Today’s article was brought to you by the generous folks over at Hides.com. Go check out their great line of “Multifunction Eyewear Necessities”, and tell them FloridaHillbilly sent you!

Today I am updating everyone on a few changes here at FloridaHillbilly.com, as well as answering some quail questions that came in last week.

First, I’m sure you’ve noticed that I now include ads in my articles, as well as small ad banners on my sidebar. This is to allow me to continue writing on a daily basis. My wife is very understanding about my drive to write here, but she becomes even MORE understanding when I can generate some income while doing so.

So from here out, you’ll get to see links to products and services that have sponsored my efforts. Each has been tasted, tested, tried, and approved by myself. And if for some reason, you ever have a problem with any of my advertisers and are unhappy for some reason, let me know, I’ll do what I can to resolve the issues. Plus I want to know if there is an issue.

Hides.com has been a supporter of mine for almost as long as I’ve been writing. They offer a line of eye wear accessories that I’ve found to be very handy. The have a variety of colors shapes, sizes, and functions. I cannot do justice in a few lines to their products or their customer service. Go check them out, even if you don’t buy anything, you WILL be impressed with the products they offer. Promise.

Reef-Hunter have also been a long-time supporter, and they also double as a local resource for lots of Florida pastimes. They are the folks that got me hooked on spearfishing, had me researching lionfish after showing me how tasty there are, and hopefully one day, will be there to BBQ some manatee if I ever get the chance. They offer a line of tropical-themed apparel much like you see everywhere these days. Custom artwork, great products, and a theme that is dear to my heart. Go check them out!

And thanks them both for their support of FloridaHillbilly.com, I know I sure appreciate it! They’ve both helped me along in a multitude of ways, and have helped keep me going in more than a few small ways.

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Second, I cannot stress how handy it is for you all to goto my Facebook page and “Like” me there. I post almost daily with free Kindle books in the homesteading, gardening, survival, farming, and how-to categories. These are all free at the time I post them, but are only free for a limited time. Once you’ve “bought” the free book, it is yours forever, again, at no cost to you.

Don’t have a Kindle? No problem. Amazon offers a reader application for just about every platform there is. And you can always simply have it sent to your “Cloud Reader”, free online storage for every Kindle book and application you’ve ever purchased through Amazon, even if the price was “$0.00”. I have hundreds of books simply sitting in my “Cloud Reader” for future reading.

The catch? Anything you buy from Amazon within 24 hours of your “free purchase” nets me a small percentage, one that is already included in your price. SOMEONE is getting it, why not let it be your favorite blogging hillbilly? Again, no extra cost for you, and it might just help me stay in the writing business.

And for the record, I get the same percentage of each of your free purchases…my percentage on your $0.00 purchase is exactly $0.00.

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Rabbits and lending a hand.

Over the weekend, I went out to a local reader’s house, to show him my method for harvesting rabbits. TK was a gracious host, and was very happy to see there were some ways to improve his processing. I brought along my young friend, Zach, and we all got to take a tour of TK’s place. I am completely jealous of his little homestead. When I saw his 5 acres, and compared it to my measly 1/4 acre, all I could think of was all the space for gardens and fruit trees.

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My wife and I are also planning on getting together with some folks to show them how to get started in canning. I’m getting pressure from some locals to start offering classes for canning and other food preservation methods, along with gardening, small animal raising, and other things you read about here. We’ll see how it goes…what do you think? Would you be interested in a local class on canning?

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On to another one of my favorite subjects – quail!

I received a comment on the last of the 5 part series on raising quail that made me realize I failed to mention a couple things. There we also some other tidbits I wanted to add in. I do so love talking about quail!

Here is the comment/questions:

DB,
  Still some things I’m a little unsure of:  Do you/can you keep your brooder and incubator outside?  Can you keep the adults in the shade or do they need more direct light?  How hot does it get in your area?  If I keep them in my backyard it gets up to 117,  over 100 for 60 days a year.  I might end up with baked eggs?! Did you infer that if you don’t keep males that the females will still produce eggs?  Because if my wife thinks she is eating fertilized eggs she would flip out.  How do you sex them after the brooder?  Is that when you harvest the extra males or do you separate the males and have like a bachelor cage until they are adult size?  Can you keep them outside still in the winter?  I would assume you cant use the light to keep the adults warm in the winter because they wouldn’t sleep with the light.

I think I have enough questions for almost another blog post, maybe this will get you out of thinking of a topic one day!

-Drew  aka Phorz in the rabbit hole horde!

My personal response to him was this:

GREAT questions…and while I’ve written all of the answers in various places, here is a rundown for you…and yes, I’ll be using this as a post later, tyvm!

How do you sex them after the brooder?  For the “normal” color patterns, the males have rust colored breast plumage. Looking at the picture to the right, the brown speckled bird is female, while the bird with the rust colored breast feathers is a male. This doesn’t work for most other color variations.

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So that’s it for today…if you have questions, email me.