Git R Done!

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever really have a day off again...and I don't even have a "job"!

There is an even greater appreciation here, of everyone that has ever worked on a farm or raised farm animals.  Maybe it is because I am learning, maybe it is because I love all these birds I have hatched and raised, I work my rear end off and the days fly by for the most part.  This past week has been really busy, and I am not finished re-arranging my coop.  I dismantled the roosts and re-worked them and my nest boxes, so that I have more places for my chickens to roost...well, kind of anyway.  They like roosting high, so even having 52 feet of roosts in my big coop, they only roosted on 1/3 of the roosts...the top bars of my ladder style roosts.  Live and learn...I moved nest boxes to one end and removed the waterer from the wall to make room.  I redid the roosts down from the door to the far right wall, the stretch from window to window four feet off the ground and 8 feet across.  I have two bars running a foot out from the window on both sides...then the roosts are about every 14 inches for eight feet, but they can also sit on the side bars too. So I went from two and a half 8 foot roosts they actually used to seven 8 foot roosts.  I have a 10 hole nest box on the wall on the far side of the coop and one 4 hole one that I will put where I took the waterer down from.

I moved a set of three nest boxes mounted on the front of the run by the door to the left side of the run with the 6 hole nest box I took from the inside of the coop.  I moved the waterer I took out of the inside, to the front of the run...the rain barrel that feeds it, I moved to the right of the entry door and I put one nipple type PVC waterer on the inside of the run and one on the outside of the run.  I took one nest box and moved it to what we call the condo too.  I have found eggs in the Condo, so maybe whoever is laying will use it instead of the floor.  I also hung a shade sail that I had gotten for the gun range shooting station...but forgot about...on the front of the coop over the rain barrel to give them some shade.  The shade cloth is probably at least 8' by 10', much better than the two chairs they were laying under for shade!  I am just hoping that the turkeys don't use it as a trampoline like they do the ones over my breeding/rooster pens.  Speaking of roosters...my husband and I caught more and I think I have around 43 rooster in those pens now.  I still have a lot of roosters running around too!  Lots of them are still young and not "active", if you know what I mean..but taking so many out of the coop and yard I hope my poor girls will grow all their feathers back before it gets cold.  Around here, it does not usually freeze until late November or early December...maybe they will quit molting too, my hens hatched last Spring look pretty awful, at least the popular girls do.  Some of them even have a sunburn on their bald spots.  I had chicken saddles on them, but some have gotten torn up and some just got ripped off.  I should have separated roosters out sooner, but I just didn't have anywhere to do it until I built the pens...and finished them with doors and tops.  

When I build, rearrange, or tear down anything...I still have all my other chores to do.  I partially tore apart the "Lowboy" chicken tractor that was damaged from the weight of water on the tarp I covered it with, I partially cleaned my feed room (where I mix up fermented feed and store it), broke down a lot of boxes to use around plants to try and keep weeds down, plus laundry, dishes, vacuuming, cooking, shopping, feeding, watering, cleaning...well, you know...every day chores.  My husband has been feeding the poultry in the mornings, so it gives me a bit more time to do some morning chores in the house and he helps in the evenings when I don't get them fed before he gets home from work.  I try and feed them around 3:30 or 4:00pm to give them time to eat and digest some before he gets home and gives them scratch grains.  I finally got a shade cloth hung over our back patio too...so we can have a shady spot to sit.  We sat out and rested between our activities yesterday.  My husband replaced some pullies and a spindle on the mower deck and mowed some yesterday, while I was working on the shade cloth and waterers.  It was nice yesterday, there was a breeze and even though it was still really warm...it felt pretty good in the shade.

My husband has been working with the dogs, trying to get them so they don't chase the poultry.  Yesterday they got to actually go into the large fenced portion of the yard with all of our poultry, it was interesting watching them.  Bailee is really the only dog we worry about chasing and possibly killing anything.  She is our Catahoula mix, our Hog Dog. We had to keep reinforcing no chasing, be a good dog and praising her when she behaved.  She had turkeys and geese, ducks and chickens all around her...my husband was basically playing fetch with Sophie and Kensie was mainly interested in sitting in one of the large water buckets.  We have a few turkeys that like to sit in our laps and they decided to do it yesterday...I had a female in my lap at one point and a male decided he wanted up in my lap, she jumped up on my shoulder then tried to get on top of my head!  These are not small turkeys, they have good sized claws too.  I got her off my head but he stayed laying in my lap and enjoyed having his neck rubbed for awhile longer.  You can tell how much they like it...they stretch their neck out and close their eyes when you rub their waddles or the back of their neck.  I think the females probably weigh at least ten to twelve pound now and the males fifteen to twenty pounds...no I have not weighed them, I am estimating.  They are a it over four mo this old now.

I cleaned cages on the back porch on Friday, I have a bald Silver Wyandotte chicken hen up there and Pop-Eye the Salmon Favorelle and Buddy Chicken the Cream Legbar both of them have eye issues, I brought them on the porch to make sure they were getting enough to eat...they seemed thin.  Pop-Eye is completely blind in one eye, she had a bad eye infection when she was hatched.  Buddy Chicken has one eyeball that is way back in the socket and flat...like he has no cornea?  I think he can see out of it, just not extremely well...he does not run around in circles like Pop-Eye does.  We have one rooster my husband has stuck with the name Blind Melon, he appears to have cataracts on both eyes but he gets around well, eats well and is a very good looking rooster he just gets special treatment...my husband will give him food and set him right in front of it or treats to make sure he gets enough to eat.  He is blossoming, he is getting out of the coop and interacting more, has grown well and is a good healthy weight.

I need to get busy, I just woke up early and decided to write today.  I still have a lot to do, I am trying to get some building and changes made before the time change occurs November 1st.  I plan on trying to get some garden chores done too, need to ad a wire mesh to the bottom of my garden so rabbits can't get in and eat everything, and make a new gate...the current gate is actually part of a fence and my chickens keep getting in the garden it doesn't latch well and I have had to wire it shut...we had to chase a lot of chickens out of it yesterday.  I have a plan to move blueberry bushes too...