Home-breeding is very popular in rural areas as an excellent opportunity to replenish food supplies for the whole family. Often farm lovers keep farm animals in the city - mostly rabbits or poultry, and their keeping is possible on balconies, and not just on the site.
However, in addition to dietary rabbit meat or juicy mutton, homemade animal husbandry products are also animal skins, which can become an additional source of income, and you can also sew any wardrobe items - hats or even fur coats, for example. But in order to be able to do something, you need to dress the skins at home or in the workshop. Without this, the skins are tough and brittle.
Dressing of animal skins must be done in specialized workshops, because it is there that there is all the necessary equipment for dressing hides. In addition, this work is hard, very laborious and complicated. But it is quite possible to dress hides at home, if you follow certain rules. Before starting work, the skin must be completely cleaned of pieces of meat and fat, and then cooled. When the skin has cooled, it is necessary to pour salt on its inner side so that the skin does not begin to decompose. So begins the production of skins at home, and this rule is true for the skins of any animal.
The skin should lie on a flat, flat surface. Salt must absorb moisture to make the skin dry and crunchy. But this process can take a couple of days, or even weeks. When you start the work of dressing, a couple of hours before, put the skin in clean water, so that the skin becomes elastic. After you need to boil twelve liters of water and pour on the bran.
When the flakes are steamed, they need to be filtered through a sieve to get a brown infusion. It will turn out fifteen liters of water, which should also be boiled. Then pour 15-17 glasses of salt into a tub, pour boiling water and mix with a wooden stick until the salt dissolves. Pour the brown infusion into salt water and mix thoroughly. When the liquid becomes warm, you need to pour acid into it for car batteries. Yes, animal dressing is not without acid. With acid, you need to be extremely careful, read the instructions on the label, wear rubber gloves and a long sleeve shirt. Having poured acid, stir the resulting liquid. Put the skin in this liquid for 40-50 minutes.
In the meantime, fill the second vat with warm water to rinse the skins. We put the skin there and rinse until we get rid of the remnants of salt on it. If the water has become dirty, it must be changed. After that, add baking soda to remove acid from the skin, so that in the future the skin does not cause irritation in a person with sensitive skin.
When the skin is washed, it should be hung on a strong crossbar so that the glass is water. After we take 30 grams of hoofed oil, soak the sponge and apply a thin layer on the skin. Then we pull the skin onto the wooden flooring so that it is not too stretched and transfer the flooring to the shade to dry. After dressing the skins, do not pour the vat with the acid solution, since you must first add a couple of packs of soda to neutralize the acid - you need to take care to maintain a favorable environmental situation. After that, the room should be ventilated.
Drying the skins needs to be checked every day. When it becomes dry, soft and elastic, it needs to be turned upside down with a fur brush and walked on it with a metal brush, after which it will become soft and light. In the end, you need to hang the skin for several days to dry completely. As you can see, dressing skins at home is not only a labor-intensive process, but also a long one.