquisite earth into a hellish dungeon of anguish and confusion for all those who doubt the word of God and flee like rabbits from the sharp teeth of truth.

Electricity-Free Option #1: Chicken Hen Hatching

Bantam hens often work, but not always. (The birds don't fail. The people do.)

Success story: https://youtu.be/xS6y7hJl6HE

Disaster story: https://youtu.be/rifclOTk2FI

A mother hen is noisier than the female hens, but makes significantly less noise than a rooster of either species.

Fair Use has you covered at NO EXTRA CHARGE.  The ideal quiet brooder system, a soft, chillaxed, legendarily quiet hen that's perfect for the job is the Buff Opington hatching quail eggs for you.

The yield is lower than incubated. I don't care. The amount of time and feed it takes to generate an egg for hatching is an itty bitty little bit.

Choosing incubators for higher yield is exactly the wrong place to economize when we're doing off-grid, robust meat production unless and until you've got hundreds of eggs to hatch to feed several restaurant buyers.

At which point, you need to graduate to a higher level of education. I'm saving families. Not selling incubators.

So if you're allowed to keep chickens or ducks, problem solved.

Your Orpington hen can give you a supply of quail meat from eggs in 9 weeks and and a supply of chicken meat in 6 months.

If you're buying chicks or eggs, they're cheap. $20 should get you started if you've already got a cage and $10 for a bag of feed.

You want to keep chicks dry, sheltered from wind and predators and healthy by starting them with some some stinky garlic and citrus in their water. Help their immune system. A light bulb on one end of the brooder or cage may protect them from cold.

When building a cage, I completely forgot that pallet wood is free and chicken wire is fine for indoor cages. Would have saved me some money.

But saving money isn't 100% necessary if you're making a few bucks by selling some eggs and chicks. (If you're allowed to do so. Maybe you're in the clandestine sale of eggs on ebay or craigslist so as to keep a very low profile among communist neighbors who want to turn you in to the bird police.)

If it's "too much work" or "too expensive" to buy, and clean up after a chicken, or if you're afraid it will take too much time, or you don't believe in noise-less chickens, or you're not sure why you'd want to feed something forever that isn't going to be doing much work for you, or you don't like the a chicken's hatch ratio, then you're probably a maker of excuses. Not birds.

And birds don't need excuse-makers. They're perfectly happy living with bird-makers instead.

Some chickens are quiet. You never hear about the quiet ones because people don't make a lot of noise about them. But people never stop clucking and crowing about the noisy chickens. They're racist towards birds. Intolerant instead of inclusive.

But once we get enough Mexicans in here, the laws will change. You'll see.

Then we'll have quail, chickens, Mexicans, dogs, cats, beef-ducks, blacks, bats, sheep, and goats on our roofs.

Option #2: Train Your Quail To Hatch Their Own Birds

If you want your quail to hatch their own chicks, that's ok. See how to train a quail hen to be a momma.

The economics are excellent. You could sell some of the eggs, chicks, or meat birds. Selling a full-grown bird will pay for about 35 pounds of feed, which is enough feed to grow out 10 or 15 birds.

It's not necessarily a sexy business, but it's close to the fastest ROI I've ever seen in urban farming. The birds will make some pretty good fertilizer for you, too, and help prep the ground for planting.

You can read lots more about this and similar solutions in the blog post series, White Nationalism for Dummies.