The Predator Becomes the Prey

A while back we lamented the fact that we lost 39 hens to mink.  Those critters savagely slaughtered our egg layers.  It was only after I killed some squirrels and baited the traps with their blood and guts that I was able to catch the male and female in the trap.  They were summarily executed by firing squad.  We haven't had an issue with mink since that day.  I still drive around and see mink that have been killed while crossing the road.  Perhaps I shouldn't, but every time I see a mink carcass on the road, I do a fist pump and break in to a grin.  Mink are vicious killers and they get no sympathy from me.

This morning Tricia hollered, "Kyle, there's a mink on our back porch."  I'm mostly deaf, so I had to confirm what I thought I heard.  Yes, I heard her correctly.  We do have wild creatures like possums and coons and armadillos that will venture near the house, but never mink.  I ran to the gun shelf, pulled down the 12 gauge and loaded it with shells.  I ran out to the back patio and sure enough, that rascal was between the french doors and the back of the fireplace.

I couldn't hardly shoot him there - I'd break the windows and splinter the wood.  That little devil looked at me and bared his teeth.  I bared mine back.  Ginger, our cat, was around and I didn't want her in the crossfire.  The mink made a break for it around the back side of the house, but I had a bead on that beady-eyed creature.  BOOM!  Or you might say, "Pop, goes the weasel."  

Look at the teeth on this varmint!  He can tear some chicken up.  I quickly ran back to the pasture and around the henhouse to see if he had killed any of our chickens, but I found no dead or injured birds.  I put my foot in the photo below for perspective, so that you can see the size of this animal.

What would cause him to come up to the house?  Was he sick?  Rabid?  Did he just have a death wish?  We'll never know, but I'm happy Tricia happened to see him and called me so that I could take care of business.  That's one less mink to kill our chickens.

The Indians, I read in history, helped the pilgrims by teaching them to bury a fish underneath corn seeds to provide slow release fertilizer.  I grabbed a shovel and buried the mink in the garden, sort of next to the goat.  We'll see if mink works as good as fish as a garden fertilizer.

Broody Hens in the Henhouse

Each afternoon around 5 pm, I grab the rustic wire egg basket that hangs from a rafter of our barn and I enter the henhouse.  The henhouse is where the birds roost for the night on roosting bars that line the eastern wall, but it is also where the hens lay their eggs.  We have nesting boxes that line the north and south walls of the henhouse - four boxes on the north wall and four on the south wall, along with a milk crate full of hay that they lay in.  It serves as an overflow nest when the other boxes are full.  Sometimes two hens crowd themselves in one box to lay farm fresh eggs for us.

The boxes on the south wall are closest to the woods and thus, attract rat snakes.  Big, long, scary, but harmless snakes that eat our eggs.  It is not uncommon to get ready to pick up eggs and find a six foot long snake coiled up in the box.  It is for that reason that I keep ceramic, wooden or chalk eggs in each box as a 'decoy' for the snakes to eat and get a fatal case of constipation.  I mark them with a black stripe written across them with a Sharpie so that we don't gather them up with the edible eggs.

I wanted to draw your attention to the black hen and the white hen.  They are all fluffed up as they make themselves look larger than they are.  They are quite aggressive and also make threatening noises when you try to move them to get the eggs out from underneath them.  They'll peck at your hands.  The thing is, the birds don't move - at all 24/7.  That's when you know they are broody.  

Broody hens have a strong, hormonal urge to set on their clutch of eggs and hatch out chicks.  She has nothing else on her mind except hatching out a clutch and mothering her young.  She lays no more eggs.  She stays on her nest.  She rarely even gets up to get food or water.  God put that instinct into our fine feathered friends.

In like manner, He also gives that to humankind.  It is the normal maternal instinct, biological clock, or whatever you wish to call it for us.  Tragically, we as a modern society have largely rejected this and walked away from this gift.  As a people, our birthrates have fallen dangerously close to not meeting replacement numbers.  Why?  Materialism.  Children are expensive.  Our time is more valuable.  If we don't have kids, we can afford the vacation or the camp on the lake or the $80,000 Suburban.  The real question is: if we don't have kids, what are we missing?  Can parenting break your heart?  Most certainly, but oh, the joy you can receive!  Can we learn something from the broody hen?  I think so.

"Leave me alone," says the black hen.

"Don't bother me.  I have a mission to fulfill," says the white hen.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who have been sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!’”  Matthew 23:37-39

Jesus was speaking to Israel who had rejected her Messiah.  He likens His love to the deep, nurturing, compassionate care of a mother hen.  It's funny how you read verses like this and then walk into the henhouse and experience a teachable moment in looking at the broody hens that point you to our Savior and His great love.

 

Three New Hens

Since our oft talked about chicken catastrophe last year in which minks killed off half of our flock until I was able to trap them, our flock was cut in half.  We have 25 hens remaining.  So it was with great joy last week when our neighbor's grandson walked over and asked if we'd be interested in adopting three hens.  What a good neighbor!

His sister lives in town and purchased three hens at Tractor Supply.  At first her three hens seemed neat.  The newness quickly wore off and the hens wouldn't stay where they were supposed to stay.  They roamed around causing trouble and made lots of noise in the neighborhood and they laid eggs in different hiding places all around the yard.  Before long, it was determined that the 3 hens needed to be re-homed.

Of course, we'll take them.  Bring them on over.  They were wild and he had lots of trouble catching them.  I told him to wait until they're roosting at night and then he'd be able to grab them.  Sure enough, it worked.  He called me the next morning and told me that he had caught them the night before when they were roosting and he was bringing them over.

I asked him to put them in the cattle trailer and I'd introduce them to the rest of the flock when I got home.  The three birds are very healthy and will be a welcome addition to our dwindling flock.

Before putting them with the rest of the chickens, I used some tin snips to clip one of their wings.  This keeps them off balance should they decide to try to fly up and over the exterior fence.  After cutting the feathers off, I gently set the hens down with the rest of the flock.

It generally takes a while for new birds to get acclimated to the rest of the flock.  They tend to be standoffish.  The new birds don't know the routine.  Last night, they didn't go into the henhouse before the door closed.  That resulted in them being out exposed in a very dangerous place.  Mink and raccoons and possums prowl about at night on their nocturnal maneuvers.  We lost one hen just last year that didn't get into the henhouse before the door closed and a big barn owl was eating the hen when I went out the next morning to do the chores.

Last night I went  out after dark to see if the new hens made it into the hen house.  Nope.  They didn't.  I used a headlamp to find them out in the pasture, huddled in a little group.  I caught one by hand and put her locked up securely in the hen house.  The other two were wise to my plans and were wild by then and were having nothing doing with me.  No amount of telling them that it was for their own good would help.  I went and got the net we normally use when we go crabbing and used it to scoop up the other two hens.  Believe it or not, I had to run out tonight and catch those 3 hens once again.  They just don't realize the danger they are in.  After I secured them in the hen house, I locked the door.  I hope they figure out the routine.  I don't want to have to go chasing hens every stinking night to safely secure them.  After losing so many hens and then being gifted three to make up for that, I want to keep the hens happy, healthy and laying many eggs for us.                           

Egg Production Data - 2025

On Friday we posted the 2025 Rainfall Data.  It was a look back at the entire year precipitation totals, by day and by month.  Today we'll look at egg production.  The first chart, shown below, is the daily log.  We actually keep a handwritten log and transfer it at year end to tally up the numbers in Excel.  I'm sure it would be easier to just log it into Excel each day, but this 'old school' system seems to work for us.  It's a total of 4,350 eggs for the year.  

Let's see how that stacks up against previous years.  We've kept egg production records since 2013.  I'm sad to report that at 4,350 eggs, 2025 was the lowest egg production year on record.  We still produced 362.50 dozen eggs.  The highest month for eggs was June and the lowest was December.  If you total up the numbers, May is historically the best month and December the worst.

It's kind of amazing to see that since 2013 98,030 eggs or 8,169 dozen eggs have been produced off of 3 acres of pasture.

This table simply shows the data in a different format and adds in the number of hens below to help estimate the average eggs per day and how often they lay.

It's interesting, but there are some variables that skew the data, namely predation.  In September, a couple of mink began murdering our hens.  You can see the fall-off in the chart above during that period.  By the time that the dust (and feathers) settled and I had caught the two mink in our trap and settled the score in Old Testament fashion, our flock was cut in half.  Our numbers would have been more in line with prior years.  Those mink really sunk any profitability in eggs this year.  We did, however, have enough eggs produced off the land that we never had to buy eggs and had enough left over to sell some too.  At some point this spring, we may incubate some more chicks to build the flock's numbers back up.

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.

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!

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.

Birds of a Feather

Back in March we hatched out some chicks from fertilized eggs from some of our hens.  We have them in the chicken tractor.  They are growing.  I'm pleasantly surprised that a fair number of them appear to be pullets and not cockerels.  We are raising them to replace those that we lost to minks and those we normally lose to old age and predation.  Our flock (not counting these) is down to 22 hens.  That's sad.

Benjamin let us know that one of his friends had about 130 laying hens that he needed to sell.  He just didn't have room for them anymore.  They are already laying eggs.  The price was reasonable, so we agreed to purchase 20 of them from him.  He was going to deliver them to us on Saturday.

It was raining when they arrived and we used a dog kennel to shuttle them from the cattle trailer they were delivered in back to the barn.  We loaded them in the rabbit hutches that the other birds roost in every night.  As you can see, they are a wide variety of birds.

The plan was to let them slowly get acclimated to their new environment.  Then I'd like to clip the feathers off one of their wings off so they cannot fly over the fence.

I clip one of their wings back with a pair of scissors.  This trim keeps them from flying over the fence.  Early on, I would clip both of their wings, but I soon learned that you only needed to clip one.  With one wing clipped, trying to fly is very hard to do as they're off balance.

By the time that I was finished, the hens could no longer fly.  Look at all the feathers on the ground below.  I don't want the birds going over the fence to be eaten by predators in the woods.

Once all 20 hens' wings were clipped, it was time to set them free.  One by one, they cautiously exited the cages and ambled over to where I had chicken scratch in some gutters.  They were hungry.

The very next morning I was amazed to learn that the roosters had gathered them all up and got the hens to roost in the cages.  The next day the new hens kind of kept close to the barn.  Each day they are venturing out further.  The next project is to get the henhouse secured so that they can all roost in the hen house, protected from minks.  For the time being our flock now numbers around 40 hens, with surely a few more hens that will be joining them from the birds we hatched out.

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! 

A Time to Kill

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;  Ecclesiastes 3:1-3 KJV

Last year we let a few broody hens sit on some eggs and they ended up hatching out some chickens.  After they got big enough where we (thought we) could tell the pullets from the cockerels, we butchered the cockerels and put the hens out on the pasture with the others.  There was a problem with this plan.  We misjudged.  Two of the birds we thought were pullets were actually cockerels.  

This miscalculation was brought to our attention rather quickly.  With four other roosters on the flock, the addition of two more caused quite a ruckus.  A pecking order had to be worked out.  It's a vicious undertaking, to be sure, with fights and blood and intimidation.  Sometimes the roosters will kill one another.  Other times the victor rules and the defeated skulks around on the margins, trying to get food where he can and trying to keep from getting beat up by the bigger, more dominant roosters.

What will also happen is, well, we'll call it the "birds and the bees."  Roosters will seek out and breed hens in the flock.  The poor hens fall prey to this.  Lots of squawking.  Lots of feathers flying.  Two of them will be breeding and the rival rooster will appear and attack the romancing rooster in the middle of mating.  Shrill cries ring out across the barnyard.  Frightened, disheveled hens scurry off to find peace.

Tricia finally looked at me and said, "Kyle, it's time we help the hens.  Let's butcher those two white roosters that keep everything stirred up."  I agreed.  Saturday afternoon was the appointed time.  We walked to the barnyard and caught the raucous, romancing roosters.  We each carried a rooster to the chicken tractor from the back to the yard.  Tricia called it the "long walk."  The roosters did not know what was in store.  (Warning for the squeamish)

We tied them from twine in a tree and slit their throats, holding them over a bucket to catch the blood.  In a short time, their hearts pumped out the blood.

With one final flop of the wings, the roosters kicked the bucket, literally and figuratively.  Time of death: 1:52 pm.

We set the two formerly amorous birds aside while we waited for the water temperature in the scalder to reach 145 degrees.

Dishwashing liquid was added to the water and when it was 145 degrees (scalding), I began to dunk the birds beneath the water for about 2 minutes.  Up, down, up, down.  When you can pull on a long wing feather and a tail feather and they pull out easily, your bird is ready for plucking.  It's important that you monitor the temperature (hence the thermometer).  If the water is cooler than 145, the feathers won't come off in the plucker.  If the water is hotter than 145, you'll cook the birds.  We learned early on the hard way when we first started doing this years ago.

We toss one of our feathered friends in the plucker and spray with water as we turn on the plucker and the bird spins.  Soon, all of the feathers are gone.  It's an efficient process, much easier by hand, except it's a lot of mess and a lot of equipment to get out for only two birds.

Here is one of the roosters, devoid of feathers.  Minus all the feathers, the roosters are kind of skinny.  No where near the size of the Cornish Cross meat birds that we raise each spring for butcher.

The cavities are then opened and the birds are eviscerated.

Here is one of the roosters...  We're going to use the feet this year for the first time to make broth.

And here is the other.

Gizzards, livers, and hearts are lined up waiting for cleaning and packing up for freezing.

We cut up the roosters into pieces and put in bags for freezing.

With cold weather coming this week, Tricia is planning on making a big chicken and sausage gumbo.  Nothing like a good gumbo to warm you up on a very cold day.  One final note before I sign off tonight:  After these two roosters are now off the flock, you'd be surprised at how calm things are out at the barn.  There is no more shrieking, fighting, or violent breeding.  No more fearful hens running for their lives.  There is peace in the valley.

By The Numbers - 2024 Egg Production

Last week we looked at the rainfall totals and trend from 2024.  I always find that to be interesting.  Tonight we'll look at the 2024 egg production totals.  As we do with rainfall, we keep daily logs of the number of eggs we pick up each day.  Yes, it is a paper log.  There's probably a more efficient way to do this.  Who knows?  There might be an app, but for now, we write down the number of eggs each day, total up by month and then by year.  I move all the information into an Excel worksheet.  We also add notes that remind us about eggs we put under a broody hen or when we move pullets back out into the pasture with the rest of the flock. 

We now have 12 years of data on how many eggs we've gathered.  We eat a bunch of them, give some to family members and sell the rest to people who appreciate free range, pastured hens that roam free and eat, primarily, what God provides them.  Things like bugs, worms, frogs, grass, garden scraps and leftovers sometimes.

The first thing you'll notice is that the number of eggs produced in 2024 on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm is down and down significantly.  In fact, it is the lowest year since we've been recording egg production.  To be specific, 1,508 eggs less than last year!  That is attributable to losing 39 hens to minks.  Even though we replaced some with hens that we raised from eggs incubated by broody hens, it wasn't enough to offset the ones lost in the bloodbath.

Let's look at a few things.  The month of March is still the highest production month.  This makes sense to me as it is springtime and fresh, lush green grass is abundant, as are bugs and worms.  More protein = more eggs.  The lowest was November.  That one is a little hard to figure out.  You can look to see how we measured up against the 12 year average.  

Let's look at the data in another format, broken up in totals by month and for the year and converted into dozens.

I looked up the information from last year where we had roughly 50 hens.  It is hard to be exact because we always lose a few here and there from predation and old-age.  With 33 hens, they laid about 155 eggs each.  Each day we picked up, on average a little more than a dozen eggs.  This year we hope to add a few birds to our flock.  We've had to take down our "Eggs for Sale" sign as we only have enough to sell to our regular customers.  I'd like to reintroduce some Barred Rock hens to the flock as the minks wiped out every last one of them.  As the days get longer and the food sources get more abundant, we'll see more eggs.

Everyone Loves Goat Milk

When I managed the family grocery store, we stocked canned goat milk.  I always wondered, "Who buys this stuff?"  I found out later.  Many people who have lactose intolerance and other problems digesting cow's milk have no problem with goat milk.  Goat milk is easily digestible, especially good for babies.  

We have a whole herd of dairy goats, Nubians, to be specific.  They've all been weaned.  Only Agnes is still in milk.  We are drying her off.  Tricia has frozen a lot of her milk in ice cube trays and we'll use that eventually to make goat milk soap.  We still milk her each day and night so that she doesn't get mastitis and we feed her milk to our laying hens.

We are hoping that the extra protein they get from the goat's milk will boost their egg laying numbers.  They are only laying about 10 eggs per day.  We've had to turn customers away, but that's normal this time a year.  As the number of daylight hours decrease, so does the hen's egg production.  They absolutely love the goat milk and immediately surround the bowl that I pour it into and drink it until it's gone.

Only one problem - Belle loves goat milk, too.  She comes rushing into the barn area, tail wagging and the chickens run off, feathers flying.  Some of the hens are missing their feathers as they are molting.  That has nothing to do with Belle.  She used to play with the chickens too roughly when she was a puppy and would kill them accidentally.  She's so big and doesn't know her strength. We are so glad she outgrew that stage.  (So are the hens.)

Belle sits there and laps up the milk vigorously.  I snapped the photo and then quickly ushered her out of the pasture so that the chickens can have the milk that Belle left behind.

Goat milk is good!  It is smooth and sweet.  Unfortunately for Belle, it's for the hens and not for her.