Boot Hill

This morning walking out to the barn at 6 AM something caught my eye by the firewood stacked up.  I thought it was a dead chicken.  How could that have happened?  All our hens are locked up in the henhouse at night.  The sun hadn't risen yet, and it was still sort of dark, so I walked over to check out the situation.

There was a dead animal, alright, but it wasn't a chicken.  It was Spotty.  One of our little bucklings.  Spotty has been in poor health for a while.  The goats struggle mightily with parasites, and Spotty seemed the most susceptible.  For the last month, we've been doctoring on him.  We alternated treating him with Valbazen, Safeguard, and Ivermectin.  We gave him Vitamin C and copper boluses and other treatments.  Initially they seemed to work and then a day later, we'd find him regressing again.

Popcorn is our buck that handles all the ladies of the herd.  We had picked Spotty to be Popcorn's heir apparent, primarily because of his genetics.  This little dude was spotted from head to toe - a really remarkable looking little creature.  Well, our plans for Spotty aren't going to materialize.  Popcorn will have to keep on going.  There is another baby buckling, but he's almost solid black with a few random spots here and there.

Before the sun got overhead in the sky, I told Tricia that I was going to lay Spotty to rest.  I took Spotty's collar off of his neck and carried him into the garden.  It hasn't rained here in a month of Mondays, so the ground was hard as granite.  My shovel went down about six inches until it hit a clay hardpan.  I went back to the garage and got the mattock and used that to dig a deeper hole.

When I got it deep enough, I positioned poor Spotty in the bottom of the hole.  Since rigor mortis hadn't fully set in yet, it was easier to get him to fit in the hole.  Then I began back-filling the hole with all the dirt and then woodchips and mulch.

Boot Hill for Goats

When I was done, you could hardly tell where Spotty lies in his unmarked grave in the garden between the green onions and the sweet potatoes.  Can you spot the small rise in the center of the photo above?  Sad?  Yes, but if you raise animals, you've got to be prepared for this type thing and get used to loss.  We gave it our best shot.  It just wasn't meant to be.  And who's to say that Popcorn doesn't have a recessive "spotty" gene that will come out next kidding season.

It Costs A Lot To Die

 “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...”

― Henry David Thoreau

Have you given any thought to dying?  From a spiritual standpoint, it is of paramount importance.  We will all spend eternity somewhere.  You want to nail down the fact that you will be spending eternity in the presence of God in Heaven.  There's only one way to get there and that's through faith in God's Son, Jesus Christ, believing that He's the Messiah and trusting in His finished work on the cross for your salvation.

Once you have that settled, there are some additional, unsavory things about death from a practical and financial standpoint that one must consider.  When I had heart surgery in August of last year, I sat down and wrote out my obituary.  What a project.  If things were to go south in the surgery, I wanted to save Tricia the time and trouble of writing that out.  She didn't end up needing it, but one day she will, and it's done.  But there are other things to consider.

The will is all done and filed away with other important documents.  The next thing to do is to think about the songs you want at your funeral, the pallbearers, singers, and other details of the service.  I haven't completed this yet, but it's next on my list.  Once done, I can put all that in a file and let Tricia know where to find it.  All it would take is a few minutes to read and make any necessary updates.

It seems like the only thing the USPS delivers to the mailbox anymore is junk mail.  Some days we don't get any mail.  However, I walked out to the mailbox the other day and there was a letter from a local funeral home offering a free consultation and funeral planning discussion.  That seemed like the logical next step in getting the planning squared away regarding "kicking the bucket."

I arrived at the funeral home and a professionally dressed woman led me to a well-appointed room.  We sat behind a large wood desk, and she passed the following folder across to me.

She went over a whole lot of information, regarding my wishes.  What I learned is this: "Dying is a doggone expensive proposition!"  Look at some of the costs below:

$7,360 for just the service.  We put a placeholder in for the casket as an average price of $4,000.  I did not bring up with her the thought I had of making my own.  That would be an interesting woodworking project, but where would you store it?  Could it double as a coffee table?  What a conversation starter!  The casket cost does not include the cement vault.  The total goods and services comes to $13,055.  But wait... there's more.  This doesn't include the real estate that your remains will be deposited on.  Local plots run between $500 and $800.

But where to be laid to rest?  We do have a family cemetery in Oberlin by the farm.  I always told my wife and kids that I wanted to be laid to rest beneath the old elm tree in the back yard.  They always respond, "Dad, we don't have an elm tree."  Louisiana law requires that one must be buried in an established cemetery, so I guess that removes my composting in the back from consideration.

Thinking about death is very important from both a spiritual and financial standpoint, and it makes a lot of sense to plan.  I'll continue to fine tune the plans, but thinking about dying reminds me that it is important to think about living, too.  We don't know how much time is still in our hour glass.  I want to make sure that I make every day count.

A Very Hard Day

Twenty-something odd years ago, we had a Chocolate Labrador Retriever named Judy.  She was a beautiful dog - full of life.  She would run around the farm, chasing rabbits.  It was a favorite pastime of Judy's.  One fall afternoon, we were harvesting in the very last field right next to the shop, ten minutes from being finished.  Judy was doing her thing, chasing rabbits in the field.  As you harvest, the area that the rabbits can hide gets smaller and smaller.

The rabbit saw its chance to run and took it.  Trouble is, Judy ran, too - right into the cutterbar of the combine.  The sharp teeth on the combine cut deep into Judy.  She was cut up - really bad.  She looked up at me with those big yellow eyes, whimpering in pain.  I remember Dad asking me if we could save her.  I shook my head, no.  She was injured very badly and could not be saved.  Reluctantly, I got the gun from the truck and put Judy to rest.  It was a hard thing to do.  We buried her right there in the bottom cut of that field where she had gotten so much joy chasing cottontails.

Why am I telling you this painful story?  Because, sometimes animals we love get hurt.  Animals we get attached to are suffering, and a hard decision has to be made.  Last week I told you that Clarabelle, one of our Jersey cows that we JUST dried off after milking her for a year and three months, got injured.  It was a freak accident.  The two heifers, LuLu and Elsie (Clarabelle's heifer), were horsing around.  One of them was in heat and they were all jumping on each other the way that animals do.  Somehow, one of them jumped on top of Clarabelle and injured her back.

We called the vet out for a farm call.  He looked her over and theorized that Clarabelle had a back injury (slipped disk) or perhaps a pulled muscle.  He gave her a shot and said she may get up later that day or the next morning.  He also prepared us that she might NOT get up.  Clarabelle was on the clock.

Every day following, Tricia and I went out to the pasture where she had fallen and flipped her over, two times a day, to make sure her leg wouldn't go to sleep and give her a different vantage point.  That's not an easy thing to do with a large animal.  It was hot and it rains every day.  Lots of mud and mosquitoes and deer flies.  We'd bring her sweet feed and fresh water, gave her a shot of BoSe, drenches of molasses, and we'd pick fresh sweet potato vines for her to eat from the garden (her favorite).  We'd sit with her and tell her what a good cow she was.

She would try to get up, but her back legs would not work.  It was hot and so we built a tent of sorts out of t-posts and a tarp to keep her cool.  She never stopped eating and drinking water, but she was deteriorating day by day.  The other animals would come visit her under the medical tent.

She would get week and fall sideways, struggling to breathe.  Tricia and I would rush out there in the mud, pushing and pulling on her to get her back upright.  We finally got a bale of hay down from the hayloft and positioned it against her body to keep her propped up.  It became all too apparent that this wasn't going to end well.  She was breathing heavy and groaning.  She was suffering, and I couldn't allow it to go on.

Early Friday afternoon I got my handgun and made a slow, long walk to where she lay.  I didn't even tell Tricia I was going.  Clarabelle had fallen once again and had mud all over her and was panting.  I talked to my girl and told her how sorry I was that it had come to this.  I told her again what a good cow she had been, giving us good heifers and winning many ribbons and plaques for Russ and Benjamin in livestock shows.  She was our family cow and had produced hundreds and hundreds of gallons of milk that nourished our family.  But is was time.  Rest in Peace, Clarabelle.

RIP Cupcake

As the title of this blog post suggests, it was a sad morning on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  When I walked out to milk Clarabelle this morning before church, I found Cupcake dead by the garden gate that leads into the pasture.  You might remember our posting about Cupcake, our disabled goat.  You can click the hyperlink and read about her disability.  She was about 10 months old.

Frankly, I don't know what caused her death.  Other than her front two legs which didn't work normally, she was the picture of health.  Tricia spent hours splinting her legs and doing 'rehab' with her.  Here lately, she was walking on her own (bowlegged, of course and limping) about 300 feet to eat grass in the pasture.

Although she didn't really need to, it became an afternoon tradition that Tricia would walk out across the pasture each afternoon, pick up her little Cupcake, and carry her back to the barn.  Last night was the first night in months and months that she didn't do it.  We are guessing that perhaps one of the other animals (one of the milk cows, or Buckwheat, the buck goat) head-butted her and fatally injured her.  They were really rough with her at times, and Tricia would rescue her and put her in one of the stalls in the barn to segregate her from the others.  For the most part, she made it just fine on her own.  She and Tricia were closely attached.

I hated to tell Tricia this morning, but she said, "I'm a farm girl.  This kind of stuff happens.  Before you bury her, I want to tell her goodbye.  She had such a cute little head."  We had church today and caroling for shut-ins this afternoon, so it was after dark before I could tend to Cupcake.  I got a shovel and measured her footprint and dug a 2 1/2 foot deep hole in the very back of the garden.

As Tricia watched, we laid little Cupcake to rest.

I heard a rustling behind me and turned around to see the saddest thing.  Agnes, Cupcake's mom, had come by to bid her farewells to her little girl at the impromptu ceremony.  It was kind of touching.

We'll miss little Cupcake.  She was a fighter and determined not to let her disability keep her from living a somewhat normal life.  It will be different without her on the pasture.  But, newsflash!:  The does are all getting fat.  I think they are all bred and we'll be having a lot of baby goats on the farm this spring.

Farewell to Luna

On November 7th we posted about Luna giving birth to a stillborn calf.  We estimate it was two months premature.  We don't know what caused this to happen.  Luna was fat and healthy.  She delivered the calf and placenta and acted normally... until about a week later.  She began to stiffen and then she lost her appetite.  Her jaws appeared to lock tight!  We called the veterinarian to come take a look at her.  His diagnosis was tetanus.

Tetanus is an infection caused by a bacteria that spreads from the nerves to the brain.  It occurs many times after calving.  The symptoms are stiffening, a protruding tail, unsteady gait, and lockjaw.  This is not good.

The veterinarian prescribed an antibiotic...

A steroid and thiamine which we injected into the muscle on Luna's neck twice a day. 

We diligently cared for Luna day after day, giving her the injections, trying to get her to eat, drenching molasses water into her clenched jaws, but in the end, Luna's recovery just wasn't to be.  Saturday morning when I went out to do the morning chores,  Luna was down.  

When cows go down like this, it is almost never a happy ending.  We tried to push her, to pull her to her feet again.  Her neck was stiffened to the side.  She would kick, wanting to get up, but her body, ravaged by the infection, would not obey.  She wanted to eat and to drink, but her body would not comply as it was damaged by the toxins created by the tetanus.   

Rosie came to Luna's side, trying to encourage her, nudging her with her head to get up.  When Rosie saw it wasn't to be, she began to lick her.  It was a sad day.  Sunday afternoon at about 3:15 PM, Luna breathed her last and succumbed to tetanus.

The rainy, dreary day became even more dreary.  We'll miss ol' Luna, but this is life (and death) on the farm.  You work hard.  You play hard.  You rejoice in victories and you come to accept defeat at times.  2020 has been a rough year in many, many ways.  

But as the Good Book says, "Though the sorrow may last for a night, His Joy comes in the morning."  There is death, but there will also be new life.  This spring (hopefully) Rosie and Clarabelle will calf, ushering in new life to our little acreage.  Farewell, Luna, we'll miss you.

Chickens Can't Tread Water

We have three water troughs for the animals on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  Animals require a lot of clean, fresh water - especially in the summer and especially if the cows are in milk.  Watching cows drink water at the trough is interesting.  They dip their mouth in the water and you can see their nostrils flare out.  Then they drink in large amounts and you can see their throats move as you see the level in the water trough going down.  To the best of my estimation, each cow drinks about 20 gallons a day, depending on the season and if they are lactating.

This water trough has a float valve.  When the water level goes down slightly, the float drops and the valve is opened, allowing fresh water to fill the trough until the float rises, shutting off the water.  The cows and goats primarily drink here.  We have a smaller trough for chickens, but some chickens do fly up, sit on the rim and drink water.

I have two similar water troughs that sit right under the drip lines on the north and south sides of the barn.  They are not attached to any water line, but are filled by rainwater running off the barn.  A two inch rain can easily fill them both up.  Since installing these troughs, they have become the favorite watering hole of choice to the cows.  As they leave the barn, they conveniently walk up to the troughs and slowly drink their fill.

There is one downside to these troughs.  They can be a death-trap for chickens.  We have to be on our toes and check the water troughs each time we go out to the barn.  Sometimes, however, we find a scene like you see below.

That's a barred rock hen floating in the trough - very dead.  It's easy to re-create events leading to her demise.  She was thirsty and didn't want to walk to the trough in front that has water filled to the top.  She flew up to the rim of the water trough and sat on the edge.  She noticed that the water level was low, but figured, "I'll just crane my neck down a bit and drink."

While reaching down to drink, she lost her balance and fell into the water, soaking her wings.  She struggled to try to fly out of the water, to no avail.  Chickens can't tread water, but she didn't die of drowning.  She died of hypothermia.  After sitting in the water, her body temperature began to fall.  She became confused and disoriented and began to shiver.  When no help arrived, she died.  We've been able to save them from time to time by taking them out of the water and putting them in a bucket with a heat lamp.  The lamp dries out their feathers and warms them up.  After just a few minutes the chicken is good to go.

Sadly, in this case, we weren't able to save her.  I brought her to the garden and buried her.  I re-doubled my efforts in checking the two water troughs for wayward hens.  I don't like losing animals.  So far, so good. 

And Then There Was One

About a month ago, we introduced you to new life on the farm IN THIS POST.  Four little Barred Rock chicks hatched out and were following the momma.  She clucked and protected them.  She ruffled her feathers and scolded when animals (or people) got too close.  The momma hen was very crafty and set on the nest in secret.  She surprised us all with her little brood of four little biddies following closely after her, learning from her.

A month later, give or take a few days, and there is only one baby chick left.  There's the baby below all feathered out.

We really don't know what happened to the other three.  There are so many things that could have happened.  First, cows.  The chickens dart to and fro in between the legs of the cows.  I don't know why they do this, but they do.  Sometimes, a cow will step on a chicken and she will be lame for a week or so.  Sometimes they never recover.  One of our cows could have stepped on three of them and squished them down into the mud where we'd never find the little carcass, who knows?

Then, there could have been predators that snacked on 3 of the chicks.  We have red-tailed hawks flying around constantly that would not be shy about swooping down and getting a three piece chicken dinner to go.  We also have a number of chicken snakes on the prowl around the barn.  Mainly they eat rats and eggs, but a baby chick (or three) would have been a nice treat.  Finally, we have critters back by the woods such as possums that would enjoy a chick to eat.  I personally saw the chicks darting between the 4x4 holes in the hog wire despite the momma hens' protests. 

That would be my best guess - the chicks ventured outside of the safety provided by the momma and met a gruesome end.  Fact of the matter is, such is life.  Sometimes, animals just die.  You can try to do everything you can to protect them, but it is a cruel, hard world out there.  Best be careful and not make mistakes.  They could be very costly.  I've always heard it said that you should learn from your mistakes.  I think it is even better to learn from the mistakes of OTHERS!  Hopefully, the one chick remaining did exactly that.

A Loss on the Farm

If you remember from a previous post, Annie, our Nubian goat, had triplets yet again.  The only female kid was stepped on by Luna and was injured, but has recovered.  She walks with a limp that is only noticeable if you know about her injury.  The two bucklings have been plagued for the past week with diarrhea.  This is not uncommon in calves and kids.  Sometimes they drink too much milk.  We live in a hot, humid, wet area and that serves as an ideal breeding place for bacteria and parasites.

Last week Tricia told me that Domino was getting skinny and weak as he continued to have runny stools.  Domino was one of the bucklings who was named Domino because of his white spots on his black torso.  Tricia began reading up on causes and treatments of diarrhea in goats and began treating him. 

Domino did not respond to treatment and continued to worsen.  Tricia went out to the barn numerous times trying to keep him hydrated and comfort him.  It was heartbreaking to watch.  Domino would cry a weak cry.  Tricia is not one to exaggerate or get overly emotional, but she told me, "I think we are going to lose Domino."

Tricia was right.  Friday morning, Tricia went out to care for little Domino.  He was struggling to breathe.  When Tricia gently picked him up to re position him, he breathed his last.  Tricia got a stool sample and brought it to our veterinarian to identify the culprit.

He informed us the name of the parasite.  It is very common in this area and this is the prime time for losing animals.  In fact, our vet told us that he has a veterinarian friend that gave up raising goats due to his frequent loss of goats to this parasite.  He sold us some valbazen wormer that should do the trick and we are treating the other goat that was affected.

It is always a sad thing to lose an animal.  We move forward, though, and continue to try to do our best to care for our animals.

Scary Things In The Night

Has anyone ever approached you and told you that they had some bad news and some good news and asked you which one you wanted first?  I always ask for the bad news first so that I can process and deal with the bad news and then have some news that is good to look forward to.  That is sort of what this post is - a good news/bad news scenario.  And I'll give you the bad news first and then will follow up with the good news in tomorrow's post.

Nighttime can be scary.  There are things that go "bump" in the night.  Evildoers wait until nightfall to engage in their treachery, villainy, and debauchery.  Macabre happenings such as murder often happens at night.  Lives are lost and blood is spilled on the ground by trespassers who break in and take what is not theirs.  This is a story of terror, trembling and blood-curdling fear.

In yesterday's post we explained that we were feeling on top of the world.  We saved a hen that was nearly dead from hypothermia and gave her a second chance at life.  We were feeling real good about ourselves.  We snatched that hen from the jaws of death and gave her an opportunity to continue eating bugs and worms all day in what she must think is heaven on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.

But alas, the day was about to take a turn for the worse.  As we walked to the barn to milk the cows and looked toward the hen house, my eye caught something out of place in the periphery.  Feathers! Lots of feathers were scattered on the ground outside the hen house.  It was as if there was a big pillow fight in the barnyard.  I opened the hen house door and as the door creaked open and my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw more feathers.  One of the nesting boxes was covered in white feathers.  What in the world?!?!

My eyes slowly scanned the hen house and I saw a mutilated corpse on the ground - a lifeless form minus many of its white feathers.  This was an Aracauna hen.  She's one of the girls that lay the blue and green eggs.  She, along with one of her sisters, we call the "barn owls" because they are kind of wild and they like to roost up in the rafters of the barn.  This was a stunning, sad development.  We barricaded the area with Crime Scene tape, made a chalk line around the body and opened a formal investigation.

Although there had to be witnesses, no one was talking - at least in any language that I could understand.  There was fear in their eyes.  Snitches get stitches, they say.  As I looked around for a suspect, a motive, or a weapon, my eyes settled on a second victim.  The "barn owl's" sister was laying in a crumpled pile underneath the roosting bars.  I think there is a serial killer in the area and I think this was a hate crime.  Justice must be served.  As the neighbors, friends and family members of the murdered victims, huddled solemnly and tried to console one another, I vowed to make things right.

I was able to ascertain that the perp made entry into the chicken's abode from a side door that had been left open.  I have half the door blocked with wood to discourage entry by the mischievous goats who liked to get in the hen house and wreak havoc.  The mere size of the opening eliminated certain suspects.  It wasn't a black bear, but that left a lot of smaller suspects.  We'll have to close that door at night from now on.

In a truly twisted turn of events, I stepped back in the hen house to continue my investigation and found yet another twisted, sick, sadistic crime taking place. Cannibalism!  A rooster was eating the remains of the dearly departed.  What did it taste like, I wonder?  Chicken, of course.  "Protein is protein", said the rooster.

Chick - Filet

The beginning of the day was marked with optimism and life.  We were suddenly confronted with murder, cannibalism, and death.  And a killer was still on the loose. Lock your doors.  Hide your kids, hide your wife.  You don't have to call and confess.  We're looking for you.  We're gonna find you.

Tune in tomorrow for some good news.

A Dead Chicken

We throw our chickens a big bucket of rice to eat first thing in the morning and then again in the evening.  The chickens rush around, scratching, pecking, and eating.  Once they are done they meander out to the pasture to eat bugs, worms, tender grasses and other morsels to eat.  They also scratch through cow patties to find undigested grain or seeds to eat.  That doesn't sound appetizing to you or me, but a chicken loves it.  Then the hens convert all that gross stuff they eat into the delicious eggs with deep yellow colored yolks that we love to eat.

Our laying hens have long life spans.  They don't have to be worried about us butchering and eating them, because we grow Cornish Cross meat birds for that purpose.  They don't have to worry much about predators because the dogs around the perimeter keep the raccoons and possums at bay.  Hawks and owls seldom bother them because they've learned to be very watchful and when they see one circling overhead, they run quickly to the barn for shelter.  We do lose a few roosters, but that loss is due to fights between roosters competing for their place in the pecking order.  Mostly, they live happy and carefree.  

At any given time, however, we have a few birds walking with a limp.  100% of the time the limp was due to them being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  That place is under the feet of an 800-900 pound cow.  A chicken that weighs around 3-4 pounds is never going to win that battle.  Cows are notorious wasteful eaters.  As they eat their dairy ration during morning the cows drop the feed pellets and/or grain out of their mouths while they are chewing.  The chickens foolishly gather around and snatch up the feed.  They are so focused on eating that they don't pay attention to the cows' feet. Or the chickens will just get in the cows' way.  Cows don't worry about what's underfoot, they just plod along en route to their destination.  Inevitably, we'll hear a squawk and a hen will limp away with a hurt foot.

Most of the time, they heal up on their own.  Sometimes, though, the injury is fatal.

RIP Barred Rock Hen

Every so often we'll find a dead hen and it is for this reason the each year we purchase some "replacement hens" to take the place of those birds who have died of natural causes or from accident throughout the previous year.  We're expecting a delivery of day-old chicks for this purpose in about two weeks.

It is sad when we lose a bird, but the bird is is not wasted.  She's buried in the garden.  As we posted in the Trench Composting Blog Post, the hen will continue providing for us long after she's gone.  In this case she'll give us some good vegetables instead of eggs.

The Final Resting Place

You would think that the other chickens would learn from their feathered friend's demise, but this doesn't appear to be the case.  Even though we shoo them away from getting around the cows' feet, they continue to put themselves in risky situations.  They get distracted, lose focus, and put themselves in harm's way and sometimes they pay a high price for making a poor choice - sort of like people.    

This is Hard to Write...

This is hard to write and hard to talk about, but that is part of what this blog is about - to journal our thoughts, our victories, and sadly, our struggles in managing a small, diversified homestead farm. Tricia and I have long said that this adventure is a learning process, one that has its fair shares of exuberance and victories where you feel like you are on top of the world AND one fraught with disappointments and difficulties where you feel like you're in a valley.  This is one of those times.

On April 6, 2013, we embarked upon a new adventure that we chronicled in this post: Nellie in which we rejoiced in a new addition to our family when we purchased a lovable Nubian Dairy goat named Nellie.  Since that time Nellie has become like a member of our family, yielding gallons and gallons of goat milk that we use primarily to make kefir.  She gave us many smiles and laughs along the way. She also gave us Annie, her little girl:

Annie

Annie's all grown now and it was time to bring Nellie and Annie to be bred by a Nubian billy goat and we recently discussed that trip in This Blog Post.

Nellie (foreground) and Annie (background) ready to go

We received a call earlier this week sadly informing us that Nellie had died.  There. I said it.  We don't know how or why and we certainly don't blame the wonderful people looking after her.  There were no marks from predators and no signs of sickness.  It just happened.  It's one of those things that you turn over and over in your mind wondering what we could have done differently, wondering how this could have been averted or what type of learning experience we can take away from this tragedy. Sometimes there are no answers.

We know that we provided her with a good life.  She was a happy goat and it saddens us that when we go to pick up Annie, Nellie won't be returning to Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  As I write this I can almost hear her bleating "behhhh" and the jingling of the red bell that we had hanging around her neck as she would run to the barn for her daily milking.

There is a phrase in French, C'est la vie, that means "That's life."  It's true.  Bad things just happen sometimes that we can't change.  Although hard to accept, it's just the way things are and you keep pressing on.  Life is a cycle that sadly includes death.  We fully understand that she's an animal. She's not human and as special as she was to our family, her life is not as valuable as human life.  Our job is to be good stewards of the animals and land that the Good Lord has given us and we believe we've done that, but that is no consolation for losing her and doesn't assuage the sense of loss we have. This isn't the first animal we've lost and it won't be the last.

RIP Nellie

The Millenials have a term they use when something is really good.  They call it GOAT.  That acronym stands for Greatest Of All Time.  RIP Nellie.  You were the GOAT and we will miss you! 

Lessons Learned from a Dead Rooster

Well that's just crazy now, huh?  How can a rooster teach a lesson, let alone a dead one?  Well, that's a story that needs tellin', now doesn't it?  I can remember being a young boy watching cartoons and seeing Foghorn Leghorn teaching lessons to the old dog, Egghead Jr., and Henery Hawk.  "B-b-Boy, I say, Boy!"  Sure roosters can teach lessons and now that I'm older, I learned a lesson or two from a real rooster, not a cartoon one.

Image Credit

We've got a number of roosters running around in the pasture.  They are needed in order to ensure that you have fertilized eggs in the event that you want to hatch out any eggs.  The correct ratio of roosters for hens is 1:10.  You need roughly one rooster for every 10 hens in the flock.  We have that ratio and the roosters run around and do their thing.

Roosters can be very aggressive creatures and, as we've learned, there is indeed a pecking order. Roosters will communicate their dominance.  They each have their own 'harem' and the roosters do an effective job of policing one another and generally try to stay out of each others' way.  Every once in a while, though, a rooster will lose his spot in the pecking order.  He will get into an altercation with another rooster after the other rooster, usually a younger one, challenges him for the top spot. They'll fight and the loser, defeated and scared, will retreat.  It is sad what happens next.

The losing rooster will be picked on and intimidated by all the others and will hide from the others and will shortly die.  The other day this very event played out on our farm.  When we went out to milk, we saw one of our Aracauna roosters cowering in fear under the table near Rosie's milking stall in the barn.  He wasn't bleeding.  He didn't have broken bones,  He didn't appear to be injured.  But he was frightened and traumatized.  We've seen this play out several times.  When I fed the chickens, he never came out from under the table.  A broken dude, to be sure.

The Aracauna's hiding spot

I threw him some feed, hoping he'd come out, thinking that maybe, just maybe he'd get his "second wind" and fight back and live, but it was not to be.  A couple days later Russ found the rooster dead in his hiding spot in the barn under the table. What was the cause of death?  I don't know.  We didn't perform an autopsy on the old boy, but I think he died because he just gave up.

After getting beat up and knocked down, he just gave up and didn't have a will to live.  He cowered in fear in the corner of a dark barn and just quit.  Quit on his ladies.  Quit on life.  We buried the rooster in the garden, between the row of kale and carrots and even though he no longer lives, he'll provide fertilizer for our vegetables. So his dying wasn't a total waste, he has offspring running around the pasture and with the nutrients from his decomposing body, he'll provide for our garden, but his death was tragic and needless.

The rooster's final resting place

So what lesson did I learn from the rooster?  Well for one, we, just like roosters, will always have times in our lives when we'll get beat up.  Sometimes we will get beat up by literal bullies.  There is a pecking order.  Everyone can't be the "head rooster," but we all have an important role to play.  Just because we aren't the leader, doesn't mean that we can't contribute.  Excel in whatever role you have. Bloom where you are planted.

Sometimes we will just get beat up by events in life, disappointments, and dreams not realized.  I've been there.  So have you. In those times there will be a strong temptation to just hide in a corner, curling up in a fetal position and you'll just want to give up, quit, throw in the towel.  Take heart, old rooster!  Don't cower in the corner.  Come out fighting.  You have much to live for.  Don't give up. Never, ever give up.

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go."  Joshua 1:9

Poor Sally

Sally the Hen.  May she rest in peace.

A few posts ago (I think it was the one about the snake), I told you that we had a hen in the infirmary.  We were trying to take care of her and nurse her back to health after an unfortunate accident.  Some day a couple of weeks ago, she had gotten a bit too close to either Daisy or Rosie and the cows don't look around before they meander off to graze.  As a result, Sally, the Barred Rock hen, found herself under an 800 pound cow's hoof and quickly found she was no match for the weight and pressure of a mama cow.

For two weeks now, Russ faithfully brought Sally fresh water and rice to a safe place in the goat barn where he had positioned her away from the other animals.  It is an odd thing about chickens, but when one is injured, they sense the weakness and begin picking on the bird, pecking at her and will eventually kill her.  Sally was eating and drinking just fine, but her legs... they just didn't work anymore and just dangled by her side as she leaned over to eat.  No hobbling, no standing up.  Sally was not making any improvements.  Her legs were crushed.

Russ came to me and said, "Dad, I think we need to put Sally down."  Awww man!  I hate to do this, but she's not getting better and is suffering.  I don't like to see animals suffer.  We tried, Sally, we really did.

The executioner's tool of choice, sharpened

Sally is not an overly special bird.  We call ALL the hens Sally, because we can't tell most of them apart.  It is no big deal for me to kill a meat bird.  We grow them for meat.  After 8 weeks, they are butchered and find a new home in our freezer.  But for the laying hens, it is different.  They live on our pasture for years.  The lifespan of a chicken is said to be around 8 years.  

We started banding our chickens a few years ago and put a different color band each year so we can tell their ages.  Sally did not have a band so I'm guessing that she was at least 4 years old, but probably older.  I read some information that said that on average hens can lay 800 eggs in five years, varying depending upon breed and environment.  Sally has given us lots of eggs over the years and has fertilized a lot of grass during that time.  In this same time, we've given Sally a good life, 3 acres of pasture to roam on and the freedom to do things that free chickens like to do in the great outdoors.

Out of respect for Sally, I won't show you a picture of her or the deed.  "Thank you, Kyle," I can hear my readers say.  Russ turned his head and I sadly and swiftly performed the task.

The Crime Scene

We gathered Sally's remains and a shovel and planted her in the row where the kale grew this past winter.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to dust

Sally will continue to be an asset to Our Maker's Acres Family Farm as she'll fertilize the soil and grow healthy vegetables for our family next Spring.  Death is part of life.  I think it is important to show your kids things like this.  They get to see life and death.  They get to learn that you are to treat animals with kindness, you handle them in a gentle manner, you give them a good life and a humane death.

Russ worked very hard to save Sally, but finally recognized that there was only so much that he could do and he came to the decision of what needed to be done.  That decision was not an easy one for him to make and it made me happy that he deliberated on it and didn't take it lightly.  Life shouldn't be taken lightly.  It's only a bird, you might say.  Yes, but Sally's death provided a teachable moment for my kids and one in which character was developed.

Some Days just Stink!

A couple of weeks ago we purchased 25 Barred Rock day old chicks as replacement birds for some of our older laying hens.  We put them into a little brooder cage in our garage and we'll keep them here until they get some feathers or it gets a little warmer and then we'll put them out on the pasture in a chicken tractor. 

Barred Rock pullet chicks

At the same time we got 100 Cornish Cross chicks and put 50 in each of our two other brooders.  They come in the mail and they are shipped at 1 day old.  We'll normally get a call from the Post Office at around 6:30 in the morning telling us that our birds have arrived.  When you get them in, the Poultry Company normally gives you a few extra in the event that any die during shipping. 

When you open the package, you're supposed to get them out, dip each one's head into a sugar/water solution to give them electrolytes.  Then you put them into the brooder with newspaper spread out and sprinkle some Chick Starter 18% Protein Ration on it.  The chicks instinctively start scratching and eating and you know things are going to be okay.  After a day or so, you remove the newspaper, put in feeders instead and waterers, of course.

One of the brooders with 50 Cornish Cross chicks

You want to be sure to keep them warm, so it is important to hang heat lamps over them.  Sort of a weird thing to think about that at one day old, they have heat lamps over them and then if you go to Popeye's or some other fried chicken joint, the fried chicken has heat lamps over it.  At the very beginning of their lives at at the end of their life, heat lamps cover them.

Heat lamp over brooder #1



Heat Lamp over brooder #2

These birds, especially the Cornish Cross meat chicken, eat a lot.  If they eat a lot, you know that they will be pooping a lot.  With 125 birds in the garage, it gets, how shall I say?  Aromatic.  It gets very, very aromatic in the garage.  Every single day you must change out the hay or wood shavings in the bottom of the brooder or the smell will be unbearable.

The title of the post was "Some Days just Stink!"  Until we move them out of the garage and onto the pasture, the days that they're still in the garage, literally stink.  Another reason some days stink is when you have problems with your birds.  Normally, we'll lose a couple of birds here and there.  They'll pile up on one another and one will suffocate or one will just die for an undetermined reason.

Warning: if you're eating breakfast: YOU MAY WANT TO FINISH BREAKFAST BEFORE VIEWING THE NEXT PICTURES.

It has been incredibly frustrating each day for the last week to wake up in the morning and go out to the brooders to feed and water and find this:
 

Not pretty, huh?

I immediately pull the dead birds out of the brooder for a proper burial in the garden.


Dead chick

The trouble is, the dead birds keep piling up.  Each day we're averaging 3 dead.  We've thought and gone over our production system and we haven't changed a thing from prior batches.     

The body count rises...

Even though I've never had to do this, you can notice in the photo below that I've used some paneling to "round off" the corners as most of the times, the dead birds can be found in the corners squashed and dead from the other birds being on top of them. 


Rounding off the corners

Unfortunately this didn't really slow down the death rate.  Bad feed? Sick birds?  We just don't know.  And then today, they just stopped dying.  All we can figure is this: perhaps the birds were just sickly.  Birds that normally lived through being squashed a bit when they pile up now couldn't make it as they were sickly and in a weakened state.

We lost quite a few birds.  We keep detailed records and right now, I don't have the courage to tally the death toll.  It is easy to get discouraged at times like this.  Death is ugly.  Birds are smelly.  Dead birds don't yield meat for the freezer or money for your pocketbook.  But we keep moving forward.  We do the best we can and leave it in God's hands.

This morning I told Tricia that we need to look on the bright side.  In every occurrence, if you look hard enough, you can find something to be thankful for.

#1  We're thankful that they stopped dying.  Today we lost zero birds,
#2  If we had to lose birds, now is the time to lose them.  At date of slaughter, each bird will have consumed a little over $5 worth of feed.  These baby chicks might have had a nickel's worth of feed go through them so far.  I'd rather them die sooner than later.
#3  The dead baby chicks are buried in the garden and their decaying bodies provide nutrients/fertilizer that will produce beans, corn, potatoes, etc.  Their death is not a total loss.

Just trying to look on the bright side.  And the sun will rise again tomorrow...