Day 14 - Teenage chickens

Well I was admonished by Harrison that I was too erratic in my blog writing. "It's like a journal. You're suppose to write in it everyday" he urged, rolling his eyes in not a little disgust.
As I see it, there are two problems with that. One is that I am quite sure that my life with chickens really isn't THAT interesting to anyone but me. Second is that I let the technological side of things slow me down. So, those two disclaimers made, I will write often, not worrying if I'm boring anyone and I will dispense with the notion that I have to include a photo every single time I post. I believe I can always edit my post so it may be that I simply add a photo when I can psyche myself up to deal with that.

Today's topic : Teenage chickens

I knew that my sweet little chicks had crossed the line this morning when I went in to feed them and found they had eaten almost everything in their feeders. They are pigs now. Starving, maniacal pigs. When I bent down to pick up feeder number one, I had to practically dig it out of the bedding. It was buried in a sea of wood chips. Yes, they are little pigs. Messy little pig chicks that have a total disregard for keeping their brooder in any order at all. They poop in the feeders, in the water, and one poor guy who had obviously been in the wrong place at the wrong time had poop on his wing. The straw that broke the mama's back was that when I lovingly laid down the bountiful feeder buffet and one chicken with an attitude went for my arm instead of the feeder. Bad chick. Bad, bad chick. He had to go to the end of the line...

I have to confess to a bit of chick mother guilt. It's only fair that I own up. Last night when I was giving the little fellas some new water, I apparently sat one of the gallon waterers right smack down on a chick and I didn't even realize it. I kept hearing this incessant "peep, peep, peep" and for the life of me I couldn't figure out where the sound was coming from. That's a downfall of imperfect hearing. A few minutes later Harrison came in and immediately said "The water, the water! You sat the water on a chick!" Yep. Guilty. I picked it up and that poor little guy came running out. I don't know how I didn't kill him. I guess the wood chip bedding was soft enough to give a little. I don't know if we're out of the woods on him or not though. Today I thought I saw a chick that was walking too close to the ground. Ooh. I hate it when I do dumb mothering stuff.

Day 10 - Moving Day

Moving Day Friday -

Yesterday was a big day for the chicks. They moved into new quarters! They still fit fine in the two converted rabbit cages they were living in, but because they were drinking and eating so much more we decided to go ahead and move them to a larger brooder. We needed to bring out the big guns and put the super duper gallon waterers in place and it was a bit crowded in the smaller brooders. So we took the two existing brooders and connected them with plywood, creating an extended "yard" for them to move about more freely in.


This is what it looked like on one end before we removed the cardboard blocking the entry way.
We then removed the middle wire grid, set out two feeders and two gallon waterers in the middle yard, and let the chickens loose. As you can see from the first picture, they were a bit hesitant to venture out, but once they did they each discovered that there were 36 more birds coming out of another cage on the opposite end. No one seemed to like that too much at first and there was a macho display of chest bumping and pecking. After a while, though, they settled down and got down to the business of eating, drinking and going to the bathroom.

The only one who isn't happy with the new arrangement is Sadie. She had enjoyed going in with me to feed them but now with the wooden sides up , she can't see in to the cages and it is driving her crazy. It was a tough day. Here she is, falling asleep in front of one of the cages while we were in the midst of renovation. It gets fairly warm in the brooder area ...

Weather Matters

It is 11 am and Hadley has been outside digging like crazy, trying to beat the rain. He has the thankless (but financially profitable - for him) task of double digging my garden beds so I can get my spring garden planted. If it does rain then he will be out of digging work for the next couple of days because it will be too wet to move the soil.

I am praying for rain so I don't have to drag a zillion hoses out to the garden to water the potatoes I planted a couple of days ago. Our irrigation system is still in the "work in progress" stage, so rain would save me a lot of time and would be better for the garden too. On the other hand, rain will prevent me from working on my garden pathways or planting my figs or weeding the blackberry beds. It's always a catch-22. Luckily, the farm life always provides plenty of tasks that need to be done, inside and out, so I am finding that I'm never at a loss for figuring out what to do. Never.

It's funny how tuned in I am to the weather when I am at the farm. Yesterday I mowed like a mad woman, just in anticipation of the rain. We have a small pasture near the pond that has grown out of control. It is mostly weeds now, since it is where the soil from the pond excavation was dumped and then leveled out. I was bent on mowing it because the coyotes have been hiding in the tall weeds at night, howling and calling out to my little chicks each evening around 11 pm. The chickens will be in a chicken tractor when they are put on pasture, but those coyotes won't let that stop them. I thought if I could clean up their cover, then maybe they'd move on. It's wishful thinking, I know, but mowing is always my therapeutic answer to any problem at the farm. When the grass is high, I mow. When it's about to rain, I mow. When I need time alone, I mow.

So I get it now. Weather matters. It affects all of us, for sure, but for farmers it is the barometer of what tasks lies ahead each day. It determines if you lug hoses or turn on your irrigation system. It grows grass which feeds animals. It grows crops and fruit trees. It fill cisterns. It creates mud. It creates more laundry. It pushes you to the workshop to sharpen tools or to the garage to attempt to finally get things in order. Rain gets the housecleaning done, the planting rotations planned and emails checked.

Yes, weather definitely matters. Out here, I am learning to be grateful for all of it.

The chicken project - Day 4

Well I let three days slip by without writing. I can only blame it on being up with babies all night.

Okay, well not all night. I set my alarm each night between 3:00 and 4:00 to check on the chicks. Kent came in on Friday night and he did night duty on early Saturday morning. We shared the duty Sunday morning.

I am sad to report that we have had 3 chick casualties but all seems to have settled down now and we are at a happy nursery count of 72. I can't account for the deaths so I will simply chalk it up to the "weak chicks" explanation given to me by all of the literature I poured over when I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong.

We have labeled, rightly or not, one brooder cage Type A and the other Type B. The first night I went to check on them, the chicks in the Type B cage were, for the most part, sleeping sweetly except for a chick here and there that was pecking at the feeder or drinking at the water station. The Type A cage was a different matter. Except for a few sleepy chicks here and there, the rest of the brood was alive and partying. Running here and there, tripping over sleeping bodies, gorging on food...the contrast between the two brooders was remarkable! While I make no endorsement of the party lifestyle, I must confess that the three deaths came not from party central, but from the Type B brood. Ah! I am happy to report that by today the personality of the two cages seems to have evened out and they each pretty much mirror the other. Unfortunately, as with people, labels can stick. So until they are mixed up when they are put out on pasture in the chicken tractors in another 2 1/2 weeks, I'm afraid the labels will likely stay put.

The rain yesterday brought colder temperatures but between the heat lamps and the space heater that Kent set up in the workroom, the chicks seem to be staying comfortable. We finally got to graduate from adding a layer of paper towels down on the floor 2 - 3 times a day to cover the vast amounts of poop that these chicks excrete to simply scattering a thin layer of wood shavings down. It is decidedly easier to sprinkle wood shavings than it is to coax lively chicks out of the way to spread out a paper towel. The paper towels provided stability for the chicks' legs and prevented them from eating wood shavings prematurely, before their bodies could handle an occasional shaving mixed in their feed.

The highlight of my weekend was NOT the chicks, however. The highlight was Kent being with us. He brought "provisions" of fruit and (store bought) frozen chicken breasts along with two dozen gorgeous red roses.

Right now, I love chicken farming.

The Chicken Project - Day 1

I am so elated. Thrilled beyond measure.

My babies arrived this morning. 75 chirping, hungry, sweet little balls of fluff.

I got a call at 7:11 from Karen at the post office. I was still in bed, asleep, after having spent a very quiet night at the farm all by myself. The boys were gone, Kent was gone, and it was just the cat, the dog and the rabbit for company. It's hard to go to bed when there is no noise you are wanting to retreat from.

The minute I hung up, I flew out of bed, got dressed and went downstairs to make a pot of tea, feed the animals and check on my brooder. All was going well until I realized that one of my brand new heat lamps wasn't working. I called Kent and left a message, called my friend to let her know that I was coming to pick up Hadley and Harrison, and made a quick breakfast. I threw dry cereal and bananas in a bag for the boys, grabbed my broken heat lamp, and tossed everything in the car.

By 9:15, I had driven to Fayetteville to pick up the boys, stopped at Lindemann's to get a new heat lamp bulb, and set off for the New Ulm post office.

When we walked into this tiny post office we immediately heard a cacophony of chirping. Karen the postmistress brought out a very small box, maybe 24" X 18". That was it. One very small box packed full of tiny sweet babies. Um, I mean chickens. Meat chickens. The kind you eat.

These chickens are shipped the day they are born so my chicks were, at most, 24 hours old.

We got them home, set up the new warmer lights, filled the water and feeders and took the chicks out of the box one by one, first dipping their beaks in water to let them know it was there. They immediately started drinking and eating and moving about. Like children, each one of these chicks was different. One with very large legs, some quiet, some vocal, some shy, others quite assertive.

I am sticking with my vow. I am not naming a one of them. Not one.