Cabin Crafted

Tag: brooding

  • Autumn Surprises

    Today started sunny and at mid day, it is in the mid 60s.  A great day in the mountains.  We started out early to vote, hoping we will get someone in office who will help fight the Fracking Pipelines and came home for Mountaingdad to get in one of what he knows to be last rides on the BBH before it gets garaged for the winter.  It was a good day to work on more of garden close down and to get the garlic planted.

    The bed that had contained the peppers and tomatillos hasn’t been used before for garlic, so it was raked to remove the fallen, rotting tomatillos and the stray pepper or two that didn’t get thrown to the chickens or brought into the house.  The bed was weeded with my awesome garden tool, smoothed and furrows dragged through the surface.  The bed was planted with 74 cloves of garlic.  I don’t know if I waited too long last summer to harvest, didn’t wait long enough curing time, but we have a lot of cloves that desiccated in their skins, as much as half a head.  If this year’s crop isn’t better, I will start over with new seed garlic next year instead of using cloves from what was harvested.

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    planted and mulched
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    covered to keep the chickens from digging it up again
    While out there and after a couple more nights of freezing temperatures, I found more winter squash.  Most of these will go to the chickens, but there were several Burgess Buttercup and they are so delicious they will be kept. One was pared and cubed last night, roasted with Italian sausage, red onion,a green Ancho pepper, some whole garlic cloves and a few pieces of broccoli.  A meal in a pan and it was great.

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    Several small pumpkins were tossed to the chooks.  After finding Broody girl #2 on the nest again yesterday, but not having the heart to dip her hindparts in cold water, I just isolated her in the meat chicken pen for the day and left her there until dark. Once it was dark, I moved her back in the coop on a perch.  She nested herself once today but stayed outside after I removed her from the two eggs she had parked on.  Another one of the girls is molting.  The run and coop look “feathered” and the egg production is down to a maximum of 6 a day out of 12 hens.  Hopefully things will settle back into production soon.

    Today I decided to start making my own whole grain chicken feed instead of buying the very unappetizing pellets.  I am finding that the chooks aren’t eating all of the pellets I put out for them and it is such a waste.  They never waste the 5 grain scratch which is a good start on home mixed food.  Add some flaxseed, sesame seed, oats, kamut, lentils, kelp and brewer’s yeast and you have a mix that is high enough protein for the layers, they like it, and it doesn’t turn to mush if it gets damp.  They don’t eat quite as much at a time either.  Since they get free range time for most of each day, they are also getting fresh grass, bugs and totally decimating some of my perennial herbs.  I had to put a low fence around one bed that they have decided is a good place to dig, dustbath, and just lay around in.

    Another surprise in the garden was secondary broccoli.  The primary broccoli heads were harvested a few weeks ago but I left the plants in place.  With the freezes, they were relatively cabbage worm free and enough was harvested for a meal or two.

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    As a bonus, the chooks got the remaining plants tossed in their pen for their entertainment and whatever nourishment they can get from the leaves and the few cabbage worms lurking there.

    The day has clouded over, though we aren’t supposed to get rain until Thursday.  It was a good day to be outdoors for a while.

  • Chick Day

    Tractor Supply has had Chick Days going now for a couple of weeks, but they don’t carry the breed that I want.  My goal is to keep Cogburn, my Buff Orpington rooster, the two Buff hens and the one Olive Egger Hen and replace the other 6 with 10 more Buff Orpingtons.  That will give me 13 layers instead of 9 and will give me a pure heritage flock, except for the Olive Egger, whose eggs are just fun because of their color and easy to identify.  Hopefully, this will give me a self sustaining flock as the Buffs make good mothers and can raise their replacements and the table birds.  A few days ago, I reconnected with the gal that I bought my two Buff hens from last year when they were about 10 weeks old.  She has 1 to 3 day chicks and though I didn’t want to raise chicks again this year, I also didn’t want to pay $20 per bird for ones that are only a month younger than the layers I have since I wanted 10.  This morning we made a road trip to meet her in a town about an hour from here and did a parking lot exchange of money for 10 new chicks.  We took a towel lined cat carrier to bring the peepers home, with a side trip to Tractor Supply for starter feed as they can’t eat the laying mix for the big girls.

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    I have to admit that they are adorable at just a couple of days old.  However when you buy babies they must be kept warm and after my experience of having the brooder in the basement last year, I don’t want a repeat of that, so they are in a makeshift brooder in the garage with a heat lamp, which I also don’t like to use, but have no other option at this point.  Last year I used a large black plastic livestock water trough as a brooder, but it is full of split wood in the garage and I didn’t want to have to empty it. maybe later as they grow.  The makeshift brooder is half of a plastic large dog crate set inside a larger wire dog cage with the heat lamp hanging from the wire cage.  Pine shavings, a chick feeder and waterer in with them and a blanket over part of it, they are set for a while.

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    Hopefully, this brood will be a success and in 7 weeks they can be moved outdoors, the 6 hens from my United Nations flock will be moved to the chicken tractor for the young ones to be introduced to the coop.  Sometimes this summer, those 6 will go to freezer camp and my egg production will drop until the babies are ready to lay.

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    Hubby says I have an addiction, but at least I limited my purchase to only the breed I want and only females, so we won’t have multiple pens of different ages, and one of them full of testosterone like we had last spring when I bought 21 chicks over a two week period and had half of them cockrells.