Good Things Come To Those That Work

Or, is that Wait?  Yes, I do know the saying...I am talking about my garden.  We got our first ripe tomato a few days ago, it was green then and it fell off the vine when I was running my supports, but I put it on the window ledge and it ripened.  It had such a good flavor.  I had an egg customer who brought me some home grown tomatoes too, it was very nice of him...I have had only one out of my garden so far.  We cut one of his tomatoes for our burgers last night.  I am not sure if it is because of the type of tomato, or because I worked so hard to get my garden going this year...but mine tasted better!  Lol, my husband said it first...he was surprised the flavor was not the same.  I am not sure what kind he planted...they are very large though.  Mine are Heirloom tomatoes, I think all but maybe the Roma tomatoes.  But when I was out watering and weeding yesterday, I noticed one starting to ripen...it is a Purple Cherokee tomato.

I harvested Broccoli too, my plants are doing very well and are the biggest I have grown.  I guess moving my garden to the front of my house was a good move.  I have green beans big enough to harvest now too, and noticed my Brussel sprouts may be getting the sprouts!  I also have quite a few Bell Peppers and Habaneros too.  I have water melons the size of my fist and a butternut squash about four inches long.  I have cucumbers forming too...and am thinking about planting a Fall garden.  I need to move a bunch of compost to the front, you can tell where I stopped spreading the composted chicken manure by the size of the plants.  My corn, well about half of it was laying on the ground yesterday, the wind was blowing and the soil/sand dried out...I have a lot more work to do to amend the soil so that doesn't continue to happen.

It has been hot and muggy here.  We have been having brief downpours, most only last five minutes or so.  But, we are coming into our dry season.  We may not get much rain for the next two months which will make our high temperatures a little better.  Last night on the weather they said June in Shreveport Louisana is usually the wettest month of the year, we are a bit over 50 miles from there.  This year I think March and April were the wettest.  It is hard to get things done for a garden when you have 8 to 12 inches of rain in a day.  But between storms and fencing in a new area, tilling my garden four or five times...planting started plants after they should have been in the ground and seeds two weeks later...I think it has worked out great.

I have worked more on my four breeding pens too.  I got the house part almost completed, all the roofing, siding and most of the hardware cloth is on.  I even have roosts in.  I have the top section of the divided walls to attach hardware cloth to.  Then I can start on the runs for the pens.  I need more wood though, otherwise I will have to use some doors off of other pens and they are only four feet tall...not really tall enough to contain the chickens.  I need to get it finished, I have a lot of babies getting too big for my back porch brooders.  I need Growout pens for ducks and turkeys too!  Maybe another for my chickens...or maybe dividing the breeds out into the breeding pens will give me enough space in the coop to get the babies into the Side Car...or getting rid of more roosters will open up enough space to use my Growout pen for it's intended purpose?  Lots to think about, and always lots to do!

Stealth Turkey!

I talked to my Mom yesterday, it had been awhile...but since I stay so busy most of the time, if I don't call fairly early in the day, I forget.  I called and she didn't answer so I just left a message and she called me back later...I had not fed the animals yet, but we talked for awhile.  My husband came home from work and helped me get everyone taken care of.  He fed the section of poultry that has the Stadium, the Condo, the Turkey House, the Growout pen and half of the rooster pens.  It is in this set of rooster pens that we put a Bronze turkey.  The turkey was there when he fed them.  I remember the turkey was there when I was gathering eggs in that section.  Funny thing is, the turkey disappeared between then and when he went and put them up last night.

I was worried about the turkey when he told me he wasn't in the pen.  How could it have gotten out?  He looked in other pens and didn't see it.  I went out to look around more, checked other coops, other pens, called for it...no response from any of the turkeys...usually when I say turkey, turkey really loud the males gobble back...not last night.  I even rechecked the rooster pens, lifted the tarp up and looked under it in case it had gotten between the shade cloth and the tarp somehow...no turkey.  I came back in the house and we talked about it...if the turkey got out somehow it was probably up in a tree somewhere bedded down for the night and would be out in the yard walking around by himself in the morning.

The turkeys have been fighting a lot because of mating season so we separated three of the five out and put them in different areas.  Two turkeys are in the rooster pens and one in the Growout pen.   They don't roost with the roosters, but either sleep on the ground or one of the pallets.  They are much larger than the roosters, so it is pretty easy to tell the difference even in the dark with a headlamp on.  Yeah, it doesn't sound very fair to the turkeys, staying in lockup...but neither does getting their snoods ripped, their feathers yanked out or spur wounds from the other male turkeys.  I already have a wounded female in isolation because of wounds and them fighting over who gets to mate her.  She has been on my porch for a couple of months.  I had her healed up and put her back out in the yard and she was ripped back open, the skin was too thin I suppose.  So she is back in the hospital ward.

Anyway, my husband went out to let all of the poultry out of their houses and noticed that the turkey was back in the pen!  So how?  Lol, the only explaination is he went into stealth mode last night...unless he learned how to unlock the gate to the pen?  Who knows?  I guess I will take a closer look today and see if maybe there is a secret hiding place I have not found...or maybe he dug a hole under the pallet that I have not seen?

My husband found a snake in one of the rooster pens...the first snake we have seen in the chicken area.  We have had a lot of rain and they have been publishing warnings about snakes.  I thought it was probably a Rat Snake or Water Moccasin, but after doing a little research I think it is a Yellow Bellied Watersnake.  It doesn't really matter any more...it is a dead snake.  It was about three feet long and a blackish gray, had a yellow belly and smelled like a skunk...I did not know any snake could smell like that.  The chicken pens are close to the little creek that runs through our property, I was afraid it could have been a Water Moccasin and since they are poisonous, well...dead snake!  It think I probably would have freaked out if I had found it.  It makes me want to carry a machete around just in case.  I am pretty good with one of those, I use one to lop branches off when I go out and limb trees or cut paths through the woods.  I got pretty good whacking branches off with one chop.  I am not sure if I am good enough to hit a snake in the head with my gun from far enough away so that I don't get bitten.  I took the dogs for a long walk in the woods yesterday, I may start including both in my arsenal I take out with me.  That and some target practice may be in order.

Any Progress Is Good Progress

I worked on my breeding pens yesterday.  It has been slow going since February?  I guess if I had not changed my thought process on the design I would have been done quicker.  When you build things to house chickens, you have to really think about a lot of factors.  First and foremost is functionality.  I am no spring chicken any more, so everything I build now has to function well for me.  It has to have easy access, so I can clean it...gather eggs too, and if anything happens to one of my poultry, I need to be able to get to them easily.   I want to be able to stand upright in everything too, stooping to clean up chicken poop is not easy, especially when you have back problems and your knees don't allow you to get up without using your arms.  I have found that the easiest way to build anything is a lean-to style.  Take a normal peaked roof and cut it in half...can you picture what I mean?

Chickens need a certain amount of square footage each in their coop.  If you can't let them free range they need even more.  Mine get to go out into a good sized pasture every day.  But if it rains an excessive amount or snows we may not let them out until the worst of it is over.  It has rained a lot this year, record rain and flooding in Texas.  We have been lucky lately it has not rained but about half an inch at a time the past week, today may be different...we are suppose to have several days of rain in a row. It could be 3 to 5 inches of rain.  I am glad it is raining, my garden is doing well and it keeps me from having to water it and all the fruit trees, vines and bushes I planted the past few years.  We have very sandy soil and it dries out pretty quickly in most areas of our upper yard.  I am a bit crazy...planted my garden in front of my house this year because of the rain.  The past two years I didn't get the garden planted until mid June because of the areas I had the garden previously stayed wet so long, I would till it, it would rain...grass and weeds would grow...and I would till it again...it would rain before I got it planted...wash, rinse, repeat.

Anyway, like I was saying about chicken housing...a chicken needs at least 4 square feet each in a coop.  If they are never let out of the coop they should have even more.  These breeding pens the coop section is 4 feet by 4 feet, so 16 square feet each.  I am building these side by side and there will be four coops and four runs attached...hopefully the runs will be 4 feet by 12 feet.  I am putting these in my old upper garden area, mainly because it is higher ground.  I was going to build eight breeding pens, but because of the change in design it will only be four for now.  If I remember correctly the roof is about 6 and a half feet tall at the lowest point and 7 feet at the peak.  That way my husband can go into them too.  I need to put nest boxes in each individual coop and a roost bar too.  The roosts will probably be about 3-1/2 feet off of the ground or floor, but on these the nest boxes will be at the floor level.  I have been learning the hard way with all the broody hens I have that the momma hens will keep sitting on eggs in the nest box if there are still eggs to hatch and not getting the babies out to eat and drink, it doesn't take one long to die.  I try and check the nest boxes and collect the babies as they hatch for this reason.  I take away eggs from some of the hens because if they don't protect the chicks the other hens may kill them too.

Boy oh boy...it just started pouring rain.  It is early and the chickens have not been let outside yet thank goodness.  If keeps up we will probably have more than 3 to 5 inches of rain this go round and it may all be coming down in an hour at this rate!  Generally I can't hear the rain in our house, we have a metal roof, but it has a double layer of insulation that muffles the sound of the rain so much you can't hear it...unless it comes down really hard and fast.  I can hear the thunder rolling in now and the rain has let up a little...not looking forward to doing chores outside today, it will be a rain boot, rain coat and hat kind of day.  I am glad I got the roof put on the breeding pens I am working on yesterday, I forgot the drip edge though...I was hoping to get that on today.  I got it on the side sections, but not the front and back section of the roof...the metal fabricators kind of screwed up my order and gave me six foot lengths of metal though, so I have more overhang than I planned on...instead of five foot and six inches of overhang, I have a foot of overhang on each side, it should keep more rain out, but my roof rafters are too short now.

I am going to stop writing now, I have a lot to do today and I can hear chicks running around in the incubator.  With this rain I won't be able to rotate my older chicks off of the back porch yet...so I need to set up another brooder for these, I know there are five so far.  The hatch going on right now are eggs I took out from under a broody hen, she killed several or other hens did and I cleaned out the nest box, candled the eggs and put the most developed ones in the incubator...that is what is hatching and it comes in waves.