Late Night Phone Call

It has been a crazy few days.  Yesterday Darling Husbands phone rang at one in the morning.  We both shot up in bed and about 329 bad, horrible things went through my head in the seconds it took him to answer the phone.  His brother’s voice cheerfully says “What are you doing up so early in the morning?”  Maybe people who have no kids or animals can turn off their phones at night.  Since we have kids and animals we sleep with the phone by our heads.  My brother in law was stuck at the Emergency Room at the Hospital.  He had crashed his dirt bike and dislocated his shoulder, was dropped off at the hospital and needed a ride home but he wanted to have DH pick him up on the way to work and take him home.  We looked at the clock.  Darling Husband said I can’t leave my brother in the waiting room for 3 more hours.  So he left to pick up his brother.  Darling Husband finished the night sleeping in his truck at his work. 

When Darling husband came home from work he was understandably exhausted.  Our 9 year old was the only one home when it was time to take care of the animals.  It took poor Stick Boy and me almost 2 hours to do the fodder, feed the chickens and put them away,

attempt to put the sheep away,

get 11 sheep put away, feed the cattle, put 4 more sheep away,

walk the dang dog because we still have Maxwell and her baby out, go back and get Max and the lamb in.

New Lambs

It has been busy.  Driving Son is still exhausted as he recovers from ADEM.  We will have a meeting with the school to help make sure his needs are being met.  So far our school has been amazing at helping him, but we are realizing his healing will probably take the rest of the school year. 

The house dingbat (also known as Dakota) ripped into one of the chicken coops and killed one of the baby chicks.  College Girl has been working with the 2 surviving chicks so they are super friendly.  It’s fun to be able to carry the chickens around.    

 

We bought 2 lambs for Driving Son to raise as his FFA project for the fair.  Tessa immediately decided they were her babies and we are now seeing the Livestock Guardian part of her temperament.  The first time Darling Husband drove the fork lift near the Lambs, Tessa was sleeping near them and they ran and jumped on her then stood behind her as the fork lift went by.  Tessa knows the forklift isn’t a threat if you are under a tree so she looked up and went right back to sleep.  We have not worked with the Lambs as much as we should and they are still very skittish with people, but if Tessa or Luca are near they feel safe and let you get near them.  We are doing an experiment with the Lambs: one of them is getting grain and free ranging daily, the other is getting fodder and also free ranging daily.  

We are keeping College Girl's chickens with the sheep.  

The Birds

Palm, Laurel, Hardy, and a Stooge

It has been a long time since I sat down long enough to give an update.  We were given the opportunity to purchase our neighbors house.  I had hoped to get it and keep it as a rental but it has turned out to be way too expensive for us to keep.  Buying it has allowed us to take care of some drainage problems it has that leads to drainage problems for our property.  It has been a lot of work but it will be worth it every time it rains. 

I will try to update you on all the animals as quickly as I can. 

Palm trying to impress the new ladies.  The Shrew told him she was not interested and to stay away from her and Tomas.  

Las time I wrote we had 1 Tom turkey, Palm was hopefully a girl, we had the 2 turkey hens, and four babies.  All the baby turkeys died; 2 died in their box, 1 ran off and we couldn’t find it, 1 went in to the roosters pen and was killed.  While we were fixing our Flip House we forgot to lock up Dakota and he broke out of the house.  He killed one of the turkey hens and one of the chickens.  A few weeks later a coyote got the other turkey hen.  So we were left with just Palm and Tomas.  Palm is looking like he is a boy but Palm still has not started getting any black marks on his feathers so I am starting to think he may be a different breed than the Royal Palm.  We were looking new turkey hens but it took a while to find some close. 

Tomas strutting his stuff.

 We found 2 mixed breed hens.  We brought home Lolita and The Shrew.  They are 1 year old and we are getting an egg about every other day from them.  I have made some awesome scrambles! 

The chickens stealing fodder.

Most days all the birds roam free so often we find eggs in unexpected places.  Letting the birds free range has cut down on our bug population.  I had hoped they would break up more of the sheep and cattle poop but so far they are not going into the cattle pasture unless they are stealing fodder in the morning.  

Loving Spring

This week has been exceptionally warm.  The fodder sprouting beautifully, when we had the cold weather it was slow to sprout.  The turkeys love the fodder. 

The baby chickens are getting along wonderfully we have taken out the screen that divides them.  We have put the cage that holds the chickens inside the chicken coop that has the roosters in it.  Hopefully all the chickens will get used to each other and be able to be in one pen.

The cattle are in a pasture with a lot of grass in it right now but I am still giving them some fodder and hay to help the pasture last longer.  All the cattle except Onyx, our old Lowline Angus girl have been eating the fodder for weeks.  This week even in a pasture with a lot of grass Onyx started eating the fodder. 

The sheep are in an area with lush green grass and they don’t eat the hay or fodder we give them at night when we put them in their coyote proof enclosure. 

Life is beautiful in our corner of the world.  

I need to remember to reflect and be thankful. 

The Turkey Coop

We woke up to another cold wet rainy day.  Darling Husband needed to finish the turkey coop.  But, for some reason before he could start he and Teen Son needed to go to the feed store.  They came home with more chicks!  We don’t have a place for the turkeys and now we have more chickens???  They put the new baby chickens with the older baby chickens and the older chickens start pecking at the babies so we divided their cage by putting a screen in that has openings big enough for the baby chicks to go through if they want. 

The guys discovered that one of the turkey hens had laid an egg.  Teen Son was so excited to show it to us he tripped, dropped, and cracked it on the way to show it to us.

Then Darling Husband left to run some errands and one thing led to another and the turkey coop didn’t get finished until the next day.  It is beautiful!  If I had to do it again now that the turkeys are in it, it would be deeper (don’t tell DH that).  It is beautiful the turkeys are happy, since then we have 3 more eggs.

 One thing I will say is it is amazing how huge turkey poop is.  

I Want Turkeys Part 2

I still want turkeys.  I found a trio of adult turkeys at a good price not too far from home.  We found a coup Darling Husband can build without too much expense and looks easy.  We contact the seller and set everything up for the weekend.  That gives Darling Husband 6 days to build the coup. 

Darling Husband has a friend who has a radiator shop he has kids who love hatching chickens and an uncle with access to a lot of free eggs.  He regularly needs to get rid of the chicks that hatch because there are only so many chicks a man can have and his kids like hatching eggs - not the adult chickens so much.  Somehow he ended up with a lot of birds at his radiator shop.  The city found out, you can’t have birds in the industrial part of town.  He called us to see if we would be willing to take a young but breeding pair of Black Silkies.  Sure why not.  He has only a few days to get rid of all the birds.  Instead of building a turkey coup we now had to build the chicken coup we will need when Laurel and Hardy get bigger.  It needs to be done in hours not a couple days.  Some friends gave us their old dog kennel it’s about 4 x 5 so Darling Husband decided to adapt that to fit the chickens.

 Great but it didn’t get finished so he brought home the Silkies and put them in a box on the kitchen counter every time one Caw-ca-doodle doo-ed our poor dog started howling.  I put them outside so the cats could explore the outside of the box but not make my dog go crazy.  Finally the coup was ready and we put the silkies in it.  I thought they both looked like roosters but DH said no they were a breeding pair.  Neither of us know what we are doing. 

The next morning I went out early to watch them as I was feeding the rest of the animals and both of those silkies make rooster noises!  UGG we have 2 roosters.

I Want Turkeys Part 1

I want turkeys.  I have been looking up information and want to stick with heritage animals.  I have chosen a breed.  I have not been in a big hurry.  We are busy enough.  We got our oldest daughter chickens for Christmas we do not need anything else for a while. 

Darling Husband was driving by a local feed store and they were having a Chick Extravaganza.  He came home all excited!  “We should go!” 

“I don’t want chickens”

“It will be fun, we don’t need to buy anything!”

“I have a lot to do, I don’t want to go!”

Then Teen Son joined in, “Let’s go check it out”!

“We have friends we can get free chickens from if we want chickens.”

“We are not buying we are just looking!”

Yes we went!  Yes looking into Darling Husband’s eyes and Teen Son’s eyes I had to stop saying no.  They melt my heart even though buying these chickens made no sense.  Chicks were dead in the boxes we were looking at, they were too young to buy.  We had no coup, we were not ready for chickens.  We brought home 6.  We cleaned out a cat crate and put them in it with Chicken Starter and water.  They were not in good shape.  In 2 hours 2 of them had died, by bed time 1 more was dead, and in the morning 1 more was dead. 

The two survivors started feeling better and moving around by the afternoon they had discovered they could get through the holes in the cat crate so we had to put cardboard around it.  Laurel and Hardy seem to be doing well and thriving.