First Snow!

It finally happened, our first snow that stuck!  We actually had snow coming down for about 7 hours.  We ended up with 7 inches of beautiful snow.  In Texas, well in this part we don't get snow very often.  It was a bit of a surprise since in the same week we got up to 78 degrees.  They always say, if you don't like the weather in Texas...just wait a minute.  

Our Shooting Range

I took the dogs on a walk up to the range, they enjoyed getting out of the house and playing for a little while.  It was snowing pretty heavily while we were outside.  The bad thing about the snow was the weight of it on the tree branches.  I could hear branches snapping and breaking as we walked up to the range.  I would guess the range is something like 400 yards from the house...maybe 4 football fields?  I am not sure.  I know the pond is about 200 feet from the house.  You can see our Red Barn Shed in the top picture and to the right of center you can barely make out part of the house.

Trees on the side of the shooting range and my 3 dogs Bailee, Sophie and Kensie

You can tell how heavy the snow is on these smaller trees, many of them were bent almost to the ground.  When I later went out to check on the chickens who were locked in the coop all day, I saw trees that fell back in the woods behind the coop.  I am a little afraid to walk around in the woods when the wind is blowing hard or like this...when it snows, you can hear trees and large branches falling and with the dogs running through and of course myself, I don't want to take a chance on any of us getting hurt.  We still have snow on the ground today, but it is suppose to be in the 70's by this weekend.  It is melting, but it is also cloudy and windy today...a lot of snow is gone from the trees now.

Early Mornings

There is nothing like waking up very early in the morning to the sound of screaming baby geese...they are something like newborn babies, they want food when they want it.  This morning is one such morning.  They were pretty loud and woke my husband up too.  They were pretty much out of water and food...yet I made sure and filled both up before bedtime last night for this very reason.  The chicks are actually very quiet, it is the four baby geese that are the noisy ones...but, just like human babies that get what they want...they will quiet down when happy.  After I put down a new puppy traing pad in their brooder, filled up their water container and gave them a fresh dish of food they quieted down.  I went back to bed...but then Corkie, our little butterball of a cat decided to start crying and scratching at the door to the kitty room wanting out.  Yes, I said kitty room...we have a small room off of our living area that was intended to be an office.  It is only about 9 feet by 9 feet, so along with our wireless computer setup, we have the kitties tower/condo, the food and litter boxes...and things like a scratching post and toys in their own space.  We have a baby gate up on the door to that room to keep the dogs out.

Well, after the geese and Corkie being a brat, I could not sleep.  I opened the door to the kitty room and Corkie quieted down, she quit scratching the door and meowing.  She has no front claws so she was not really scratching...but she paws at the door very vigorously and sometimes my husband jokes and talks about her paws bursting into flame.  Corkie is a rescue cat, she was dropped off in the parking lot by an employee at a company my husband use to work for.  There were a lot of 18 wheelers at that job, and she was just a tiny little kitten when he brought her home.  My husband would sit outside with her, trying to coax her out of the bushes using parts of his lunch.  He finally got her to come out and eat, but it took awhile.  He is a softie when it comes to kitties, and this one was very young and tiny, he was afraid she would die if he didn't bring her home.  She is still very skittish around strangers and will hide if we have company.  We use to have them in a larger room so they could run and play...but she would rarely come out of the room.  When we moved them to the kitty room as we now call it...she can lay in the doorway and watch TV or come out when she feels safe.

Today is what is known as lockdown day.  On the 18th day of incubating eggs to hatch chicks, you take the eggs out of the turner and candle them, remove any that are not developed...and take the turner out of the incubator.  I line the wire floor of the incubator with paper towels and then put the eggs back in to finish developing.  In a day or two, possibly three...the chicks inside will start pipping (breaking through the shell) and zipping (they go around the big end of the egg and break the shell in a line around the top to escape.  After day 18, you quit turning the eggs so that the chick can get oriented correctly for this process.  In a few days, I will have another batch of chicks...if all goes well anyway.  After these are born, I will set more eggs I got from eBay sellers.  Right now, I have Speckled Sussex and Double Blue Laced Barnevelder eggs to set in the incubator, but I am also expecting Silver Grey Dorking eggs to arrive soon too.  The Dorkings are an endangered breed as are the Sussex breeds of chickens.  These are very old breeds of chickens, by that I mean that they have been around for a very long time.  I have been trying to get heritage, endangered and rare breed chickens to help get them off of the Livestock Conservancy's list of endangeded breeds, some that I have are making a comeback...like Wyandottes, but breeds like the Dorking, Andalusian and Sussex are still endangered.  I don't have any that are on the critical list, I have not found any that are adaptable to hot and humid areas from that list and money is tight...I don't want to waste my time on chickens that may not survive in this climate.

Well, I just though I would write a little this morning before I got super busy.  I have a ton of eggs to dehydrate, I had to order the special inserts for my dehydrator to do it...it only came with two, and that doesn't work very well with a 5  tray model, it wastes time only doing two trays...they have to dehydrate around twelve hours.  I rather have 5 trays going and get more done at once.  On another note, I finally have rye grass sprouting that I scattered the seeds for almost three weeks ago.  It finally warmed up enough to germinate I suppose.  But now it has dipped into the 20's again!  I looked at my fruit trees and I can see pink in the buds of my Fuji apple tree...I finally sprayed all my fruit trees with Dormant Oil and I am hoping that the buds don't get damaged by late freezes this year.  Even all of the Chicasaw Plum trees I moved are budding out...I think I transplanted 7 trees and all lived so far.  I still need to work on the breeding pens, but I have so many other projects to do...well...I will get to them, when I get to them...I try and do things by priority or importance.  I may plan on doing one project but go outside and something derails my plans and snowballs sometimes.

We Have Babies!

You may think I am crazy at this point...I love having babies in the house again!  We got the chicks and geese I ordered from the hatchery.  Since we had some predator losses and processed some of the roosters for the first time, I ordered a few replacements.  When you order chicks through the mail you need to get a certain amount so they stay warm enough in the winter to survive the postal system.  I got a new Silver Laced Wyandotte rooster to replace the one eaten by the predator, I also ordered a new Dominique rooster because the one I bought last year as a chick has leg issues and it is not a trait that I want to breed new chicks from.  I also ordered Gold Laced Wyandotte females for the rooster we hatched in a mixed batch of eggs...and some Gold Laced Polish for my husband's favorite rooster Pompadour.  I have 16 new chicks to replace the 11 we no longer have, but I also have quite a few more roosters to process soon.  I also have eggs in the incubators...yes, that is plural.

I love laced chickens, and chicken math struck me hard.  I also love all the pretty colored eggs they lay.  I do plan on breeding too.  I started on the breeding pens, not done...but started on them.  Weather can keep me in the house at times...when it is in the twenties outside the metal screws in my feet make my bones really hurt, and it hurts to stand for long periods.  I tend to try and take it a bit easier when it is that cold.  We also had some rain that made everything a muddy mess for several days.  But, we then had great weather, I got three garden areas tilled and the last of the brush cleaned up and burned in my upper garden area.  The chickens will keep it clear of weeds and add fertilizer to it until I am ready to plant it.  I went down to the neighbors and processed 6 roosters and she brought her tractor to my house afterward with the ice chest the processed chickens were in...and tilled the extension I wanted to make to my herb and fruit garden.  That was nice of her...it breaks up the grass and makes it easier for me to till when I need to.

Oh, I got off track...anyways...Back to the babies...we got what is suppose to be 4 female geese for our two adult male geese.  African geese are on the Livestock conservancy list of endangered breeds. After I learned about chickens, I wanted to try and keep some of the endangered breeds alive and that is one of the reasons I am getting into breeding heritage and rarer breeds.  It is why I am also ordering hatching eggs on line and taking the risk of them not all hatching, because as long as I can get a few to hatch of each breed, I can breed them to get more to breed and sell.  Hatcheries want an arm and a leg for the rare breeds, like Cream Legbar and Blue Double Laced Barnevelders, French Black Copper Marans and Blue Splash Marans...some breeds a lot of the time are unavailable.  I have Blue Andalusians too, and several heritage breeds like Silver Laced Wyandotte, Rhode Island Red, Buff Orpington...I keep an inventory of them too.  I keep an inventory of all of my stock, but it needs to be updated too.  I have not added the chicks I purchased, none of them were expensive...and I ordered early enough that they had those breeds.   I have hatching eggs coming for Dorkings and more Double Laced Blue Barnevelders, and am Bidding on some Blue Splash Maran eggs...because I have no rooster for mine.  

I am reading up on genetics and have purchased a book as a guide for breeding.  Knowing what the dominant and recessive traits of the breeds are important if you also want to create new breeds.  Some may call they barnyard mixes, but I want to create a new recognized breed one of these days...maybe a Blue laced black chicken that has black legs and lays blue eggs!  Yes, it is a dream...but after I get more familiar with the breeding, maybe I can do it...it may take 10 years...but, it will be a challenge that would be fun...because it means I get to have lots of babies!