I love Christmas, but this year is a lean year...business has been lacking at the shop and I don't even make enough from the sale of eggs to feed my chickens...but I have faith that everything will be O.K. Christmas is for kids anyway, I loved having my grand daughter at my house over the weekend...she was fascinated with the decorations on the tree and all the different colors of the lights. I gave her a Cabbage Patch doll, she seemed to love it. I have some Duck Dynasty Knomes that she played with at Thanksgiving and am going to try and make her a soft body version, but because of our kids schedules we celebrated Christmas early with them and I have not made it yet. I look forward to more grandchildren, we will be blessed with another in June.
I have all these thoughts of things I wanted to do to prepare for Christmas, I wanted to make some pine cone wreaths and use some for crafts like decorations for the tree, I want to use pine boughs and holly for decorations too...but it will just be me and my husband on Christmas this year and with all the chores I have I may skip even attempting anything like that until I have more time. I have a hard time getting everyday chores done without adding to them right now. I am just thankful that we got to have some family here for a few days. I did get the Christmas tree up and decorated before they came and that was a feat in itself.
I made candles, goats milk soap, laundry soap and cookies and put them in gift baskets with coffee, homemade vanilla, hot sauce and jelly for the kids. I normally do more, but it is what it is and I hope they enjoy the fruits of my labor. The jellies were from the Plum trees and Dewberries we have growing wild here. I hope my son will bring my grand daughter out more in the future, she loves the ducks, geese and chickens...maybe some day she will enjoy learning to fish in our pond and maybe camping out on our land some day.
I hate talking about death, but we had something kill a couple of young chickens and a young duck this past week. Only one body was totally missing, the heads were missing off of the duck and the rooster. I had an open duck house that had been hastily put together when it was going to get down in the 20's...I totally revamped it, beefed it up clad it with metal and put a polycarbonate window...and put a lockable door on it. All of the chickens are locked up at night now as are the ducks and geese. I purchased a live trap and we set it up in the duck pen the first night, but it is just outside the perimeter fence now. We have caught nothing, so it probably isn't a raccoon or possum like some thought. I was leaning toward a large owl...we saw no tracks. The duck was almost adult size, the hen that is completely missing probably only weighed about 3 pounds...just a small pile of her feathers was left behind. The rooster that was killed, well there was a large pile of feathers in one spot, but his headless body was found in a tarp covered chicken tractor. I started letting my dogs outside the backyard fence again, I figure that their scent will keep most animals away. I have ordered a trail camera so if it comes back, we will be able to figure out what it is. I also built what is known as a pop door for the large coop, we had been using a piece of the metal siding and large magnets...but the roosters learned to pull the metal off.
I have been working with the roosters, trying to get everyone integrated and right now I have a bunch of roosters in the coop we call "the Condo", we let all of the big coop chickens out this morning and they can feel safe from getting pecked on by the big roosters. There is about a 4 month difference in their ages for the bulk of the chickens in the big coop. I do have babies in the big coop too, and 4 more will be added tonight, then I will only have 5 chicks left in the brooder...I will wait a bit longer to add them to the big coop, they need to be about 3 months old I think, I will get them out when they get too big to walk under the roost in the brooder like the other ones.
I think most people have visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads this time of year...me I am chicken obsessed, I have visions of colored eggs, hatching new chicks, breeding the ones I have, building the breeding pens...and the first time processing roosters.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Finally ALL Out of The House
After 7 months of hatching eggs and then growing babies, I don't have any chicks or ducks in the house! Call me crazy...but I keep looking at hatching eggs on eBay, but I will wait until at least after Christmas to hatch any more.
Why you ask? Why would I want to hatch more cute little fluffy babies? Well, to sell and rotate my stock. A hen lays the best the first two years of her life, they can slow down after that two years. A lot of people around here raise chickens so they can have eggs, and they don't want all the trouble a rooster can cause either, so they have no protection for their flock. Even when you have a rooster they will die protecting their girls, roosters are very protective and if a raccoon or fox, or even a hawk tries to grab one of the girls, he will do his best to fight it off and will sacrifice himself so the hens will live. I have around 30 roosters at the moment. It is the luck of the draw when you hatch eggs, a lot of the time you get about half roosters.
I ordered restraining cones yesterday, it is a device to keep a bird still when you decide it is time to process them. The majority of my Roosters are adult size now, I have a lot of different breeds and will keep at least one Rooster of each. Roosters can get rather aggressive though, they fight for dominance and injuries to other birds can occur, even deaths. I lost two young Roosters that would not back down to the dominant male in the Coop Run...it is set up like a coop now, it has a roof, roosting bars and nest boxes too. It is best to introduce new younger chickens slowly because of the pecking order thing that goes on with chickens, I took a chance and put the largest youngsters out in the Run without much of an introduction. I was working outside on cleaning and building so I kept an eye on them for the day, everything was going pretty well and about a week later I guess the little Roosters decided to take on the bigger Rooster. My husband found a lot of blood one morning when he was feeding, he told me all of the chickens looked OK though, but I might want to check them out. Later when I went out, I found the two dead...so I guess maybe he might have interrupted the fight with feeding and they resumed it afterward. There was no blood on them, but after inspecting some of the other baby Roosters I noticed some cuts and abrasions on their feet and legs.
No, I did not cry. Upset that it happened, yes...and I feel bad about it. I have learned that death is part of raising chickens though, and that is why I don't really name them. My husband does name some of them. I try to keep them all healthy and nurse them when anything happens. I named this one I nursed Diamond the other day, she is a small Dominique hen...one of the favorites of my Easter Egger Rooster my husband calls Mr. Poofy Face. Chickens can be kind of stupid sometimes, when it got cold a few weeks ago, Diamond and her flock stood out in the rain and cold...got soaking wet too. Normally a chickens feathers keeps them plenty warm, she was molting and what made it worse, she was missing feathers in her saddle area. I went out to feed and check on all of them and I could hear her breath from 15 feet away. She was standing in one spot and making raspy gurgling noises. I picked her up and felt so sorry for her...she was still wet, her few feathers were matted to her little body and I could feel the rattling in her chest. I brought her into the house, I have large totes that I use as brooders when I hatch chicks and I had one ready to put her into. I had moved babies to the brooder that I had moved into the storage room with the water heater so I had room. I still had one batch of babies in the bathroom and did not want them sick, so she was kept in the office.
I got the tools of the trade out...VetRx and Electrolytes with Vitamins and Probiotics, got her all set up and warm. Put the VetRx on her and the Vitamins in the water. VetRx works something like Vicks Vaporub on people, it is all natural ingredients and usually helps with any congestion or breathing issues. So she gots some on her head, a drop on her beak, under both wings and some on her chest. She was really sounding bad a half hour later, so I got my Eucalyptus oil, Pepermint oil and Oregano oil out...I put a few drops of Oregano oil into her beak, and a few drops of Pepermint and Eucalyptus on the puppy pad in her tote. I gave her some fermented feed with a couple of drops of Oregano oil in it too. I did this for a few days, when she seem unchanged I added antibiotics to her water and still did the rest...after a week she laid an egg. Diamond still had that sound and gurgling noise in her chest, she never had any discharge from her eyes or nose...but she still sounded bad. I got Duramyacin and started giving her a shot a day...still did the other too. She started walking around more, she even started laying an egg every other day, but still sounded bad. I finally got some Tylan, Tractor Supply had it in the small bottle finally! I gave her a shot of Tylan, then waited another day...discontinued the other stuff so I could tell if it was working, gave her another shot and moved her to a kennel on the back porch for some fresh air. She seemed much better faster after the Tylan injections. I kept her out in the kennel for another week after being in the house for almost a month! Tell me I don't take good care of my chickens...I may just slap you. Lol...anyway, I do the best I can...like I said before, at this time in my life they are like my children. Wouldn't you do everything you could to take care of them?
Why you ask? Why would I want to hatch more cute little fluffy babies? Well, to sell and rotate my stock. A hen lays the best the first two years of her life, they can slow down after that two years. A lot of people around here raise chickens so they can have eggs, and they don't want all the trouble a rooster can cause either, so they have no protection for their flock. Even when you have a rooster they will die protecting their girls, roosters are very protective and if a raccoon or fox, or even a hawk tries to grab one of the girls, he will do his best to fight it off and will sacrifice himself so the hens will live. I have around 30 roosters at the moment. It is the luck of the draw when you hatch eggs, a lot of the time you get about half roosters.
I ordered restraining cones yesterday, it is a device to keep a bird still when you decide it is time to process them. The majority of my Roosters are adult size now, I have a lot of different breeds and will keep at least one Rooster of each. Roosters can get rather aggressive though, they fight for dominance and injuries to other birds can occur, even deaths. I lost two young Roosters that would not back down to the dominant male in the Coop Run...it is set up like a coop now, it has a roof, roosting bars and nest boxes too. It is best to introduce new younger chickens slowly because of the pecking order thing that goes on with chickens, I took a chance and put the largest youngsters out in the Run without much of an introduction. I was working outside on cleaning and building so I kept an eye on them for the day, everything was going pretty well and about a week later I guess the little Roosters decided to take on the bigger Rooster. My husband found a lot of blood one morning when he was feeding, he told me all of the chickens looked OK though, but I might want to check them out. Later when I went out, I found the two dead...so I guess maybe he might have interrupted the fight with feeding and they resumed it afterward. There was no blood on them, but after inspecting some of the other baby Roosters I noticed some cuts and abrasions on their feet and legs.
No, I did not cry. Upset that it happened, yes...and I feel bad about it. I have learned that death is part of raising chickens though, and that is why I don't really name them. My husband does name some of them. I try to keep them all healthy and nurse them when anything happens. I named this one I nursed Diamond the other day, she is a small Dominique hen...one of the favorites of my Easter Egger Rooster my husband calls Mr. Poofy Face. Chickens can be kind of stupid sometimes, when it got cold a few weeks ago, Diamond and her flock stood out in the rain and cold...got soaking wet too. Normally a chickens feathers keeps them plenty warm, she was molting and what made it worse, she was missing feathers in her saddle area. I went out to feed and check on all of them and I could hear her breath from 15 feet away. She was standing in one spot and making raspy gurgling noises. I picked her up and felt so sorry for her...she was still wet, her few feathers were matted to her little body and I could feel the rattling in her chest. I brought her into the house, I have large totes that I use as brooders when I hatch chicks and I had one ready to put her into. I had moved babies to the brooder that I had moved into the storage room with the water heater so I had room. I still had one batch of babies in the bathroom and did not want them sick, so she was kept in the office.
I got the tools of the trade out...VetRx and Electrolytes with Vitamins and Probiotics, got her all set up and warm. Put the VetRx on her and the Vitamins in the water. VetRx works something like Vicks Vaporub on people, it is all natural ingredients and usually helps with any congestion or breathing issues. So she gots some on her head, a drop on her beak, under both wings and some on her chest. She was really sounding bad a half hour later, so I got my Eucalyptus oil, Pepermint oil and Oregano oil out...I put a few drops of Oregano oil into her beak, and a few drops of Pepermint and Eucalyptus on the puppy pad in her tote. I gave her some fermented feed with a couple of drops of Oregano oil in it too. I did this for a few days, when she seem unchanged I added antibiotics to her water and still did the rest...after a week she laid an egg. Diamond still had that sound and gurgling noise in her chest, she never had any discharge from her eyes or nose...but she still sounded bad. I got Duramyacin and started giving her a shot a day...still did the other too. She started walking around more, she even started laying an egg every other day, but still sounded bad. I finally got some Tylan, Tractor Supply had it in the small bottle finally! I gave her a shot of Tylan, then waited another day...discontinued the other stuff so I could tell if it was working, gave her another shot and moved her to a kennel on the back porch for some fresh air. She seemed much better faster after the Tylan injections. I kept her out in the kennel for another week after being in the house for almost a month! Tell me I don't take good care of my chickens...I may just slap you. Lol...anyway, I do the best I can...like I said before, at this time in my life they are like my children. Wouldn't you do everything you could to take care of them?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)