Easter Egg Hunt Every Day

I believe I started raising chickens in July or August 2013?  In the beginning I only had two roosters and four hens...it was pretty easy to start.  I raised them in a chicken tractor we built.  It was really heavy, still is...but we use to move it around every few days.  It has been stationary for awhile now, it sunk into the ground in soft sand and I can't move it by myself, it will take a tractor and a couple of people to get it out the wheels on it have sunk into the ground about six inches at least.  My chicken tractor was fine for the six, but because we only got one or two eggs a day the first winter...we got four more chickens to add to our flock...it has kind of snowballed since then but I built an extension to the tractor that I could drag around to fresh ground that gave my chickens additional space.  There are four nest boxes in my chicken tractor...they stayed enclosed so no real hunting was involved for eggs, although they did lay eggs in the run sometimes.  My husband got the bright idea to use a golf ball retriever to get the ones in the run, great job honey!

Anyway, after my hens started going broody and we let them sit and hatch chicks, we decided to build a big coop to house them all.  In the mean time we got some baby ducks!  After brooding the ducks I needed a place to put the ducks while they were growing.  I built a grow out pen.  The grow out pen I made so that it could be moved fairly easily, four panels with rings that I could drop metal rods down into...it was a bit heavy to move each panel, but it was possible.  I actually had the ducks set up in the backyard, at the time it was the only area that was fenced.  This grow out pen was later used to make my "Rooster Condo"...it has all been a learning process.  I also found geese at a feed store and those soon were added.

Oh gosh, getting off track...but, my poultry yard and area has expanded a lot. In the beginning I just fenced around the chicken tractor.  I then fenced around my garden area next to that area, then after we built the big chicken coop, we fenced off an area for the ducks, then around the coop and another couple of garden areas and added a large gate to be able to mow the area.  I added dividers inside the area so that I could separate roosters or different ages of chickens too.  Then after hatching a lot of chicks this year, adding more ducks, more geese and turkeys...I fenced an even larger area and this is the area we have started having to hunt for eggs.

My older chickens still lay in nest boxes for the most part.  I had some issues when I had so many broody hens, but I added more nest boxes to fix that.  Now the chicks that hatched in February are starting to lay, they lay in the bushes, clumps of grass, next to the wood pile, in flower pots, under the nest boxes, in the turkey pen, in the chicken coops run, under the roosts, behind rain barrels, the ducks and geese lay in dewberry patches or sometimes under a tree that has some bushes around it and vines.  Some days I will be out filling pools and waterers and all the sudden I will turn around and there will be an egg practically laying at my feet.  I even found one on top of my patio table just laying there suddenly.  The ducks have laid in their pools before, and if I disturb an area they like to lay by putting straw or soft grass or something down over the dirt, they will move to another area sometimes...so, it is a constant hunt, my husband calls it an Easter Egg hunt, but the poultry are the ones hiding the eggs!

I am going to make a couple of large ground nest boxes big enough for the geese, ducks or turkeys to lay in...hopefully they will figure out what they are for.  I have one made that the frame is made from 1"x6" wood but I put cage wire as the bottom and raised it up off the ground a touch so the nest will stay dry.  Time will tell if they will use it.

Supervisory Help Makes Things Tough

I really have to be flexible in my planning and yesterday was one of those days, it looked like it was going to rain and he first half of the day.  I after selling eggs to my customer I went and said hello to the geese at my gate...I had a hen outside the fence, she ran right through the cattle panel gate when I chased her.  I decided I needed to get some smaller wire over the cattle panel to keep them from escaping so easily.  I have been meaning to do it, it has just been so hot most of the time the poultry doesn't come over to that section of the yard because there is no shade...today was different.

I debated what type of wire to use on the cattle panel, it is four feet tall so I thought about just using the 2"x4" opening fencing that I fenced the chicken yard with...but it is hard to move 100 foot roll by myself and rabbits can still run through it.  I have some cage wire, but it is a lot more expensive than hardware cloth and I have two hundred foot rolls to ad to the bottom of the garden areas...so I decided to use it.  I used my safety wire pliers and galvanized steel wire to attach the hardware cloth to the cattle panel.

If you don't know anything about turkeys...they are very curious creatures, not afraid of anything either...they have been exploring a lot, I have had to get them off of the solar panels in the backyard, round them up and chase them out of the back yard so the dogs can go out...and catch them and get them back in the fenced area when they fly over.  It seems like they realize were the food is and wait for me to come out with some, it is pretty much what I do to get them out of the yard.  I get a scoop of food, shake it they come running and so do the chickens that fly over the backyard fence.  

They have to check out everything I am doing, no matter what it is...and they peck everything that shines.  Well, today I was work with tools and wire...they had to check it out and they pecked at my hands a lot while I was trying to get the wire through the cattle panel and grabbed with the safety wire pliers for twisting.  I have twelve turkeys and they would reach through the fence and try and grab tools or wire, they pecked at my hand as I reached through the fence and tried to get the wire in the right spot to twist. Then the geese came over after the turkeys showed interest in what I was doing and as I was sitting on the ground they reached through areas and groomed me...which basically means they grabbed my shoes, they grabbed my jeans leg and nibbled on my ankle as I was sitting there working...sometimes they grabbed my sock and pulled on it.  If I got to close to the fence the turkeys would pull my hair.  I am sure anyone that drove by were curious to find out why I had so many critters lined up at the fence, I do sometimes cuss up a storm if they hurt me or pull a tool through the fence to the other side.  I had to make sure they couldn't reach through the fence and pick up the bits of wire that I cut off too, they pretty much test everything to see if it is edible.  It was pretty funny with all of them right there watching me...even some of the babies were curious and came to check out what I was doing.  

I feel sorry for the young chickens, they sometimes get under the geese trying to pick up scratch grains when we throw them out to the mob and get stepped on. The geese honk loudly wanting scratch grains out of the scoop and all five will try and stick their heads into it to get some and the Ducks will stand up and crane their necks trying to get at them too.  My husband has created monsters, it seems their sole purpose is to get to the scoop and eat out of it now.  Yesterday I had a chicken fly to it land on the edge while I was walking with it and start eating scratch grains directly out of it.  I do up a special mix for the turkeys and carry a five gallon bucket out to their house to feed them, it is dry food...they eat the fermented feed if they can get to it, but when they see me with the big bucket most of them come running and follow me to their house.  I throw a few handfuls to the other poultry to keep them occupied while I round up the turkeys.  There are usually a couple of stragglers that have to be picked up and hand carried to the door. If I don't throw enough feed out to the chickens, ducks and geese...they will attempt to go into the turkey house to get their food too.  Many a young chicken have spent the night with the turkeys, they hide in the milk crates I have the food and water sitting on top of.  The milk crates were modified so that the could be used as nest boxes and have an opening on one side.

Achy Bones & Laziness

I didn't do much of anything over this past weekend, we had the rain for brief periods but most of the time that doesn't stop me from doing things.  I have a lot I need to get done but took it easier than normal yesterday too.  I had a weird thing happen on Sunday morning, I guess it may be called a Thunderclap Headache that was a bit scary.  Intense pain at the base of my skull suddenly, the bad pain only lasted minutes but it made my neck hurt and my left eye and ear would get sharp sudden pains.  I am thinking it is related to my degenerative disk disease.  For some strange reason, I ache in other parts of my body, nothing bad...but almost like I worked out and am sore.  I waited until after 4:30PM to work outside yesterday, then I just fed and watered and cleaned my coop called the "Condo".  I had to, the poop was getting bad so I scraped it all out, leveled the ground and spread some straw for my babies...they are getting big though.  

Today I need to tackle cleaning my big coop, I don't like to clean it if there is a chance it will rain...because it won't stay clean long.  My chickens will spend the day in the coop if it rains much and it doesn't take very long to get nasty when they don't free range.  It is cloudy out and I think we have a 30% chance of rain today, I may just clean the nest boxes out and put fresh pine shavings in them and turn the liter today.  I want to shovel the liter out, wash the walls and roosts but...if it does rain, they will be in the coop and I can't do it with a bunch of chickens mobbing me.  Maybe I will go look for small trees to use for new roosts...I need more roost space for them, the reason I have to clean the nest boxes is because they are roosting on the bars on the front of them.  I have more roost space in the coop itself, but they like sleeping in the run in the summer, it is covered by Polybarbonate panels so they are protected from rain somewhat, but the walls are just hardware cloth and they catch any breezes there are.  The top roost is the most popular in the coop, it is the same height as the windows.  I may change the roosts in the coop and make more at the same level as the windows.  I change my mind a lot and re-engineer things based on how my poultry behaves sometimes.  

I need to get more roosters out of my coop too, I am thinking about moving the younger chickens in with the hens to the big coop and using the Condo and the grow out pen to house the ones I want for breeding purposes.  Some of the young hens will be laying age before long and I have no nest boxes in either the Condo or Grow Out pen.  Lots to think about and I am procrastinating today.

I am also kind of sad, one of my best egg customers is moving away, she is a sweet lady and came by with her neighbor today to buy eggs.  She asked if she could come visit when she was in town again and asked if she could just sit and watch my chickens sometime.  Oh...that reminds me, I need to put some wire over the cattle panel we are using as a gate!  Lol, my chickens have discovered they can walk through the holes on it, maybe I will do that first, there is a cat that comes and visits sometimes and it would probably help to keep it out and the chickens in...while my customers were here, I walked to the fence and noticed I had a chicken out in the non-fenced area that ran back through the holes when I went over to the gate, rabbits tend to run through the 2"x4" fence holes too...I don't have enough hardware cloth to keep them out, maybe just my upper garden though...they ate all my green bean plants so I will have to do something if I want any veggies.

Raining in August?!

August in Texas is generally the driest month of the year.  It had been dry for a few weeks in my little corner of the world, and even though it made the heat more bareable because the humidity was low, we needed rain very badly.  I have been having to water my fruit trees every few days to keep them alive, they are fairly new and if I don't water leaves start browning and falling off.

Well, we did get rain...after a few days of clouds and not a drop...we had a few downpours in two days time we received 3-1/4 inches.  The thing is, it is extremely humid now and every time I walk out the door, a few minutes later I am soaking wet.  I am working when that happens, and it is from sweat.  It also made the poultry area rather nasty and stinky.  I am ready for Fall, cooler temperatures and changing leaves, it is much easier to work outside in the Fall in Texas.  Yes, it is usually still pretty warm out during the day, but 80's is better than 100's.  I still have not finished my Goose house...and I need to get it done.  I have to make another house for what is currently my chicken tractor area, I have been using what I call my Lowboy for roosters...when we got all the rain it collapsed the top of it from the weight of the water.  It actually tore the metal hardware cloth and broke the wood too.  So I will have to make a new structure for that area.  I started putting younger roosters into pens now, some have figured out how to escape though, so I will have to fix that area.

I still have far too many roosters running around with my hens, it is getting better...I think I have about 35 in separated into the pens now, but the two in the Lowboy are out now until that gets replaced.  I have some young roosters coming of age that are not being very nice to young hens that I need to catch and separate.  I really need to construct more roosts for my big coop too, if I do that, I will be able to move more into it.  I have to start thinking about winterizing too.

I need to try and set up an area to process chickens too.  Lots to think about, only about seven of the roosters I have separated will be kept for breeding purposes.  So I have at least 25 chicken dinners coming.

Hard Decisions

I am a softy, I will admit...I try and save any of my poultry who have been injured, born with a deformity, or get sick.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it is just an impossible task to keep going for long.

I have had a few chickens with minor foot injuries, a case of Bumblefoot and a torn comb and waddle.  There was no option but to remove the rest of the comb, I couldn't do it...my husband did while I held the injured rooster named Napoleon.  I was able to perform the Bumblefoot surgery on my own on my hen Brown Racer, but I found out it was not that easy to get all of the infection out with the tools I had to use...I ordered a few items so maybe the next time it will be easier.

I even tried to save eggs that had embryos growing in them...some were born nice and healthy, others were not...one of my ducks that hatched under a broody hen had leg issues and did not grow, it's legs twisted in such a way that it scooted around the brooder, it stayed small and the others picked on it.  We kept it in a separate brooder for weeks, it just got worse.  My husband would take it out and hold it, watched TV with it and carried it around in his pocket.  It started developing sores on it's hocks, it could not swim...yet we tried to help it anyway.  I gave it extra vitamins, mixed up a special mixture of food for it, cooked it boiled eggs and oats for days.

We had some extremely hot weather and I lost a Salmon Favorelle young hen and my Rhode Island Red hen, Red Racer...I found her laying on the floor of the coop and she was stiff, yet she opened her eyes when I picked her up.  I took her and tried to cool her down by laying her in cool water in the shade, I tried to get her to drink but she couldn't stand up.  She died during the night.  I also found a chick that succumbed to what I thought was heat, but it ended up have a severe case of wry/limber neck.  I worked on the chick and hand fed it, for days...every two hours or so, I gave it droppers full of a Nutridrench, vitamins and a product called DYNE.  The chick did not get better, it's neck twisted so badly that it could barely swallow, it's crop filled and did not empty the mixture I had given the chick ran out of its mouth when it was picked up...you could see the poor things bones through its skin.

This is where the hard decisions come in, if one of my special poultry does not get better fairly quickly, I have to decide if I want to keep up treatment or not.  When my husband suggested culling the duck and the chick with wry neck, I was heart broken...but agreed that neither of them would live without extraordinary measures for the rest of their life.  I was spending far to much time, feeding and caring for the special needs poultry and not paying enough attention to the healthy ones...I think that is why I lost the two to heat.  

I agreed to his suggestion, it pains me greatly to have to put one down...even if my husband is actually the one who does it.  

Rooster Wrangling 101

I still have not completed my goose and duck house, I was going out to work on it but decided to check on all my chickens.  It takes me quite awhile to fill up waterers and clean waterers, but yesterday I did clean and refill a couple of pools too.  Then I decided to clean the Condo.  The coop we call the Condo...

I generally make several trips from the house were we store feed back out to the poultry yard, yesterday was no exception.  Here lately the roosters have been very active and amorous towards the ladies, the ladies decide to jump the fence and go outside of the penned area.  I have been having to chase several of them down and put them back over the fence, it is not exactly safe for them jumping the fence...we have predators.  If they are hungry or think I have treats for them they get impatient sometimes too.  Yesterday one of my Barnevelder hens decided to jump the fence into the backyard with the three dogs.  It is not good when a chicken jumps into the backyard...my dog Bailee, at least here lately has decided to try and catch them.  She has killed a chicken before, one of my many roosters...apparently it got into the back yard while I had gone to town.  Bailee believes it is her job to chase chickens and if she catches them, she will hold them down and I think possibly they have a heart attack.  She didn't eat the last one, it was found dead by the corner of the fence.  Most of the time, the geese can stick their heads through the fence and pick at the grass and the dogs don't bother them.  Yesterday, I heard a commotion when I was getting feed and knew a chick had flown over the fence.  

Bailee, is fast and she goes into chase mode when a chicken flies over the fence.  Then I have to kick it into high gear to get to it before she does, she doesn't listen very well when she is busy running after and trying to stop the chicken.  I scream at her NO, Bailee...and it is like she doesn't hear me...she runs from one end of the yard to the other with the chicken running for it's life...and it is.  I was in hot pursuit yesterday, trying to get the Barnvelder hen so Bailee would not harm it.  Bailee caught it several times and held it down but it would flap it's wings and get away.  Chickens actually have pretty powerful wings, they hurt when they hit you in the face too.  Anyway, I continued to try and get the chicken, running around like a banshee, screaming at the dogs to leave my chicken alone and at one point tackled Bailee, it just kind of happened, Kensie and Sophie gained interest but they listen a bit better than Bailee.  I was actually on the ground with my arms wrapped around Bailee and the other two started after the chicken.

I hurt hitting the ground...so I was limping a bit.  I got Bailee on the porch and started yelling at the other dogs to leave the chicken alone, it is MY chicken!  Bailee was sitting on the porch, Kensie and Sophie were close to the chicken and I kept having to tell Bailee to stay because she kept getting up like she was going to join me for the chase.  I finally got the gate opened and the Barnevelder out of the backyard.  I decided to grab food for the chicks in the grow out pen and check on them.  I kept seeing roosters attacking my hens...so, I decided to do a rooster round up.

It is not easy catching chickens.  I am fifty six years old, not a spring chicken myself any more...and here I am chasing chickens in the heat of the day.  My knee is aching from hitting the ground when I tackled Bailee...Bailee is my Catahoula Mix dog, they are called Hog Dogs...because they are generally trained to catch and take down wild hogs.  She is a stout, muscular dog, very strong and can be stubborn as an Ox.  We have been filling up the pens I built for breeding, with roosters.  Yesterday, I observed several that were less than gentlemanly towards the ladies and proceeded to run after them, wrangle if you will...and catch them one by one and put them in pens.  If the other roosters attacked them too badly, I let them out and tried another pen.  

One pen is full of Sex-linked roosters, one pen has one Polish we call Pompadour and a few others that are mixes my husband calls the Bros, we caught a lot of young Cream Legbars over the weekend and a few of the Dorking roosters and they are in a pen together, and some of the roosters we took out of the Rooster Condo to begin with are in another pen, and I ran around and caught some more Polish roosters and put them in yet another pen...a couple of those are part of the Shady Hill gang.  All in all my breeding pens now have about 30 roosters in them and I still have more to catch.  I have three empty pens left, but I will have to make more gates to be able to use them.

Oh, and the easiest way to catch a rooster...wait until they jump a hen to try and mate them, you only have a few seconds to grab them...but it is a whole lot easier than chasing them everywhere.  That, or trapping them in a coop or run, although that is never easy and you can bang your head on roost bars or nest boxes.

Construction Time

I have finally started construction of the Goose and Duck house!  My husband found a Cattle Panel Greenhouse that he thought would work for Our poultry houses.  I watched the video on construction of one on YouTube, but the ones I have been building are modified and heavier construction than those used for greenhouses.  I have to have mine strong enough to keep predators out of it and need hardware cloth attached to it.  The ones I am building are about 8 feet by 8 feet at the base and tall enough in the center for me to stand up in.

After making the one we are using for the turkey house, I modified the design a bit more and made the wall panel sections out on the back porch, then put them together in place to basically make the foundation part of the house.  I used 4 - 2"x6" pieces of pressure treated wood for the bottom and then cut 13 - pieces 21 inches tall to use on the walls.  I used 4 - 2"x4" for the top rail and attached the 21 inch pieces at the ends and center of 3 of the walls, the front I used 4 pieces, because of the doorway.  I then carried out the panels and attached them together using angled steel pieces.  I also ran long screws through for extra strength along the edge pieces.  I left the front panel off until I got the cattle panels placed inside then attached it too.  I used large fence staples and lifted up the cattle panels about 3 or 4 inches off the ground and hammered the staples in to hold them in place.  The panels overlap, so I used wire and safety wire pliers and wired the pieces together.  I also put long pieces of 2"x4" wood to make a doorframe to hang the door on, I also stapled the cattle panel onto the door frame too.

Today I will try and get the door made and get the wire attached to the top section and connect it to the cattle panel, I will need to add a couple more long pieces of wood at the back to staple the hardware cloth to and help with stability.  I guess I should get out there while there is a slight break in the heat and get busy.  One of these days I will add pictures...I just write on my iPad and have not figured out how to upload pictures from it on the Google Blogger site.  

By The Light Of The Moon

It is amazing sometimes how dark it can be outside...we have a street light up close to the driveway at the street and we have a very bright light on the shed that throws light 100 feet around it...that is close to the house but shines out to the drive to the shooting range, the lake and the half of our property up front with the fruit trees and our big red Tuff Shed.  But beyond that, unless the moon is shining, it is very dark.

In the summer when it doesn't get dark until almost nine at night, we leave the poultry out and they pretty much put themselves up...with the exception of the turkey's.  I won't make that mistake again...they put themselves up in the tree.  We always feed them in the morning when they get let out and a few hours before dark in the summer.  That way they go to bed with full bellies.  It makes for happier chickens in the mornings sometimes too...they tend to wake up hungry...who am I kidding?...the act like they are starving to death every time I go out there.  They will come running, and it is like that scene of little dinasaurs in Jurasic Park (the movie) where they all run and start chasing the man and end up eating him!  Ok, maybe not that bad...but they will fly up and land on an arm or swarm around you so bad that you can't take a step without stepping on one.  Anyway, they will jump on the feed bucket sometimes too, if several of them do it it gets to heavy to carry...but there is wall to wall (ok fence to fence?) chickens so most of the time I have to scoot them out of the way with my foot.  We use goat feed troughs to feed them and shallow pans...I ferment my feed these days, so it is wet and about the consistency of oatmeal.

Anyway, we feed several buckets of fermented feed a day.  They love it and it makes the food more bioavailable...meaning it is easier for them to draw nutrients out of it.  It can be a pain to mix at times, and each bucket probably weighs 40 pounds or so...I usually feed two buckets at a time when I feed them.  They don't normally eat it all...but, I don't want anyone going hungry.  They have the ability to free range all day, but a lot of them just hang out under trees or sitting on the side or ramp of the big cattle tank.  I am guess the breeze over the water helps cool them.  We have had a couple of chickens fall into the water, but none of them died...chickens can fly, so as long as they don't get waterlogged they can flap and get out.  We did have one rooster that had to be rescued, he kept his head above water and my husband fished him out.

I got off track a little bit, but it is what happens at the farm.  Anyway, back to the darkness...most nights when it is my turn to put everyone up, I use a head lamp like you may see on a miner.  We installed a few solar lights here and there on the coops, but they really don't give off much light and we have no electricity out there yet.  Some of the group of chickens we call "The Shady Hill Gang" can hide pretty well and I search, woodpiles and rolls of wiring, under bushes, on the patio furniture, in the garden, in the windows of the coop, on the backs and under chairs in the yard...sometimes I go out just before dark and don't wear my headlamp, but when the moon is full and the fireflies are flitting about, making those chicken, duck and geese roundups is kind of nice.  We get to see the fireflies in the darkness and by the light of the moon.

Death Comes Again

It has been a hard few days...first I noticed one of my little Salmon Favorelles was all poofed out wings hanging, head hanging down.  I brought it up on the porch and put it in a bin with food and water. It perked up a little, but by this morning I knew it would not be alive by the end of the day.  I made it a boiled egg and mashed it up with some uncooked oats, it didn't touch the food.  I could not get it to drink or eat, at first I thought it may be Coccidiosis...now I am not so sure.  I examined it closely before it died, it was very thin, I could not tell just looking at it how thin it was...it looked dehydrated too.  I brought it into the house, but even the cooler temperature didn't make any difference.  It was probably being bullied and not getting enough to eat, it is hard to tell sometimes when you have a lot of chickens that look exactly alike.  I went outside to make sure all the critters were Ok in this heat wave, gave everyone fresh water to drink and filled up swimming pools and pans with cool fresh water.  By the time I went back in the house to check on the Salmon Favorelle it was dead.

This is definitely a learning process, I also learned last night that I need to make sure the turkeys are put up about an hour if not more before it gets dark.  Why you ask?  I went outside at dusk and instead of going into their house to roost, the majority of them were up in a tree above their house.  You would be surprised how well turkeys can fly.  We had cut the branches up to about ten feet off the ground.  I am guessing they got on top of the rooster condo, which the shortest part of it is seven feet tall.  They may have flown up from it.  Needless to say, they didn't come down from the tree,it was getting too dark.  Most birds can't see well in the dark, that is why they normally roost before dark.  

One of our baby ducks is having issues too...it is very small, it was fine when it was born but it is having problems with it's feet and is walking on it's hocks...that is kinda like your knee. I have added vitamins to their water and been feeding boiled egg and oats.  It is doing pretty good this morning, I am not sure if genetics are playing a role in this problem, a lot of the time it is an indication of a vitamin deficiency, so I am hoping the extra vitamins help.  Niacin is important for ducks and as long as it drinks it is getting some.  I may add some additional A and E too.  The other two baby ducks are thriving and running around like little banshees.

I found a dead Black Copper Marans chick yesterday too, I am treating the chicks in my outdoor brooder for Coccidiosis once again, I will be glad to have them grown and off the porch.  I am tired of finding dead babies from Coccidiosis.  No other chicks appear to have symptoms, so hopefully it will be the only one.  I guess only the strongest survive.  I will treat them for several days and keep them on medicated feed until they go out to the grow out pen.  

I am going to have to perform a rooster roundup, I have far to many and they have started going after my females with a vengeance.  They are also fighting amongst themselves and late yesterday my rooster Napoleon had his comb half ripped off.  I knew it had to be removed in a procedure called dubbing, but I have never performed it before.  After watching a YouTube video it did not look difficult, but I could not do it.  My husband and I did get it done last night.  We wore surgical gloves and he sharpened kitchen shears to use, I wrapped Napoleon in a towel to hold him still.  We had gauze ready and corn starch to stop the flow of blood.  My husband cut his comb away and Nepoleon was a champ, he jerked a little bit when the cut was made, but I think he knew we were trying to help him.  Dubbing is a common practice in game birds and Napoleon is an Andalusian rooster and a breed that is on the watch list for being low in numbers.  I have mainly heritage and rare breeds and do my best to keep them healthy and strong.  He is doing well this morning, his wound has scabbed over and he started crowing bright and early.  

Last night, I did get all of the turkey's in their house early enough so they didn't roost in the tree last night.  We have better luck just letting all the chickens roost on their own at dusk and going out with headlamps on and rounding up any stragglers.  We have a group we call the Shady Hill Gang that like a tree by the back patio and several of them like to sit on the patio table instead of going into the coop.  We have to hand carry them to the roost a lot of the time.  Sometimes another one will sit on the back of a chair outside the coop, he is a Barred Rock.  We have another chicken we call Window Chicken, she is a young Cream Legbar hen...she flies up to a window ledge on the outside of the coop to sleep.

The Quiet Did Not Last Long!

Surprise , surprise, surprise!  Lol, well...my husband went out to give treats to our critters and he always gives our hen Brown Racer some special attention and scratch grains when she is sitting on eggs...he saw a baby duck last night.  So I had to get a brooder ready real quickly.  I didn't exactly record when I gave her duck eggs to sit on, I just did the ones in the incubator apparently...I was a thinking I had more time.

I have not hatched duck eggs under a broody hen before.  He was afraid the other hens would kill them so I went out there after setting up the brooder and found two already hatched.  I heard little chirps after I took them out, and went out later and found another duckling buried and squished flat under some eggs...It didn't look very good last night, but it seems better this morning.  There are five more duck eggs and one chicken egg still under her...she was not happy with me picking her up, but she didn't peck me.  My husband named her Brown Racer...she is one of my original starter flock of six.

I put duck eggs under another broody hen but after sitting on them awhile, they just disappeared.  I think I may have an egg eater.  She is still sitting as are three others, but I keep taking the others eggs away.  I have been adding goose eggs to the incubator every time I find them, hopefully some will hatch...but I am not seeing veins or any growth in but one, so far.  That and one duck egg.

I still have about 25 chicks on my back porch, in my double decker brooder.  Most of them are Black Copper Marans and it appears a lot of those are roosters.  I have way too many roosters and need to process some...once they start aggressively mating they go into an isolation pen.  I am planning on breeding, so I need roosters...but they don't have to be in the general population if they are gang bangers.  I would prefer my hens not get attacked by five or six roosters at once and that is what they do when they find a submissive hen...they gang up on her.  There have been many times that I snatched one off a hen that tends to mate a hen every few minutes, some of them run around all day and try to mate every single hen in my flock!  It angers me, the brutality of some of their actions.  The roosters that actually protect their girls get to stay out, they are generally easy going and gentle until another rooster messes with their women.

I have probably 10 hens that are bald on their back from mating...I made chicken saddles for them but they got ripped off, some saddles are torn up.  I will have to rethink the design and try heavier material on both sides.  Maybe a canvass duck type or heavier outdoor material.  Apparently blue jean and quilting cotton is not good enough.  They have not torn the blue jean up, but it is heavy and I do 't want my hens to overheat either.  It has been blazing hot outside here...combine that with the humidity and it feels like 105 a lot out here.  As long as there is a breeze it is not to bad in the shade.

All Out, One More Time

I enjoy the sound of baby chicks, but not the dust created in my house by all the food and the chicks being in the house.  I keep them in large plastic bins the first few weeks and use puppy training pads in the bin, it requires changing them out multiple times during the day.  I have tried pine shavings but they get them in the water and I end up cleaning out waterers a lot.  I tried corn cob and pine pellets too, but I like the puppy training pads the best for ease of cleaning.  They also don't cause as much dust.  I have been using the office/workout room to brood chicks in.  I was just using the bathroom in there but, after getting more incubators I needed more room, that and I actually use that bathroom a lot when I work outside.  The path to that bathroom has no carpeted areas and I don't always kick my shoes off when I am in a hurry...I still have my first incubator sitting on the counter in that bathroom, and it currently has duck and goose eggs in it.

I have been incubating eggs since February, I promised myself I would not incubate for 8 months solid this year...so far it has been five months.  But, I am really trying to get good stock for breeding and getting a few more geese is high priority at the moment.  I will have at least three weeks before I have any more babies in the house, so far it looks like only two of 16 eggs is developing, but I will keep adding eggs to the incubator until the geese quit laying for the year.  I hope to get at least two females, our male Thor needs a mate or two...geese mate for life and will live up to 25 years.  My husband really loves the geese and wants them to be happy.  We may try and sell any extras, but at the moment we may not have any extras.

My hatch of Black Copper Marans was not as good as it should have been, I have 16 chicks I believe.  I have 4 grown females and 1 male at the moment and could breed them, but they all came from the same stock.  The chicks I hatched are from 3 different sellers so I will have genetic diversity and be able to get a dozen eggs a day, most days to sell.  I did the same thing with Cream Legbars.  I hope to start selling chicks or eggs from them soon, and possibly Gold and Silver Laced Wyandottes and Blue Andalusians.  It may be Spring for the rarer breeds like Java and Salmon Favorelles or Blue Laced Barnvelders.  My chicks are still too young to tell if the Blue Laced Red Wyandottes are males or females or what?

I was hoping to get all the breeds I really wanted and two to three different lines of each before I closed my flock and started breeding.  That may not happen this year.  I want one more line of Lavender Orpingtons and really want Jubilee Orpingtons too...three times I tried to hatch some and I only had one chick hatch!  I am disappointed, but at least I have one...and I may be able to cross it with a Speckled Sussex and get more...and I have some nice Speckled Sussex.  I did get a Blue Splash Marans rooster too...he is still pretty young, but by Spring he will be very active I am sure...and I have 5 Blue Splash Marans hens.

Anyway, I have the chicks out of the house and if the ducks and geese do hatch...they won't have to spend very long in the house because it will be very warm outside and they grow faster than weeds and can go outside by three weeks old.  So, not very long compared to chicks.  I am ready for a break, I have a lot of other things to do that I have been putting off...like planting a real garden!  Lol, yes it is late...but hey, better late than never and I may be able to build a greenhouse and extend my growing season.  We shall see...

Playing Dead

When you have over 300 poultry, you expect things to happen every once in awhile.  A predator may get a few, your own dog might kill one if it flies into the backyard, rooster fights...things like that.  Today was a first...I went out to check on my poultry and was cleaning and filling waterers, I turned the corner of the big coop and I had a pair of roosters, who I call The Blues Brothers, standing over one of our cream Laced Pollish...it was bloody, it's feet were sticking out at an odd angle.  I just new it was dead.  I went through the gate and made the Blues Brothers get out of the area.  I picked up the poor Polish and its head drooped over my hand.  I was afraid I was looking at its brains...but, it was just what was left of it's head feathers covered in blood.  It was alive, it perked up after I started talking to it...I carried it up to the porch and put it in with another Polish that had its head feathers pulled out yesterday.  Well, I sprayed it with an antiseptic first...got them both some fresh water and food.  I have never seen a chicken play dead that well.

It is kind of funny, I still have to check some sometimes...they look dead pretty often when they are sunning themselves.  Or dust bathing and have half buried themselves in the dirt, but then they aren't bleeding or covered in blood.  Most of the time when a predator gets one, you see a lot of feathers in a pile, then maybe a piece or two...like part of a wing, or tiny bits and pieces...and you follow the trail and find what remains are left.  We had about a month, that every few days a predator killed something...I had to build fully enclosed houses for all of them pretty quick.  But, letting them free range...sometimes the roosters would fly in a tree and I couldn't get them down...usually the next morning I would find a dead one.

It does scare me sometimes, that a pack of coyotes or wild dogs will get into the fenced area and kill my flock.  I guess that is why I make sure gates are closed and chained and there are many layers of fencing.  My dogs also are allowed to run the property when I am outside and they scare most animals off with their scent.  We have Falcons, and we think an owl that has killed some...flying predators are our main problem so far.  I use pretty heavy hardware cloth on everything so it would take something pretty big to get into my coops.  Some even have cattle panels and hardware cloth.  It may be overkill, but I try and keep them safe.

The more poultry you have, I am finding out, the more issues you have with fighting, over mating, injuries from them trying to get away from other poultry and older ones pecking on the younger ones.  My dogs do not like it when the ducks gang up on each other either...or several males attempt to mate the same female...neither do the geese.  Some of the younger roosters also mature very fast and start trying to mate the tiny hens...I don't like that.  They grab them by the top of the head or neck and the poor girls scream at the top of their lungs...especially when there are more than one rooster doing it.  I am putting aggressive roosters in separate pens, a lot will become dinners.

Today I am going to give some Pollish chickens baths...I think, and I will clean out the brooders on the back porch and move the babies out of the house.  I have to clean my isolation kennel and see about doing Bumblefoot surgery on my hen Crooked Toe.  We shall see what all I can get done.  I need to hang roosts in the grow out pen I just finished too.  I need to start construction on the new duck and goose house too.  I have eggs in the incubator for both ducks and geese...not sure yet if they are viable, still have a week before I candle to see if they are developing...but, I gotta have a place to put them if they do hatch...that whole construction thing.

Reminders Of My Childhood

I was born in 1959, back then things were much different than they are now.  The past few nights we have had fireflies in our yard, my husband saw them when he went out to put up chickens and he came and got me to see them for myself.  When I was a kid we use to catch them and put them in jars and keep them by our beds.  It has been a long time since I saw that many fireflies.

We spent a lot of time outside when we were kids, there were no video games or computers, we played at the park, my grandmothers backyard, the neighbors house...and our backyard was were we sometimes set up our zoo.  We would catch things and display them in makeshift cages built out of whatever we could find.  Sometimes it was neighborhood cats, sometimes toads or snakes, sometimes our next door neighbors chicken.  But there were also fireflies and horny toads in abundance back then too.  We had a pet tarantula at one time and a turtle named Speedy.

We would go to our Great Aunts house a lot in the summer and she had a pool, it was hand dug many years before and had thick walls that stood up a couple of feet above the ground and a bath house attached to it with a large screened area with picnic tables.  My Mom would always fix sloppy joes to eat when we went.  There were cow patty fights and rides on the tractor, hide and seek and badmitton games.  We caught many horny toads out there too, and always the fireflies.

I have chairs that were my grandmothers lawn chairs, the heavy clamshell metal chairs, I see them every day.  When my grandmother moved in with my Aunt Pat, there were a number of things that were gotten rid of...I got the chairs with there many layers of paint.  I remember sitting in those chairs many nights and watching the fireflies in my Grandmothers back yard.  Playing with my cousins and eating ice cream.  There was a time that my feet barely hung off of the seat of the chair.  Now my grand daughters can sit in the chairs when they come over.

I would love to have a place that my family will think of fondly when I am gone, a place where memories are made.  I think we have a good place so far, it has a long way to go to be fun enough for kids to enjoy in the summertime.  But maybe we will put up a tire swing or fix up a good camping spot and build a fire pit under the stars.  Maybe we can make a little fishing pier over the pond for the kids to fish off of.  Maybe, when they come to visit they will put video games out of their minds for a little while and enjoy nature like I did when I was a kid.  There were many times I rode my bike and went fishing with just a string a hook and bits of my sandwich for bait off a pier at the lake.

I remember climbing trees and sitting in the deep shade by the creek down at the park, where it was cooler than my house.  I read many a book in a big old oak tree that the branches curved almost down to the ground...I loved the sound of the creek and walking in the water to cool off.

Being in the country and getting to experience nature first hand is great...and so is seeing fireflies again!

Sleepless In Bivins

I guess I worked to long yesterday, I stayed up watching The Tonight Show and thought I could sleep and mostly tossed and turned all night.  Got up at about 4:15am.  Got the chicks some food thinking they would quiet down some, but not so much...they are in the other room making happy sounds but are being pretty loud about it.  

My cat Corki was not helping either, she likes scratching at the door and meowing pretty loud at around 4:00am most mornings...I don't always hear her, but since I wasn't really sleeping anyway I got up and opened the door and squirted her with water a few times.  Why she picks this early in the morning to be a pain in the butt, well...I just don't know why.  Our cat Prada is a Bengal cat, she is quite adventurous and likes to get into things in the middle of the night so they get locked up in the "kitty room" every night.  Otherwise cabinets would be banging, drawers opened, things knocked off of shelves...if she gets into my room she likes getting my ponytail holders to play with, I have some in a crystal biscuit jar on my dresser...she will knock the heavy lid off to get at them, jump on the bed and drop one she chewed on that is nice and wet on my face wanting me to shoot it across the room.  If I have new ponytail holders in the drawer in my bathroom she will try and open the drawer and get them out...she bangs the drawer closed several times doing this before she is successful.  If I am sleeping well, I may not hear her do it...it is when she walks on my chest and drops the card full on my face is when I wake up.

I was working on another coop yesterday.  I didn't sell a lot of chicks yet that came out of my broody hens sitting...I need a place to put them.  So, I am building another cattle panel coop.  I have most of it done now, I need to wire the front wire onto the cattle panel part better and get a tarp put over it for the roof, but then I can move the chicks from by back porch brooders to that coop and the chicks in the house brooder to the ones on the back porch.  I may have someone who wants to buy some laying hens come buy a few on Saturday, if so I may try and sell Pretty Boys offspring.  If I can sell those three I can use that area for some of my ladies that need a break from being over mated.  I still need to separate more roosters out of the big coop, too many are coming of age and terrorizing my girls.  We let them free range during the day, but at night we lock them up so foxes and coyotes don't get them.

I have three pens with gates and shade cloth over them that I need to transfer roosters to, they have torn up and eaten all the grass in their current pens.  They have dug a deep trench under their roost too.  I need to level the ground in the current pens and I can't do it without moving them or letting them out.  Same with the lady ducks in a pen, I have been rotating my females, the males are kind of rough on them during mating season.  I may just let them out and put some of the males in pens or take a few to the pond to see if they will stay in that area.  I need to get at least four out of there.  I guess if eggs under my broody hatch I may get some more females.

I wish it was cooler outside during the day, the heat and humidity tends to zap my energy some days.  But, when you have a lot of animals to take care of there is no choice sometimes, I try and check on my animals throughout the day to make sure they are all doing Ok and have plenty of fresh water.  The free ranger ones have access to a lot of water sources, but the penned ones...not so much.  Which reminds me, I need to make some more nipple type waterers...it is always good to have at least two sources of water for them in each pen.  I am trying to have at least one nipple type waterer and a shallow pan of water too...so on these days when the heat index is 100+, they can stand in the pans of water to help cool off.  Those pans may get changed three times a day in the summer!  But once you have lost a chicken to the heat, you do your best not to let it happen again.  I lost one last year and hope it never happens again.

I am getting ready to truly start my day...I hear a very strange sound outside and I need to investigate.  It could just be a baby rooster trying to crow, but better safe than sorry.

Duck, Duck, Goose

We have 17 ducks right now.  I gave a broody hen 8 duck eggs to sit on but the few I looked at yesterday did not look like they had anything growing in them and it has been at least ten days.  I may have to take them all and candle them in the house to tell for sure. I just need to set up an incubator in case she stops sitting.  We have to many male ducks and need to thin the population down some, maybe by four drakes.  We have four females in a pen recovering from over mating now, we need a higher female to male ratio.

I think we have two of our female geese laying now!  Yesterday I went out and one of the geese was in the dewberry patch and her head was laying on the ground, most of the time they tuck their head back and lay it on their back or tuck it under a wing.  I won't lie...it scared me to death!  I was afraid a predator gotten to her and she was dead.  I went over to her and her neck was stretched out and under a few strands of vines...I touched her back and she didn't move, there was no blood or any sign of wounds though. So I touched the top of her head, she still didn't move and her eyes were closed.  I actually lifted the vines and picked her head up...it took a few seconds until she opened her eyes and decided to get up and waddle away.  After she got up, there was not one egg...but two!  So we have two geese laying now.

I am going to try and clean and sanitize all three of my incubators today and hopefully get one set up and warming up to try and hatch goose eggs.  We have no desire to eat them and I want to make sure my two males are fertile and doing their job.  If any do hatch, they should be old enough by next spring to start laying, since these females are only a bit over five months old.  If we get males, I can always sell them...but we won't be able to tell for several months...unless we learn how to vent sex them.  I need to read up on that...I remember something about protrusions and the shape, but that's it.  It would be nice to know ahead of time on all our poultry which ones are males.  It is easier to sell females.

I Really Need To Win The Lottery

I have big dreams.  I fell in love with our land, with having a farm, with the idea of trying to start a Poultry Farm...but it takes money.  I won't lie, winning the lottery would help tremendously towards my goals.  Only a small portion of our land is fenced, I would need something like 4500 feet of fencing to fence our whole property, probably more because I want goats, pigs and maybe a cow or two...so, I would have to section off some of our acreage.  But we also have a lot of trees, and I would like a bit more land cleared if we got larger animals...that would require a real tractor with attachments...that would come in handy and be so much faster than me having to till with a small hand tiller and have someone else brush hog parts of our land when the weeds are 7 feet tall.  I could probably actually plant larger areas and maybe even grow enough corn, oats or wheat to help feed my animals.  I just get worn out tilling by hand.  I need buildings too, I do the best I can building chicken coops, but a lot of the time it takes awhile to get all the materials I need. It would be great if I could afford to just have everything built at once and then I could devote my time to other things.  That and I need a barn for larger animals...and it would be great to have a horse or two to ride to the back of our land.  I would love to clear part and plant new trees and have clear paths to ride and be able to get to all the areas that we call our land.  I would love to have gates big enough to drive a tractor through too, so I don't have to mow large parts with a push mower.

I know I am impatient at times, but like with my breeding pens, even making them out of fencing, I still had to have the materials to create them, and the gates...and shade cloth to keep the poultry from cooking in the sun, and I just got tarps to put over them for when it rains...nothing fancy, but I need to make sure predators can't get in too.  I am hoping to start breeding some of my chickens soon, but things need to be right and I really want to get NPIP certified and be able to close my flock.  

I would love to have a large shop building with electricity and air conditioning for days like today, it would be nice to be able to build things in a real shop and not have to do it outside in the heat, and to not have to haul all of the tools out to a pen and build things in place, because I have no way to transport anything big.  It would be great to have a trailer to hook up to the tractor I need.  I need water lines run to areas of the yard for when it doesn't rain too...have you ever tried to pull a couple hundred feet of waterhose full of water around a few acres, it ain't easy for this Grandma.  I have tried to buy a few fruit trees each year, when my husband asked me what I wanted for Valentines Day...I asked for fruit trees.  Am I crazy?  Well...if I won the lottery, I would plant an orchard, and lots of Blueberries, Strawberries and Raspberries...there is nothing better than fresh fruit.  I want pecans too..maybe some almond trees and hazelnut bushes.

I would like to have a large building for my chickens instead of a lot of small coops, and have the ability to separate each breed into separate pens.  That and a place to house injured poultry besides a kennel on my back porch.  I would love a small guest house too, all of my family lives in different areas and it would be nice to have several "Tiny" houses for visitors, or even if I could afford to hire someone to help me take care of the chickens and the land...yep, big dreams.

It would be great to finish fixing up the house too, make all the repairs and not worry about anything breaking anymore, get a septic system installed right and get enough solar panels to actually be able to run everything on solar.  Oh, and maybe dig the pond deeper with that tractor we don't have yet and build a dock over the pond so we can fish off it and maybe watch the sunset sometimes.  I am dreaming...but it would be great to have a pool, a gazebo and a nice fire pit...and an outdoor kitchen too!  Lol, lots of dreams...

  I guess the first step is BUYING a lottery ticket...

Mindless Mowing

I should have worked on the grow out pen for the chicks yesterday...I did not.  Some days I plan on doing one thing...try and get myself mentally prepared for the heat and humidity and get out there fairly early and just don't feel like hauling all the tools and running the extension cords out almost to the creek.  The grow out pen is only about 30 feet from the bank of the creek in the furthest corner of the yard under some pine and cedar trees.   I put the Rooster Condo, the Turkey House and now the Grow Out Pen up under those trees.  It gets hot here in the Summer and it is cooler under the trees and with the moisture by the creek and the wind coming off the pond, even when it is over 100 you can sit out there and it actually feels pretty nice.  I don't want my poultry to die from heat stroke.

Anyway, I was going to work on the pen...but didn't.  The day before I hung up the gates I made and got the shade cloth over the tops of three pens.  The shade cloth is not quite long enough to completely cover the third pen so I will have to work on getting that fixed.  It does provide shade to 95% of the third pen, but it doesn't offer total protection from predators.  We mainly worry about owls, Falcons and Hawks. The poultry yards are fenced and when we have predator issues, it has been the overhead predators that we usually have to worry about.  My husband helped me get the second cattle panel in place on the Grow Out Pen too, since I did a panel type construction and then just put it together on-site I didn't have to drag out the table saw and compressor and all that went with it.  Until now anyway...not the table saw but the compressor and the pneumatic staple gun.  I use my garden dump cart to haul everything in...it is not so much getting everything out and hauling everything down there, it is running the extension cords, hooking everything up, working all day...then putting everything up when I am tired and hot.  So, I mowed.

I don't mind doing yard work, I actually like transforming my yard into something nice to look at.  The grass and weeds...and all those seed heads standing just over knee high drives me crazy...I don't like not being able to see if a snake is in the grass, or the thought of stepping on a fire ant hill and getting stung a hundred times before I realize they are crawling all over me.  I also don't like poison ivy...at least if I mow, there is less of a chance of me getting into anything like that.  I was going to weed eat, but I could not get it started, I tried for twenty minutes, at least...maybe I was not holding my mouth right or something, maybe my body was telling me no...not sure.  My husband got it to start later, and I continued to mow while he ran the weed eater.  Since we got an inch and a half of rain last week, everything grew fast...my garden was over run, he weeded it with that thing and some of those weeds were waist high!  We have these things we call Chinese Lanterns, they have these little green paper looking seed pods on them that look like lanterns, the ducks decided to start laying eggs in the middle of a big patch of them. One female spent the night out in the patch...when I went out to put everyone up she didn't come out of the area.  I couldn't find her but her two male Amigos were very upset when she didn't come out, I walked through the garden area calling for her while they stood outside the fence calling her and complaining to me when she didn't respond.  She is fine, she came out of the garden the next morning.

I mowed...I call it mindless because I just go around and around, or in long swaths and because we just have a lawn tractor, it takes awhile to mow this front section of our yard.  We only mow maybe 3 acres most of the time, but because I fenced the chicken yard the gates to several of the pens are too small to get the lawn tractor in them so I mow them with a push mower.  I trimmed some of the fruit trees too, and cut down some weeds that looked more like trees with branch loppers around my compost pile.  A raccoon has been visiting my compost...getting the eggs out, when you have that tall of weeds you don't want any surprises...I can just see myself now...getting chased by a large raccoon with rabies or something...wouldn't that be a funny site.

Construction...Who Needs It?

I have discovered that you cannot have a farm without constant construction.  I have always been kind of crafty and not afraid to tackle things but it seems like I am always trying to build things out here.

When we first moved out to the country, we had to fix up the house and we did a lot of the work ourselves.  My surrogate son Mark worked on things we just didn't know anything about, like plumbing issues.  I can change a faucet on a sink, but so far that is the extent of my plumbing resume.    My husband can do some electrical, but we had to have a new water heater put in after only being here a short while...and moved the location of it so that we could have a larger water heater.  Mark and Crew teamed up for that one.  Anyway, it is a lot of work...but that is not what I am talking about today.

I built four gates for my breeding pens yesterday, they are nothing fancy, just a wood frame and welded wire fencing for the most part.  I made the pens out of fence wire awhile back ago.  They are about 8'x8' for the most part...and there are 8 of them.  I have also been working on a grow out pen, I made it out of wood, cattle panel fencing, welded wire hardware cloth and will use a heavy tarp on the top to keep the rain out.  You have to have a place to put your animals...and it is a lot better to have a place to put them before you have them!  I have a bunch of chicks in brooders and need more space for them.  I have not felt well twice, since I started construction of the grow out pen and because of that I stole the Rooster Condo to put one large batch into...I let the roosters go back into the main coop.  That is why I made the doors yesterday...too many roosters are terrorizing my hens.  We got one gate up yesterday, my husband caught the roosters we let out of the Condo and put them in the pen with the new gate.  I am hoping to get more gates put up today and at least the shade cloth over them.  I have a large tarp to put over them too for when it rains but I have to figure out a way to make the water run off it, I learned that if I don't I will have to bail it out every time it rains.

I am getting better at construction, and figuring out it is good to build things well the first time.  I have a pen we call the Lowboy, it is a movable pen with wheels...I stapled hardware cloth to it with individual staples that you have to hammer in.  The weight of water on the tarp I covered it with has pulled the wire from the staples, I may have to do some work on it too.  I have two mean roosters in it...ok, maybe not mean...overly aggressive towards the ladies would be a better word for it.  I have way too many roosters and those born in February are coming of age and they too need to be penned separately.  I see a lot of chicken and dumplings in our future.

I'm So Dizzy My Head Is Spinning

The past several days I have been having some trouble with vertigo.  I was having some pain in my jaw, had a sinus headache and when I was reaching up when putting some dishes up all the sudden got really dizzy.  It has happened several times, most of the time it goes away fairly quickly but is usually triggered when I look up and I lift my arms over my head for very long or turn my head quickly when laying down.  It is making my ear hurt and I have had a mild headache that doesn't want to go away and my stomach is feeling a bit queasy.  

When this happens I fall behind on my chores, I can't bend over without dizziness or reach up either.  I have a lot of animals to take care of, coops, brooders and cages to clean.  I have to modify my routine a lot or just leave things until I feel better.  If I move slowly and am careful, I can do some things but tend to hold on to steady myself.  Crew worries that I will fall, and when he gets home from work and finds me the chickens will have pecked my bones clean or something.  I must admit that it is a bit scary, I am not sure what they would do.  I saw an article a few weeks ago and started searching the Internet for the way to fix it on your own...it is a positional thing, I am going to try it out and hope it works.  My stomach is a bit queasy at the moment, so I am going to wait until my breakfast settles before I try it...I don't normally puke, just feel queasy but I ate this morning in anticipation for getting outside and working on gates and setting up my breeding pens set up so that I can separate roosters out.  But, I bent over and I guess my sinuses are at it again...I can breath but just under my left eye and my forehead feels full of fluid or something, I have a dull ache, some pressure and my ear and left side of my face I am having intermittent pain that becomes sharper here and there when I move around much.

I guess I will take some sinus medication and something for the headache and wait awhile for it to kick in.  I have a lot I need to get done, I don't have time for this!  It pisses me off when my body acts like this, most of the time I just work through things...just figure out the least painful or dangerous way to do it.  I need to use power tools today though, and I rather be safe than sorry...I am sure my husband would agree, he doesn't like calls from me in the middle of the afternoon.  Why you ask?  Because I try not to bother him at work and when I call him in the afternoon, it is usually because I did something that may require stitches...or I locked myself in the chicken coop.  He calls and checks on me, he can tell when I am having dizzy spells, but there was a time I got up to fast in the middle of the night, I had an extreme dizzy spell while I was walking across the room and fell against the dresser and slid to the floor...I bruised my ribs pretty badly and scrapped my arm up pretty good that time.  I am more careful when I get up these days, I sit on the edge of the bed upright for a minute before I stand up, it doesn't matter if I have been feeling dizzy or not, I still do it.  Getting so dizzy you black out basically and all you see is nothingness with your eyes wide open and your legs give out...they turn to jelly and won't hold you up anymore and all you can do is try and grab something to break your fall...well, it is scary...very scary.  I just want it to go away.

Family Time and Other Issues

Since we have moved to the country, we just don't have company very often at all.  We thought if we had a big enough house to have dedicated guest rooms, we had more of a chance for the kids to come visit, or any family for that matter.  It doesn't happen very often, but...we had company just before the 4th of July holiday.  We have a new grand daughter and got to meet her and see her Mom and Dad this past week.  Ellie was five weeks old, she is a good baby, didn't fuss much I enjoyed getting to see her and the kids.  Ellie was delivered early by C-Section so we didn't get to be there for her birth.

We have been having issues with our only vehicle, our truck.  We have not ventured very far from the house because of our issues...our transmission was acting up on us, some bearing disintegrated and we had to have that fixed, but it is not perfect.  Then some part of the clutch failed, but Crew was able to fix that, he watches YouTube videos and learns how to make some repairs...he is not a mechanic but he is learning more of that skill.  Our latest issue was a flat tire, I noticed a vibration in the front end a few weeks earlier...we knew we needed to get new tires but had put it off for awhile because of funds.  Crew came home from work while the kids were here and a front tire went flat...when he took it off there was a long strip of rubber missing and the belt was showing.  So we had to replace the tires or risk getting stuck on the side of the road somewhere.  The spare was the original spare tire...it worked but after 11 years under the truck, it was cracked and we were not sure how long it might last.  So we are fixed up for the moment.  Since I had the truck, I went and got tires, an oil change and washed and vacuumed it too.  Usually when I have the truck I have a lot of errands to run and Crew works 6 days a week and just don't really do any kind of maintenance on it very often...but, we also don't put very many miles on it.  We do need a second vehicle, but that would increase costs more...not sure we can afford to do that right now.

We only have one vehicle because we basically are trying to cut costs, my husband's business has been really slow...people are just struggling.  Trying to get his business going well and trying to get the poultry farm going and actually making money has been tough, we spend more than we take in a lot of the time.  We are trying to live off of his Military Retirement and it is just not easy with having all the animals and unexpected expenses.  He makes enough money to pay his expenses at his shop, but with all the taxes he has to pay, rent and utilities we need more business so he can get paid more for working...most the time we live paycheck to paycheck and the credit card bill is steadily rising.  I keep hoping to get my breeding pens built so I can start breeding and selling full breeds of chickens, but at the rate I am going, it will be next Spring.  It is scary some days when I sell $12 worth of eggs...and I make more than the Computer shop.

I visited the tax office a few months ago, and reworked our land splits we are now agriculture and timber...hopefully it will help with our taxes more.  I guess because there are fewer people out here, we pay higher taxes, as a matter of fact every month we pay more in taxes than towards the house payment.  When we first moved here our property was appraised as being worth $134,000 it has gone up about $50,000 since then...so our taxes have gone up too.  I found out to maintain agricultural status, I have to have at least 100 chickens, I probably have around 320 poultry at the moment, if you count all the chicks...hopefully it will help us more in tax season, we have no backup funds any more, no more money to fall back on.  We have to make our businesses work.  Since I don't have much of a garden this year, I probably won't be canning anything this year either.  I went up on the price of my eggs, but I am not sure if I will be able to sell them at $3 a dozen...even with the Avian Flu and them killing massive amounts of chickens up north, the egg shortage at the stores I am not selling all the eggs I have.

Moving Day

Yesterday, I cleaned brooders and moved babies...a lot of babies.  It has been hot and humid and I have been worried about the babies in the shed.  We have kept the door open and a fan going constantly but they had been getting out and going on the back porch and we were afraid the dogs would get them.  We lost a young rooster a few days ago, he decided he wanted to check out the back yard when the dogs were back there.  We are pretty sure our dog Bailee killed him.  He was dead in the corner of the yard, it had bite marks or so Crew said.  There have been several times the chickens have jumped the fence, but this is the first death.  I started putting the dogs in the house when it is almost time for Crew to come home from work, they know that he will give them treats and they don't always like to wait...the chickens have started jumping the fence and milling around waiting for Crew to come out and feed them scratch grains...or crack as it is known in the chicken circles.

I let the roosters out of the Rooster Condo and started hauling babies and putting them inside.  We moved the Polish Juveniles in with the babies...they are bigger but had been seriously picked on by others...most are bald on most of their head.  They seem so more relaxed now and no one is picking on them...and they were enjoying dust bathing.  The roosters are spending the night in the big coop tonight, but I didn't get gates built for pens yet again and when I do I will separate roosters out again.  My poor hens are looking very bad, at least the ones the roosters favor are...I need to fix that.

A young man that I sold eggs to a few days ago stopped by and bought a few chicks from me, he also bought some duck eggs to eat.  The first carton I pulled out and opened up had two eggs that looked really dark in them...I am guessing they had cracks in them that I didn't see and probably went bad.  That is rather embarrassing.  I try my best to candle everything and make sure it is good when I am washing and putting them in cartons, I am glad my new egg candler arrived.  It seems to work pretty well...I washed and candled eggs and took out probably ten that were cracked or questionable.  I gather eggs every day, multiple times some days...but I still have hens wanting to have babies and they tend to hoard eggs and move nests, and possibly eggs too...I think they crack them, some do it when they use their beak to tuck the eggs under themselves.  Some hens crawl in the nest box and lay eggs on top of them, it gets a little crazy when three hens are in a single nest box.

Last night when I went to put up the poultry, I separated a female duck  who was being chased by three males into one of the breeding pens with three others that were in there.  This time of year it is bad for the females, it is mating season and the boys are pretty much little horn dogs.  They basically gang rape the hens every chance they get.  I feel bad for the girls.  We are going to attempt to separate the male ducks out and leave them in the duck area today.  Duck egg production has dropped way off, but I think they are molting, the drakes feathers are all mottled and ragged looking.  I checked on the babies I moved too, it is funny how they pile in a corner to sleep.  The Polish were piled in the center of the run, but the juveniles were mostly in one corner, with one or two scattered here and there.  I took two of the roosters from the top of the water tote that is hooked up to the big coop and transferred them into the coop, my Blue Splash Andalusian and Speckled Sussex rooster are two of my favorites, I don't want to loose them to the owl that likes to hunt early in the mornings.  

Maybe today I can get a few gates built for the breeding pens and separate some roosters and drakes out.  If not, tomorrow is another day...

Not Getting Any Younger

I guess none of us are getting any younger...but, sometimes I have to remind myself that I am not Wonder Woman.  In any given day I do a lot of things, but it takes me longer to do things then it use to.  My sense of time has been thrown off somewhat, I don't remember what day it is half the time and if I am really busy...I don't realize how fast the day goes by either.  In some ways it is freeing...not having to worry about having to be somewhere at a particular time on a particular day.  I don't worry about traffic, or what other people think of me either.  I rarely wear makeup any more, I cut my hair shorter because the humidity here can be rather unforgiving...and I have very wavy hair.  I did not realize how curly it would get until I stopped blow dying it every day and then sweat combined with drying naturally just makes me look like Shirley Temple some days.

I am discovering I don't like some of the changes taking place in my body, not the appearance of it or the feelings I get in certain parts.  In July 2008, I had surgery for Ovarian Cancer...well, at the time they just thought I had Hemoragic Cysts...I was not feeling well for over a month and they kept doing tests and keeping an eye on things.  I basically found someone who would take my ovaries out for me, I knew something was wrong and I was afraid.  I was right to be afraid, my cancer was very early stage...so early that all they did was take out my ovaries and basically scraped my insides because I had endometriosis really bad.  When I had twins they sewed my uterus up into my stomach muscles and it caused me a lot of pain for a number of years, I had it removed and a medically necessary tummy tuck performed when I was the ripe old age of 25.  Any way it was the start of a medical series of tests and surgeries that lasted several years.  When you are diagnosed with cancer, you tend to do what the doctor thinks is best.  If I hurt somewhere, it triggered more tests.  I had my Gall Bladder out prior to the surgery for my ovaries because of throwing up, and after the surgery for my ovaries I was having a lot of pain in my lower belly, I had a lot of tests done...Upper GI's, Lower GI's, Endoscopies, MRI's, Sonograms, Electrocardiograms, you name it, I probably had it.  I was put on a lot of different drugs too...I am sure it was to help me...but, me being afraid I didn't argue about any of it...except when I was giving the choice to have the staging surgery...I didn't want to be filleted like a fish.  I had a micro-invasion, that basically means that the cancer cells may have left my ovaries.  They were going to cut me from under my arm to my pelvis and take out something like 32 lymph nodes to test for cancer.  But my doctor gave me the choice after consulting with MD Anderson Cancer Center, they thought it was early enough that I could just be watched closely for the next five years.

Anyway, I had lots of procedures for a total of six years.  My body seemed to start falling apart on me, in all the CT Scans and MRI's I had, it was discovered that I may have broken my hip in High School...I was in a car wreck and had to quit the swim team because of the pain...but I had ex rays and they didn't catch it.  I found out I had arthritis and degenerative disk disease in my back from the MRIs, which triggered further tests, some injections in my spine and a stint in pain management boot camp...those MRIs and laying in that machine was very painful, and having to do it every three months did not help.  I had a number of polyps removed that I was told are the kind that could also turn into cancer.  Recently, I had a Mamogram...I had to have a second Mamogram because of an area of concern...since my Mom and her Sister both had Breast Cancer in the last few years...and I already had Ovarian Cancer, it was a little scary going for that second Mamogram.  I am fine...it was just nerve wracking.

I gained a lot of weight from all the drugs I was put on, the back issues I was having and problems with my feet...I went to Pain Management Boot Camp and then ended up going to the Podiatrist after healing from my surgeries for Removal of my Gall Bladder and Cancer...and ended up having surgery on both feet.  So I had 4 surgeries in about a year and a half maybe, not to mention all the tests I underwent.  I did not heal well those last two surgeries, well even the surgery for the cancer I had healing issues and had to have my incision drained a few times and my belly button cauterized.  I could not walk for about 4 weeks after my first foot surgery, I had something called Halus Rigidious (bone spur that keeps your joints from bending), a bunion and arthritis that had screwed up my bones.  I had screws and wires put in my bones, bone grafts and bone cut away and repaired by grinding...you talk about painful...I would rather go through childbirth!  Anyway, I had it done to both feet only about a month apart...and the first surgery was only about 3 months after the cancer surgery.  It seemed like my body was failing me, I gained more weight from being sedentary for a long time...I could not walk, drive or stand up long for months.  I slept with a million pillows, which helped with back pain and kept my legs and feet from swelling to horribly.  My feet kept turning bright red and hurting for a long time, my Podiatrist did X-Rays and my bones in my feet looked like Swiss Cheese...I had something similar to Osteoporosis and had to go to Rehab and have therapy to help regenerate the bones...good times.

I don't usually talk about all this stuff, but I am feeling things stiffening up on me, I am getting additional bones spurs just below my knees that are rather pointy, I can feel my bones rubbing together in my back at night and can hear the grinding and popping.  My hands do not grip well early in the day and I drop things sometimes, along with bone spurs on my thumbs.  My hip bothers me a lot and when I get up and walk across the floor I can feel bones rubbing together in my feet.  Funny thing is, the more I move and spend time outside the better I feel...provided I rest a lot.  My feet hurt pretty badly at times, walking on the sandy soil does that to me...I have to wear pretty stiff shoes to support my feet well, but it is hard to find comfortable shoes with the right support.  My feet have swollen so badly a few times that my husband had to cut a pair of boots off of me....that happens when I spend a lot of time on special projects.  I found some work boots with a zipper down the outside at an unusual angle that helps to remove them when that happens now.  I am talking about this, because I feel better now than when we lived in Dallas, I have lost 75 pounds in two years, gotten off the majority of the drugs they put me on and little by little certain things, like the major swelling in my hands and legs have gone away. I am not on any major pain killers any more, just Aleve when I need it...yes, there are long stretches that I take it...but, I hurt too bad when I skip taking it and actually can't sleep when I overdo it outside sometimes.

Anyway, I am mortal...I have not given up and I enjoy my life these days.  Yes, I do talk about my chickens a lot, but they are keeping me moving and loosing the weight I needed to loose...I don't like how my skin kinda sags in spots, but I don't have to look in the mirror if I don't want to...and I don't wear shorts any more anyway.  I can move better without the weight and even though after several days of bending and squatting and my knee hurting somewhat, after a couple of days of light duty...it is feeling better and I will get back to construction of a grow out pen.  I have company coming too!  Lol...I have a new grand daughter and Sara and Mark are bringing her out to see us before she goes back to work.  Sara had to deliver Eleanor early by c-section so we were not able to get there in time for the birth, but we have had trouble with our only truck so, we have been sticking close to home anyway.  I am excited to get to see her and hold her for the first time!  It may be a bit before I write again, I have a lot to get done and it takes me twice as long as it use to...I am not getting any younger!

Chicks, Juvies & Full Growns...Ducks, Geese & Turkey's!

I very well may be crazy, I have a problem with chicken math.  I am not 100% sure how many chickens I have at the moment.  I know I have 30 chicks in the house, I probably have 45 to 50 on the back porch and I have about the same in the swimming pool brooder in the shed.  It no longer contains the chicks, I have a baby gate in front of the door and my husband actually found juveniles on the porch this morning!  I have older Juveniles in what I call the Sidecar to the big coop.  I am guessing about 40 in there.  That doesn't include the ones in the "Big Coop", "The Rooster Condo", the "Chicken Tractor" area, the "Lowboy" or the "Kennel"....that is probably about 120 adult chickens.  So what is that total?  Just over 250 chickens?

I have 13 young turkey poults too.  I have 17 ducks and 5 geese.  Does it sound like I am on my way to a full-fledged poultry farm?  I am certainly trying to be!  I still have broody hens and decided to give a few fertile duck eggs.  I have several broody hens and one is especially nasty.  I have been bitten, I have been flogged and just down right attacked several times by her...she is a nasty broody hen!  I have a beak mark and a bruise from her on my forearm, it really surprised me how viscous she is when it comes to the eggs she is sitting on.  I may have to move her and give her eggs to sit on before she does serious damage to me.  I still have several broody hens, but not all of them are as nasty towards me is this little bearded devil.  I have three broody Marans and they are pretty docile, my Easter Eggers pecks me when I remove eggs and so does my Silver Laced Wyandotte.  The Buff Orpington is starting to peck me too...all of them are getting very thin.  I gave a Black Sex-Link a couple of duck eggs, I may give the rest a few to sit on too.  I am done incubating in the house, to many disappointments...although my own eggs hatched without problems, I have a lot of barnyard mixes already...so they will be my egg layers if I don't sell them.

The Avian Flu has hit the Northern Tier of the United States really badly, a lot of poultry is being put to death because of it.  As far as I know it has not hit Texas yet.  There are very few cases of the Avian Flu in backyard flocks, it is mainly hitting major poultry producers that have hundreds of thousands of chickens and turkey's.  Prices are skyrocketing at the grocery store for eggs, I am sure prices for anything that contains eggs will go up dramatically too. Eggs are being rationed and businesses like McDonalds are unable to get the quantities they need.  I guess it is a good time to have chickens, because I have plenty of eggs...and the Avian Flu has hit turkeys too...so Thanksgiving  Turkeys may be out of a lot of people's price range this year.  They are saying it may take a couple of years for the big poultry houses to recover.  I will not bring in any outside chickens any more, my flock is healthy and I plan for it to stay that way.  So get ready if you live in the United States, eggs are going up, chicken and turkey prices are going up too...don't be too surprised if eggs get up to $10 a dozen before it is all said and done.  I have only gone up to $3 a dozen so far, that is still cheaper than the price for the cheapest eggs...and I still don't make enough of of sales to feed my chickens yet.