This Afternoon

Surprisingly, we have kept our electricity all day. The sleet has turned to light snow. In the pictures, most of the accumulation is sleet.

Sleet built up on the awning above our back door. The wind would then blow it, and it would fall down between the awning and the house. When it was time to go feed, we had to go out the front door and dig out to be able to open the back door.

We just got word that school is cancelled again tomorrow.

This Morning

These pictures were taken this morning when Robby and I went out to feed. It was a little before nine and a fairly thick coating of ice covered everything. It has been sleeting ever since. The sleet is supposed to change over to snow any time. I'm hoping for sooner rather than later.

Ice makes for lots of interesting photographs. I'm just not much for taking pictures when sleet is stinging my cheeks. Hopefully I'll be able to post more pictures after we feed this afternoon. (That will mean we still have electricity.)

I'm off to get the kids started on a puzzle.

Picture of the Day

This is what happens when you leave clothes on the line overnight in January.

Our Day

We woke up this morning to a winter wonderland. Ice crystals coated trees, fences, wires, etc. I took these pictures from our front porch.

A Farm Tale...

I was in charge of feeding Sadie's show lambs today. As I was about to leave the pen, I noticed one of our bottle calves (now 1 1/2 years old and way passed time to be sold) had come up into the pens to see if I had a treat for him. Not wanting to be licked and head-butted (He has a huge head and horns and likes to "nudge" you from behind.), I chose to climb over the fences to get out.

Fast forward to 20 minutes ago...
Robby jumped up, got a gun out and ask if someone was supposed to be here. I responded, "no," grabbed the phone and followed him out. Stripes and Tiger were right by our bedroom window. The "brilliant" puppy we got this summer hadn't barked at all.

I had forgotten to close the big gate to the pens when I chose to climb out.

I'm sure the two of us were a site trying to persuade the calves back in. Thankfully, they respond well to feed being shaken in a bucket. Hopefully the black heifer that is in the pasture with them is still in the pasture--hard to find a black calf at night.

Just another day/night on the farm...

Stay-at-Home Mom, P.I.

Today I had a mission: to find where the chickens were laying their eggs. We'd been having a low egg count lately so I knew they were hiding them somewhere. I waited until later than usual to let the chickens out of the pen for their daily outing. Two of the Rhode Island Reds immediately took off towards the pens. I followed them, but couldn't find a nest.

The dew was so heavy that the chickens and I left footprints in the wet weeds.

I finally found the nest in a pile of tumble weeds. The hen was sitting on 6 eggs. Since I didn't know how old they were--either 3 or 6 days, depending on if both chickens had been laying, I had to get rid of them.

I went back out later to check the nest in the pens. To my surprise, the Reds had come back to their house to lay. I did get the chance to stalk Wild Momma Cat this time. She is the mother to the three cats we bottle fed. I knew she had babies, but hadn't been able to track her. When I went outside, she was eating the cat food. (One drawback to bottle-feeding cats, if you don't teach them to hunt, they are dependent on you.) I was able to follow her to the old chicken house--now a storage room for lots of junk--that is on the back end of the shop. I looked in the window and saw three kittens. At the time, I thought I only saw two, but much to my surprise, the first picture I took caught a second kitten in the lower right corner.

I'm not brave enough to go in and investigate further--there is a good story about my sister and looking for cats in there that I'll have to share sometime.

T.S. can't get over how much they look like our cats. I've tried to explain that they all have the same mother, but he doesn't seem to get it.

Who knew that a morning of chicken stalking could turn into so much fun discovery?

Picture(s) of our Day--Yesterday

Run, Bob run! there is a giant trying to get in!



These need captions (I tried on the first one, but it is too early for my brain to work). Feel free to leave one in the comments.

Planting Potatoes

The kids raced down the newly made rows.

My great-grandmother always said to plant potatoes on Good Friday, so this year we actually did that. After we planted them we put hay on top of the rows. Hopefully it will hold moisture in (we are having to water right now because it is so dry) and keep weeds down.

Our seed beds look really big because we make them with the same implement you would use in a regular-sized field. When it is time to water, we have a cool pipe with holes drilled to fit the spacing of the rows so we can water four at a time. A bolt fits in the hole to stop it up if one row gets soaked before the rest is out. I'm afraid we are going to have to pre-water this year, so pictures of that eventually.

Our seed potatoes: Red Lasoda and White Kennebec

Lost/Found: Talley Cat

Tonight, panic was in the air. Talley Cat was no where to be found. He'd been missing most of the afternoon. I figured he'd had enough of T.S. and would return when it was time to go to the garage for the night.

We returned home from basketball practice and I began the task of putting up the chickens and cats for the night. We've been closing the cats in the garage. We had been leaving the door cracked--until Robby came face-to-face with the skunk. The cats are pampered. We haven't made them take the leap to being totally outside yet (remember, they were bottlefed--for more info on that, search this blog and the family blog for cats and kittens). Anyway, Talley was no where around. The kids kept asking me where he was, when I had seen him last and if he would come back.

I told my teary eyed daughter that that was the trouble with cats in the country, especially boy cats, they sometimes disappear and never return. As I lay in bed, I couldn't help trying to remember the last time I had seen the cat and it hit me. I had gone out to Robby's school pickup to look for some keys. I remembered tripping over Talley as I walked out to the pickup. I also remembered that Talley has this annoying habit of jumping into cars when the door is open.

So, I bundled up (it is cold tonight), grabbed a flashlight and headed out to the pickup. Sure enough, there was Talley, curled up on the seat waiting for me. I didn't check for damages (it was dark after all). I guess I should see if he made a mess in the morning.

I do know one thing, I am definitely up for Mother of the Year. Wait until I tell Sadie this story in the morning.

Chicken Basics

We love our chickens and are by no means experts at raising them, but we're having fun anyway.
So here are the answers to some frequently asked questions:
Where we got our pullets:

• You can order online (I suggest McMurray Hatchery), but if you do this, you have to have a minimum order of 20 or more.
• We went to our local feed store--Town and Country Feed in Canyon, TX--and inquired. Rusty is so nice there that he lets you specify what breed and how many you want. When he gets enough to place an order he does. He calls when they come in and takes excellent care of them when they arrive. Take a large box or bushel basket when you go to pick them up.
• You do not need to order roosters unless you are planning to hatch your own eggs. Research the breed you are purchasing. Leghorns will usually not sit to hatch eggs. If you are just into egg production, I suggest ordering a straight run of pullets. It is a little more expensive, but worth it in my opinion.

What to do when you get the "day-old" chicks home:

• We start out with them in a large box with a heat lamp in the kitchen. As they grow, you can tell when it is time to move them outside.
• You have to dip each chick's beak in the water so they'll know what it is and take a drink. We start out with a jar lid for the water so it is not too deep. Some people put marbles in a bowl of water so they won't drown in it. (I found that this led to standing on the marbles and poop in the water.)

Once they are outside:

• We locked them in their house each night so they'd learn they are supposed to go in at night. Probably not necessary, but we had one chick that didn't understand this concept and got caught out in the rain.
• We kept the heat lamp on for several more weeks so they'd have the option in the house of heat or no heat.
• Our pens aren't very big, so we let them out daily to roam. We don't start this until they are pretty big.

Feed and Water:

• We went to Tractor Supply and bought feeders and waterers. You can just use shallow pans for this, but I think they waste a lot.
• We feed pig feed from our local elevator--Attebury Grain. We do this because it is cheaper, but any starter feed or layer feed will work.
• Since the feed is pig feed, we do add grit to the feed. When the hens start laying we add oyster shells to it to make the egg shells harder. You can also crunch up egg shells as you use them and feed back to the hens. (We get our grit and oysters at Tractor Supply)
• Our hens love lettuce and stale bread. In the summer they are a big fan of squash and corn on the cob. They especially love the worms on the corn.

Bedding:

• One of our hen houses has boxes (nests). We line those with shredded paper or with wood shavings.
• The other hen house doesn't have boxes yet. We put shavings or shredded paper in it.

Please let me know if you have more chicken questions. I'm not an expert, but love learning more about them and will be happy to help you find an answer. The McMurray Hatchery site is a good place to start looking for information.

Picture(s) of the Day

This morning I gathered eight eggs. There may be more later, a few of the hens seem to hold out until evening.

This is a sign I have in my kitchen. I wonder how long it has been since eggs were only ten cents a dozen.

Signs of Spring

The weather here has been unseasonably warm. Although we have enjoyed it, it also means that the trees, elm in particular, are budding. This explains my allergies lately. This is the time of year when you start itching to plant in the garden. A week of warm weather like this makes you want to go ahead and do it. Unfortunately, we've still got lots of opportunities for cold weather. I'm not trying to be pessimistic, just realistic. In the next few months we'll have to trek down in the pasture to check the mesquite tree. We won't be clear of frost until it buds.

Here's Talley under the trampoline while the kids were jumping. The cats and chickens have enjoyed roaming in this weather. The cats don't realize they aren't really supposed to hang out with the chickens. I'm working on getting a picture of that.

Why Do We Have Chickens?

It occurred to me that this might be a good time to explain how we got into the chicken/egg "business." In first grade, Sadie's class hatched eggs in an incubator. Sadie kept coming home from school telling me that if I sent a note she could bring home some chicks. This was before they even hatched so I kept putting her off. Come to find out, she was right, so we allowed her to bring three Leghorn chicks home. We figured they wouldn't make it through the winter (for some reason they hatched them in October-November which is not an ideal time around here.)

The three--Pecky, Eatie, and Roostey--soon outgrew their box in the house. We "borrowed" a huge rabbit hutch from our friends and Robby built a smaller house with a heat lamp to put inside the hutch and we moved them outside. We never dreamed they'd all survive the winter; we actually had snow that year. They did survive, so we built a house and pen in our backyard in town.

We moved all three chickens and the house and pen to the country with us. Our neighbor in town had "fancy" chickens. He decided that we needed some Cochin Bantams. We were excited to expand our flock, so we agreed. He called one day to tell me to come pick them up. He already had them in a cage. He gave us an older hen and 3 of her chicks. After I got home with them he said, "By the way, I'm pretty sure two of those are roosters." I didn't want roosters. Roostey, the original Leghorn was getting mean and cantankerous, I wasn't interested in more.

To make a long story short, Roostey got so mean he wouldn't let us in or out of the pen. I had to carry a "chicken stick" with me to get eggs and the kids wouldn't go near the pen (except Tryce, which is another story.) Petunia, the dog, killed the old bantam hen when she got in the yard and her chick, that was now a hen, died from loneliness. Roostey went on to greener pastures when we adopted our cousin's second-grade chicken Adventure Cheepy. (He, by the way, was not smart enough to come in out of the rain and unfortunately didn't last too long here.) So, we were down to the two original Leghorns and the two unwanted Bantam roosters.

In August we bought 5 Rhode Island Red and 5 Leghorn chicks. Fast forward to now. We still have the two hens from first grade. The chicks we bought last fall are all laying and we have eggs coming out our ears. (For sale, by the way, if you are interested.) The roosters, after 2 years of living in peace, have begun to fight. Our hens will probably never sit on eggs to hatch them (broodiness has been bred out of them). Because of that, it kind of makes the roosters unnecessary. So, renovations to the pens and relocation of the "fighting" roosters are on the to-do list for this spring.

If you'd like a slightly beat up Bantam rooster, let me know. I guess you could say they are "free to a good home."

When Roosters Fight

The roosters have been fighting a lot lately. I'm sure it has something to do with trying to impress the hens and the pullets. (All of which are laying now--seems the fighting started when the pullets, who are in the adjacent pen, started laying.) Needless to say, the girls are not impressed.

T.S. and I, on the other hand, are impressed. Notice how they make the feathers around their head go out and how they puff up their whole body. I'm assuming this is to appear larger. I googled "why roosters fight" and mainly came up with real rooster fights. I also found some male enhancement products, but we won't go there.

Here are some pictures to show how the fight goes. Usually they bow down to each other, fluff feathers, then jump at/on each other. Then the whole process starts again. The hens continue to go about their business scratching and pecking like nothing is going on.

Hooray for Rain!!

We were finally blessed with some rain last night. We got close to 3/4 of an inch. The bad news is that the wind is blowing hard today (20-30mph), so some of that moisture will be sucked up before long. A cat being chased by a tumbleweed is quite a site.

We were in desperate need of the rain. It was so dry that the electric fence wasn't "shocking" the cattle and they were just ducking under and going over it to get out. It isn't fun to put cattle in daily and spend time in the wind trying to figure out where they escaped or why the fence isn't working. (Not that I did that, mom got stuck doing that last night and today) Hopefully we received enough rain to keep the wheat alive and growing. It's funny to hope your road is muddy.