Feeling Motherly

It happens every year.  You go to gather eggs in the afternoon and there is a hen sitting on eggs.  You reach underneath her to grab the eggs and she pecks your hand, "bushes" up her feathers to make herself look twice the size she is, and she makes some weird, threatening noises.  What's going on with her?  

She's broody.  That means she's decided she wants to sit on a clutch of eggs and hatch them out.  Her biological clock is ticking and she wants to be a mother.

Right now we have four of them (out of 31) that are broody.  If you take the eggs out from underneath them, they'll still sit there.  They will sit atop a ceramic egg or an unfertilized egg.  Poor girl.  She wants to be a momma so bad, she'll do anything.  Here's another broody hen:

And here's yet another.  She is in full "fluff" mode, here.  She's very protective of the eggs she's sitting on.

Tricia and I decided to let one of them set.  We gathered 10 eggs and put them underneath her in this little cage.  This way, we can lock it up at night so that she isn't eaten by the minks.  As cunning as they are, they haven't figured a way to make it through hardware cloth.

Today when I went to feed all the chickens, this broody hen got off her nest to eat.  There were only 5 eggs remaining.  I don't know what happened to the other 5.  We suspect she ate them.  Hopefully, she'll stick it out for another 3 weeks and hatch out 5 biddies.  We'll wait and see if her motherly wishes come to fruition.

Just Kidding Around

My wife has the due dates for all the animals written down in a calendar.  It is kidding season and so far Callie has had a little spotted doeling named Betty, and Mocha has had a little solid black doeling (with the exception of about 3 white hairs on her forehead) named Blackie.  It was Agnes' turn.  Tricia went out to the barn thinking that it was getting close and sure enough, Agnes was in labor.  You can see the little hooves poking out.

It was a particularly hard labor for Agnes.  She hollered like nobody's business to push this little baby out.  Finally, here she came...

Yes, another doeling.  This one is a completely new color, leading us to believe that the father is Popcorn and not Buckwheat.  Buckwheat is the daddy of all the other goats out here, yielding offspring that is black or spotted.  This little girl is light tan with a white head.  She was up on her feet in 15 minutes after being born and Agnes licking her clean.

She has long legs and is a spunky little critter.  All the other animals are curious about this new addition to the barnyard family, and they come up to sniff her.  She has no fear and it is quite a task to keep her safely away from the cows who could easily step on her if she got up under their feet.

I was just calling her "Brownie," but she got a name change the other day.  I was asked by a family member to name the baby after her, so absolutely, Brownie's name is now Abby.  Meet Abby, everyone:

Tricia loves her little goats, but we are getting too many for our pasture to hold.  Tillie is expecting any day now and we think she's carrying more than one.  Tricia has been milking Agnes and the milk is good and sweet.  She is a dairy goat (1/2 Nubian and 1/2 La Mancha) and is making quite a bit. 

There is a lot of cutting up and playfulness out on the pasture right now with all the little ones.  Kidding time is a fun time!

Rot

Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes stubble And dry grass collapses into the flame, So their root will become like rot and their blossom blow away as dust; For they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts  And despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.  Isaiah 5:24

A little over a week ago, we had strong a strong storm that blew through from the west, bringing with it 80 mph straight-line winds that caused lots of damage and blew down a pretty decent sized pecan tree in our pasture next to the barn that provided nice shade in the sweltering heat of the summer.  The animals would sit under its shade in the heat of the day, chewing their cud.  Those days are gone.  The cows and goats are going to miss that tree.  We will miss that tree.

The funny thing is, the pecan tree, being the last tree to bud out in the spring, didn't have many leaves yet.  There wasn't a lot of resistance to cause it to topple over.  It seems like the wind would blow right past it with no leaves to buffet against.  It was a mystery to me how it could have fallen.

And then I took a closer look.  Although the outside of the tree looked fine, the inside of the tree was rotten.  It was dying from the inside out.  Just by looking at the exterior of the tree, you would have never known that it had a terminal illness.  Probably an arborist could have identified symptoms, but to anyone else, the rottenness inside was hidden from sight.  But it was only a matter of time.  The clock was ticking.  On April 10th, as strong winds blew, the pecan tree's last grain of sand dropped through the hour glass.  Crash!

Overly dramatic, I know, but this malady isn't only restricted to trees, it is present and prevalent in nations and in people.  Our country, that once stood strong, is rotting from within.  We can stick our heads in the sand or we can face it.  Our Judeo-Christian heritage and values that once set us apart and put our feet on a strong foundation, has been under attack.  The family structure is falling.  Church attendance dropping precipitously.  We're deconstructing every norm, questioning every standard of truth, incentivizing all that's immoral and punishing all that's good, and right, and pure.  We've left God behind and if Jesus is mentioned, it is in a swear word.  Meanwhile, we're steadily rotting from within.

As people, we may look good from the outside.  We can put up a nice façade and put a new coat of paint on our barn that makes bystanders think all is well, but within, things aren't what they seem.  It's sinister and nefarious.  We can hide it for a little bit, whistling past the graveyard, but there are storm clouds brewing.  When the metaphorical strong winds begin to blow, the rot hidden inside our nation and inside the heart of man will have weakened us so that we cannot stand.  Try as we might with all our strength, we will not be able to withstand by human force or will.  We will topple and oh, what great destruction will occur.

The rotten pecan tree fell on another tree seen in the photo below, snapping it in half.  See, that's the thing.  There will be people who are faithful and virtuous, but they'll be caught in the wind, too, and won't be immune to the cataclysmic fall when the rottenness around them negatively affects them too, snapping them in half.  The Bible tells us that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.

As I was looking at the rotten tree, something caught my eye that was imbedded in the dirt in the very center of the tree.  In the place that it was, it had to have been there for, I'm guessing 50 years or more.  It was a stick of welder's chalk, still pointed!  

Welder's chalk is made of soapstone and welders use it to mark steel plate that they've measured for cutting.  We live at the border of what used to be a rice field, and I assume that half a century ago, a farmer's implement broke down.  He pulled his implement to the edge of the field, got some metal plate perhaps to weld reinforcement on the tongue of a plow.  He measured and marked it for cutting with his welder's chalk and, when the repairs were done, threw the chalk next to a little pecan tree sapling that was growing on the fence line.

Fifty years later, here we are.  Oh, that we as a nation might repent and turn to Jesus.  Oh that we'd get some welder's chalk and mark the reinforcement of God's Word to apply to our weakened core and fix what's broken.  I used that half a century old chalk to commemorate the strong winds that knocked down the pecan tree on the wall of our hen house.

There's more strong winds coming.  Will we be able to stand?

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.  1 Corinthians 15:58

2024 Meat Birds - 3 Weeks Old

Three weeks are in the books for the meat birds.  I'm not a superstitious person, so I'll go ahead and say it:  We haven't lost a single bird.  We started with 32 and 32 are still upright and vertical.  That's good.  Real good.  We've been feeding them an 18% protein Chick Starter with no medication or antibiotics.  We keep the feeders full, but the feeders you see in the photo below will be swapped out with a PVC gutter that we use as a feed trough in order to fix a problem.  I noticed today that the chicks' heads were getting stuck in the feeder.  They're growing.

The other thing that's different is that I replaced the one gallon waterer with our old trusty bell chicken waterer.  

It suspends from the roof of the tractor and has a 5 gallon reservoir that I'll show in the next photo.

The reservoir is simply a 5 gallon bucket with a 5/16 hole drilled in it.  A rubber tube connects to a valve on the bell waterer.  The five gallon bucket sits precariously atop another 5 gallon bucket turned upside down that sits on a cow molasses tub turned upside down.  This set up allows gravity to do its thing and provides sufficient head pressure to keep water flowing as the chicks drink it.  We're still adding apple cider vinegar to the water.

So today is weigh day.  I snatched up an average bird.  Not the biggest.  Not the smallest.  I carry him in to the kitchen scale I have set up in the garage.  He's a nice looking bird.  He feels plump.  I'm still feeding them a whole bunch of june bugs every night.  That's free protein you don't have to pay for at the feed store and the chicks love 'em.  I set this week's bird down and he gave me a nice profile pic.

I sat him down on the scale for the Wednesday weekly weigh-in...

This week, Week 3, he weighed 1 lb. 13 oz or 29 ounces

The day we got them, they weighed 3 ounces

• Week 1, they weighed 6.5 ounces
• Week 2, they weighed 18 ounces
• Week 3, they weighed 29 ounces

That's a weight gain of 11 ounces over last week.  As I look at prior years' figures, we are still right where we need to be as far as growth is concerned.  We'll check in next week to see how they continue to progress.

Today We Bought Three Eggs

Following the mink debacle, we have 32 hens left.  On average they give us 21 eggs each afternoon that we pick up.  The birds roam around all day long out in the pasture, scratching through cow patties for bugs and worms and "recycled" grain.  They'll chase june bugs and other critters that creep, crawl and fly.  They eat clover and other grasses.

Long about mid-morning, they'll make their way to the hen house and lay their eggs.  You can always tell when they've laid because they sing a little song as if they are proud of their accomplishment.  I'll have to record it one day and post it.  It is a lot prettier than the shrill, loud cry of the rooster as he exerts dominance over the flock.

We produce a good number of eggs and we eat a good number of eggs each day.  "It's power food!" one of our customers said.  Still, we went to the feed store and bought 3 brown eggs:

They aren't for eating.  Not for us, anyway.  These are chalk or ceramic eggs.  When I gathered eggs the other afternoon, the very last ceramic egg in the laying boxes was gone.  For every ceramic egg that goes missing, that means there's a dead or dying snake somewhere.

You see rat snakes (we call them chicken snakes) get into the hen house often and eat eggs.  When they are in the barn, I let them go as I am more than happy with them seeking out and eating rats.  But when they start eating our eggs, that's where I put my foot down.  I put a ceramic egg in the laying boxes closest to the little patch of woods.  The snakes slither into the hen house, curl up in the box and have themselves an egg breakfast.  Except, when they eat a ceramic egg, they develop a massive case of constipation and end up dying from the blockage.  Sometimes, we'll find the skeleton and the ceramic egg and we're able to use it again.

What I've learned to do is before I put them in the boxes, I'll get a marks-a-lot permanent marker and put a stripe around the egg.  The ceramic eggs look so much like a real egg, that I'll tend to pick them up.  They don't crack on the edge of the black cast iron skillet!  The snakes or the chickens don't seem to mind the black stripe, but it really helps us out.

Here's the nest with some good old country eggs along with the "snake bait" egg.  You see what I mean?  It looks so realistic.  The stripe really helps.

We're coming into prime snake season as it warms up, so we'll watch to see how long our striped eggs last.  A ceramic egg costs as much as a dozen real eggs cost.  I've heard a golf ball works just as well, but I kind of like supporting our local feed store and the eggs have a more pastoral feel than a golf ball does.  Beware serpents!  Things aren't always what they seem...

Treating LuLu's Mastitis

One morning we went out to milk LuLu and when we started to milk, something wasn't quite right.  LuLu is normally a gentle milker, but she kicked and kicked.  Tricia noticed that she was kicking when Nicky tried to nurse.  He's rough with her.  In a few days, she wasn't as sensitive, but she allowed Nicky to suckle.  The next time we went to milk her, we could tell that the left front teat was hard.  When we started to milk, it was difficult to get the milk to flow properly.  It was as if there was something messed up in the teat.  We assume that somehow Nicky, LuLu's bull calf, did something in nursing that messed it up.  

Due to the fact that the teat was damaged by Nicky, she didn't allow him to completely empty it out and LuLu got subclinical  mastitis in that front teat.  Tricia did the California Mastitis Test and confirmed that she had a slight case, even though there was no visible sign of mastitis in the milk from that teat.  The other teats were clear, so we've continued milking those for us.  We're leaving the affected teat for Nicky to clean up.  In a few days, the teat didn't appear to have the same difficulty in milking, but a trace of mastitis was still there.  

We knew that we needed to treat that front teat.  Tricia uses Synergy Animal Products product called Superior Cow Cream to put on the udder and Ex-Cell Countdown 7000 to treat up the affected teat into the quarter.  We got LuLu and Nicky together and let him completely empty her out.

We filled a syringe with 30 ml of product with a teat infusion cannula on the end.  We make sure we keep everything sterile.  We wash the teat with an alcohol swab.

The syringe is inserted into the affected teat.  You would have thought that she would kick, but she didn't.  She is used to standing there, without kicking, while we milk her.

The product was slowly injected.

And soon was emptied into the quarter.

We keep the the calf, Nicky, away from LuLu all day long.  Twelve hours later, we let him nurse and repeated with a second dose.  We separated them.  The next morning, we put them together, let him nurse, and then finished up with the third and final dose.  By the time the third dose was inserted, she kicked a little, letting us know that she was not happy with the treatments.

We'll now wait for seven days and then do another California Mastitis test on that teat to see if she is clear.  If it isn't, there are other products that we can try to resolve it.  In the meantime, we'll continue milking the other 3 quarters.  We'll see how the results from the test turn out and how we'll proceed in a week.

2024 Meat Birds - 2 Weeks Old

An eventful week for our feathered friends.  The changes are apparent.  First, they are putting on feathers.  Their heads still have the yellow fuzz that is typical of cute little chicks, but white feathers are starting to come out.  They are noticeably larger, too.  We'll find out how much they've grown in a minute.

The storm that blew through on Wednesday set the birds back.  First, many of them came very close to dying as they got wet and had hypothermia.  Although we saved all of them, for probably 12 hours of the day, they didn't eat and didn't drink.  Once they recovered, they ate, but in a life span of 8 weeks, losing half a day of nutrition is going to set things back a little bit.

The bug population has fallen off.  Where I was feeding them between 95 - 200 beetles each night, tonight only 5 beetles were found.  That falloff in protein will be missed by the birds.  We're expanding the real estate within the chicken tractor that they can roam on, almost daily.  Since they are eating more each day, they are also pooping more.  We move the chicken tractor to fresh grass, so that they aren't standing in their poop.

So tonight is the night I pick out an average looking bird out of the flock of 32 and bring them to the kitchen scale to see where we measure up.  Like a prizefighter standing before the scales, let's look at tonight's heavy-weight competitor:

Notice the big dinosaur-looking feet on that little bird.  That means he's got some growing to do to fit into those "shoes."

Let's zoom in on the weight:

1 pound and two ounces.  In looking at records of past history, 20 ounces at this time hold the record, I think.  This bird isn't materially far behind.

At a day old he weighed 3 ounces.

A week later, he more than doubled his weight to 6.5 ounces

Not to be outdone, a week later, he more than doubled his weight to 18 ounces or 1 pound 2 ounces.

That's pretty good growth there.  We'll see if we can keep them healthy, happy and growing!  Next week we'll see how Week 3 goes.