Expensive Fertilizer for the Garden

Last week we had some phenomenal lines of thunderstorms blow through, bringing with them torrential downpours of rain.  I measured 4.8 inches in my rain gauge, but there's no telling how much we really got. My rain gauge only has a 5 inch capacity, and I'm sure some splashed out of the top.  We also got some very strong straight-line winds, with gusts as high as 60 miles per hour.

Needless to say, this was not good weather for the meat birds in our new chicken tractor.  I was concerned about the birds and kept running out the front door and walking on the porch toward the west side of the house and peering out, trying to catch a glimpse of our Cornish Cross meat birds between the blowing wind and rain that battered my face.

You see, it was hard to see because our power was out.  It went out at 8 p.m. and didn't come back on again until noon the next day.  But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind the cassette a bit. There was a tornado warning in effect, we had no power, and it was raining cats and dogs.  At one point I thought I saw the tarp blow off the chicken tractor.  I told Tricia that I was going to wait until it slacked up a bit to go check on the birds.

At about 10:30 the wind slowed a little and there appeared to be a break in the rain. We both put on our slicker suits and rubber boots and walked across the backyard toward the area where the chicken tractor was positioned.  My flashlight brought the chicken tractor into view.  Something wasn't right!  The chicken tractor lay on its side.  The wind had flipped it over.  As I panned across the yard with the beam of my light, I saw what appeared to be white rags littering the landscape in a 50 square foot area.  The wind must have knocked over someone's garbage cans.  Wait a minute - those aren't rags!  Those are birds.  Our birds!  Our soaking wet, shivering, half-dead birds.  I picked up the first bird I came to.  It was dead.  I turned to Tricia and said, "We lost all of our birds."  But as we walked around, there weren't all dead.  Some were alive.  Thank you, Lord.

I flipped the chicken tractor over.  It was in good shape.  Tricia helped me to walk around and pick up every single bird.  Some were dead - three for sure.  I stacked their cold carcasses outside the tractor.   The rest were suffering from the effects of hypothermia. Since our power was out, I couldn't turn the heat lamp on and warm them up.  I did the next best thing.  I stacked them very close together inside the chicken tractor where their body heat could warm each other up.

The next morning at 5 a.m. I wasn't sure what would be awaiting us.  Would ANY of the chickens be alive?  I opened the door and heard some chirping.  There were birds looking back at me - definitely alive.  In all 13 meat birds succumbed to the effects of the stormy weather.  When I got back from work in the evening, I carried several buckets of dead chickens to the place of interment.

When you hear the term "Bucket of Chicken," you normally think KFC - not this gruesome sight!!

With a few minutes of manual labor behind the familiar handle of a shovel, I dug a trench between the garden rows from last year's garden and deposited the fallen fowl into the shallow grave. I fashioned a crude cross for the 13 meat birds' final resting place, and God providentially sent rays of sunlight to illuminate the chicken cemetery.

Now I must remember, it could have been worse.  Much, much worse.  Maybe 8 or 10 years ago, I lost every single bird after a rain storm.  25 meat birds that were healthy and about the size of Cornish hens were dead.  We only lost 13 of the birds this time.

I also learned a lesson.  Although the center of gravity is low on the new chicken tractor, if we are expecting strong winds, I need to be diligent about staking the chicken tractor down and getting out to check on the birds EVEN BEFORE the storm subsides.  If I would have gotten out there a little earlier, I might have saved them all.

There is a silver lining to this sad story.   Like the Indian's fish provided nutrients to the pilgrim's growing corn, the chickens' dead carcasses will do the same later this year, feeding our vegetables and providing a bumper crop of delicious vegetables.  It's just doggone expensive fertilizer!