Fenced and Ready to Plant!

I know I am running way behind on getting things planted in my gardens...but, after being tilled we had rains and freezing temperatures.  My 4 garden areas had to be tilled again and I ended up buying a rear-tine tiller to help with weeding and small areas.  I also had to fence the gardens so the dogs would not have access to them.  The dogs would follow behind me as I tilled, and they ate all the grubs!  Really gross, but I would have collected them and given them to the chickens.

I got my highest garden plot planted with purchased tomato, pepper and brocolli plants.  I have started more seeds since my original plant starts were frozen to death.  We had eight inches of rain and everything is like a marsh that is on the lower area of my pasture.  My land is on a hill and only parts are semi-terraced.  I went ahead and am starting some corn plants and green beans in starter pots again.  I am going to have to till again!  Weeds grow really well in tilled soil.  My husband and I got the two largest gardens fenced weekend before last and yesterday I tilled (again) and fenced the smaller garden.  One side I sunk up to my ankles in mud...but the blueberry plants I put in it seem to like the wet ground.  With the 8 inches of rain I have decided I need to create a collection trench to control the flow of water through the garden.  I will probably have to mound dirt up too.  I will have to keep in mind the swampy areas when planting and make sure only the higher water requiring plants are planted there.  The smaller garden area will be for blueberries, strawberries and herbs...maybe asparagus and onions if there is room.  The bigger gardens are for corn, green beans, sunflowers and then one for vining plants.  Walt at Tractor Supply informed me some people have planted seed three times because of the late freezes, so I am doing pretty good...I didn't loose but one batch and they weren't planted yet.  I just need to realize that the temperatures on the news are for Shreveport...and we are always cooler in our area.

I have harvested wild blackberries from around my house and backyard, and Mexican plums!  Making Jam or jelly is on my to-do list.  But so is getting the two large garden areas tilled and planted is my priority now...or it will get to hot for some things to produce well.  

On the baby front...my Toulouse Geese and Roeun and Khaki Campbell Ducks are almost completely feathered out now.  My 14 baby chicks are growing out of the brooder, I have 7 smaller chicks in the inside brooder that after being over the hatch date a week, hatched!  I think because that area of the incubator did not get as hot...it is the only thing I can think of.  I waited several more days to see if any more would hatch but I believe because that side of the incubator registered 105 degrees after our power came back on, they must have cooked inside the shell.  I opened the remaining eggs...all but one had fully formed, but dead chicks in them.  So I don't think them dropping down to 80 degrees before they hatched hurt them...I think it was when it came back on and the fan stopped working that did it...and the the humidity getting up to 80% after the 8 inches of rain.  I think hens hatching eggs is the best way to go, especially with the Sprng storms and erratic electricity in our area.  But, I may have My hubby show me what to do to hook up the solar for use in those situations...because it went out for about half an hour yesterday and it wasn't even raining!

No Chicks Hatched!

Well, hatch day was suppose to be yesterday.  I have no chicks running around, no happy peeps...no sounds from any eggs or pips seen.  I have consulted with members of Backyard Chickens, they told me to give them additional time...don't give up yet.  I had already ordered some chicks though.  I may have more chickens than what I know what to do with by the end of the month.  But, I ordered some of the same kind I was trying to hatch, Easter Eggers and Silver Laced Wyandottes...and additional Buff Orpingtons...and Blue Andalusians.  They call it chicken math, it is kind of like Lays Potato chips..you can't stop at just one!  Oh, I ordered a Dominique Rooster and roosters of those kinds too!  

I picked up cement and posts and some of the floor joists for my new coop, but it has rained a lot since I got them, so no work done on it yet.  It will be tall enough for me to walk in, crawling around in a chicken coop or run trying to make repairs, fetch eggs, or clean is no fun!  I am going to make an attached covered run too, so the chickens can be out even when it rains.  I hope to have windows for ventilation and a solar attic fan to help with cooling.  Maybe a skylight, so I can see in the building.  I ordered a six bin nest box, but I may need more, it is suppose to be good for 24 hens to lay.  I have 7 hens now, 14 chicks that I don't know the sex of and will have 15 more hens coming with my order of eggs.  I can make a few more I suppose.  Oh yeah, and even if I don't think any of the eggs in my incubator are going to hatch, if they do...there is the slight possibility of about 15 more.

I am looking forward to getting more eggs, I am hoping the Easter Eggers will lay different colors.  I already have a Rooster for the Easter Eggers and a Rooster for Rhode Island Reds, of which I have at least two of now, along with 2 chicks that could be hens.  With the addition of the Dominique Rooster, I should be able to breed chickens and keep them pure.  The chicks I have now are Rhode Island Red and Dominique's mostly...not pure bred, but they may be meaty egg layers...lol.  I will probably get mostly brown eggs.

On another note, the wild blackberries are getting ripe now and I have collected about 6 1/2 pints in the past few days.  I am putting them in the freezer for now, but blackberry cobbler may be just around the corner!

The Pen and the Brooder

I was not really prepared very well when I got the baby ducklings, I had to use things I got for the chicks I was assuming would hatch from the eggs my chickens were sitting on.  I have gone back and gotten more supplies for each week.  I had 8 chicks hatch and left them with their Momma's for their first week of life.  On one of my trips to get supplies I heard of another feed store and went to check them out, there is where the kind lady talked me into buying a couple of her baby Goslings.  I kept the ducks and geese in the guest bathroom for a couple of weeks, but I had never been around baby waterfowl and did not realize how quickly they grow.

The baby chicks that Ms McCluckinson hatched followed Momma's lead and decided to leave the nest box and go into the general population...this was not good.  The chicken tractor's ramp was to steep for them to get back up the ramp by themselves to get back into the coop.  The wire on the bottom of the chicken tractor was too big, being 2 inches by 4 inches, to keep the chicks contained.  I figured that the dogs would get them, or a hawk, or some other animal.  I had to do something quick.  So, I made a double decker brooder box.  I put Ms McCluckinson in a very large dog crate with her two babies as a temporary solution.  The bars, I soon found out, were still not close enough to keep the chicks from danger...they could run straight threw them!  I found this out when the dogs came out the door and frightened the Momma hen, the babies ran out the side away from the dogs.  Once I got the brooder box completed, I moved both Mother hens and their chicks into the separate brooders.

My mistake was getting some new chicks from Tractor Supply and trying to put them in the same box with my Mother Hens.  That was not good, they pecked the poor new chicks...so I took the Momma hens and put them back into the coop without their babies. So now I have 14 baby chicks in the brooder box and have eggs in the incubator due to start hatching tomorrow.

I made the ducks and geese a new pen because they had grown out of their tub, their tub is what they have as a swimming hole now.  I made the duck pen so that I could take it apart to move it fairly easily.   I put a dog house as their shelter and have shade cloth across a bit over half of the pen.  If you know nothing about geese and ducks, they poop a lot...a whole lot.  They ate all the grass within a couple of days and the poop got thick on the sandy soil, I thought I would be able to rake it up, but ducks and geese keep everything wet with all of their splashing around and dipping their food into the water.  I had to move the pen, two days later it is again a mess...but over 5 inches of rain may have something to do with that.  

Today is Mother's Day, everything is just sopping wet still.  My husband and I went and raked up a bunch of pine needles and put them in the duck pen and the chicken tractors run.  There is a high probability of more rain the next four days and today it has showered on and off a few times.  I am hoping the pine needles will help keep the chickens, ducks and geese a bit dryer this week.  We need more time for it to dry out, but...we needed the rain too.

Nasty!

Yesterday was the day I had to perform the lockdown procedure on the eggs I am hatching.  I took the egg turner out and set it down and candled each egg to make sure they actually had something in them.  I put all of the eggs that I could see completely threw into the sink and all the others payed gently into the incubator.  One egg stuck to the turner, so I figured it was cracked and not good.  I took the egg turner into the kitchen to run some warm water on it to see if I could get the egg off without breaking it.

When the water hit the egg, it basically exploded!  It smelled so nasty, I was gagging.  So e of the stuff that came out of it looked like hard boiled egg yolk, some was greenish black nastiness.  The smell permeated the whole house.  It was pretty gross.  I put all of the egg shell outside in the trash after rinsing it off.  I scrubbed the kitchen sink and washed up the egg turner trying to get the broken bottom of the shell off.  11 of the thirty eggs were not fertile and are sitting in the bathroom sink as I write this.  I am afraid to touch them again.  I should have candled all of the eggs earlier in the process, but I only did a few.  I guess I will need some rubber gloves and a container to put them in, I am hoping no more eggs explode.

We had bad storms roll through the area two days in row.  Our house experienced a lot of power surges, but the lights stayed on and just flickered during the surges.  I was afraid the incubator would go off and I would have to figure out a way to keep them warm, I got lucky.  I think I like broody hens a whole lot better than trying to incubate eggs.  You have to make sure they eat and drink, but you don't have to worry about the eggs too much.  The hen takes care of the temperature and humidity.

Time for Lockdown!

Today is the day that I am suppose to take the eggs in the incubator off of the egg turner and stop turning them altogether.  I have candled a few eggs and it looks like there is something on there...just a couple more days until they start hatching (if they will).  Monday is 21 days, so maybe I will get to see my first chicks hatch out from the incubator.

I bought hatching eggs off of eBay, Easter Eggers and Silver Laced Wyandottes.  Since my hen poofy face died I have been missing the bluish green egg I use to get every day.  I am hoping that some of the Easter Eggers will lay some eventually.  I would have liked some Marans for their chocolate colored eggs, but I will have to wait and see what happens with these.  It is tough trying to keep the humidity and temperature correct in the incubator, so I am not sure anything will hatch.  I still have not started on the new chicken coop, and my other chicks are getting pretty big for their brooder...so if I get a good hatch rate, I will have to see how quick I can get it done.  I have to have a place to put all my chickens soon, the chicks can spend the first week in the house, but then it is out to the brooder boxes on the back porch.  I am hoping that the ducks and geese will be fully feathered by the time the older chicks get too big for the brooder, then I can move them into a fenced pen and use the duck pen for the older chicks, and put the new chicks in the brooder on the back porch.

It has been a juggling act the past month, and I have been really busy trying to take care of all the babies, building pens and brooders, yard work, tilling, planting and trying to take care of the normal household chores.  I have neglected a lot of chores and myself, somewhat...been working outside a lot and not drinking enough water, now I may have a urinary tract infection.  So, today I am going to the doctor for a test.  I am too busy for this mess...but I will try and do better taking care of myself.

How Big of a Garden?

Our first year moving to the country, I wanted a vegetable and herb garden.  We didn't actually get moved into the house until late May.  I made a quick raised bed garden that was only about 8'x10' and I used the cinder blocks we brought from the house in Sachse.  We bought plants, tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe and a couple of pepper plants.  It was really too late for the watermelons, but the tomatoes, cucumbers and cantaloupe did well.  I want to be able to can enough to supplement our groceries about 8 months of the year and eventually not have to buy fruit and vegetables from the grocery store.

This year, trying to figure out how much garden space we need...and what I want to plant.  I actually have to large garden plots that are about 65'x25' and two smaller ones about 30'x30'.  How did I come up with that?  Well, I want some separation of vining plants, tomatoes and peppers, corn and beans, fruits and herbs.  I expanded my original garden and planted tomatoes and peppers in it....so far.  The other smaller plot I am planting blueberries, strawberries, herbs and onions/garlic.  I got both corn to eat and corn for feeding the chickens, and sunflowers...and will plant green beans with those.  Then cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkins, and squash in the other.  We will see how that goes.  

I actually had dug one of the 30'x30' plots...broke my pitchfork trying to turn the dirt over.  It is the only spot I have cleaned all the rocks out of.  I still need to rake and clean the others.  I picked up a lot of rocks out of them already...but have not raked them yet.

I am late doing all this, but my neighbor said they would till for me...and didn't.  Then my husband traded another neighbor, computer work for tilling...that is how I got the other three plots.  I let them sit too long and he came and tilled again.  We had a late freeze and my plant starts were on the porch and all died.  So I am planting some plants I bought, and trying to plant from seed on the ones I know will grow quickly.

We have not had much rain the past few weeks and we have very sandy soil.  I will have to water a lot if it doesn't rain.  We have planted fruit trees, peaches, apples, pears and plums.  Because of the late freezes we will get no apples or plums.  But I also planted blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries.  So, I figure if I plant enough of a variety, we will have something in the way of fruit.  I want to get pecan trees too.

We Have Babies!

Ok, I will admit it.  I love having baby animals.  So...it started with the ducks, then I found some Toulouse geese at a new feed store, then just before Easter, some of the eggs my chickens had been sitting on started to hatch...and now I have 30 eggs in the incubator!  We have 8 baby chicks that hatched out of our eggs, that our hens sat on...then I passed by the baby chicks at Tractor Supply and they talked me into taking 6 home with me at a discount.  Well, hey...they wanted me to take all of the chicks in one bin for half price, so I got out light with just the 6.  

I really am going to have to come up with a plan for a chicken coop, the 14 baby chicks will only be about 4 weeks old when the eggs in the incubator start hatching.  I did make a double decker brooder box, but I can tell right now that many chicks are not going to fit in it for very long.  The ducks and geese grew so fast, I had to make a pen for them pretty quickly too.  I got a 368 gallon cattle tank for them to swim in, but that won't get filled until we move it to it's permanent area.

We had a tradgety occur too...my favorite hen Ms Poofy Face died suddenly.  I am happy that one of her eggs hatched and it looks like her offspring may have a poofy face too!  It is a cross between an Easter Egger and a Rhode Island Red and at the moment looks more like a Rhode Island Red.  Maybe, just maybe she passed the blue egg laying gene onto her baby.  My Rooster, Mr. Poofy Face...the one I loaned to a neighbor was brought back to me in rough shape.  He was attacked by another Rooster and had a good cut on his comb and would not open his eyes, eat or drink for days.  I forced vitamins, electrolytes, antibiotics and VetRx down him and he has made almost a full recovery.  He still will not open one eye, but that doesn't stop him from doing what roosters do.