Tropical Storm Lee = dead baby chickens

The rain and cold from Tropical Storm Lee wiped out all but one of the surviving chicks from our May hatchery order.  At least 40 dead.  I don't know how many were still alive but one little Rhode Island Red is the only survivor.  Very disheartening, and very not-fun to dispose of that many 3 month old dead chickens.

Still only getting a few eggs a week from the adult hens.  I suspect they're going to start molting soon, as they are over a year old now.  So no real egg production from them for awhile, and no new generation to take up the slack.

No duck eggs found either.  I've been buying eggs from the grocery store but they just aren't as tasty as free range farm eggs.

On the good news side, we are getting at least a gallon a day of milk now, between Viola and Little Bit.  Once Little Bit's buckling went to his new home and I started getting all the milk, we no longer have any milk shortage.  More like an overage.  I've made soft cheese once and it was pretty good, so that will be one way to store milk.  Make it into cheese and freeze it.

Still haven't sold Missy the TWH mare.  It's all good either way, she can live here if there are no buyers.  Just seems a shame for a sweet little mare to go to waste as a pasture ornament.  I need to email the therapeutic riding center down the road and see if they would take her as a donation, I know they have other TWH's.

And now I should go to bed, tomorrow we go to town to visit family.

Hens are teasing me!

I got 9 eggs last week, but none for the last 3 days. I even heard a laying cackle yesterday morning but haven't located the egg. I am tempted to pen them up in a stall in the barn at night, and not let them out in the morning until they pay their debt to society - in eggs!

No duck eggs either. The ducks sound like they're laughing at me too, every time they quack.

In other news, Ezra the baby goat isn't such a baby any more. He's quite interested in all four does, and spends a lot of energy playing head-butt games with his wethered "cousin," Hickory. Ezra is 9 weeks old now and ready to go to his family, as soon as they can come get him. Although I must admit the thought occurred to me yesterday, that I would love to get a doeling sired by Ezra out of Viola. I could really use some of Ezra's dam, Little Bit's, nice udder genetics to improve on Viola. I know Viola was in heat in July, and I wouldn't doubt she's already bred to Hondo (Ezra's sire). Maybe ask for some return breeding rights for Ezra from his family. I do know that Hondo's dam, Cat, had a pretty nice udder as well though, so maybe that alone would be enough to improve Viola's daughters. Breeding to improve is very much a game of patience, because any doeling born this winter wouldn't freshen until a year or more later, so I won't know what if any improvements there would be for at least 1.5 years.

I decided to give the meat rabbits one more try. Now that I'm the one feeding and watering everything, it's much more likely for livestock to survive than when we were depending on older kids to do it. I bought another New Zealand White buck, a big sucker they had named Clyde. I put Hasenpfeffer in with him last Thursday, and another doe this Thursday. Next Thursday the last doe goes in and 2 weeks after that Hasenpfeffer will kindle if she's gonna.

Dead worms, dead duckling, dead tired me.

The second shipment of worms was also DOA. Finally arrived August 2nd, again almost a week late. So once again, Amazon got back a box of stinking putrid worms, and I just asked for a refund. I haven't contacted the person on the local CraigsList that's selling worm tea yet, just haven't remembered to when I had the energy to deal with it.

And our very expensive Ancona duckling was dead when I went out to do chores this morning. No idea why.

Still no eggs from either chickens or ducks. They still eat and they still poop all over the place, but no eggs for all the food and mess they leave. Oh yeah and they invade the garden and eat everything growing there before we even know there's anything worth harvesting. They were fighting over an acorn squash today, not the first time, and we've yet to get the first edible thing out of the garden. We put many tons of composted cow manure on it, plowed it, cultivated it, disked it, planted it, and now, the chickens eat it all. So annoying.

The farmer next door has been spraying his cotton every week lately, which makes all of us here feel completely rotten when the chemicals make their way to us. The only thing we've found that helps us is to wear breathing masks with activated carbon in them. But I've not managed more than the bare minimum since early July because of breathing chemical soup.

And the pump on our washing machine died. Greg ordered a replacement today which should be here in two days, but in the meantime we're very close to being out of clean laundry. I was close to getting it caught up, then this happens.

We're still fighting the flea infestation in the house as well. Between the house cat sneaking outside and the barn cat getting inside, we got invaded by blood-sucking pests. I vacuum as much of the house as I can, as often as I can, and empty the canister outside. Haven't done so in a couple of days though, so it's past due again.

Some days I just want to sell all the livestock and give up. But what would William drink if we didn't have milk goats? He doesn't tolerate store-bought cow's milk well at all. So, I keep on keeping on taking care of critters. But I'm so tired all the time, and hurt all over a lot of the time. Very discouraging.

Adventures in vermicomposting

I decided to set up our worm bin again, to compost all the things that chickens/dog/cats/etc. won't or shouldn't eat. Moldy bread or produce, etc. I kept a compost bin in the kitchen when we lived in the subdivision in Durham, NC with great success. No smell, no flies as long as I went behind the boys and covered the food with shredded paper. And more worms than we knew what to do with. I ended up putting two 30 gallon trash cans by the back fence and seeding them with worms and shredded paper and they took off as well. Lots and lots of lovely worm castings and worm tea for happy veggies and houseplants.

Unfortunately the worm bin was neglected over the past year here, and all the worms died. Just for the heck of it, I looked on amazon.com to see if I could order more worms. Well, not too surprisingly, I could. The seller had 50 or so 5 star reviews and only a couple of bad ones at the time I placed my order, on July 20th. July 22nd I was supposed to get 1000 live red wigglers, via FedEx. The 22nd came and went, and no worms. Finally, at 6:30pm on the 26th, the box showed up. I wasn't very optimistic about it, as 6 days in a box in this heat didn't bode well for the little wormies. Sadly, I was right. All were dead, the dirt was bone dry and so were all the worms.

Amazon offered to re-ship them, if I sent back the "damaged product." Really? You want to make the poor UPS guys pick up a putrid box of dead worms and bring them back to you? Okay, if that's how it is, I'll do it. So, the re-ship was supposed to arrive on the 28th, this time with 1-day shipping instead of 2-day shipping at no charge.

It's now noon on the 29th. Guess what. Yup, you guessed it. No worm sign yet. (Sorry, had to throw in the geek reference there.) If they show up dead this time, I just want a refund.

Someone on the local Craigslist has been offering worm tea. If this second shipment is dead, I'm going to email them and ask if they have any extra worms they can sell me as a starter culture. I know from experience that it only takes a small handful of worms to get you thousands of worms pretty quickly when managed right.

Maybe I'll find their ad and ask them to buy some now, even before the second shipment shows up. That way I'll have at least one starter, if not two....

Still hot.

Right now weather.com says we are at 93F, heat index of 99F. Which is better than 118F heat index, to be sure, but it's still hot.

Lost two more chicks to the heat, one was the sole Ameraucana hatched out here in spite of the week without electricity caused by tornadoes in April.

Still getting no eggs, now not even from the Ancona ducks. I started closing them in a stall in the barn again last night, and letting them out at noon. They have food and water in there, of course. No eggs this morning but I'll keep it up and keep hoping.

The cotton farmer next door has been spraying his fields again the last two days, so I'm not even keeping the milk from the goats. Luckily we have two gallons ahead in the fridge so we won't go without.

Not much else I can think to write about now.

What's up, chicken butt?

Did you know you shouldn't eat brown eggs, because they come out of a chicken's butt?

Yes, there are people that think that. And apparently, when you ask them where white eggs come from, they will tell you, "White eggs come from the store."

I only wish I could find someone that believes this, because I want to know where they think blue and green and pink eggs come from. Our Ameraucana chicks will lay blue, green and pink eggs once they're old enough! For that matter, our Ancona ducks lay eggs that are green and purple as well as white. Where to the purple ones come from, do they think?

I've also heard of people thinking brown eggs shouldn't be eaten because they are infected with bacteria that turn the shells brown. I hate to break it to them but, the entire time we were in China we didn't see a single white egg, only brown eggs. Billions of Chinese eat brown eggs and they're still alive and healthy.

All that is just a segueway to saying, I'm really liking our Ameraucana chicks. Some of them are growing as fast as the red cornish cross broiler chicks and they're much better foragers. With the heat, we're not getting any eggs from our Rhode Island Red hens we got as chicks last spring. Maybe once the South American-origin Ameraucanas mature the heat won't bother them as much...

HOT hot hot

Heat index is 96f right now. I just came in from making sure all the livestock have full water and feel like I've run a marathon. Dripping with sweat like I did, too.

Have someone interested in buying Missy, the TWH mare. She's just going to waste here with nobody the right size to ride her, so, hopefully it will work out.

The one Ancona duckling is so far, so good. Four days old now, eating and drinking and lively. The six adults have taken over the front yard, and decided one waterer is theirs. They've also claimed the shade under the utility trailer as theirs, and woe to any chicken that tries to sneak under there with them.

One very expensive duckling.

The 22 Ancona duck eggs in the incubator only netted me one live duckling. That's a $50 duckling right there, as the eggs cost me $25/dozen. *sigh*

Good thing I also bought 6 ducks from that person later, or I'd be even more unhappy. At least I have some chance of having a full flock of ducks that way.

Duck eggs = super rise bread!

Everyone that says that duck eggs are great for baking... is totally right! Wow! I made bread with one of the chocolate duck's eggs last night, and when I got up this morning I couldn't believe it. It rose so high that there is bread on the inside of the bread machine's lid. It's so light and fluffy it puts store bought white bread to shame. And it is whole wheat (the only kind of bread we eat here).

Come on duckies, lay me another egg so I can make more bread tonight!

Definitely more ducks.

So, the funny farm just went quackers! :) We've had Muscovy ducks for a year or so, but they don't quack. They hiss when upset but don't quack at all. But now we are the proud owners of two trios of Ancona ducks. And they definitely quack.

Mature trio is: a black and white drake with a heart-shaped patch on the back of his head, named Romeo. A lovely chocolate and white duck that lays green eggs. And a lavender and white duck. Juvenile trio is: a blue and white drake, and two black and white ducks with iridescent green wings.

They're residing in the Chicken McMansion for a few days, so they learn that this is home now, and where food will always appear. And I'm planning on baking my bread with duck eggs in the morning! :)

Ducks, ducks and more ducks.

So, the people we bought the Ancona duck eggs to hatch out here, are moving out of state. They are selling out a lot of their adult and juvenile ducks. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go buy at least an adult trio (a drake and two ducks) from them in the next couple of days, and possibly a few 14 weeks old juveniles as well.

Pretty sure the baby goat is sold, just have to find out how soon his new owner wants to take him.

Still need to put up a CraigsList ad to sell Missy, the TWH mare.

Still no eggs from the Chicken Horde. They stopped laying, probably because of the heat wave last month, and haven't started back up again that I can tell. Really dislike having to buy eggs at the store and still feed 2 dozen hens! Maybe the new ducks will pick up the chickens' slack.

Just write something!

The only way I'm going to get this blog going again, is to just write something. So, I'm writing something...

We lost a Buff Orpington hen to a predator yesterday. I don't think it was a stray dog, because her head was gone but there was no other damage. A weasel or a raccoon probably. I smelled either skunk or fox musk around where I found the carcass so I suppose our neighborhood fox might have grabbed her then got chased off its kill by our Great Pyrenees. Sad though, we've had her almost a year and the people we bought our Buff hens from had them a year.

Have 7 newly hatched Buff Orpington/Rhode Island Red cross chicks in a nest box in the Chicken McMansion, our first hen-brooded and hatched chicks. They are adorable bundles of fluff right now. I really like the Buff/RIR cross chicks we hatched in our incubator earlier this year, they're growing fast and excellent free-rangers. Having more of them is a good thing.

Our 100 chick order from Hoffman Hatchery (that was really only 98 chicks but that's a rant for another post) is down to about 75 chicks now, and most of the casualties have been the Red Cornish Cross cockerels. They just die for no reason I can see. I'm assuming it is heart or organ weakness, the Cornish Crosses are infamous for that and it's been pretty hot here. They have the shade of the chicken tractor, and food and water and can forage as they please so I'd think they'd be in chicken heaven. Well I guess most of them ARE in chicken heaven now, just not the one that does me any good here. :/

I haven't attempted to count the survivors, but we started out with 26 Buff Orpington straight run, 23 RIR straight run, 24 Ameraucana straight run, and 25 Red Cornish cross cockerels. There is one Ameraucana that hatched out here before this order arrived, the sole survivor of 42 eggs in the 'bator during the tornado power outages of April 27-May 1.

I bought four solid white guinea fowl keets from the feed store down the road a few days ago and put them in the chicken tractor with the chicks. No sign of them now. *cries*

We have 22 Ancona duck eggs in the incubator, about 10 days from hatching. I bought 2 dozen but two never started to develop. Looking forward to them hatching and having cute fluffy ducklings, but not looking forward to the extra work that ducklings entail.

Our first goat kid born on the farm is almost 3 weeks old now. Little Bit had a single buckling on June 13th. He's brown with frosted ears, nose and white crown. Hopefully he is sold, to someone that wants a purebred Nubian herd sire.

Sold the two problem children goat kids, Spot and Runty, last week. The barn and goat pens have been so much quieter and calmer since then! The remaining goats don't leave the paddocks even if the electric isn't hooked up. They don't yell all the time or pick fights. Next on the sales list is Missy, the Tennessee Walking Horse mare we bought last year. She's too small for adults to ride and too green for kids to ride, now that my two older sons have gone back to live with their father in South Carolina. So she needs a home with a job.

There's more to write, lots more, but it's 1am and I need to get some sleep. Hopefully more soon.

Trying again

... to get this blog going. I'm going to leave it open as a tab in Chrome in hopes that will remind me to write more often.

We got 100 baby chicks in the mail a few days ago, May 26th 2011. 25 Rhode Island Red straight run, 25 Buff Orpington straight run, 25 Ameraucana straight run, and 25 Red Cornish cross broiler cockerels.