Second Round of Pigs...

We got 4 more pigs last week!  They are pretty cute and oh so curious.  Spud Man is pretty excited to have a new batch to watch grow.  Our first batch are all sold (we are keeping one for our own meat supply), and they will be slaughtered tomorrow.

This new batch will get to enjoy all the crops we planted for them in one section of the garden, as well as any surplus we have from the rest of the garden too.  We can't wait to see how they do!  The largest crop we planted was rape seed/canola.  Then we also planted mangle beets, carrots, turnips, wheat grass and of course other garden crops in surplus to allow for sharing with the pigs and chickens.

Their names are Oreo (because it is black and white), Swiss (because it has circle dots all over like Swiss Cheese), Ring (as in onion ring), Nacho (no idea where that name came from).  They all have to have food names....because that is what they will be....food.

So we are off on another phase of the project.  We can't wait to try the first batch of bacon in a month or so.

Aerial Adventure...

 Three of the kids got to go for a flight last weekend!

Getting all buckled up, and puke bags ready just in case!

 Sunshine and my dad up front.

Headed toward the runway.

Fly away home...

An aerial shot of our place!  You can see the bees in the lower right corner.  You can also see the large garden area behind the house too.

The hay ranch, I've made many fond childhood memories here.  We used to ride the horses from our house up here as often as we could.  It was a long ride, but worth it.

The area I grew up.  North Fork of McKay Creek.

South Fork of McKay Creek in the upper section of the picture, North Fork in the lower section.  

It's a wonderful place to grow up!

Hope you enjoyed the aerial tour!

Infuriating Underground Animals...

I need some kind of rodent squad to come and rid the place of all things mole, gopher, and mouse!  

I grumble every time I run across something like this...

...and especially this.

Then, I remember I have a few secret weapons.  First line of defense is our fierce hunter, Betsy the cat.

There is just one problem with fierce hunter cat....she is a hunter, she doesn't usually kill them.  She plays with them until they are severely stressed, and exhausted.

Sure they are worse for wear when she's done, but they are not usually dead.  So normally what happens is these next two characters come on the scene and finish the job (or steal her potential dinner, not sure what you'd really call it.)   They look harmless, but they are rodent killing machines I tell ya.

I think they even give us a little doggy smile when they kill one for us!  Unfortunately, they don't always notice when the cat has done her job of wearing them out so...

...in comes my other secret weapon.  My fearless rodent killing daughter.  See how fast she moves?  The camera can't even catch the speed in which she disposes of them for me.   By this time, after the cat has had her fun, it is the least we can do to put it out of it's misery after the cat has a hold of it.

Sunshine has to be the most level headed 14 year old girl I know of, not much phases this girl.  I was busy looking around for something to hit it with, and she just stepped over, stomped on it nonchalantly like she does this 10 times a day, no biggie.  Meanwhile, I thought something along the lines of "Der, why didn't I think of that?"  I blame my sluggish response and reasoning on the fact that after 4 pregnancies, I have lost some of the brain cells I once had at 14 years old.  That is my story and I am sticking to it.

We really need to learn to set gopher traps, because so far the gophers are most likely winning.  I think they might be reproducing faster than we are killing them. Oh, and we really need to catch the mole that keeps tunneling all around the garden every day too!

Startle Reflex...

Why does the startle reflex have to be attached to closely to the bladder?  I've never understood this. 

When the kids were changing sprinkler pipe the other day they came running into the house to tell me about something they found.  I eventually made my way out to check it out.

They had whatever it was staked out so we could easily find it again...

...find what exactly?  I don't see anything, do you?

Then, everything went a flutter and my heart jumped into my throat and well I told you about the bladder part.  It was a close call in the bladder department let me tell you!

The blurry subject is a pheasant hen.  It wasn't until we were right over the top of her that she flew the nest!  Which made for a heart stopping second of excitement.

Here is her nest.  Pretty interesting.  

I am not sure how to tell her that in a couple weeks we are going to cut the hay.  I am not sure what to do with her nest.  We thought of trying to incubate the eggs if she abandons the nest after we carefully guide the swather around it.  My motto is mother nature does best with wild animals and I'd prefer the momma to do the incubating.   I just don't know how likely it would be if she'd come back to the nest after the field has been cut.

So follow along with our journey of watching over this pheasant nest.  We've already altered our watering pattern to keep the momma bird from having to shed water off her nest for 24 hours straight.  Hopefully she appreciates our efforts by not abandoning her nest and leaving her babies in our care, because honestly I am not sure what I'd do with pheasants once they were hatched.  I'll bet they will be cute though.  

The 2nd Movable Chicken Pen Project...

I really enjoy working on projects involving lumber and tools.  I even think someday I might enjoy learning again to weld, and maybe even use a plasma cutter too.  There are so many projects I'd like to try and skills I'd like to improve on. The metal fabrication skills would likely go well with the woodworking in making some neat things.  I enjoy being creative as well as practical.

Last week we started with this....a few boards on the ground.

By the end of the day we had it this far.  A great start for sure.

When we got a chance to work on it again a day or so later we got it completed and moved to the field to begin it's life of usefulness.  We haven't gotten around to getting the chickens into it yet, it was all we could do to move it from the carport area to the field.  Whew, what a chore.

This area is where the water bucket for their waterer sits perfectly.  Also, there is an extra slot for food storage or other items.  Which will come in handy.

Overall it took about 14 hours of working on it to get this completed, as well as a couple trips to Kelly Lumber Supply to get what we needed.  This movable chicken pen is larger than our last one.  The last one I made 8'x8', and this one is 8'x10'.   Between the two pens we will be able to house 95 meat chickens (42 in the smaller one, 53 in the larger one).  It is heavier and bulkier to move, but still we are able to move it OK with 2 people just like we move the other one.

This pen should be all we need to get through the remaining of our chicken production season.  The first chicken tractor cost us in the range of $50, this larger one cost about $75 because we had to buy more products new than the first one.  We had so many scraps and used things on hand for the first one it was down right reasonable to build.  I still don't feel like $125 total for both pens is bad at all.  I appreciate so much when Mr. Wonderful brings home salvaged lumber, supplies, and parts!  It is the equivalent of a bouquet of flowers for me I think. 

Only problem is, working on a gravel surface is proving to be a little painful to the knees.  For Mother's Day the kids got me a foam knee pad for gardening which I use when I need to work on projects now.  It is most helpful!

I think one of the things high on the priority list is to get our shop area enclosed.  Right now it is an open hay shed/carport and soon it will be a 22x36 workshop with an open carport area.  I have a dream about what it will look like inside, and how organized it will be.  Everything would have a place, because right now, nothing has a place and your guess is as good as mine as to where I might find something.

 It will be really exciting to design a nicely functioning workshop.

Turkey Troubles...

We ended up with two turkeys from the surprise hatching yesterday!  Which is quite exciting, we feel blessed to have any excitement at all after the trouble we had with the incubation process.

They took a while to get dried off and gain composure after hatching. I wondered, developmentally, how they'd be, given their temp troubles before hatching.  I fully expected death or complications after hatching, once we got over being so excited they actually were hatching.  Sure enough, they have some leg issues.

Here is the hatching unit we used once they were out of the incubator and needed more time to finish hatching (the incubator has a wire base, and the heating element is pretty low and I didn't want them to burn their heads on it).  So I moved them to the hatching unit I made years ago.  It is a little hillbilly, but it works fabulous....maybe I should have incubated them in this too because it sure is easier to maintain temps in it than in the incubator so far.

My homemade hatching unit made from an old cooler, dimmer, 40w light bulb, old extension cord, and of course duct tape!

So this morning, after checking on them at 4 a.m. I realizing we had issues. I Googled how to deal with  it and formulated a plan.  One had curled under toes and wasn't balancing properly and the other had spraddle legs (like he is doing the splits basically.)  

Inside the hatching unit...

I wrangled up Sunshine to assist me and we got to work doing our best to remedy the issues. For this guy with the curled under toes, the remedy starts with the simple band-aid that has been trimmed down a little.  See how the toes curl under him and they don't spread out to support it's weight? That is what we are trying to help fix.

Here are the bandages trimmed and ready to go, we will use the padded part as the flat surface to spread the toes out onto and the tape parts to secure it until the toes can set right.  Like a splint.

I think we got it positioned fairly well and hopefully it does the trick.

I am not really sure why, but scenes from the movie Forest Gump kept running through my mind this whole time. lol

Here is the 2nd turkey poult, with the spraddle legs.

Poor baby, he was so frustrated he couldn't get anywhere!

This bandage we cut in half lengthwise to use as a sort of hobble to keep the legs from spreading out further than we want them to. So he can learn to walk and balance with feet under him.

Standing pretty good already, hopefully he can keep it up.

We will keep you posted if this temporary solution has any effect on their issues.  They say if done early enough it gives them a good chance of being able to walk normal and strengthen the legs.  I certainly hope so after all of this drama surrounding the turkey adventure! Hoping they do well.  I think they need names.  Any suggestions?

Cockeye Update...

 Remember little Cockeye?

Well, he is doing pretty well!  He is growing well despite his beak issues.  He appears to be strong and vigorous.  He is only slightly smaller than his peers.

He still looks a little...well cockeyed doesn't he?

We are glad he seems to be doing well.

Surprise!

I was awakened by a strange noise coming from the bathroom this morning.  Kind of a scratching scrambling noise and there was a curious peep peep.  At 5:15 a.m. it took a while to register what I was hearing...once it dawned on, me I flipped the covers off and raced to look and make sure I wasn't dreaming.

I stared in disbelief as I saw that we had a turkey hatch in the night!  You know the turkey eggs that I was 99% sure I killed with high temps in the incubator?  Yup, those are the ones!  We had one completely hatched, 2 more have pipped.  They are trying to get the job of hatching done.  This is so exciting and it feels like a gift from God!

They also hatched 1 day earlier than normal, maybe higher temps develop them faster! lol  I won't know if they are normal or healthy for a while longer yet, they are still figuring out how to walk and getting dried off and fluffy.  So in a few hours hopefully we will have a better idea.  I am just so excited we have life!

I am so glad I didn't give up on them last week when I was so sure they were dead....I had decided to go ahead and finish the incubation period just in case one was in a cooler corner of the incubator and made it somehow.

I will have to be sure to tell Butterball about the new arrivals when we go feed the older birds this morning!  I am sure he will be excited to have some young peeps to tell about life on the farm.  Thankfully the timing works out well because we have a new batch of chicks in the brooder so these turkeys can go right in with them in a couple days and I won't have to have a separate set up for them if we don't want to.  Although, I have a feeling they will be a little spoiled and stay inside for a while.

I was so excited to be able to share this update with you!  We obviously won't have a good hatch rate beings we bought 24 hatching eggs and it only looks like 3 will even possibly hatch, but after this 27 days of stress, worry, and constant care it feels like a triumph!

 

So we didn't completely fail after all!  Now if we can keep them alive from now on, hopefully if they could survive the inconsistencies in the incubator they are toughened up enough to live through anything now!  

One and Only Butterball...

Well it looks like we've failed at incubating turkey hatching eggs.  We are sad to report that we had a terrible time trying to keep the incubator temperatures steady enough.  This time of year we have such large temperature swings between days, nights, and weather conditions outside and room temps inside that we just could not keep it steady enough.  At first it was swings of 2 degrees at 98-101.  Then we got several unseasonably warm days at 93 during the day and 60 at night and things got more difficult and stressful to keep in a healthy temperature zone.  It took constant checks every 30 mins and small adjustments each time to keep it in the zone.  It was exhausting, stressful and worrisome.

We candled the eggs last week and found about 16 that didn't develop much at all past the first few days.  So we tossed all those and only 8 remained and appeared to be developing.

Then yesterday was when I felt 99% sure we'd done them in for good.  We found the temp in the incubator to be clear up to 106 degrees!  After all day it had been a steady 99-100.2 which was perfect!  That 106 is killer hot.:(   I feel like a failure, because after those weeks of attending to it so carefully and then this...when we are just days away from the hatch date we let the temp spike too high?  What a let down for all of us.:(

We are still going to finish out the incubation period, until the 22nd of May, just in case there is a 1% chance one lived through the heat wave.  I'd be every so grateful to have a ray of sunshine in our apparent failure, but I will also be alright with this being a lesson learned I suppose.

So I guess Butterball will likely be an only turkey this year.  I hope next year to order some from a local feed store and have them keep them for a couple days to make sure they are good and strong and over their travel/shipment stress and try again.  We spent our turkey budget this year on the hatching eggs and since those didn't work out we have to wait until next year.

Things we learned~

*  We are far too busy this time of year to be babysitting an incubator.
*  Ordering turkeys in the mail isn't the best idea, unless we can order them from a fairly nearby hatchery.
*  Turkeys are pretty cool and we really would like to raise them next year.

Thanks for reading about our challenges with the turkeys.  That is what life is about, not everything can be a success.  Hopefully next year our turkey story will go more positively and we can include you along the
journey.

For now Butterball doesn't mind his broiler chicken buddies.

I think he likes being one-of-a-kind.

Garden Tour Mid-May...

Join me on a quick garden tour this morning.  There are a few things up and doing well, there are many more things under the soil ready to pop up any day.    Some are still too small to really get a good picture of them.  Sadly, the weeds are doing quite well also, I wish they weren't, but I guess that goes with the territory of such a large garden.

The broccoli plot looks great so far!  We have about 90 plants in this area.

Strawberries are growing strong. (sorry about the sideways pic) We've been pinching off the blossoms for a few weeks and I can't wait to let some mature later in the season.

Zucchini plants are happy.

Cauliflower plants aren't growing quite as well as the broccoli, but they are doing ok so far. I've never grown cauliflower successfully before so we shall see if I succeed this year.  We have about 30-40 plants.

 Sunshine and Maggie Dog with broccoli by their feet and potatoes further out. 

Salad greens looking tasty!

The horses' "garden" is growing well too!  Almost time to cut the hay crop. 

Thanks for joining me today.  There should be some more interesting garden tours coming in the coming weeks.