2024 Meat Birds - 7 Weeks Old

This week was an eventful week for the Cornish Cross birds.  A bad storm was coming through, promising hail and high winds.  After the weather scare when the birds were very young when we tried to hold the chicken tractor down in 80 mph winds, we had different plans this time.  We were getting weather reports of 75 mph winds an hour away from us.  I staked down the chicken tractor, but then had an epiphany.

The birds are older now and not as susceptible toy hypothermia.  I decided to remove the tarp from the top of the tractor.  This takes the wind resistance away and allows the wind (and rain) to blow right through.  Yes, the birds would get wet, but we could get the tarp back on as soon as the weather settled down, turn on the heat lamps, and all would be good.  Good, that is, unless we got hail that could kill the birds.  I made up my mind that we would butcher any birds that got killed by the weather.

Well, no hail killed any birds.  The strong winds blew and we got almost 2 inches of rain, but the birds made it.  All of them.  We turned the heat lamps on and the shaking birds quickly recovered.  What a blessing!  Well, today is weigh day.  I grabbed an average rooster and marched him in to the kitchen scale I have set up on a table in the garage.

He's a nice looking bird, I think.  He feels solid as I held him.  Let's see what the scale says.

At week 7 we are at 6 pounds and 2 ounces.  Remember a 6 pound bird yields a 4 pound carcass and that is what we are shooting for.  We've hit that for the average bird and still have a few days to go (and grow)!

The day we got them, they weighed 3 ounces

• Week 1, they weighed 6.5 ounces
• Week 2, they weighed 18 ounces
• Week 3, they weighed 29 ounces
• Week 4, they weighed 44 ounces
• Week 5, they weighed 64 ounces
• Week 6, they weighed 84 ounces
• Week 7, they weighed 98 ounces

That's a weight gain of 14 ounces or just shy of a pound over the last week.  As discussed above, we've hit our goal.  I've compared to prior years and this one is right in line with where he needs to be.  Weather permitting, we've tentatively scheduled the butcher date to be this Saturday morning.  So far, we haven't lost a single bird.  Let's see if we can get all 32 birds to cross the finish line on Saturday.  Stay posted.  We'll keep you abreast (pardon the pun) of the poultry butchering extravaganza.

Our Dog, Belle

Belle is our Great Pyrenees.  She's a good girl.  A BIG girl, but a good girl.  Lately we've had some fierce storms that blew through our area.  As big as she is, she's a big baby when it comes to bad weather.  She hides under my workbench in the garage.  She will also beg and Tricia caves in and lets her come into the house.  She parks her big rear end in the half bathroom by the back door.  The next morning the half bathroom smells like "wet dog."  Not good.

She's been barking a lot at night.  We know that there are stray cats in the area and that may be what she's carrying on about.  Or we know that the neighbors have dogs.  If there are any other dogs in the proximity of Belle, she lets them know that this is her territory and it's off limits to her.  Regardless, she barks loud and we worry that it is bothering the neighbors.  We've apologized to them on her behalf.  They say it doesn't bother them, but we think they're just being kind.

Belle's job is to be a livestock guardian dog, but fulfilling that job description started off in less than stellar fashion.  When we first got her and put her with the animals, she promptly chased the chickens and ate a few of them.  She also ate the valve stems and mud flaps off the pickup truck.  She also had a penchant for chewing through the brake lines on my car.  I drove to work with no brakes one day.  "My dog is trying to kill me," I thought.  Those shenanigans cost us some money.  I'm glad to say that as she's grown older, she's grown out of most of those bad behaviors.  Except for digging holes.  That dog excels at hole-digging.  Not your garden variety hole, but 'fall in the hole and sprain your ankle' holes.

Fact of the matter is, we love that girl.  She likes to sit out by the barn in a dog house that I built many years ago for a puppy we had named Cutie Pie.  Cutie Pie was stolen!  What type of individual steals a child's puppy?  It is heart-breaking to lose a dog.  By the way, have you ever seen the movie, "My Dog, Skip?"  Wonderful movie.  I highly recommend it.

Stoic Belle

I think she'd like it if we stenciled her name on the dog house.  To be honest, I didn't think she'd fit in it.  She's way bigger than Cutie Pie was!

Smiling Belle

Belle just likes being around people.  She likes her people.  If we're outside, she's gonna come find us and get some attention.  Sometimes her desire to be the center of attention is overwhelming.  A few Saturday mornings ago I was on the back patio reading over my Sunday School lesson.  Trying to read over my Sunday School lesson...

Our dog, Belle, made it very difficult to get any Bible Study done on that particular morning.  Who could deny attention to that face?  Not me!

Mothers Are To Love!

Mother's Day 2024.  It was a good day.  We enjoyed a church service honoring mothers and thanking God for the gift of mothers and the institution of Motherhood.  I'm so blessed to have a great mom, to have had great grandmothers, a great mother-in-law and a great mother to our children in Tricia.  Proverbs 31 women, for sure.  We gathered at our house for a meal and dessert and just sat around the table visiting, laughing and enjoying each others' company.

Russ and Benjamin were here to celebrate with Tricia.  Mom and Dad were here as well.  My brother, Kristian, drove in from New Orleans and my sister, Jenny, her husband, Brett and their six boys were here.  Jenny's oldest, Conner and his wife (celebrating her first Mother's Day), attended with their six month old, Mary Grace.

Russ, Tricia, and Benjamin

Many times we get so busy visiting and eating that we forget to take pictures to commemorate the event.  Not this time.  We got a few:

Benjamin, Mom, me, Tricia & Russ

It was a Mother's Day to remember!  We thank God for Good Mothers!

Quick Garden Update

We've spent lots of time in the garden lately harvesting all the good stuff that's ripening.  Until this week, the humidity still hasn't been suffocating nor the heat oppressive.  But look out.  It's coming!  The sweet corn harvest is coming as well.  We planted early this year, kind of risking it with a late frost, but everything worked out.  As you can see, the sweet corn is tasseling.  Won't be long...

The Rainbow Swiss Chard is the last hold-out from the fall crop.  It is still producing, but it doesn't like hot weather.  Some of the bigger leaves have begun to droop.  Those get fed to the cows.  I like the way the veins in the leaves and stem have bright colors - red, yellow, pink, and white.  Hence, the name rainbow chard.

The sweet potato vines have quickly overtaken the entire first part of the garden.  This is something that we've not planted in a decade.  It comes up every single year volunteer.  There's no telling how many hundred or even thousand pounds of sweet potatoes we've dug over the years off of one original planting.

Speaking of only planting one time, here is our asparagus.  My mom bought us the asparagus roots easily a decade ago, probably more.  Each year, they've grown back, pushing up spears out of the ground.  You have to check them each day because they grow so fast!

And the cucumbers.  We're picking a basket of cukes every day.  We have fresh dill growing in the herb garden.  We have a favorite salad that we like to make using cut up cucumbers, blueberries, fresh dill, and balsamic vinegar.  It makes a delicious, crisp, cooling salad for lunch.

Zucchini, yellow crookneck and straightneck squash is filling up baskets as well.

Sautéed squash, zucchini fritters and zucchini casserole has been in rotation for side dishes lately.

Tricia sautés asparagus in butter with some sea salt.  We finish them off as fast as we can pick 'em.

From garden to table.  Hard to beat fresh garden produce!

I hope your gardens are producing bountiful harvests!

2024 Meat Birds - 6 Weeks Old

This morning my wife and I were reading in the book of Job.  You know the story well.  Job had many calamities befall him.  All on one day.  When he thought it couldn't get any worse after loosing his oxen and donkeys and sheep and servants, another servant came running up and told him that his sons and daughters were having a feast and the eldest son's home.  All of a sudden strong winds came forth and blew the house down on top of them, killing all of Job's children.

What did Job do?  He mourned.  Like anyone would do.  Then he said, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, Blessed be the Name of the Lord."  In all this Job didn't sin.  In fact, his wife told him, "Are you going to retain your dignity?  Curse God and die."  Job told her, "You talk as a foolish woman.  Are you going to receive good from the Lord and not receive the bad?"

First, I began to think of what a righteous man Job was.  I also began to remember when our meat birds were very young and the 80 mph winds blew, knocking over our pecan tree and causing destruction all around.  Tricia and I were in the chicken tractor, trying to hold it down and save our birds from calamity.  Little did we know that we could have been like Job's kids!  Not only that, lightning was flashing all around, crashing like nobody's business.

After the storm passed and I was cleaning up limbs, I picked up this branch that wasn't 150 feet from where we were in the chicken tractor:

Yep, lightning!  It popped a water oak tree in the front yard, burning the branch with considerable voltage and splintering the wood, sending it falling in the yard.  You can see way up in the tree in the photo below where, about 3/4 of the way up, another burned, broken off piece of the limb remains.  That was a close call!

Well, tonight is 'weigh day.'  It's the time I go out and pick out an average bird from the chicken tractor, march it into the garage where I have the scale set up, and weigh the bird.  We purchased straight runs, meaning they could be hens or roosters.  Roosters grow faster and bigger.  This one below is a rooster.

He felt heavy and hot.  I sat him up on the scale to see where he was.

Whoa!  He tipped the scale at 5 pounds, four ounces.

The day we got them, they weighed 3 ounces

• Week 1, they weighed 6.5 ounces
• Week 2, they weighed 18 ounces
• Week 3, they weighed 29 ounces
• Week 4, they weighed 44 ounces
• Week 5, they weighed 64 ounces
• Week 6, they weighed 84 ounces

That's a weight gain of 20 ounces or 1 pound 4 ounces over the last week.  At five pounds and four ounces, that is precisely where we want to be at this point.  I've compared to prior years and this one is right in line with where he needs to be.  At this rate, we are on course for butchering at the 8 week point.  We'll check back in next Wednesday.

Fine Feathered Friends

 “I dream of a better tomorrow where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Three weeks ago yesterday we put 10 eggs under a broody hen.  If she wanted to set, well, we'll let her set.  We need to make up for the 30-something odd hens we lost to the minks.  Fortunately, since we've been locking them up every night behind a hardware cloth lined cage, we haven't lost any.  We have about 30 hens left.  

Yesterday after church, Tricia said, "Hey, it's been three weeks.  I wanna go check and see if the broody hen hatched out any babies."  She came back in and said, "Yep, I see three baby chicks so far." 

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!  - Matthew 23:37

That is such a touching metaphor.  You can see how the hen protects her chicks.  When we walk up, the chicks scurry under her protective wings.  She fluffs up her feathers to make herself look larger than she is and makes noises to let you know not to mess with her.  

It's a dangerous world out there for a newborn chick.  There are many predators lurking around on the ground and in the sky.  Rats, Snakes, Red-tailed hawks, minks...  There's even danger from "friendly" animals.  The cows don't look where they are walking and if a baby chick gets under their feet, well, it's not pretty.

Our plans are to move the momma hen and her chicks (however many hatch) into a dog kennel that we'll line with chicken wire and let them get a little bigger before setting the babies free in the barnyard.

We have three other hens that are broody.  We'll let one of those start setting on a nest of eggs, too.  Realistically, we will have to hatch out a BUNCH of eggs to make up for the ones lost to minks.  Some of them will be roosters and we'll butcher them.  But the hens - we'll incorporate them into the flock. Sure, we could put a bunch on the incubator again, but these girls are feeling motherly.  We might as well let them hatch out their eggs naturally, the way God intended it.

Improving the Soil

One of our projects on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm has been a work to improve the soil in our garden and side garden.  We've used cover crops.  We've made biochar and inoculated it with cow manure and worked it in the soil.  We've done hugelkutur.  We've composted for years and amended literally tons of organic matter into the soil.  We've used only composted (cow and chicken) manure and fish emulsion for fertilizer and planted plenty of crops that set nitrogen.  Finally, we've incorporated the "Back to Eden" gardening technique which is no-till and uses layers of wood chips to always keep the soil covered.

The soil was in poor shape when we started, however.  I have a soil test from about a decade ago and figured it was time to do another soil test just to see where we are and how we might improve.  We went to the LSU AgCenter Extension office here in Jennings and got a soil sample kit.  We followed the directions found within and took soil samples.

We took three separate samples.  One was from the garden.  Another from the garden in the side yard.  Finally one from the pasture.  Each sample was put in separate bags and labeled.

Each test costs $11.  I labeled the samples by putting the crop grown on the outside.

All the samples were taken on the five acre piece of land where we live.  I want to show you something that was obvious at first glance.  Look at the color of the soil in the three samples.  Starting from the left is the garden soil.  We've been working on improving that soil for the longest time - maybe 20 years.  Then the sample in the middle is from the side yard garden.  We've been improving that soil for about 5 or 6 years.  The last sample, on the right, is the soil sample from the pasture.  Other than cows and chickens pooping on it, we've done nothing to it, although I had intended on putting lime down, but never followed through.

Quite a difference in color!  It appears that the amendments have improved the soil in color, at least.  We'll wait and see what the soil test analysis shows.  Once we get the tests back, we will have a good idea of what we need to do.

Kids Looking for a New Home

Be fruitful and multiply.  God told Adam and Eve to do that.  They did.  After the flood, God told the same thing to Noah and his family.  They did.  Later, God told essentially the same thing to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and guess what?  They did.

Our goat family has taken that message to heart as well.  It all started with one goat and now we've got a herd of them.  This spring Mocha gave birth to Blackie and Callie gave birth to Betty and Agnes gave birth to Abby.  It is like a goat rodeo in the pasture 24/7.  Our little pasture is just too small to handle all of the goats, chickens, and cows.  I told Tricia, "We've got to sell some of these goats."  She doesn't want to.  Tricia loves the goat family, but understands the space limitations.  

They are dairy goats and Tricia milks them.  We have a goat milk smoothie every morning with fresh berries.  Delicious!  I think we've shown you photos of Blackie and Abby, but I'm not sure if we showed you Betty.  Betty has an interesting "paint job."  Look at the spots on this critter:

She started out as being very small as compared to Blackie, but she has quickly caught up.  It is entertaining to watch the babies play out in the pasture.  They hop around and dart this way and that.  Fun to watch, I tell ya.  

Their playfulness catches the attention of people passing by on the road.  In fact, someone stopped and wants to buy Betty.  They've called twice letting us know they were coming by to get her, but each day they haven't shown up.  I took this photo of Tricia and Betty in the event she got sold - Betty, that is.  (Tricia is NOT for sale.)

We'll see what happens.  One way or the other, we've got to get some goats off the pasture.  Cabrito?  That would be very hard since we've named them!

2024 Meat Birds - 5 Weeks Old

It's already Wednesday weigh-in for the meat birds.  The week has been mostly uneventful for the Cornish Cross birds.  They are steadily growing.  You can't really call them chicks any longer.  We had more than a 2 1/2 inch rain this past week, but it didn't phase them.  As young chicks, when they get wet, you can easily lose the whole flock.  Ask me how I know that little factoid.  They are older now and have feathers and put off a lot of heat.  

Speaking of heat, I still have them under the heat lamps at night.  During the day, I turn them off as it has been warming up into the upper 80's already.  I'm still feeding them bugs at night.  As far as feeding, we're still giving them an 18% protein, non-medicated chick grower.  I feed at breakfast, lunch and supper.  In other words, I keep feed in front of them all day long.  At nightfall,, I pull the feed and give them a 12 hour stretch with no feed.  In the morning, they are hungry.  They practically attack me when I open the door with the bucket of feed.

Let the sleeping chickens lie

I picked up a bird of average stature for the weigh-in.  Remember, there are 7 birds that are a week older.  I'm not weighing any of those guys.  You can see by this one's comb that he is a rooster.

This bird has some big feet!  I noticed them when I set him down on the scale.  Let's see what he weighs...

Exactly 4 pounds.

The day we got them, they weighed 3 ounces

• Week 1, they weighed 6.5 ounces
• Week 2, they weighed 18 ounces
• Week 3, they weighed 29 ounces
• Week 4, they weighed 44 ounces
• Week 5, they weighed 64 ounces

That's a weight gain of 20 ounces or 1 pound 4 ounces over the last week.  At exactly four pounds, that is precisely where we want to be at this point.  At this rate, we are on course for butchering at the 8 week point.  We'll check back in next Wednesday.