Homegrown Fertilizer

In a post back on April 5th entitled a "foul smelling concoction", we described how we're turning weeds and garden waste into liquid fertilizer by inoculating with cow manure, rainwater and letting it ferment in 5 gallon buckets in the sun.  Homegrown fertilizer.  It has proven itself.  We've never had bigger, healthier, more productive yellow squash and zucchini!

We have another way that we produce homegrown fertilizer.  It's derived in our henhouse.  You might call it a "fowl" smelling concoction as well.  It is in the hen house where the chickens roost at night on roosting bars on the eastern wall.  You can see the sun filtering in from the western sky as I stand in the doorway.  Over time, the poop piles up underneath the place where they roost.

If you allow it to pile up, the henhouse has a strong ammonia smell.  It reminds me of how they describe bat guano in caves.  Every so often, in order to gather fertilizer AND to freshen up the aroma in there, I shovel the chicken litter into a wagon and pull to the garden.

On this particular afternoon I was able to fill two 30 gallon molasses tubs with composted litter.  I'll cover with a lid to keep it sealed off and dry.  If you look closely at it, in addition to chicken poop, there is straw and feathers mixed in as well.

Chicken litter is high in nitrogen and must be composted or cooled down for about four months until it is "cooled off" enough for use around plants to ensure that you don't burn the plants.  The tricky part of this is that most of the chicken manure in the tub is composted.  However, some of it on the top layer under the roost is fresh.  What I've always been able to do is to mix the litter thoroughly in order to incorporate the fresher manure with the composted manure and then either top dress or incorporate in the soil before planting.  It's an inexact science and it could (pardon the pun) burn me, but up to this point, it hasn't bothered the plants in the garden.

Free fertilizer made right here on our little farm.  It beats the pants off of buying it!

Disaster in the Hen House

At 6 am the alarm clock goes off and I head out to the barn to do the morning chores.  I feed the goats, the cows, and feed the chickens.  Then I open the henhouse to open the nesting boxes.  After sunrise, the solar-powered door opens and the chickens go out to roam on the pasture.  When I opened the door to the hen house, I was met with a startling sight.  There were feathers everywhere.  There were numerous carcasses of dead hens littering the hen house floor.  Carnage and savagery on display.  It was only a few months ago that we worked very hard to cement the floor of the henhouse where mink can't tunnel under and get to the chickens.  Mink had, you'll recall, killed 39 hens back then.  What in the world happened?  The surviving birds had witnessed a murderous rampage and I wondered if they had PTSD.

When I got back from work, I loaded the deceased into a wagon.  There were FIFTEEN dead hens.  Fifteen of them!  But I have a plan.  Like Wyatt Earp exclaimed in the movie, Tombstone, "You tell 'em I'm comin', and hell's comin' with me!"  Phase one of my plan is to gut all these chickens, so I sadly, but resolutely brought the wagon of death to the back patio.

Once I gutted all fifteen birds, I dug a big burial plot in the back of the garden.  If any good can come of this, it's that we're importing some fertility to the garden.  Tossing the birds in the burial plot, I covered them up.

I collected a nice collection of chicken guts.  I'll show you what I'm planning on doing with this in a future post.

Once that job was out of the way, I went to inspect the henhouse.  How could the mink get into my feathered fortress?  I closely surveyed the entire exterior.  And then... I found it.  There was a very small gap at the bottom of the door casing.  It is only an inch and a half wide by 1 1/2 inch tall.  That's more than enough room for a bloodthirsty mink.  They don't even eat the chicken.  It appears they suck the blood.  To fill this gap, I cut off a piece of 2x4 and nailed up the hole to prevent re-entry.

That night a contingent of hens that previously roosted in the hen house gathered in front of the rabbit hutches to roost where it's safe behind hardware cloth

They were exposed to a lot of violence.  I guess they've seen enough.  For that matter, I have, too.

Don't Tread on Me

Our hen house borders the woods on the south side of the property.  That's always been a problem.  There are lots of critters in the woods - possums, rabbits, rats, MINKS, stray cats, squirrels, and snakes.  Rat snakes grow to be six feet long, easily.  They look scary, but they are harmless.  In fact, we leave them alone for the most part.  They are like heat-seeking missiles that take out rats and keep the population under control.

Where we run into problems is when the rat snakes (we call them chicken snakes) opt for easier prey and begin eating our eggs.  When I went out to the hen house with my egg basket to begin gathering eggs, look what was waiting for me in the very first box.  No wonder all the hens were acting real nervous right outside the hen house.

It's quite obvious the snake had eaten an egg.  Its skin is stretched taut and you can see the oval shape of an egg there.  It is also an amazing thing that the snake can open its mouth wide enough to ingest the egg.

To assist in combatting egg loss by these reptilian rascals, we have placed ceramic eggs in each of the nesting boxes bordering the woods.  I use a black sharpie to draw a stripe around the egg so that I'll be able to tell the fake eggs from the real ones.  You can see those below.  If you look above, you'll note that the fake egg is missing from the box.  The snake had eaten the fake egg.  It's a death sentence for the snake.  He'll get a terminal case of constipation, because he'll never break that egg and he's sure not gonna pass it.

Sometimes, the snake slithers off into the woods and dies and we'll find the ceramic egg in a snake skeleton months later.  This time, I'm not going to wait.  I'm going to get our egg back.  Armed with a shovel, I performed a surgical procedure to remove it.  I got our egg back.

If the snake would have just stayed in his lane, all would have been well.  He would have been free to kill rats - a practice that rat snakes are quite adept at doing.  Tragically, the snake got "tread" on.

The High Tech Hen House

We splurged a little and bought a contraption for the hen house.  Total price tag was $44.  We'll see if it works.  It is a solar powered chicken coop door.  It opens at sunrise and closes at sunset.  The current arrangement goes like this:  At night after all the chickens are roosting in the hen house, I go and close the door so that the minks don't kill all of them.  After they killed 39 in total, we've finally built the flock back up to 40 in total.  Each morning, we go back out to the barn and open the door to the hen house so that they can run around on 3 acres and forage for bugs, worms and grass.

This is not a new invention - I remember my friend in Hathaway had one of these on his hen house many years ago.  I was impressed with it.  It was delivered to the door yesterday and today after work, I got the instructions out and began the installation process.

I took the existing hen house door off and took measurements, using the old adage, "Measure twice, cut once."  It fit like a hand in a glove.  I began screwing everything in place and brought the charging apparatus inside to charge with electricity since it would soon be getting dark. Tonight, we'll manually close it once its charged and then tomorrow we'll begin the automatic sunrise open and sunset close feature.

It's about 6:30 pm and some of the girls are checking out the new door.  "How's this gonna work?"  The opening is four times smaller than it used to be.  Will they figure it out?  I'm sure it will, but after it gets dark, we'll check and see if they all made it in.

It's 9:30 pm and we went out and manually closed the door.  Let's check in and see if they all made their way in to roost:

They did!  The hens and roosters are all up on their roosts and ready to call it a night.  As am I.  Good night everyone!

Broody Hens

We have 8 nesting boxes in our hen house.  Nine if you count the milkcrate with hay in it on the floor.  It's an overflow nesting box, and it's a good thing we have it.  Right now we have 5 hens that are broody.  Here are four of them right here:

Broody hens have gotten the motherly instincts.  They want to sit on their eggs and incubate them.  The incubation period is 21 days.  Broody hens, during this time, may stop laying eggs.  The trouble is, we have 40-something laying hens right now, with another 13 in a chicken tractor that we hatched out in our incubator from our fertilized eggs.  We don't need additional chicks at this time, so I reach under these hens each afternoon and snatch the eggs from beneath them.  They are very protective of their clutch of eggs during this stage, and they always fluff their bodies up and peck my fingers as I reach underneath them.  They don't like this at all!

They sit on their nests all day long in the sweltering heat.  I've moved water tubs into the hen house so that they can have water when they need it.  Most things I've read say that a hen will "break" her broodiness after 21 days, but we don't always see this happen.  Their biological clock is ticking and they desire to hatch out some babies.  Some of the broody hens sit on NO eggs.  Others are sitting on a chalk egg that we have in the box to deal with rat snake problems.  They don't know what they are sitting on.  They just want to sit.

This would be a perfect time to just put 8 or so eggs underneath each one, but we don't need anymore baby chicks for our flock.  We are gathering, on average, about 22 eggs each day.  We eat all we can, keep our kids and family members stocked with fresh eggs and sell the rest.  One of the things we've been eating for lunch is egg salad sandwiches.  I'm not a big fan of mayonnaise, but my wife makes homemade mayonnaise that is good, so she'll boil some eggs, cut them up, add olive salad mix and salt and pepper and serve over some toasted sourdough bread for an open-faced sandwich.  We enjoy that for lunch.

Hopefully, at some point soon, the broody hens will be broken and will once again be out on the pasture foraging in the grass for bugs and worms.

Getting the Hen House "Mink-Proofed"

Anyone following our blog has heard us lamenting over the fact that we lost 39 laying hens to minks over a year ago.  Though long ago, it is still fresh on my mind.  Under cover of darkness, those murderous minks crept onto our property from neighboring rice and crawfish ponds, burrowed under the hen house walls where the hens all roost at night, popped up in their safe resting place and killed them.

Since that time, we've locked all our hens up in rabbit hutches that are completely off the ground and protected by hardware cloth.  Each night when they get in there to roost, we put the latch on to ensure their safety.  The trouble is, it is cramped in those cages for 40-something birds to fit comfortably.  It was high time to 'mink-proof' the hen house.

I'm 58 years old.  I'm not an elderly person, but I'm not a spring chicken, either.  Every so often, I throw out my lower back.  My plan to mink-proof the hen house was to pour concrete all across the floor.  This would prevent the minks from tunneling in (unless they had jack-hammers).  Pouring concrete, however, is laborious and hard on the back.  All that mixing and shoveling.  There has to be a better way.  Turns out there is.

Dry pouring concrete.  That's the ticket and I'll show you how its done.  I measured the floor of the henhouse and used an on-line concrete calculator to determine how many 80 pound bags of concrete mix I would need.  Then I used a wagon to move the bags close to the hen house.

I split the project into 3 parts since this is a working hen house.  Hens are in and out all day long laying eggs and I didn't want to disturb them.  I made a crude form, using 2 x 4's and first poured the section you see directly under the roosting bars at the far end of the building.

On the second day, I did a shorter section under the smaller roosting bars right up to the nesting boxes.

And the third day, I finished up the section underneath the roosting boxes, right up to the door of the structure.  The photo below shows how I've worked my way out of the building.  It shows the process, too.  All that concrete you see below is powder.  It is dry concrete that I've poured out of the bag and used a rock rake to spread it, 2 1/2 inches deep across the floor area.  Then I use a 2 x 4 to screed the dry concrete until it is level as possible.  Working my way out of the building so I don't paint myself into a corner, you can see how it's done.

Finally, when its all dry poured, NOW you apply water.  First, setting your sprayer to the MIST setting, you mist the concrete powder until it has changed colors.

Then, you come back in an hour, set your hose sprayer setting to the "shower" setting and spray pretty liberally.  Repeat the same thing in an hour and then repeat again in another hour.  Then you are done.  The next day, you can remove the forms and your hens are good to go.  So easy.  No back-breaking mixing or shoveling.  

We began moving the hens back in the henhouse last night.  We're pleased with how it came out, but the proof is in the pudding.  Can the dry pour concrete defeat the bloodthirsty minks?  Time will tell.

The Hens Rejoice

Have you ever done something that you were proud of?  Perhaps you reached a goal that you had set.  Upon achieving that milestone, you naturally want to crow about it a little bit.  It's the human condition that we like to poke out our chests and strut around like we're something special.  The King of the World, the Cock of the Walk.  What if I told you that things are not any different in the animal kingdom?  When animals do something they're proud of, they like to boast, and crow, and strut around.

I witnessed this on Resurrection Sunday morning.  I was out feeding the chickens and opening up the henhouse so that the girls could run inside and lay their eggs.  Upon laying their eggs, the hens launch into a song they've created to tell the world they laid an egg.  It is a song of hope, of exuberance.  It's a song of victory and pride.  Click on the arrow in the photo below if you'd like to hear the hens' song I captured on my cell phone while listening to the hens hymn:

What did you think about that?  Hens don't make that noise at any other time than after laying an egg.  What a cacophony of clucking!  If I could lay an egg, I'd probably sing a song, too! 

Knocking Things off the List

I had a somewhat easy day at work today, so it allowed me a little time in the mid-afternoon while I had some daylight left to knock two things off my list.  How's your To Do list?  If it's anything like mine, I add two things for every one I scratch off.  I'm not complaining, though.  That gives purpose and ensures productivity.  It protects one from the sin of slothfulness!

First item on the list:  Move mulch to the garden pile.  We have a number of piles of wood chips that have been decomposing.  As I make space in the back of the garden, I move it from the yard piles to the big pile in back of the sugarcane in the garden.  These piles have reduced significantly in size as they decompose.  It's time to go find the right-of-way clearing trucks and get some more.*

The interior of the pile is moist and full of mushrooms.  If I rub it all together in my hands, it turns to a rich soil-like substance - a nice growing medium.

In the big pile of wood chips in the back of the garden, I'm working on what I call bacteria compost lasagna.  I call it that because I have layered wood chips, cow poop, wood chips, dead chickens that the mink killed, wood chips and cow poop.  Today I put a cap on the lasagna but topping it off with wood chips.  The bacteria in the cow manure and dead chickens will inoculate the wood chip pile with bacteria.  The mushrooms will further break down the pile so that next year some time, I can move all this into the garden.  Then we start the process all over again.

Second item on the list was to "secure the hen house."  As you saw, the mink murdered a number (about two thirds) of our flock.  They did so by accessing the hen house at night by digging under the tin walls that weren't reinforced by bricks and cinder blocks and gaining entry.  Today, armed with some self-tapping screws, tin snips, a drill, and tin, I drove the tin into the ground deep and screwed it in securely and then piled bricks and rocks against the wall to discourage them.

I know what you're thinking.  "It ain't pretty!"  It's not.  This is an old hen house that was given to me and moved on site.  Over the years, the bottom tin rusted out leaving holes that tempted various varmints and vermin to find their way into the hen house.  That ends today.  I know it doesn't match and its not even.  A friend told me one time, "Animals don't care if it's pretty.  They don't care if the wood or tin is cut square.  It just has to be functional."  I subscribe to that!

It's all patched up.  Along the back wall where the roosts are, prior to my patching job, you could see sunlight from where the holes were.  Not anymore!  The only daylight you see is from the coop door that I have opened.

Third item was to patch up the holes in the rabbit hutches.  These are really, really old.  There were numerous holes in the roof and in the hardware cloth that would allow critters to get in and kill my chickens.  I fixed all of that and worked on latches for the doors.

You can see the hens making their way into the hutch on top.  That's where I lock them up for the night, safe from predators.  The bottom hutch is not ready so that we can move the hens from the chicken tractor that's in the yard.

I didn't want to move them before I had everything fixed as best as I could.  That was an afternoon of fixing things.  The next items are much more fun.  I'll be digging sweet potatoes and picking pecans.  Hope ya'll have a great weekend!

Gimme My Egg Back!

It hasn't even been a month ago since I posted the FAKE EGGS POST.  In it I explained that snakes had run off with almost all of our nest eggs.  The post shows how we purchased more and marked them with a Sharpie so as not to get them confused.  This afternoon it was almost time for church, but I decided that I could go collect eggs first, package them and put them away.

When I opened the henhouse door, this is what greeted me:

You can see by the bulge in the snake's neck that he has swallowed on of our new ceramic eggs!  See, this snake is doomed.  His digestive system will not break down and digest a solid ceramic egg.  He has a death sentence.  The thing is, he'll slither out to the woods and die, taking my ceramic egg with him.  No sir, that's not gonna happen.

I grabbed a shovel and gave the rat snake a chop behind the head.  I used my foot to push the egg out of the snake.

The snake was greedy.  In addition to the ceramic egg, he ate a real chicken egg.  It burst when I popped the snake with the shovel and egg yolk ran out of the snake.  Hens quickly surrounded the deceased snake and began eating the yolk.  Cannibals!

On the bright side, I got the ceramic egg back and put it back in the nesting box.  All's well that ends well.  It didn't end so well for the snake.  We let these snakes go when they are in the barn.  They do a service by eating rats.  When they enter the hen house, however, it's a different thing altogether.  They pay the ultimate price for this transgression.

These snakes are pretty much harmless to people.  They'll just give you a good scare, because they get so big.  This one measured about 5 1/2 feet long.

Tricia was glad it was me that found the snake.  She's killed them before, but she'd rather not.  I tossed the ceramic egg back in the nesting box and for the time being, we still have our full inventory of fake eggs in the boxes.

Why Would You Buy Fake Eggs?

On her way to the feed store on Saturday to get three 50 pound bags of chicken feed, I asked milkmaid Tricia if she would mind picking up some fake brown ceramic eggs while she was out.  Why would we purchase fake ceramic eggs?  There are several reasons, but I'll tell you ours - SNAKES!

Tricia came back with a package of four eggs below along with a funny story from the owner of the feed store.

The feed store owner is a very kind and out-going lady with a great personality.  When she saw Tricia's purchase of ceramic eggs, she asked, "Are you having trouble with snakes in the hen house, too?!"  She was very animated with hand expressions in her description of finding THREE snakes in the last week.  She had a dull shovel and it made the job of snake-killing hard.  She killed two of them, but had to call her son-in-law to come with a gun and shoot one down off of the rafters.

Yes, we've had the same problem lately.  When the rat snakes get in the hen house and begin eating eggs, we kill the snakes.  I hate to do it because they do a mighty fine job of keeping the rat population down, but they have an affinity for the eggs and that won't do.  When we catch them in the act, a shovel or a pipe or a board quickly and humanely dispenses of the offending reptile.

One other way we thin the population is with ceramic eggs.  We place a ceramic egg in the nesting boxes and when the snake gets in the box and swallows a ceramic egg, it has a fatal effect on the snake.  Unable to digest the egg, it gets an incurable case of constipation that kills him.  Over time our inventory of ceramic eggs disappears.  Sometimes we retrieve the egg from the snake's skeleton and we'll recycle them.  This time, with only 1 egg remaining, I had Tricia get four more.  The first thing I do is take a Sharpie and mark a big "X" on the ceramic eggs.  They look so real, if you aren't careful, you'll collect the fake egg and try to make an omelet with it.  The "X" alerts you to leave it in the nesting box.  It's for snakes to eat - not us!

Here is the last of the ceramic eggs alongside some fresh-laid REAL eggs.  See how real it looks?  It would be easy to confuse, and you can see why the snake eats them.

I stepped into the hen house to deposit a ceramic egg in each of the boxes on the side of the hen house that is adjacent to the woods.  Some of the hens had already laid their eggs and some were in the process of egg laying.  They fluffed up their feathers and made irritating noises to shoo me away from my task.

Hens like their privacy when laying and I was an intruder to their peaceful place.  It wouldn't take long.  I just needed to drop four eggs in four boxes.  This Aracauna let me know in no uncertain terms that I needed to leave.

My job was done and I was out the door.

Now, each box had a fake egg in it, and this will help with the snake problem.  There are five boxes on the other side, but the snakes always are on this side since it's closest to the woods.  I need to get the machete and clean out the ever-encroaching woods.  When it gets all grown up, it encourages snakes, possums, rats and other critters to visit Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.    

What Lies Beyond the Back Fence

Just beyond the south perimeter fence of our property lies a patch of wilderness.  It only encompasses an acre, but its unruly, unkempt wildness makes it seem bigger.  We've talked about it before.  It is home to invasive species of trees like privet, Chinese Tallow, and Chinaberry.  These trees are constantly encroaching on our property, threatening to reclaim the land.  So far we've won the battle.

The woods are also home to predators.  Six foot long chicken snakes slither out of the tall grass and into the hen house to eat eggs and baby chicks.  Possums invade nightly and we are in a fight for our chickens' lives against these predators and others.  Raccoons, hawks, and owls patrol as well, picking out supper from time to time.

The hen where most of the chickens roost for the night is supposed to provide some level of safety for the hens as it is completely closed off by tin with a chicken wire bottom enclosure for ventilation, but alas...  Our nosy goats rub themselves on the chicken wire to scratch.  After months of rubbing, they broke a hole in the chicken wire and gained entry to the hen house.  They have gotten into a habit of climbing into the hen house through the hole in the wire and they "roost" with the hens at night.  Crazy goats!

While the hole in the wire gives them access, it also gives predators access as well.  I had to bury a fat Rhode Island Red hen just yesterday.  This has to stop!  This afternoon, I assembled wire, lumber, a crowbar, hammer, nails, wire cutters and a heavy duty stapler.  I was determined to evict the goats from the hen house and fix the hole in the wall.  I drug the goats out.  The were reluctant, but knew that they didn't belong.  They immediately ran behind the hen house to gain access through the hole, but I had fixed it.  I smiled in victory!  No more goats in the hen house and no more predators.

I will leave things on a good note.  While I mentioned all the bad things about the bordering woods, I need to mention the good things, too.  The woods provides a sense of wildness that is much more appealing to me than manicured lawns and development.  The acre of wooded area provides us with fat, sweet dewberries to eat.  I also have made a friend that lives in the woods.  The friend comes hopping by every weekend morning when I milk the cows.  Tricia has seen him/her too.

Ol' Peter Cottontail hoppin' down the bunny trail.  Hippity Hoppity...

Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men

We attending Morning Services this morning and then got home, ate leftover Thanksgiving lunch, had coffee, and then headed back to town.  At 2 pm we were to meet for our annual church caroling trip.  Our group got a little smaller this year.  One of the founding members of our church that attending the caroling last year passed away.

We first went to the Veteran's Administration Home in town.  We put on services every third Wednesday night at the VA, and it was nice to meet up and sing for these patriots that served our country.  One of the men who attends our services met us while we caroled.  He was so very appreciative of us coming.  He is 97 years old and is a WWII Veteran!  One of our members' granddaughters was caroling and he was so happy to see her singing.  He had the quote of the day.  He moved his wheelchair close to her, asked her name and told her, "You are prettier than a red heifer in a field full of clover!"  I gotta remember that one.

We went into the common areas of the VA Home and then the two other Nursing Homes in town.  One of the homes we have services the fourth Wednesday of every month and the other, we have services there on the third Sunday of every month.  We have gotten to know the residents at each place and it is such a joy to go serve them.

We went into the Alzheimer's Units and the residents sang along with us.  We walked down the halls singing and stopped at patient's doors and sang for them.  Even though we're Christmas caroling, one resident always has us sing "In the Garden."  People were so warm and welcoming to us.  Others cried tears of happiness as they sang.  It's one of those times where you go do something, intending to be a blessing and you leave receiving more of a blessing than you expected.

When we finished, we met back at the church in the Fellowship Hall and had a devotion, fellowship time and refreshments.  The whole day just left me with a warm feeling in my heart...  UNTIL -

It was dark by the time we got home and I headed out to the barn.  Rosie isn't going to milk herself.  I also had to gather eggs and feed the chickens.  I turned on the lights to the hen house, but surprisingly, the hens were cackling and running around in the corral.  Something was not right.  I walked int the hen house and saw a dead Rhode Island Red hen on the ground.

A huge possum was eating it!  I quickly grabbed a 2 x 4 and knocked the possum in the head and then quickly killed it.  I know varmints have to eat, too, but they are not going to each our chickens and get away with it, if I have anything to do with it.  

What an afternoon!  From singing Christmas carols to bludgeoning a possum.  The song says, "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men."  It says nothing about goodwill to possums.

Sleeping With One Eye Open

I find that I like routine.  I like things all laid out with no surprises.  You can settle in, knowing what to expect.  Every once in a while, things get shaken up and the routine takes a back seat to change.  The time change always throws me off-kilter.  This evening when I drove into the driveway, it was dark.  I grabbed my DeWalt 20v light and headed outside.

We capture rainwater in large catch basins in the back of the house.  When we have about 300 gallons of rainwater in containment, I'll turn off the water valve to the water trough and I'll carry 5 gallon buckets of rainwater to the trough until full.  Next, out to the barnyard.  Normally the animals are still eating grass in the pasture, but the new time has changed their routine as well.  They are pretty much tucked in for the night.  Let's take a look.  Maybe we won't disturb them too bad.

The hens are up on their roosts in the hen house.  Their poop is shoveled out once a year and used in the garden as fertilizer.  We wait a year, because chicken poop can be quite "hot" and can burn your plants.  One other thing that can be quite useful is the cobwebs that line the rafters and the ceiling.  Believe it or not, cobwebs can stop bleeding.  One time we had a heifer that was de-horned at the veterinarian's office.  Later that evening, she started bleeding - profusely.  We called the vet in the middle of the night, and he told us to find cobwebs and use in place of gauze.  It's been used since ancient times.  One of the reasons it works is that spider webs are full of Vitamin K, the blood-clotting vitamin.  It worked !

We always close the nesting boxes you see on the left side of the photo.  If you don't, some of the chickens will roost on top of the nesting boxes, filling the boxes with poop, making cleaning the eggs the next day a messy chore.

As I walked out of the hen-house, Annie and Buckwheat have settled in on some hay by the barn door.  Some other chickens have roosted on top of a carrying cage.  I was talking about routine earlier.  Animals are no different.  If I come out tomorrow night, those same chickens will be roosting atop the cage...

These same chickens will be roosting atop the woodpile...

I'm planning to burn this woodpile next week.  I'll remove the hens first, of course.

And these same hens will be atop the pile of bricks.  Do you always sleep on the same side of the bed?  Chickens do the same thing.

Clarabull has his own little place where he beds down at night.  This location was previously a big mud hole until we built a roof over the walkway and brought in loads of wood chips.  This area was once avoided and now it is a peaceful place of rest.

Luna, Clarabelle, and Rosie seem to like this spot.  We throw hay out of the window of the barn that they eat on.  Once finished, they tend to stay in this spot as there are fewer mosquitoes and flies that bother them here.  Of course they are in a routine, too.  They equate seeing me walking to the barn with feed and they mosey to the gate expecting to get fed again.  I hate to disappoint, but Tricia's already fed them.


It's hard work laying eggs and making milk, so I'll leave all the animals alone and let them get som shut-eye.  I'll head back indoors, eat supper, and do the same.