Colorado was amazing, I still have a few more pictures to post. Patricia is really a saint--one of the few people I know truly without guile, a patient mother with a rare combination of a peaceful spirit and an adventurous soul. It is such a blessing to call her friend.
We have great plans for this week. It has been a great summer so far. I take GREAT offense that the retail stores are already doing "back to school." I call BOYCOTT!
(Patricia and I worked a bit clearing her chicken run and I found a snake. Just in case you're wondering what that is there.)
A few years ago, if you'd have told me that feeding, housing, murdering and cooking chickens would be a daily part of my life in the near future, I'm not sure I would have dared to try chickens in the first place. But here I am, my first day of FREEDOM (say it Braveheart-style) after quitting the corporate grind (no offense, work pals), spending the majority of the day moving chickens, building a third mobile coop so they can till the garden for me, and trying to solve egg-eater mysteries.
Consider the phrase, "I had egg on my face." I never really had a context for that one--I knew it meant that you were caught red-handed, guilty, or embarrassed. This is just one of the phrases that hearkens back to when chickens were part of everyone's daily life. A chicken with egg on the face is an egg-eater--it's a capital offense because they generally can't be broken of it. I caught a hen eating an egg and put her in jail but she has laid eggs without eating them every day since, so just today I realize someone else could have broken the egg and she was just eating it--what any chicken would do. So I put two eggs in the nest of my main flock and I'll be darned if I didn't go back and find ONE. And no one else laid today either, or they were all gobbled up.
I suspect this rather aggressive one that looks like a very fat hawk. She is super heavy and meaty, so I won't feel too bad if I'm wrong. Go, carnivores!
Anyway, I need to figure that out soon.
In other chicken news, the eight hens that remain from the accidental clutch that hatched in my shed last fall are finally all caught after being practically wild all winter. I was going to sell these girls and then keep my old flock, but they actually are laying so much better than the others that I'm reconsidering. The first three years of a hen's life are her best laying years (once she starts laying at around 20 weeks), but they can live for 15. Most make it into the stockpot well before that.
I'm just trying to get in the groove of how to rotate my flocks, since chickens don't like strangers, so you need to separate flocks. That's why I have so many coops--the old hens in the big box with the rooster (our food security animal), the accidental wild hens now in a chicken tractor in the garden, the hens on probation in my "jail" tractor (I can't tell if they are not laying or eating eggs but haven't yet condemned them to death. The big main coop has mama hen and her four chicks (see pictures below). She only hatched four because I hadn't read enough about how to manage a broody hen (below) and this was my first time (and hers), so I can't feel too bad. Lastly, my sweet four little Americaunas just got their new tractor built today. I do nothing but feed them and take care of them but they completely freak out anytime I'm nearby, not sure what that's about.
So my plan is to put mama hen and her four chicks in the new tractor with the store-bought chicks (now about 35 days old), with a wire partition down the middle. My hope is she'll get used to them and want to mother them when she sees how pathetic and unlearned they are after living in a box in a dark shed their whole lives. After a little while I'll take out the partition and hope no one dies and then I have eight chicks with a mama to be my main layers for next year. I've read that mamas will adopt chicks (or kill them, depending on the mood) and am holding out hope, even though she's a first-year mama. I've let her go out a bit with her new babies and show them how to dig for bugs--I could watch it all day.
She really does talk to them. She was growling at me and threatening me one day (as mother hens are supposed to do) until I put down the feed, then she switched to hen chatter and all the chicks obediently came out and did as they were told with the feed. It was remarkable. Wish I spoke Hen.
It is gorgeous outside and I could spend every day, all day, out there, but to be honest, I did a really half-baked job of resigning from Access, so I have piles of projects to finish before I can really pull back.
Last but not least, in my effort to take my life back, I'm going to start writing publicly more and moving some of my stuff to this blog so I have one record, including some of the old Mamamelodrama stuff, so forgive me if the post volume starts getting a little excessive. I've been advised to have all my writing in one place, so that's what I'm doing. If you'd like to have me take you off so you can switch to RSS or just come visit when you want, just let me know.
I promise, I won't always blather on about chickens. But if you do like learning about random chicken-related things, you should check out the "chickens" tag in the sidebar cloud, or read what I've learned about eggs. Fascinating stuff. I can't imagine life without them anymore.
So, I lied about the Sophie pictures. But, I did get all the pics I wanted to post scanned and will do it this week.
Here's why I have time to blog--because I had just put Lucy and Noah to bed tonight and was going out to move a rooster to a new pen before it got totally dark.
Noah got out of bed, so Lucy got out bed, and they followed me outside (with Ben yelling at them because they were walking on his newly-mopped kitchen floor--remember my love for child slavery?).
When she saw me venturing into the backyard darkness, Lucy was instantly panic-stricken. Her greatest fear was realized: I was going to feed the turkeys.
I wasn't really. But in her tiny, tiny little three-year-old mind, the only thing I do outside at night is risk my life feeding turkeys. This is because about two months ago, I was coming back from feeding the turkeys and was straddling the wire fence between our back chicken coop area and the landlocked lot where the turkey cage was at the time.
I was still in my work clothes, because I'm a slow learner and was (again) doing farm chores in business casual attire. Ben had just come out to tell me that Lucy wasn't staying in bed (David was working in his downstairs office). But by the time Ben got to me, she was on his heels, barefoot in the dark and upset. I commenced to get my foot stuck and fall backward over the fence, getting caught in some barbed wire that we'd pinned back from the crossing spot, and landed on my back with my feet tied up in the fence.
Lucy went into hysterics.
I kept telling Lucy, as I lied on my back in the dirt, that mommy was fine and not to worry, but the hysteria only escalated and she ran screaming into the house in horror. Ben tried to get my clothes unhooked from the wires, but in the end, I had to just pull them free to stand up, ripping my favorite "new" (DI) red shirt and work pants.
I made my way into the house and had to comfort Lucy at length while she cried, "Mommy fine? Mommy OK? Mommy NO FEED THE TURKEYS!!"
Then, at least once a day, every day, for at least a month she again counseled, "Mommy no feed the turkeys, OK?" And, if she saw me going out in the yard at night, she'd run out and grab my hand and lead me back to the house, saying "Ah, mommy's tired, mommy want to go to bed. Mommy no need to feed the turkeys."
It got to be that, even at mid-day, she'd randomly inquire, "Mommy feed the turkeys? Mommy OK?"
Apparently I'd rocked her world with uncertainty and traumatized her for life. Since then she's been treating me like a fragile being. It didn't help that I fell down the stairs a few weeks after that, of course right as she'd wandered out of bed, again, after being officially tucked in, again.
That only fueled her fretting.
So tonight, I shooed her inside while she began getting upset about all the horrific possibilities of mommy going outside at night, worried tears welling up even before we got back to the door. In order to get her to stay in bed, I promised mommy would stay inside.
So, I'm just waiting for her to go to sleep so I can go outside and move the rooster.
How does the story end? The four turkeys, all female, all likely to be well over 20 lbs when dressed, meet their doom on Saturday, because my sweet mother bought me a deep freeze over the weekend.
But somehow I doubt dead turkeys (and the bloodbath that will precede it) will put Lucy's troubled mind to rest.
Downstairs bathroom converted to greenhouse (and turkey nursery)
Sorry, sideways. I replaced the normal vanity bulbs with alternating white and yellow CFLs. Plants love florescent light and CO2, (just the opposite of humans).
This is thanksgiving in it's early form. Four turkey poults (poults=turkey chicks). Two bronze and two whites, here four days old. These are commercial breed broad-breasted, so they can't reproduce due to the awkward physical size they will eventually have. Also, they can have leg problems if allowed to live too long--they've been selected for meat. Next year I am going to get the old fashioned kind that are a little less busty but can reproduce.
The poults look a little like the chicks, but they have more prominent wings, longer necks and a little knobby on their forehead/beak area. They are less flighty and skittish than the chicks and let me hold and pet them. The are very wobbly and awkward when they walk as opposed to the chicks, and tend to just walk right over each other rather than walking around. They are cute and very, very stupid. They are also very fragile, so it's recommended you get 1/2 as much more to double the poults as the number of turkeys you want to end up with because they die easily. Mine are very pampered, so I'm hoping for better odds.
white poult
bronze poult
They are friendly, but love to nip at my fingernails and wedding ring. They'll eat out of my hand.
Here are the layer chicks, 3.5 weeks old, 14 different breeds. Five of the tan ones are buff orpington cockerels (roosters under a year). When I make a weird noise or do something strange like hold a camera at them they all freeze and stare at me out of one eye like this. Notice "skinny-head," as the kids call her, in the back center, with the 'Nilla Ice crew cut.
The lovely hen in the middle is the one we call "red," for obvious reasons. She's beautiful. The Buff behind her I believe must be a cockerel, from the long legs and larger size. The water bottle on top of the waterer is to keep them from roosting up there and pooping in their water, because they are that way.
Another photo of the, "What the "%&*@" is food-lady pointing at us?" freeze-and-stare pose.
I keep the greenhouse/turkey nursery/bathroom locked and let myself in with a hairpin because I'm the only one in the house that can figure that out. This is spike, our gorgeous boy-kitty, saying, "Please, please let me in here just for a minute. I just want to look at the turkeys, that's all."
Girl-cat Bella smiles for the camera. She doesn't even bother trying to get in to the chick or poult rooms anymore. You're asking if my house stinks, aren't you? No, not really. Not any more than the barf fest we had over Easter weekend and the daily diapers. And as any good book will tell you, proper litter management means little to no smell.
Because there is no way I could properly manage all the litter these gargatuan 3.5 week old fryers are putting out these days, I had to move them outside, even though it is a little early. David built an 8x8 pen. At this age, they need about 1 sq ft of space each, moving up to 3 (min) -5 (cushy) sq feet each as they grow (on soapbox: commercial chicken batteries give them a space smaller than a piece of paper--six hens in a file-drawer sized cage--they can't even sit down most of the time. This creates disease and pecking, so they often have to debeak. It is not uncommon for one of the six chickens to be dead and trampled long before anyone gets to it. They live that way for two years. off soapbox). I have 21 fryers now, as some died, which chicks sometimes do. So 64 square feet gives them a very comfortable 3 feet each. They will need a heat lamp until they are harvested at 8-12 weeks. Chickens eat grass, and having chickens on grass reduces feed costs.
The Easter bunnies came to our house this year! Here are our four bunnies. The white ones are Goosey (named on behalf of Lucy, aka, the Goose) and Susan (named by Sophie). The black one was named by Noah: Blacky Taffy. The grey stripped one you can't see on the right is Ben's, Hoppity. These are all New Zealands which are a good pet or meat breed, the white ones are a good fur breed also. Theoretically we have one white buck (Goosey) but in all honesty it is too early to tell. If we do, it is possible that 150 rabbits a year can come from just these four innocent little things. A rabbit ovulates upon intercourse, the latter causes the former. They can start to reproduce at 8 weeks, have around 8 per litter, and can start over 8 weeks later (and so can their babies).
They can eat pellets, which are expensive, but are very happy on 70% alfalfa and 30% mixed grain, which is way cheaper. We got a starter bag of pellets and (my first!) bale of alfalfa hay. Alfalfa is a legume, which means the hay is high in protein for them (also Alfalfa feeds nitrogen to the soil and is a good crop to rotate before or after you plant your garden).
These guys are in cages, but we give them outside play time (when it isn't raining) and will build them an A-frame outside hutch for the summer so they can eat grass and save us even more on feed. These cages are old and free, given back from a family in the ward, whom my cousin lent them to a while back. This is in our shed/mini barn.
I can't show off my cute hair because it has been rainy and this picture was taken after doing chores in the rain--I had to clip my new bangs back because water turns them back into a fro--all the straightening-iron magic is gone. But here are me (tired, as you can see from the circles, and cold, as you can see from the red nose) and Goosey.
Will we eat the rabbits? We won't eat these, our breeders, which is why we can name them. We'll raise a few and try it and see how it goes. They are higher in protein and almost fat free in comparison to any other meat, and many say they are very good. Is it okay to eat cute things? Well, I think my chickens are very cute, and cows are just beautiful, with those big brown cow-eyes. This whole experience has definitely led me to be more mindful of the meat I eat, and we eat less. Rabbits are great food storage, as they convert feed to meat more efficiently than any other animal and breed fast and easily. Plus, I'd rather eat a cute rabbit that I gave a happy life than a miserable and factory-farmed chicken that is 10% fecal soup (sorry, off the soapbox really now). We can always keep the buck separate from the does to slow things down. And we can put the extras on ksl.com or craigslist and get rid of them.
We now have about 66 animals. I'm finding I really, really take a lot of joy from these animals, in a very satisfying way, not just like with pets, but another way I can't verbalize very well. I appreciate them and love them, and it doesn't wig me out that they are food animals, because I know that I really have a lot more gratitude and respect for food animals than I ever have.
So, our Easter was fun, with new animals and a big egg hunt in the yard with lots of our friends, including the Hunters from Pasadena, whom we miss terribly. It was so great to see you guys.
Work is fine, life is fine. I'm trying to walk that fine balance between striving hard and praying hard for the things we need but being accepting, thankful and satisfied with what we have. There are issues, some big, that aren't really blog fodder, but overall, we are very blessed.
I have to go because I promised Sophie we could watch "her video." Yet again. Ever since she saw Emilie Simon on my blog (my hair picture) she has been obsessed with this video. It is actually very cool and visually interesting. Don't wig out that it shows her back for a second at the beginning--it represents the beginning of spring, but it doesn't get all nudie. Watch--it's a fun song.
