Memorial Day Memory

This is one of the hardest holidays for me, in 1980 on Memorial Day...I slept later than normal, I was completely exhausted.  I had identical twin boys that were three months and one day old, on the 26th of May, in 1980...it was Memorial Day.

I woke up suddenly and realized it was daylight, I sat bolt upright because I was normally up tending the babies several times during the night, and I slept through it all.  My oldest son who was not even two yet...didn't wake me up, I didn't hear but one baby fussing, I hurried to the end of the hall and started tending to the first baby, it was Mitchell. I changed his diaper and as wet as he was, I thought it would be good to go ahead and change Michaels diaper too and get them both fed since they didn't have a bottle during the night.  Their cribs were end to end against one wall.

Micheal was not fussing at all, I turned him over to change him and his lips were dark blue, his eyes glazed over and unblinking.  I screamed and my husband came running down the hall...He carried Micheal to the living room and started CPR, I could tell him things to try but, I could not move from his side.  He had to tell me to call an abulance.  I ran to the phone to call 911.  The fire rescue was only a block away and they made it to the house in minutes.  I knew when I saw him that he was probably dead, but we tried to save him anyway.  The paramedics tried to get a heartbeat and get him breathing and rushed him to the hospital ahead of us.  We threw on clothes, grabbed the diaper bag and the boys and took off for the hospital as fast as we could.  I remember my husband at the time telling me to make sure and bring clothes for Micheal, because he WAS coming home.  When we arrived at the hospital everything seemed like a blur, I vaguely remember them telling us that he had a heartbeat but could not get him breathing on his own and he went into cardiac arrest and died...they had to do an autopsy and because he died at the hospital, we would be investigated, it was routine.

I was just numb, in shock.  Blamed myself for sleeping through the night, not feeding them that night.  I had taken the twins for a checkup the day before and they got a clean bill of health and their first set of shots.  How could this just happen like this?  They called it Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or S.I.D.S.

I think that any parent would blame themselves in the death of their child when it happened so suddenly.  Micheal had bruises on his legs from getting stuck between the side bars on the crib and the mattress too.  I had been in the hospital for almost a month and was not prepared for the twins to be born so early.  I was put into a ward room that had six beds when they admitted me on Valentine's Day.  I am fairly tall at five foot eight, I was heavy with child and each time I went for a checkup they tried to send me to labor and delivery, I was huge...but I had to explain about the twins growing inside me.  Anyway, I had several roommates while I was there at the hospital.  I was offered used cribs from two girls that had an extra one.  So at least the babies had a place to sleep when we took them home...one of the mattresses did not fit well in the crib, there was a space and after Micheal had fallen between the mattress and the bars and got stuck one night, I had stuffed a sleeping bag down in the space to keep it from happening again.

My sister-in-law and her son were living with us, as was my mother-in-law and her husband.  This was a in a two bedroom house mind you...I had told them they would all need to find an apartment or something before I brought the babies home.  It was not a bad sized house, it had a formal dining room, a breakfast room, a large eat in sized kitchen and a sun porch in addition to the two bedrooms and living room.  But it only had one bathroom.  I got stuck in the hospital early because the doctor was worried about me not getting the rest I needed, He had told me I was to lay flat on my back and the only time I could get up was to go to the bathroom.  Tell me, how could I do that when I had a toddler, his cousin wasn't even three yet and I was the one they came to when they were hungry?  It was difficult for me to do much of anything as big as I was at seven and a half months into my pregnancy...I had to turn sideways at the kitchen sink to even reach the faucet, the counter was very low in this house...if I tried to reach the faucet facing towards the front, my big belly got in the way and I could not touch it.

I am sorry, trying to explain a little of the situation at the time.  My husband was working nights and his sister worked during the day, and my mother-in-law was suppose to be tending to the children but she didn't usually get out of bed until 9 or 10...so, I would get up and get breakfast for the boys and usually do the dishes...or try to.  The day I was admitted to the hospital my father-in-law was in a car accident, he actually was in the hospital a day or two longer than I was, I don't remember all of his injuries, but he did have a broken leg and was in a cast from his toes to midway up his thigh when he came back to the house.  My Mother-in-law, who was suppose to be watching the boys spent most of her time at the hospital with her husband instead.  I am not sure how things were going at the house during the time I was in the hospital.  I was not happy when I came home though, I didn't get to bring my babies home, my Mother-in-law had gone through all of my things, stripped my bed of my new sheets and bedspread and they were on her bed and was wearing my clothes!  You talk about pissed off...and they had not moved out yet!

It was not a good time in my life.  It was also my first experience with death.  I had never been to a funeral and I was being investigated for the death of my child and having to try and make funeral and burial arrangements for the first time and I was barely 21 years old.  I kept dreaming about different scenarios, maybe what we could have done differently, how we could have helped Micheal differently, dreaming that he actually came home from the hospital that day.  It was tough,  I drank a lot the first few days after it happened...I wanted to numb the pain of his death and all that was chaotic in my world at the time.  It is hard not to think about everything that happened that Memorial Day, it rushes back at me even after all this time.  I think it would have killed me too, if it had not been for Mitchell, Micheals twin brother.  I snapped out of it for him and Jeremy's sakes.  It was three months and one day after the twins were born that Micheal passed away.  I went through counseling after it happened, my husband did not...I think he may have blamed me or maybe himself for Micheals death, I am not sure...he never talked about it.

I hope you have better Memorial Day memories than I.  It has a different meaning to me than most people.  I lost a son, but gained a Gardian Angel and he has watched over us ever since then.  I have asked him to watch over and protect his brothers on numerous occasions.  They both spent time or are spending time in the Military.  Mitchell spent almost two years fighting the war in the war in Iraq, and I think Micheal kept him safe from bodily harm and brought him home to me in one piece physically.  War is hard on everyone who is involved...don't forget the families of our fallen.  Memorial Day is a day of remembrance, let us not forget those who sacrificed their lives fighting for our freedom and to keep us that way.

I am sorry if my writing is fragmented sometimes or seems strange, my life has not been an easy one, parts of it I rather just block out and forget...but not anything having to do with my kids.

Garden Is Planted, Let It Rain!

It took me awhile, but I finally got my garden planted.  It is not big enough, so I will have to till a bit more or do a raised bed for strawberries and herbs.  I have some things in pots too.  I do have tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, corn, green beans and water melons planted...so if nothing else, at least we will have some stuff.  I looked on all my fruit trees and have very little fruit on most of them, that late freeze after they started blooming damaged the fruiting process...except for the older peach trees there are quite a few peaches on the peach bush we have...lol, yes a huge peach bush.  I am guessing it died back, was cut down and came back from the stump...lots of trunks and it looks like a huge bush.  There is a red bud bush too.

I did get a gate built and chicken wire around the fencing I put up to keep the rabbits out of the garden too.  So far, none of the chickens have gotten into the area and the turkeys have gone on the outside perimeter of the fence, but I left a good distance around it so that if they ran the fence, they would not be very close to the street.  I am worried about another one of my turkeys getting hurt when they jump the fence.  I want to eventually put a fence down the property line to keep the wild dogs and coyotes further away.  I saw something pretty big digging around my compost pile the other night, it had a bushy tail and looked like a dog or coyote.  I wouldn't have seen it, but my dogs were in the backyard and were barking at it...and I walked out a little way and saw it, it was dark but it was a light color what ever it was.  I went and got my husband and he got the pellet gun, but it disappeared before he saw it.

The Dewberries have been ripening and I have picked a couple gallon zip lock bags full, with all the rain we have had, some of them are quite large.  I saw that the Chicasaw plums were ripening some too.  Not a real good crop this year, but maybe I can make some jelly enough for us for the year.  I just have to get out there and pick them soon, before the birds get them all.  But, we are suppose to get rain all week long though...so who knows...last year they all exploded and fell off because of so much rain.

I got my first batch of chicks out to the Side Car...grow out pen and moved chicks on the back porch around.  I have another brooder to clean out and then I can move some more from inside the house to the back porch.  My hurt turkey is now back out in the yard, she just had one tiny scab left and I am gonna cross my fingers and hope she doesn't get injured again...her side has no feathers under her wing.  I need to get some roosters off of the porch too, but I had to remove the tarp off of the pens they use to be in...it ripped down the middle and didn't keep rain out any more.  I am tired of having 11 roosters on my back porch...they are loud, but pretty good at alerting me to things going on outside.  I moved the three baby ducks to the porch too, it was getting rather warm in my he feed shed...so they are in a five foot wide kiddie pool with cage wire wrapped around the sides so they can't get out of it.  I would love to get everything off of the porch, but with so much rain and as chilly as today was, it won't happen any time soon.  I still have to have heat lamps on the little ones and don't have electricity out in the yard.

I filled my incubators up again with eggs, but this will probably be the last hatch until I get a lot of things done.  I have building to do still, my breeding pens are still not made yet and I gotta get them built.  I have a house full of chicks to grow up and three weeks until the next batch starts hatching.  I hope to sell some of these birds, I have turkeys and geese to sell and some older chicks now...and I still have a bunch of broody poultry, although I am not sure the geese will actually hatch anything, the chickens are eating eggs and my broody duck keeps moving her nest every day.  I am guessing I won't get too many babies out of them.  But time will tell.

Babies Everywhere!

My broody hens have been hatching babies here and there, I have incubated more eggs and have chicks, a goose and turkeys in the house brooders and ducks in the feed room brooder, plus brooders on my back porch.  I still have a lot of broody hens, a broody duck and a broody goose too.  The goose and ducks are my first broodies of waterfowl, I keep waiting for a turkey to go broody next.

I have babies hatching in one incubator, maybe four goose eggs will hatch around the 12th of May and trying again with some Ancona duck eggs which should hatch about the same time.  I gave my broody duck new eggs...I had given her eggs but she kicked the ones I gave her out of the nest and laid her own.  Apparently none of them were fertile...she kicked the last one out of the nest yesterday.  She was very happy this time to have eggs, I gave her 8 and she tucked them under her as fast as I gave them to her.  I have had such bad luck hatching goose eggs this year, I was glad to see one of my females go broody.  I am not sure she will have any hatch either, but she has quite a few under her...she is taking the other two females eggs too.  We go into the coop and give her food and water and sometimes all three females are grouped together and they sleep with the broody at night.

I am happy to say I have been successful hatching my turkey eggs, I love the little chirpy sounds they make.  I have about 8 turkey poults at the moment, one that looks different, I want to keep.  This one looked almost black when it hatched.  It has lightened up slightly but has very dark eyes and dark legs too.  I guess it is a genetic mutation...I want to see what it will look like when it gets all of its feathers.  Bad thing is happening with my female turkeys, they are laying eggs outside of the fence, one of them was injured and it looked like two possible dog bites, she had two holes in her side under her wing and has been on my porch for weeks, she is healing well, but still has a way to go.  Another turkey hen laid a clutch of 15 eggs under the stairs of my shed, but she had dug a depression and we received five inches of rain before I found them...I thought it best to toss all of them.  She has decided to lay elsewhere and I am worried she may get attacked by the dogs next door too.

I stay busy, cleaning, taking care of babies, broodies and house chores...and got my garden planted finely.  The wild dewberries are ripening and I pick them when I have the chance, and picked my first blueberries yesterday.  I have four grapevines that flowered this year so that is good...just 6 more to go!  We had late freezes so I don't have much fruit on my trees, except maybe peaches...and I need to spray some Neem Oil or Dormant Oil on them.

I started my breeding pens...so, yeah just busy.

Spring Has Sprung!

Spring is such a busy time of the year for me, I have been trying to hatch eggs from my chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys...some successful...some not so much.  I have really been disappointed with the goose and duck hatches.  I only had 7 ducks hatch the second go round and that was out of 42 eggs...the major rain we got seemed to have ruined several batches of the goose eggs I set too, out of the last 24 goose eggs, I have only had two hatch.  I have more in the incubator now, we shall see how it goes, those that I set on March 10, do not look viable...I candled them and put them in the hatcher anyway hoping my eyes deceived me...but when you can't see them moving at lockdown, you pretty much know after awhile.  You can see the differences in the shadows, some eggs look almost translucent in spots.  I have successfully hatched one turkey so far.  It is kinda like the first goose, I set eggs and only one developed...not all of them were fertile.  If things don't go awry I should have a batch hatch around the thirteenth.  I have hatched some eggs through the mail too, not great hatches but at least different bloodlines to breeds like my Jubilee And Lavender Orpington's, more Isbars, a few Lemon Cuckoo Orpingtons.  I have acquired some Mottled Java and Welsummer chicks that a guy I sell eggs to picked up for me at Tractor Supply, his neighbor works there and calls him when they have special breeds.  I have some Mottled Java eggs in the incubator now too, so I am hoping with the two or three Black Java's I have I can breed more blacks out of the Mottled Java's and Black Java's I do have.

I won a rare breed auction on ducks too.  The eggs should hatch around the fifteenth along with the turkey poults due at about the same time.  Ancona, Saxony and Welsh Harlequins will also not be a great hatch, about 50 percent of the eggs are developing, but we need more girls in our flock and rarer breeds than Rouen and Khaki Campbell's.  We lost two female ducks to drowning...the males hold their heads under the water when they mate, sometimes too long.  My husband loves the waterfowl, the geese are his favorite, but he loves giving the babies baths and watching them swim.  They are messy little things but grow really fast.   Speaking of ducks...we have our first broody duck!  We have one female Golden Hybrid 300...and she is sitting on some duck eggs in a kennel on the back porch, I am not sure if any will hatch...but she seems pretty determined to hatch some out.

This time of year we have a lot of broody hens too.  I my big coop I have at least eleven broodies, some are two to a nest box.  In the Coop we call the Condo, there are five broody hens...two nest boxes have two each and yesterday I noticed a Cream Legbar in one of the floor nest boxes sitting in it all day.  Even the Chicken Tractor area has two broody hens...I have a kennel that has a covered cat box in it that also has two hens sitting in it.  In a few weeks, we will have baby chicks coming out of our ears.  I have been picking up chicks as I find them, I snagged a few that didn't make it because the hens didn't keep them warm enough when we had freezes.  I check the nest boxes more often now.  I found a lone chick running around the yard by itself about a week ago, I could hear it and started looking all inside the coop, out in the run I heard it better but couldn't find it...went outside and the little thing was running around beside the big coop with no supervision.  Lol, it was kind of funny...but I grabbed it and carried it around in my shirt while I checked on the other chickens.

We did finally start on my breeding pens, but ended up taking what we did apart.  I started over and basically am rethinking my design.  I was going to have the coops raised at least two feet off of the ground, but decided to just raise them a little and put them on cinder blocks and make them taller.  I was going to make them more like my chicken tractor shape, but now I think it will be closer to the big coop in style.  It has been nice the past few days, but I have not worked on them...instead I have been fencing in my new garden area.  I need to get plants in the ground, I have tilled and put composted chicken manure over half of the new garden.  I can't plant until I have finished fencing though, the rabbits and chickens ate everything last year...so this year I am putting chicken wire over the bottom section of fencing, moved the garden to the front of the house so the chickens aren't tempted to jump the fence and eat the tender green shoots rising out of the ground and enclosing the whole thing so that the dogs can't run through it and destroy the plants.  Yep, busy time of the year...

Rooster In The House!

With all the rain we had...came terrible mud.  Thick goo actually.  My poor penned up roosters have suffered because of it.  I put a few of them in the new cage I made.  My husband gave them baths and we doctored them up when needed.  A couple of them got squished into the mud and ended up with eye infections, so I gave one a couple of shots of antibiotics and put an antibiotic ointment in his eye, he is on the back porch.  I have one in the house that I have put eye ointment in one eye, he didn't have much of the cheesy material in his eye, so no shots.  I can tell he is feeling better...he was crowing in the house this morning.  He was responding to the roosters in cages on the back porch.  Even though officially it is spring here now, we had a light freeze the night before last.  I moved some of my chicks to the outdoor brooder on the porch, so I had to keep the latest rooster In the house until he was dry.  It is easier to just doctor on him when I don't have to catch him too...he is crowing again now!  It is quite the surprise to hear a rooster crowing in your house, they are very loud.

I will probably try and move the roosters on the back porch to a pen today.  It is suppose to rain a few more inches this week though, so I am not sure how good an idea that would be.  I need to build more housing, so I guess I should get to work on my breeding pens.  I will till the area today and try and make it more level.  I need to put out some grass seed too, my old garden area needs to grow back...the more grass I have for the chickens, the less they eat of their food and that helps with feed cost.  I sold all of my mixed breed hens now.  But I am hatching some chicks to try and replace the eggs, a lot of people want full grown hens that are already laying too...I cannot sell them if I don't have them.  I have goose, duck, turkey and chicken eggs in my incubators now.  I have chicks in one brooder in the house, ducks and a goose in one, and two large geese...Hope and Mercy in a swimming pool brooder in the house too...but they are old enough to go outside now.  We are slowly trying to integrate them with the rest of the flock.  We have put them in a fenced area behind the main coop during the day a few times, but as cold as it has been the past few days, we bring them back inside at night.  We are growing these geese out to try and get Thor some ladies, he seems pretty interested in getting to know them.  Thor is just over two years old, he needs companionship other than the ducks he hangs around with.  Loki basically took the other females when we got them, so we are trying to bond Loki's daughters to Thor...we know they are Loki's because they all have blue eyes like Loki.  I even know the mother goose, she is the smallest of the three girls, she did not start laying last year...so she was the first to start this year.  I guess we should give Loki's girls names, only one is named Athena so far...and this is not Athena.  Thor does occasionally mate with one of the other girls, but we should be able to tell the difference with his babies, they should have brown eyes like Thor...and the girls...I think.

Decisions Decisions Decisions

I purchased the wood last week for breeding pens and have been looking around my yard trying to figure out the most level, best draining, easiest access place to put them.  I have been measuring and moving and measuring again.  I am building the pens so they will be connected, so not easily moved...each individual pen will be 4 feet wide and 12 feet long, part of that will be a raised coop, so the run will be 12 feet long.  I am going to model them after the chicken tractor I built when I first started with chickens...but the runs will be taller.

After much thought, I think I am going to take a section of fencing out from my duck and goose area to a smallish garden area to build them.  There is the remnants of a very large stump in that garden, I found it when I expanded the garden, but I just worked around it at the time.  I have decided to put it in this area because of a gentle slope, it will drain when it rains.  It is up high enough that it won't flood like my makeshift breeding pens housing some of the roosters...and it is the flattest section I can find big enough that doesn't flood.  There is a drain pipe to drain water from the back yard but I will just put them far enough into the duck pen that they are not affected by them.  It will be shaded in the late afternoon for the most part so summer heat shouldn't be an issue.

Well, I started writing this a couple three weeks ago...a lot has happened since then.  I have been hatching geese ducks and chicks, which makes more work for me.  At the moment I have 6 goslings in various stages of development, had 7 ducklings hatch a few days ago, have chicks inside and outside in brooders...probably about 25 of them and have set more eggs.  I have sold pretty much all of my extra hens...oh, and I have at least two of my turkey hens laying and have been setting their eggs too.  I candled one that I set about 4 days ago and I see veins and a tiny little body!  I am so happy, I love the sounds all of theses little birds make.  It is a lot of work cleaning up after them so I stay busy.

We also have had some major rain, we probably received about 12-1/2 inches of rain in two days.  Our creek overflowed it's banks, the lake is super full, my yard still has standing water in it and everything is a muddy mess.  My husband has gathered up some of the muddiest roosters and given them baths...so my three kennels and two brooders on the back porch are all full, and only one has chicks in it.  I have 12 adults on my back porch, it is getting kind of crowded.  Because of all this...I am building an 8'x 30" brooder/cage that will be divided into three sections.  I may have to build another one too.  We started on the breeding coops and pens...but I may have to take the one we started apart, the ground is just not quite right and I think I will till and level it somewhat, we were trying to make it square on a surface that is slightly stair stepped and angled down...we may have to set the posts in cement and just level the coop section and not have the run attached to the coop, unless I can level it much better.

In the mean time, Spring has sprung.  I tilled a new garden area in my front yard, it is already growing grass...I have not planted anything yet, but have tilled it twice.  It needs to be fenced and I am working on that too, I have driven a number of t-posts into the ground, but had to stop, I need to get the utility lines marked so I don't cut into anything.  In the beginning I was just going to fence the garden area, but I planted some fruit bushes and trees and need a larger area fenced.  It takes a lot of fencing to keep making small sectioned off areas, it will work out less expensive just to fence the outside perimeter of the front yard.  Since the front of our property is almost 400 feet from marker to marker...that is a lot of fence.  I would really like to fence about 200 feet down each side and just on the other side of the lake too....then, I could let the dogs out into the large section of the yard and not have to worry about them getting into the street or my neighbors yards, no fighting with the wild dog pack either, and maybe the ducks and geese could go to the lake safely to swim and weed?

Anyway, I got up early for a Sunday, but we were suppose to change the clocks last night, and didn't yet.  I like day lights savings time...yes, we may have lost an hour, but it will be light later now so more daylight equals me having more time to get things done outside that I need to do.  Tops on my list is finishing the cage I am building today.  I need to plant some veggies, but it is too muddy...and then while I have the tiller out, I may as well till the breeding pen section...and there is always cleaning that needs to happen.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Every day has it's challenges, some days can be pretty good one minute and the next everything comes crashing down.  Yesterday was one of those days.  For my Valentine's Day gift from my husband, he told me I could get the materials for breeding pens.  It has been something I have wanted for quite awhile.  So I went with him and dropped him off at work on Saturday.  I had to go to town and had someone interested in hatching eggs, so I took them with me and they met me to pick them up.  That went off without a hitch, but my trip for the materials, not so much.

When you live in a tiny town and have to drive 30 plus miles to pick up specific things for a decent price, you make the most of it.  I picked up a few grocery items, then went to the Home Improvement store for wood.  Saturday's are usually awful shopping for anything and the weather has been so nice, everyone was out in hordes.  I could not get anyone to help me pull and load the wood, except customers who saw me struggling with the plywood...well, not at first anyway.  I loaded raidient barrier decking by myself, an older gentleman helped me and so did another lady with the plywood.  I pulled everything else except the 2"x4"x8' that there were not enough of on the shelves.  It took a long time going through the line, they opened a lane and the man behind me ran to it...they said credit cards only...that guy misunderstood, but had cash but it took time to sort it all out because the register did not have any cash in it for change.  After a lot of back and forth and trying to come up with the proper cash, it was my turn.  I could not pull my carts through the line so they took the price gun and scanned everything and told me they would load everything for me, because they would have to pull the 2"x4"s from out front.

I paid and went and got my truck and moved it close to the loading area.  Another man backed in before I had the chance, so I had to wait my turn.  He had a large load and no help to load it.  It looked like he was completely redoing a bathroom or two with all the tile, toilet, sinks and cabinetry and wood, either that or building one from scratch.  It took awhile, once he moved it had been about half an hour, I checked the time and it was almost 1:30pm...I was suppose to pick my husband up at 2:00.  I called him and told him I was waiting for my stuff to be loaded and I would be late picking him up.  I pulled in and the guy who had told me they would come load my truck was no where to be found.  I pulled and shoved my carts to the loading area and started unloading the smaller wood into my truck.  I am kind of a stickler keeping things neat and tidy doing this, trying to fill the bed of the truck so the load would not shift.  After I had unloaded about half of it, the man who had checked me out ran by, went and got carts and took them into the store, then came back out to help me.  We got everything loaded but the 2"x4"s and he told me to drive and follow him.  I backed up to the pile and he started loading them in...I got out and started helping, one reason I like to do the loading is I get to select the wood...and I pick wood that has the fewest knots and no splits...and straight...he did not, so I was loading as fast as I could.

Here is were things start getting bad.  I had the tailgate down and left it down because I had 12 foot lengths of wood.  I went and got red flags to put on the ends but they had nails to put them on with.  I didn't bring a hammer with me.  The wood was wet, so I tried pushing them in with my thumbs, it hurt, so I grabbed some paper and folded it several times and shoved those nails at least an inch and a half into the ends of the wood.  I got the tie down straps and tried to tie the wood down the best I could, as tight as I could.  I thought the load was pretty evenly balanced and the weight was really heavy so it should hold everything down well the way it was stacked, no side to side movement either...I was so wrong.  There is a little hill to get out of the parking lot...and bed liners are super slick.  I am so glad there was no one behind me when it happened.  I heard a noise felt jolt, the truck bounced and then I heard a loud crash...I lost my entire load, one big neatly stacked pile slid right out of my truck onto the driveway in the parking lot.  A man drove up, I am not sure if he saw what happened, but he asked me if I could use a hand...just seconds before, I was feeling like crying and wondering how the heck was I going to get all that wood back into my truck by myself?

There are many good people in this world, a man his wife and two daughters also stopped to help.  It was chaotic wood going everywhere and to make sure the wood stayed in the truck, we put the tail gate up and just piled everything in, it ended up being a hap hazard mess, but it was reloaded and the second man even when and got additional tie straps out of his truck and he and his wife tied the load down for me.  I thanked them all and asked if I could mail the tie down straps back to him and he said it was not necessary, he had a lot of them and always bought more on sale...not to worry about it.  I did not inspect the load, they wanted to make sure it wouldn't fall out so I slowly drove out of the parking lot, nothing shifted but once I got on the highway I was worried, the truck shimmied in the wind really badly.  It was not evenly loaded and the front of the truck was lighter than the back.  I drove slowly back to pick up my husband...I was an hour late.

My husband drove home, the truck continued to shimmy.  It was a bit scary, but we made it...next time, I think I will just go ahead and pay for delivery...I was trying to save money.  We pulled the truck down into the yard and unloaded it close to the area I had planned to build.  We put pallets down first and stacked the wood on top of them.  The ugly...well, the wood was so heavy that it bent the top of the tailgate of the truck, something I had avoided originally by leaving the tailgate down...but that is how I lost my load.  My husband used a rubber mallet and tried to pop the metal back into place, it worked pretty well...not much I can do about it now anyway.  So, I learned another lesson...I am not sure how heavy all that wood really was...but it was wet and a lot of it heavier than usual, and I know I had a heck of a time even moving the carts it was loaded on.  I know what not to do now, no more open tailgate with a load of wood...bedliners are slick and any incline can make them slide...even with tie downs if it is heavy enough it won't stop it from sliding right out.  I also learned it is best not to put a large amount of wood, especially wet wood...stacked on top of your tailgate.  I have no clue how much it actually weighed...but I know it is too much if I can't move the cart made for that purpose.

Oh well, I will be busy next week...building.  I hope I can get the breeding pens completed pretty quickly.  Once I can separate breeds I should be able to sell full breed chicks.  It would be nice to be able to actually make enough money to feed them every week too, now if I can just get rid of 30 or 40 roosters or more, things will start looking up.  I must get busy, I have brooders to clean and a baby goose pipping, incubators to check and laundry to do.  I am sure glad my husband cooks on the weekends, at least I know we will eat good...I don't eat too much during the week sometimes, just get so busy I don't think about it much and time passes by quickly when you are busy.

Letting Go

OK, one of the he hardest things there is for me to do is to let go of my babies.  I have been hatching geese and ducks and have been selling them.  It is not so bad selling eggs, but there is a lot of work involved in all of my poultry endeavors and after collecting the eggs, setting them in the incubator, checking them multiple times a day for humidity and temperature, some hand turning each egg twice a day, candling them and inspecting the growth rate, seeing the small signs of life blooming in the egg, waiting and performing these tasks every day for anywhere from 21 days for chickens to 30 days for geese...waiting for the first pip, trying my best to make sure they all make it...even if it means helping.  It is just hard...I hope it gets easier.

I sold 16 ducklings and 3 goslings this week, I have sold 3 dozen hatching eggs too...but, I have filled all of my egg flats and the fridge I keep eggs in.  I have a lot of eggs.  I have duck eggs and chicken eggs all over my kitchen, I have a few small first turkey eggs and all three geese are laying now...but I keep putting their eggs in the incubator...it is getting full, but it won't be long and I should have a couple more hatching...and I have four reserved and more people wanting some as soon as they are available.  It shouldn't be much longer and my turkey hens should all start laying, the first eggs I have found are about the size of chicken eggs...but should get bigger...then I will hatch them too.

I think chicks are the easiest to hatch and care for, geese don't really move around much the first two days, but their shells are so thick I imagine it takes a lot out of them and they need time to recover.  Ducks recover quicker and generally start scooting around pretty quickly after the break out of the shell.  Waterfowl are extremely messy though, the older they get as babies the worse it gets because once the discover water they start playing in it, drench their bedding numerous times a day, the more they drink and eat the more they poop too...and that is a lot.  I had 17 ducks, I kinda wanted to keep a couple that were not full breed...they had a black diamond shape on their head were gold colored and had a black tail...but after taking care of them for over a week I decided to sell them all...I listed I had 16 for sale, but I had 17 and ended up throwing one in for free so it wouldn't be alone.  I gave that customer a dozen duck eggs too, they said they really liked eating them and I have an over abundance of them, I was just going to pitch them into compost soon if I didn't sell them.

I basically have a waiting list for goslings now, and people want me to call them when I have turkeys available too.  It is easier for me to sell them just after hatching so I don't interact with them much and form attachments...makes it easier to let them go.

Inside Work Today

I hate to think I still overwork my body, but I do.  I just don't realize how bad until the next day.  I mucked out several coops and tilled and my wrists and arms are feeling it today.  I picked up feed buckets yesterday and it hurt my ribs too, so instead of trying to remove all the spent/composted bedding in the run of the big coop, I have been cleaning and organizing some.  I got the pantry done and I am almost done with the laundry room.  I keep egg cartons and containers in there.  I have been throwing things on top of the fridge and freezer in there in plastic bags.  I finally organized all of them and wiped down, dusted a bit...got fifty million grocery sacks out of the pantry too.  So I am not resting...just changing the muscles I am using, well except probably when I vacuumed and mopped.

I have another gosling trying to hatch, it started pipping yesterday.  It is not due to hatch until tomorrow.  It made no progress overnight which concerned me.  I have picked at the shell and removed enough to make sure it can breath and I can add a little water inside the shell every couple of hours.  I won't pick any more shell off until tomorrow, and then only if it has not escaped or made progress.  I have ducks that will need to go on lockdown soon too.  Mercy, Hope and Gracie are all doing well.  Mercy has chewed on her wing stub a bit, I started spraying it with Scarlet Oil more often.  I am just trying to get her to heal up...she will be a keeper.  I tend to get attached to my special needs critters.  Maybe we can hope for a miracle for her and her wing will regenerate?

The nine baby ducks are doing really well, they are cute little boogers, but messy as all get out.  I have changed out their bin twice today because they are playing in the water and pooping up a storm. I am using five layer puppy training pads in the brooder bins and they still got all wet and nasty.  I hate giving them a bath so early in life, but it may end up being a necessity.  It probably doesn't help that Hope the gosling is in with the ducks she is ten days old now, but since we put her in with the ducks we can tell she has grown, in just two days.  I tried putting her back in with Mercy, but Mercy grabbed her by the tail and was tossing Hope around so, I put her back.  She is slightly larger than the ducks now.

I sold 10 dozen eggs today, I know he is going to hatch them.  I didn't wash them or refrigerate them so it was easier on me.  He is going to set more on the 16th and asked me if I would have more then.  I am going to hatch chicks soon, just trying to get some things done first and I would like to have breeding pens built so I can hatch full breed chickens.  My chickens are laying like gangbusters so I will have them, even after selling him 10 dozen I probably have 25 dozen still and I have not gathered eggs today yet.  I have been getting 4 dozen plus eggs a day lately.  Ah well it is about feeding time and I still have to finish my kitchen mess.  I just thought I would write while I am taking a break.

Geese, Ducks and Gardening

We have had two more geese hatch and 9 ducks now, our oldest goose baby we have named Grace or Gracie.  We tried to sex it and the two others, they all looked the same and we think are girls.  I am thinking their names are Grace, Hope and Mercy.  One is very small...she is Hope, because I hope she gets bigger soon!  Lol, she is half the size of the other one born the same day.  I decided on Mercy for the other one, we moved all of the geese together in one brooder...we now know it was a mistake.  My husband put Hope in the brooder with the newly hatched ducks because Grace was picking on her.  We went outside to do some repairs and chores and he heard screaming...I didn't hear them because I was tilling.  But soon after I came in the house to check on them...Mercy was soaking wet cold and her wing tip section was gone...she had a long tendon looking thing hanging off what was left of her wing.  Mercy and Hope are one week old...Grace is three weeks old, she is larger...but we didn't think she would be a cannibal!

I washed Mercy and inspected her, she was shaking so I wrapped her in a towel and held her.  She gradually warmed up, dried and I sprayed scarlet oil on the tendon thing that was left.  I put her in a brooder by herself.  Little did we know she would chew the tendon off!  Geeze, I had no idea these cute fluffy balls of feathers could be so mean and cruel.  The moral to the story is...do not put different sized baby geese together!  Hope has a little damage, some of her down is missing, but no body parts, she and the baby ducks are the same size...so she is safe in with them.  I ended up trimming off what looked like a string with a couple of tiny feathers off of Mercy...she is doing fine this morning.  We moved Grace out to a brooder in the shed, she is by herself, but she has grown so quickly she quickly outgrew the indoor brooder in the house.  She is in a small swimming pool with wire around the edge about 30 inches high.  We tried to sex the 8 week old ducks, we think we might have three girls...I don't know, we really couldn't see any difference.  We will know for sure in another couple of months anyway.

I got another cattle panel coop completed, it has been named The Stadium.  Why you ask?  Well, I made a roost for it that reminds us of stadium seating.  The bottom section is open so the roosters housed in it can run around, dust bathe, and eat without problems.  The "seating" part are 2"x4"s flat side up and stair stepped up with about 18 inches between the levels.  I am hoping so they don't poop on each other...that they are far enough apart so their tail feathers don't get damaged too.  Some of them roost on them a lot to keep from getting attacked by the other roosters.  I have a couple of food dishes that I fill and set on the steps to make sure they get food, it is fermented feed so it has water in it too...in case some of the roosters are protecting the waterer and those aren't getting enough.  I may hang a nipple type waterer high up so they can get to it too.  After the roosters have been been in it awhile, I am hoping I can let them out to range in the yard and they will return to The Stadium.  I can close that yard so hopefully they won't fly out and start trouble with other roosters or gang up on hens.

I also am working on tilling a big garden area in front of the house.  I hate putting it out there, but it may be the only way to actually get any vegetables.  I will have to move some plants and fence the area because of our rabbit issues, and the wild dogs and coyotes, oh and deer.  I will have to move some fencing from other areas, but since the chickens ate my garden last year...I don't want them to be able to see what I plant.  I may plant something specifically for them in my old garden areas...not sure yet.

Well...I must get busy, I need to remove my composted chicken poop from the big run...before it rains again, I need to move it to the front yard too.  My husband got the tiller and the garden tractor out for me yesterday.  I got about a 20 foot by 80 foot garden area tilled yesterday before the tiller had a flat.  I also got Dormant oil sprayed on my fruit trees.  I bought a few more trees from the feed store and need to finish planting them and some blueberries, along with transplanting blueberries, herbs and strawberries to the front area.  Lots to do...

Baby Gosling is Spoiled Rotten!

I knew it would happen, our little gosling spends a fair bit of time out of the brooder and in one of our laps.  It doesn't matter if it is a he or she...this one won't be going anywhere...I can tell.  We just call it Baby Goose for now...it has a lot of personality for only being ten days old.  It is hard not to get attached to them, they are very cute, they will snuggle up to you, and "talk" to you.  I have two more goose eggs that are suppose to hatch on Saturday, it won't be too much longer and this little one won't be alone any more.  I need to learn how to sex them...so far we have 7 developing in the incubator.  I don't think I can not handle too many more males, as it is Loki can be quite a handful.  Thor is pretty gentle, I can feed him out of my hand and he doesn't chomp down on my fingers...Loki gets a bit crazy and will grab a hold of my fingers trying to get to the food in my hand, he chases Thor away and bites the top of his wing and holds on and runs with Thor trying to get away.

I took some pictures, I will try and see if I can figure out how to get them uploaded again so I can post them.  A video would be better I am sure...the little gosling likes to nibble on my husband arm hair, chest hair, grab ahold of your lip, nip an ear...and really likes biting the webbing between your fingers.  It is cute now, may not be so cute when it grows up.  Geese are pretty smart, and can be trained to go into their house, they love scratch grains and will come flying up the hill if they are in the bottom of the pasture...any time I come outside.  They know about when feeding time is too, they will stand at the back gate and call all the other critters to come to the fence and wait, I think they do it to alert me that it is getting late...it is time to eat, put your tools down now and feed us!  Lol, that is what I think they are saying anyway.  I work outside a lot when it is nice, so if they are hungry I don't get a whole lot done some days.  The geese leave me alone if it is not close to time for food, they love to play in mud puddles, swim in their pools, take naps in the sun.  Every once in awhile Thor will come find me, he talks to me softly, he is a good boy...I told him we were trying to get him some girls of his own, he hangs around with some of our ducks.  Geese are pretty good protectors too, they alarm on any perceived dangers, like a hawk flying overhead or a raccoon digging in the compost pile.  It is funny watching all of the chickens run for cover, the geese honk loudly and spread their wings and run in unison up the hill.  The turkeys start gobbling and flapping their wings too.  Sometimes it will be a huge blue Heron flying to the pond, but some days it is the family of Hawks we have living across the street...or very large buzzards.  We have a lot of Crows come into one section of trees behind the poultry yard in the evenings sometimes and they don't alarm on them.  They can be quite loud at times, the Crows.

I love my poultry, but sometimes they can be rather frustrating, they get underfoot a lot and I may step on a foot occasionally, the geese can honk so loud at times that it is hard to think and impossible to hear anything else, the turkeys steal tools, knock over boxes of screws and staples, take off with my gloves, bite me on the butt, nip my fingers when I am consentrating on building something...so, if you ever decide to get into poultry, I hope you have a lot of patience, you are going to need it!  I do enjoy sitting and watching them, their interactions, the graceful geese swimming in their big tank.  Our little white duck, looking up at us with her big blue eyes pleading for scratch grains or other treats, they are both a joy and a pain in the butt sometimes.

It is pretty cold here this morning, there is a pretty heavy frost on everything.  My husband said that all of the pools and waterers had about a quarter of an inch of ice on top, except the cattle tank. My husband drained the cattle tank and cleaned it over the weekend.  He started refilling it, but I finished filling it yesterday...maybe The water was just warm enough not to freeze?  I have two more pools to drain and clean out today.  Yesterday I mucked out the Duck and Goose house, the Sidecar/grow out pen, the Pallet Coop and removed some of the composted bedding from the run on the Big Coop.  I took out probably a ton of muck!  It took me all day shoveling it into my large garden cart and dragging it to different garden areas.  I think it was 12 very full cartloads, it supposedly can hold 600 pounds...I cannot pull that much up a hill, I put three cartloads in my front yard to till in when I create my garden area up front, and eight in my biggest garden area in the back of the poultry yard.  The chickens, ducks and geese will spread it out and I will till it in when it is time.  I have at least another ton of composted chicken manure in the run that I can use...I just have to get it out.  I usually put the spent pine shavings from the coop into the run, I use the deep liter method in most of my coops and have to turn it and add more regularly.

We Have A Hatchling!

I am so excited to report, our first goose egg started pipping on Friday January 8th the gosling made it out of the shell in just less than 24 hours and is doing well so far.  The bad part is because I saved several days worth of eggs and set them at once and that batch were not all fertile...it is alone.  I am sure it will become a pet, even if it ends up being a male.  It has already been held and cuddled, my husband wants it to be a girl so bad...I am sure he is probably trying to think of names already.  I do have more eggs in the incubator, but again saved some and set them as a batch.  They will not hatch for at least two more weeks.  The baby ducks are just over five weeks old now, and they are to big to put this gosling with right now.  Ducks and geese grow at an alarming rate, so this little baby may be able to go in the brooder with the ducks in about a week.

I have started just adding the goose eggs to the incubator as they are laid now.  I also sold two baby ducks, so I started another batch of duck eggs too...then after other people asked about ducks, I set another dozen a week later.  Ducks and geese are social animals and need companions, I feel bad that this little gosling has no companions to grow up with at this time.  I had set six goose eggs at the same time, but only one was fertile.  Normally a duck egg takes 28 days to hatch, a goose egg 30 days.  I will set up another incubator as a hatcher and when it is time to stop turning the eggs, or lockdown...I will move the ones due to hatch to that incubator.  It is not good to be opening up the incubator after lockdown.  I did assist this gosling in the hatching process, I was afraid I had shrink wrapped it by opening up the incubator to candle other eggs, add water...and additional eggs.  I took pieces off of the shell and pulled the membrane away from it's beak so it could breath before I went to bed the night before it emerged from the shell.  It was out of the shell the next morning.  Goose egg shells are thick, so it being my very first time hatching a goose, I didn't want to loose it.

When a chick, duck, gosling, etc.  gets shrink wrapped...the inner membrane adheres to them and makes it basically stick to them, as it dries out it can become either paper like or like cement if the moisture content inside the egg is high...like if the humidity on the day it pips is high from raining or too high of humidity in the incubator.  It can smother the hatchling...paper like is better, I think...less chance of drowning in the shell.  Too high of humidity makes the hatchling wet with a gel like substance (the white of the egg) does not dry out enough.  Some people call it "Sticky Chick" and if they incubator is opened after they pip the shell, that gel dries up and forms a cement like coating on the hatchlings down.  It keeps them from being able to turn in the shell to zip it open.  It can clog their nostrils and keep them from getting enough oxygen, they can smother and die without intervention...believe me, I know.  We have a lot of rain, I have assisted a lot.  I learned the hard way.

This is a learning process.  I have lost whole batches of chicks because they drowned in their shell.  I live in a high humidity area and was following the recommended hatching humidity in the beginning.    I had to adapt and learn the process own my own, to have it work in my location.  The first two batches of eggs I set drowned in the shell, even some of my later hatches were not good because of trying to find the right balance of humidity.  I have hatched eggs upright in egg flats, left them on the turner to hatch so that the air cell generally at the larger end of the egg was in a position that even if the humidity did not allow proper evaporation, that the hatchlings would survive.  I found that not all eggs have the air cell on the large end...how?  Well, experience...if you hatch in a carton and the egg in question has the air cell on the wrong end the hatchling pips and the remaining moisture leaks out and glues the shell to the turner or egg flat.  I have had it happen at least 4 times!  Not all of the hatchlings survived, because I did not know until I tried to remove the eggs.  I did save at least two.  But it is wise to candle the eggs before setting them into your incubator, that way you can make sure the air cell is right-side up and the eggs don't have any cracks in them.

Also, if you are hatching eggs make sure you set only the cleanest eggs with no damage.  I learned that if you get hatching eggs through the mail, and any break and coat the other eggs...bacteria grows and can get into the eggs that come in contact with it...it can cause birth defects.  Don't set eggs that have weak spots or wrinkled areas either, those areas light up well during candling.  This too I learned the hard way.  You can contaminate your whole batch of eggs putting one questionable egg into the incubator.   Always, always, always sanitize your incubator after each batch of eggs.  Just trying to share some of the information that I have found out, so you won't waist your time and money on failed hatches and deformed or chicks with special needs like I did.  I have two chickens on my back porch now that are blind in one eye, had my husband put down several that had such bad leg issues that no amount of doctoring on my part could help them and I still have two out in the yard one that has a spot in his eye and has poor vision in it and one with a deformed leg.  If he could not function on his own, he too would have been put down.

Everything Old Is New Again

I spent the end of the year working hard...but the pallet coop that I have been working on is now in use.  We had more rain and the door would not close so, I sanded the threshold until I was blue in the face...then decided just to take the door off, the metal support plates off, and the screws out that would interfere with cutting off a quarter of an inch...my hubby came home just in the nick of time, he did the actual cutting and helped me hang it back up.  I am not very good with a circular saw, so that was very helpful to me.  Since the door wouldn't close I didn't get the latch put on until then either.  I still need to put the hook latch on the inside, that way I can lock the door so the roosters can't get out when I am cleaning up in there.  Yes, it has happened, I have had escapes a plenty.  He helped me get the rest of the wire up at the very top of the coop too and build the roosts.  With his help we got it finished enough to put the roosters inside of it that were in the muddiest of the pens.

It is not a pleasant task catching roosters, but we caught 23 roosters and 1 turkey and got them moved to the pallet coop.  We were rooster wrangling in mud at least three inches thick...well, it is not all mud...a bunch of it was wet poop too.  Wet chicken poop stinks pretty bad.  Mixed with water and mud it makes for a very slick surface when you are running around trying to grab roosters.  I know I was slipping and sliding, got splattered and my boots covered in the muck.  During the wrangling my husband noticed the turkey's feet had blood on them.  We had to finish wrangling or rounding up all of the three pens that were the worst and get tools put up and feed all the poultry before it got to dark to see.

My husband started getting the tools put up and I started feeding them all...he also got the feed and water dishes out of the pens and washed them up and filled the waterers for the the new coop.  I got two of the wallpaper troughs and moved them into the coop and filled them with food.  A few of the roosters were sparring when I went into the coop.  I am hoping not to find any injured roosters when I go out to feed them in a bit, it is still dark outside...so I will probably go out in about half an hour.  I feed 4 -5 gallon buckets of fermented feed to my flock at the second feeding, it takes me awhile to do it because they are heavy and I basically can only carry two at a time.  That is why I use a lot of troughs, I have goat troughs too...it allows more chickens to access the food from both sides than the round feed dishes that I was using in the individual pens.  But most of the pens have only a handful of roosters in them.  

After feeding and getting the food mixed for fermentation.  I went an ran and prepared water to bathe the turkey and inspect him for wounds.  He was dripping blood from his feet when my husband put him on the roost in the new coop.  Since he was muddy, we thought it would be good to clean him up and see if we could figure out what was wrong.  He was very muddy, my husband did the initial clean up, but the turkey was flapping wildly and not being very cooperative.  It was the first bath either of us had given a turkey...I have given a few baths to chickens, however...a 25 pound turkey is a bit different.  He seemed to calm down considerably once we got him out of the bus tub and into deeper warm water.  He just laid down in the water and let me wash him well.  I could not see his feet though...or his chest.  I could feel he was missing a lot of chest feathers.  I am pretty sure that had to do with sleeping on the pallet in the pen, I didn't have a roost set up in that pen for him.  He had three rooster companions too and the roosters looked clean except for their feet.  When a bird gets wet, their feathers come out pretty easily, it is kind of like when you process any poultry, a quick submersion in hot water loosens the feathers enough to make them easy to pluck.  Well, it is the same way when you give one a bath too.  You have to be careful how you handle them or you will end up with hands full of feathers.

Anyway, after we got who I am now calling Mr. Peabody cleaned up.  I decided to try and blow dry him.  He didn't mind getting blow dried, but as big as he is, and as thick as his feathers are (except his belly/chest)...it may have taken me until this morning to get him dry enough to go back outside.  I had him in my lap and wrapped in towels for a little while.  He seemed like he was ready to sleep, he still had some mud on his eye area...that I noticed on close inspection.  My husband examined his feet and chest for me while I held on to him.  He was such a good boy during the majority of the bath and while in my lap.  We couldn't put him outside as wet as he still was, not with as cold as it was...so even though my husband went and put fresh straw out for him in a smaller dry pen...I decided to keep him in the house over night.  The only thing we had big enough and secure enough to keep him in was an extra large dog kennel.  Normally...meant for our dog Kensie to sleep in at night.  So, we took Kensie's things out, put a puppy training pad in the bottom of it and put the turkey in Kensie's kennel.  He has been good all night, was very quiet...I need to go get dressed and take him outside this morning.  We withheld food and water last night so he would not make too big of a mess.  So I am sure he will be thirsty and hungry this morning.  He did have the opportunity to eat...before we brought him inside...but, I didn't see him eat.

On another note...my goose that has been laying...and I have been putting all the eggs in the incubator since she started...some of the eggs are actually developing now!  One should be born January tenth, it looks like the three I set on December 24th are developing now too....I am excited, this will be my first hatch of geese!

Christmas Eve

I have been working on the pallet coop for a few weeks now.  It is getting closer to being able to get some chickens in it...I got the roof on with the turkey's help.  They really like to spend time with me when I try and get anything done.  I was trying to wait on my husband to help with getting the roof on but because of rain and my impatience I did it by myself.  I did have some problems, the roof decking is pretty awkward and heavy for one person to lift up into place, but I managed...but, the turkeys jumped on one piece and it was a bit windy that day...two turkeys jumped on the 4'x8' piece as I was trying to position it...and the combination of the wind and almost 50 lbs of turkeys twisted it and it fell back and hit me on the side of my head and shoulder before I could get control of it again.  Yep, I got a big bruise on the right side of my forehead...but no bruise on my shoulder.

I got the decking up and my husband went and got tar paper for me after work...and I was able to get it stapled on before the rain hit the next day.  I moved the metal for the roof one day and was able to get the pieces of metal up after the rain dried up a bit...it took me a total of three days to get the roof on, but I still needed supports, and because it overhangs...I will have to add even more on the outer edges.  The turkeys are able to fly over the fence and on top of this coop too...I had three helpers when I was putting on the tar paper, but only two when I started putting the metal on it.  I guess they don't like the he slick surface as much.  I had on turkey hen that would sit on my leg while I was scooting around putting screws in the metal to attach it.  the turkeys punched holes in the roof on the chicken tractor too...so while I was getting metal for the new coop,I got enough to do that small coop part too.  I also used some that I had gotten for the outside of the chicken condo and replaced the poly carbonate with parts I had used for the old duck house.  The turkeys kept getting on it too and I kept having to punch the pieces back into place.  I figured it was a good time to change it...before they tore it up.  I will use the polycarbonate on the run to the big coop where there is a good sized gap.  Recycling in action...lol, they are small pieces from what we had cut off of a project for our house in Dallas.  They have come in handy.  We may have to put some caulk in some of the holes if it doesn't line up right when we fix the run roof...or when I fix it.  It is suppose to rain again this weekend, so, my husband may get out of that project too.  I am impatient and trying to get things done before it gets too cold.

Today is Christmas Eve, I worked on the pallet coop again today.  I stapled feed bags to the outside of it, they are about like the weight of a light tarp.  It will help block the wind and rain until I can get some kind of siding material for the coop.  My son gave me a gift card for Christmas and I purchased a small pancake compressor to replace my broken one...so I will be able to use the air stapler to get the rest of the hardware cloth up on it.  My fingers are still sore from putting up the hardware cloth with the hammer-in type staples.  I got another heavy duty regular hand stapler too...that is what I used to put up the feed bags with.  I am not sure what wood those pallets are made of, but I had a lot of problems getting those feed bags up.  I had enough feed bags to do all but about half of one side of the coop.  I split the feed bags so they would cover more area, so in another week...maybe I will have enough to finish lining the outside of the coop.  I still have the hardware cloth to put up and a door to build too, so it will still be a little while until I am ready to put chickens in it anyway.  I have to build roosts too.

Oh well, it is almost dinner time, I will close for now.  Enjoy your Christmas Eve!

Ouch That Hurt!

I have a new injury, around here I get them a lot.  Ever since we moved in, I have been busy doing things I have never done before.  When we were trying to get the house ready to move into we mostly just worked our butts off, cleaning and making repairs to the walls, caulking and painting...things like that.  We both got to the point we could barely walk and we would go back to the house in Dallas.  I cut my finger pretty badly one day while my husband went to go get some things from the store I had to ask him to get bandaging material and butterfly bandages.  I was using a carpet knife to remove old caulk around a window...I hit a nail and the knife twisted and caught the top of my index finger.  I probably could have used a few stitches, but was able to stop the bleeding and put the butterfly bandages on and it healed up pretty good, it took awhile for my fingernail to grow out, but it did.  Most of my injuries now are animal related. Just that cut and backing into sheet metal when wind caught some plywood and it fell on me cutting my elbow...on that one, I did go get 7 stitches or something...and a tetanus shot, my husband had to come home to take me to the doctor...I thought if I could get them to stitch me up I wouldn't have to go to the emergency room.

I have learned it is good to wear long sleeves, heavy jeans, boots and gloves...even that is not enough protection sometimes.  I have been beaten with goose wings...and turkey wings...turkeys are stronger it seems, either that or more determined.  I am pretty stubborn and if it takes me awhile to catch one...I don't want them to get loose again.  I am getting better at pinning wings and soothing the big birds...I am surprised they have not broken my nose or blackened an eye.  I have been raked by claws a few times though, they have very big feet and I am thankful that most of their claws are worn somewhat round and are not as sharp as they were in the beginning...so I mostly get bruises instead of cuts from them.  My turkeys have started pulling my hair, I have already cut it pretty short and wear a bandana a lot of the time.  I have been pecked on the head several times and they have snatched my glasses off several times too.  I had to get one of those sports bands that hold your glasses on.  One of the girl turkeys snatched an earring out of my ear too...not good when you have pierced ears.

Lately my injuries have been either bites from startled roosters that leave cuts and bruises on me...usually a hand or forearm.  My partially blind chickens, if I reach in and scare them they will grab ahold of me.  Buddy Chicken got me pretty good on the top of my arm a few weeks ago.  A few days ago, I reached down and grabbed a hold of a rooster that was making one of my smaller hens scream...there were others yanking on her comb and neck feathers, I grabbed the one on top of her and another one got ahold of my thumb at the joint to my hand...it would not let go.  I have a cut, a knot under the cut...and a bruise an inch and a half across...it was very tender the first few days, but the swelling has gone down...it looks a little like a target now, the scab in the middle, a ring of pink, almost normal skin, then a ring of green bruise.  I usually run around with several bruises these days. I have the one on my thumb, a bruise on the top of my foot from, I think our dog stepping on my bare foot, and I noticed I have a few small bruises on my forearm, probably from catching turkeys.  I guess I might have gotten them from construction...maybe?  Some of our chickens will jump up on my arm when I go out to feed them, so far they haven't made me drop the bucket but they really like jumping on the scoop with scratch grains, they start eating it as soon as they do.  I have had a turkey jump on my shoulder too...not so bad when they are smaller, but when one of our females was in my lap and a male came over, she jumped to my shoulder, the male jumped in my lap...and then she got on my head!  I guess I didn't expect to look like a fighter most the time, between the bruises and the ant and bug bites I just look a mess most of the time.

I just never know what surprises my day will bring.

Mitigating Turkey Damage

I really didn't think about additional poultry, so I didn't exactly build things to handle the weight of a mass of turkeys jumping on anything.  I am glad the big coop was built very sturdy, and with a metal roof and decking underneath it...it is holding up well so far, other structures are not.  Turkeys are curious creatures and they like to be up high...and not all of my coops are built that well.  I am having to rework my chicken tractor because it can't handle the weight.  I used a roofing product called Ondura on the top of the coop section, the turkeys have gotten on top of it and torn holes in the stuff.  The best I can describe it would be an asphalt infused, coragated heavy cloth like rubbery roofing material.  Kind of like asphalt shingle but with gauze infused into it and none of the gravely stuff...I do not recommend it, it tears and in hot months it gets really pliable...but, I don't have a decking material under it, that doesn't help.

It is what I am trying to replace now, it has holes and tears in it and now the coop leaks.  We put polycarbonate over the run on the chicken tractor too...I changed it out today.  The roof on it just has small joists two feet apart...the polycarbonate was the end pieces from another project.  Not solid, lots of two foot pieces.  The weight of the turkeys on that part was bending the pieces and distorting them so that I had to punch them frequently on the inside to pop them back into shape.  I have done it a lot over the past 8 months.  I was afraid that they too would start breaking or tearing...today I removed it, put a piece of roof decking with a raidient barrier coating on it that I took off of the duck house I tore down, and used the metal from that project on top of it.  It doesn't really work right, but the turkeys have already gotten on top of it and walked around, it is sturdy enough to hold at least two.  I will have to work on it a bit more because the overlapping doesn't work right for the distance and it makes it short about 10 inches.  It will work for now, but I will have to improvise to cover the rest of the decking.

I didn't finish writing yesterday, so this is a continuation...I worked on the chicken tractors roof to the coop part today.  I had to cut a piece of decking to fit the metal I purchased for it.  I removed the Ondura roof and may use it on a wall someplace to block the wind a bit, it is about a four foot by 6 foot solid piece of material.  It may not be totally waterproof any more but it is waterproof and I took metal that was blocking the wind from behind the ducks house and the turkey house.  I will have to hang a tarp or something now on those, I didn't get it done and it is raining tonight but it is fairly warm so they should be fine, they still have a roof over their head.  I also worked on the pallet coop too, I had to fill in a hole in the back wall...so I had to use a circular saw and cut a pallet to fit in the hole...I had some issues because nothing is straight, so I had to cut bits and pieces off and probably made seven trips back and forth trying not to cut off too much...but making it a tight fit.  Took awhile, so I didn't get much else done, I took a nest box off of the outside of the chicken tractor and moved it into the new coop...but, a little hen didn't like the height of it nor the placement.  She stood in front of it screaming and hollering at me and pacing in front of it.  I thought it may be too high so I leaned a pallet up against the wall next to it and she tested it out...only went up a few of the pallet boards and started yelling at me again, and jumped down.  I decided to move it to the front wall of the coop and not so high up.  I didn't hear anything more out of her...I wonder if she will lay in that nest box tomorrow?  Time will tell.

The rain is suppose to be worse tomorrow, so we probably will put up the Christmas tree...can't do roofing in the rain.  I am not sure if I could get the decking into place on my own, not sure if I will attempt it or not.  The decking is pretty heavy and I would have to be up on a ladder to get it up on top of the pallet coop.  It probably wouldn't be wise, but I need to get it roofed soon.  I still need to side it too, I have been saving plastic feed bags to side it well enough to block the wind and rain, only the front wall and 3/4 of the back wall is made with almost solid pallets...but that little hen that was hollering at me...she could walk through the spacing on a side wall.  I will probably have to add some boards, or cover the inside with wire to keep the chickens inside this coop.  I still need to put hardware cloth on the top section of the walls too.  I have been doing all of this with help from the turkeys too.  I am not sure how many screws they ran off with today...or how many times I had to make them get off of the roof.

Global Warming?

I don't know about the rest of the country, but here...it is cooler than normal, it has rained over 20 inches in two months and I imagine we will get some pretty good snowfall this year.  I am in Texas, we don't usually get a lot of snow in Texas...maybe the panhandle...but this is the South, and we generally only have about two weeks of real cold weather and that usually doesn't happen until January or February.  Weather patterns change, they always have...some years we may get temperatures in the Summer up to 108, and we may get temperatures in the teens in the worst of winters...in my 56 years of life in Texas, there are usually more mild days than super hot or cold.  But I have seen as low as 6 degrees and as high as 114 degrees.  I have seen ice almost two inches thick one winter with the lowest of temperatures...and that was in the early 80's.  But so was the most days of over 100 degree temperatures.

I am talking about this because I am not really ready for the colder temperatures.  I need better housing for my roosters and with all the rain we have had I just can't work outside in the mud.  I set up a GoFundMe campaign for a tractor, but no one donated.  It was a long shot anyway.  But, I will have to just try and do what I can with a tiller and a shovel and my garden cart.  It would be so much easier with a tractor, but we can't afford one.  I will till and move the dirt by hand when it dries out, I may have to cut down some trees or figure out how to move the pile of railroad ties we found by the lake.  I need a retaining wall built and a level area for my critters housing.  I did it for my big coop, but I need a bigger level area that will drain higher up or to create better drainage.  It is awfully muddy in my rooster pens.  I need to go scrape all the muck off the pallets in them and put down straw.  I need to figure out how to divert water away from the big coop with what materials I have on hand too

I acquired two really long pallets yesterday at Tractor Supply.  They are at least ten feet long, and I got a couple of 2"x4"x12' pieces of wood from the pile.  It will help with the roof on the pallet coop I am building.  I still need more pallets, but I did get a few more pallets last week...they are just not the almost solid kind so I can't use them for the flooring without something over them.  I only have so much to work with right now, I am getting things here and there, like screws and staples, but I had run out.  I am going to use plastic feed bags on the north wall to block the wind...I think.  At least until I can get some kind of siding...I am leaning towards skinning it in metal, but that is not something I can do until I sell a treadmill or my elliptical machine.  I can try and get some crafts made to sell, but that takes time too.  There just never seems to be enough time in the days to get everything I want to do, done.

None of the 12 goose eggs I set were fertile, but I was told the males will wait until the spring before they "tread" the females.  Geese don't normally lay in the Fall, but I have one that is.  Only five of the duck eggs hatched and one of the ducklings died, something happened with the egg sack on it yolk is all over in the bottom of the incubator.  The four ducks that did hatch are doing well...they look like Khaki Campbell's, and since we actually started eating duck eggs...that is a good thing.  They lay almost every day, so even if my chickens need 14 hours of daylight to produce an egg...the ducks don't seem to have that issue.  They were all molting and didn't lay for almost two months, but the chickens were laying like gangbusters then...but now a lot of them are molting still and some days I only get seven chicken eggs, some twenty...just depends on how sunny it is and for how long.  I sold five dozen eggs yesterday and four dozen this morning and I don't have any more to sell right now...except two dozen duck eggs.  Baby ducks are so cute...but very messy, I am hoping to have a broody duck one of these days...it would be nice if they hatched them instead of me doing it and raising them in the house brooder.  I need to dispose of the infertile eggs and clean the incubator, I have two more goose eggs to try...and maybe she will lay today too, I may put more duck eggs in the incubator and maybe some chicken eggs.  I need to make some money somehow, I just need something to sell.

More Rain

We moved to one of the wettest areas of Texas, we are having record amounts of rain this year...the month of November we had about 12 inches of rain.  The first year we moved in, it was a drought year, and so was last year...but, there were times we got 4 to 8 inches of rain in one day.  Most of the time, when we get that much rain, it comes down so hard and fast we have rivers running through the yard.  I took the dogs for a walk this morning and water was running on the path in several areas and there were pools of standing water about a foot deep.  I only went as far as the creek at the back of the property, it was too wide for me to jump and foamy, the dogs wouldn't cross it...so I didn't try.

I have been trying to think about some way to house my millions of roosters to get them out of the mud.  It is almost like liquefaction in their pens...it is very wet and it didn't rain today.  We got close to 4 inches of rain this last go round.  It was cloudy today, but it didn't rain...it also didn't dry out in the pens.  I do have a pallet in each pen, I put straw in half of them to give them something to stand on besides the pallet, the also have roosts...but a lot off them choose to stand in a puddle.  So, I need to do something...I am afraid they will start having foot issues.  I may have to rebuild pens in another location...and build small coops with floors for each pen, I am gonna need a lot more pallets.  I haven't been able to work on my bigger coop because of the rain.

Today I put all the heavy paper feed bags I have been saving down in my smallest garden, that and cardboard boxes I have been saving...why?  I will tell you...weed control, hopefully anyway.  One of my main problems has been weeds growing 3 feet tall very quickly in all of my gardens...when it rains a lot...they get big very fast.  When it dries out, I have to cut them...then till several times to get rid of them...can't do it if it rains, I sink in the mud...even if I manage to get it tilled and it rains before I plant anything, the weeds grow back before it dries out enough to plant anything.  I wasn't able to plant anything in my bigger garden because of weeds and rain this year.  The pigs that visited stayed in that garden and took care of most of them for me and the poultry has been keeping the weeds down since then.  But, the poultry will eat anything I plant in there too, so I will have to close it off and try to keep them out next Spring...I will need weed control so, I figured if I save the feed sacks and cardboard and use them as mulch it would help.  Right now there is water standing in my lower garden...but, I have water still running down the hill and have big puddles the ducks and geese are loving playing in.  It is bad when ducks can actually paddle around in rain puddles.

I will probably try and start a garden in a different area.  The largest chicken coop and run will have composted chicken manure that I can use for fertilizer, plus I started a good sized new compost pile this summer.  The chickens got into my last compost pile and spread it out over their yard.  Hey, I am learning...note to self, chickens do fly...so do turkeys...and a four foot fence will not stop them if they want something on the other side.  Yes...yes, they got into my little garden too.  Yep, ate almost everything...if I had not picked all the green tomatoes, between my poultry jumping the fence and the rabbits...I would have gotten nothing at all out of my Fall garden.  Lesson learned, I will have to extend my fence up and possibly cover it with bird netting...or move my garden elsewhere, maybe someplace they can't see.  I may have to make raised beds and put them in the side yard...or front yard.  I just need to be able to water wherever I put them...if we have another drought year.  If it is really wet again...raised beds should fix that.  I was hoping to be able to plant a large garden...but until I can afford to fence another area and get dirt amended so that vegetables will grow in it, I will have to stick with a smaller garden or take the risk of loosing crops to rabbits and other wildlife.

Ahhh well...I only have a small hand tiller anyway, I wanted to grow enough so that I could supplement my poultries feed.  I guess that won't happen until I can get a tractor...it just about killed me tilling my 2 big gardens so many times with the hand tiller, and hey we're only about 30 feet by 65 feet too.  My neighbor tilled a small area for me and hit concrete in the ground...so, I am sure there is probably more crap scattered around the land.  The previous owners buried a bunch of stuff, every time I dig...I find metal, glass, concrete and evidence of a burn pit.  I have been using a digging fork and turning dirt too, I found a lot of rocks that were a good size for edging a flowerbed.  Too bad the chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys wrecked my flowerbed and all the flowers.  They even move the smaller rocks...I had no idea they would move rocks...or could move rocks.  They dig holes everywhere too, big holes...I use to fill them up and move the rocks back into place...I gave up.  I may have to get a taller fence for around the area that I would like to keep decent looking, and we have discussed building an enclosed screen porch with a solid roof eventually...we have a 20' by 20' slab and have a gazebo on it now, they tore up the top on it.  I have a shade sail over it now...they haven't wrecked it yet.  It is a temporary fix, I hope.  I just needed a place to rest when I am building or gardening, or whatever.  The poultry has taken it over...and it usually has a lot of poop all over the place.  We try and hose it off every night, but since the time change I have skipped several days between cleanings...it just gets dark before I can get it done.

Score!

There is nothing like finding useable materials for chicken coops for free.  I have been worried about my roosters that are just in the fenced pens with tarps over the top since we have been having so much rain.  It is starting to get cold too, ok...cold for Texas.  It is suppose to start getting down in the 30's and with the ground being so wet, my roosters need up off the ground and a way to keep out of the north wind.

I was able to get materials for another cattle panel coop, but after finding a source for free pallets I decided to make a bigger coop that could be divided into sections and use the cattle panels for the top.  I found a source for pallets recently, some have boards really close together and make good walls.  I have created a decent sized start of a coop so far, it is about 8'x12' and it will have a pallet floor in it to get chickens up off of the ground.  I need solid walls to keep rain and wind out...the north and south walls are made with the more solid wood pallets, the East and West walls are the more open panels that will have to be covered with wire and some kind of waterproof materials.  I have been using some of the feed bags to cover coop windows, I will probably do the same thing for the walls on this new one and a tarp over the top for now.

The coop that I am working on held up in some high winds we had with yet another storm system.  The rooster pens are rather wet and I did get a couple of pallets in the worst of them.  I need to get some more out there, this weekend is suppose to get down close to freezing.  I stopped by the place I picked up the first two batches of pallets and picked up about 20 more.  These are not big pallets, they are only about two feet wide and four to almost five feet long.  They are not exactly the same sizes either, some are close to the same size, but not square, I am not sure what they were made to hold either.  Some of the pallets have large spaces between the boards and others are close together, some are light in weight and others are very heavy.  I loaded up as many as I could, then took some out and changed things around so I could get more into my truck.  I had to make sure everything was strapped in well and would not shift.  I did not want to loose my free pallets!  I also found a place that I can get pallets for three dollars each...so if I am not able to get enough pallets of the free variety to do what I need to do, maybe I can get cheap pallets to finish up the job.

I will say that I have had to make quite a few repairs to the pallets I am using, most of them have loose boards, or missing boards, or the runners are cracked, broken or parts missing.  A lot of them are made of what looks like dog eared fencing or they actually have tree bark on them...kinda log cabin looking.  This coop is going to look very rustic, not going to be very square or level.  But if it can keep my poultry realatively warm and dry...I can live with that.

I am starting to imagine what else I can use pallets for...I have seen a lot of great ideas and inspiration enough to wonder about making all kinds of things.

Give Thanks Every Day

Since the time change and "Falling" back an hour, I have been getting up early...5:00 to 5:30am early.  Sometimes I put on a pot of coffee and clean or organize something...today I write.  I got up and my dog Kensie wanted outside...I took Kensie and Bailee out and Bailee stayed on the porch by the back door and Kensie ran out in the yard to do her business.  I looked up at the stars and said a little prayer, the sky is clear, the air is cool and I can see the Big Dipper right outside of my back porch in the sky above my head.

We received almost three inches of rain yesterday, I am thankful that my poultry is doing well.  With all the mud and getting wet, I have only had one loss of a mixed breed rooster...not sure why, but I found him on the ground in a coop and he was so still and cold I thought he was dead already, but his eyes opened.  He didn't live long after that though he was very cold and already stiff  when I found him.  Normally I try a multitude of things to help a chicken I found like this.  He is probably the third one in three years that has done this.  When they get to this point they are too far gone to save. I have prolonged their agony before but once they can't stand up, and basically have rigor setting in...I am not going to try and nurse them back to health anymore. He was only about six months old, I think he was a Gold Laced Polish and Black Sex-link cross...he was always kind of weird looking and stayed off by himself.  I saw a lot of bruising on his skin when I inspected him, there are a lot of roosters in that pen with him, he may have gotten beat up...but I didn't see any cuts on him though. Roosters can be rather mean to the weakest amongst them.

I performed a Bumblefoot surgery of sorts yesterday.  A Black Sex-linked hen has been on my porch for the past few weeks, I sprayed her feet and legs with Scarlex Scarlet Oil a few times a day.  The infection on a chicken like this is a staph infection caused by an abrasion or cut on the foot, a cheesy material forms and must come out to heal totally.  A sore formed between the toes on her left foot and part of the infection protruded out, a week ago I removed some of it.  I kept spraying the oil and yesterday noticed a large scab protruding out and got all the supplies together to remove the rest.  I picked at it with tweezers and pressed the bottom of her foot, I could see it rise up through the area I removed the scabbed part.  I had her wrapped in a towel, had my nitrile gloves on and switched to forceps...I had her wrapped fairly tight because I didn't have her tight enough and she was able to flap her wings...made a mess on my kitchen floor...she is molting and feathers flew all over the place. I wrapped her tight and laid her on her back, she calmed down and I braced her with my forearm while I pressed up on the bottom of her foot, and the core of cheesy material started protruding enough to grab it with the forceps.  It took about four tries, the first few times pieces broke off.  I had to press up a bit harder and my chicken was struggling a little, but I finely got a good hold of the plug...and wiggled and pulled on it with the forceps until it finely came out.  I sprayed more scarlet oil on her feet and put her back in the cage on the back porch...I found myself saying another prayer that I was able to do the surgery.

I am thankful, every day...I thank God to give me the strength and the wisdom to get through another day here on the farm.  I am fortunate that I get to see the sunrise every day, and thankful every morning to wake up.  There was a time when I was afraid that I wouldn't wake up.  I still have a lot of pain some days, but pain tends to keep me more active...if I keep busy, and not just sit in my recliner watching TV or on the computer I feel better.  The sunshine and fresh air help, as does moving...whether it be, feeding the chickens, gardening, or building...it doesn't really matter.  I rest more often these days, but I work hard too.  Stepping outside and seeing so many stars makes me smile.  I chose this way of life and I enjoy it.  Some days I may cuss my poultry...for some reason, whether it be getting flogged in the face by a turkeys flapping wings, or getting bit by a rooster I snatch up to separate...in that moment I may hurt, I may be bruised, I may even have a cut...but I am alive and well and thankful that at the ripe old age of fifty-six...I can pick up a thirty pound turkey or chase and capture an overly aggressive rooster, or a goose that is limping...and build things to house them.

I found a place I was able to get free pallets, I am working on another chicken coop made primarily of those pallets...well, I was until it rained anyway.