Friday. We all had off and so the weekend seems out of whack. I had my first job interview for a teaching position in the morning, was nice. In the afternoon we went out in the field and used our new post hole Auger digger to make holes for the cedar posts we bought. There were a lot of rocks in the first one and it kept binding and didn’t do well. Then we broke the shear pin and had to stop. So we went to town and got new, bigger pins. Not just the one we broke but both pins. We also got some landscaping timbers to put around trees and stuff in the front yard. The rest of the day was too cold to do very much, so we took the afternoon off and watched TV.
Saturday. We had waffles for breakfast. Hopefully we had what was our last frost of the year last night. I think it only got down to 37 or so, what the forecast said anyway, but they warned of patchy frost. And when I went out this morning to let birds out I checked, and sure enough, there was frost on some of the grass and the top of the little chick’s cage. We covered up the roses, and the pups pulled the covers off. Think we did more damage trying to protect them than would have happened if we just left them alone. Oh well, live and learn.
Spent the day out in the field putting posts in the ground. Started with the hole where we broke the auger, did them by hand with a crow bar, and it went pretty fast. There were some huge rocks and glad we didn’t try the auger again. All total we dug 3 holes by hand. The corner post and 2 bracing posts. The rest of the posts were pretty rock free and the auger worked great. Dug the holes in just a few minutes, then we put rocks and dirt in and packed them down. Figure in a day or so when they have a chance to dry some they should be pretty solid. The ground was still kind of wet. A few days ago, or last weekend we had torrential rains and everything was flooded. So it is starting to dry out some. All total we put in 12 posts and laid out the field fencing for 2 sides. The other 2 sides will be 2 inch chicken wire that is 4 feet high. It is in the shed, and we’ll have to decide how soon to put it up. We got wire to do the bracing posts. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to use for the cross member for bracing, but it can wait just a little. Also started pulling the staples off the little coop so we can move it tomorrow to a new area, with more grass and such.
The first of our turkey poults for this year hatched today. Right now there are two in the hatcher and about seven more to go. And this is just the first week. I have been putting eggs in the incubator every week, so they will hatch every week. This is just the first batch. I haven’t opened the hatcher to take them out yet, but as soon as I do I’ll post some pictures.
What else? Came home one night and the geese were alone in the coop with their babies. So we took the baby ducks and the baby geese and put them out there. Mom and dad didn’t like the ducks, so we put them back in the house. But they accepted the geese, so now all 4 babies are with mom and dad, walking around the yard and such. So cool to see them all out there. Today two of the babies got in the one of the drinking pools. I think they are too young, but I’ll leave it up to them to decide.
Took the rototiller and tilled up the garden, hoping to get some stuff planted in it tomorrow. Have a bunch of plants on the deck that are started and ready to go. And it is still pretty early in the season. I’ll try to get some more pictures of things as I can and get them posted.
Put 28 turkey eggs in the incubator. Now I am really going to try to not collect eggs and let the hens set on them. There is a Narragansett hen in the front yard sitting on 8 eggs. Wish she had more but too late to do anything about it. In the peacock cage, there are 2 turkey hens, Brownie and a Narragansett, plus Edith. Well, there is a nest inside the little dog house thing and one on the outside. Both turkeys were laying eggs, sometimes in the nest outside, but sometimes the one inside. Edith was laying in the one inside. Sometimes a turkey would go inside the box and lay an egg, and in appears that at least one of Edith’s eggs were broken, I assume from being stepped on. So yesterday, Edith was on the nest inside and the Narragansett was on the outside one. It would appear she got off after laying an egg, because initially there were 6 eggs, but later in the day there were 8 eggs and no one was on it. So tonight I went out and Edith is on the 8 turkey eggs in the nest outside and the Narragansett hen was inside the box with 4 Edith eggs and 1 turkey egg. So I took the Edith eggs and brought them in the house, and left the single egg under the Narragansett. And it is all Edith can do to cover the 8 turkey eggs, but I’m leaving her there. I don’t really care who sits on which nest, as long as they don’t set on them and start he incubation process and then get off and let the eggs cool and die. So need to watch that. And I’m not sure how to separate them so they won’t be so tempted to swap nests.
Both goslings in the house are doing great. I attribute that mostly to the even temps under Emmy during incubation. The 2 chicks are also doing pretty good.
Took mom’s turtle, Golden, to school today and he was a big hit. The kids loved him and got to play with him and hold him and everything. We took him outside at recess and let him walk in the grass. He didn’t hide at all in his shell. The fish at school are still doing good, too.
The weather has been rainy all weekend, big thunderstorms and flash floods. So the ground in soaked again. Will be the end of the week before I can get into the garden to plant things. Speaking of which, repotted a lot of the plants and they are on the deck. Think I have gotten a better start on the garden this year, just need to keep up with things. Starting to get plans and ideas about how to fix things around here, the trees and the yard and the field. This winter I’ll need to do some landscaping and work out the drainage so that these spring rains don’t affect us quite so much each year. Need to make paths to walk on and get in fences, make the paddocks for animals and such.
We had a nice weekend. Saturday the sun shined and we cleaned the living room and the plants. Tried to get rid of all the fine dust left from the chicks in the house. I got some of my seeds planted and the starts put into small pots, and the lights set up on the shelf. Planted the rose bushes in pots.
Then I went out in the garden and rototilled parts of it. Put in 3 of the frames for raised beds and tilled up several other areas. I didn’t actually plant anything yet, just got the ground ready. Also 2 or 3 of the Oregano plants from last year actually made it through the winter. I took the covers off them and they are looking pretty good. I am totally shocked that they survived the cold. I hadn’t even given it a thought that they would, but when I found them, I tried to protect them some. Of course by then, most of the bad parts of winter was over. And I think they are the kind of Oregano I labeled as “Other” Oregano. It just smells and tastes different, better. And so I’m hoping to get more of it this year. I also bought a Rosemary and Lavender plant at Wal-Mart. I have some I’m trying to grow from seed, but I wanted to be sure I had some. And I’m starting to run out of what I have in dried from last year.
I accidentally killed my Rosemary last fall. I trimmed it way back and figured it would grow back. But I have since learned from reading that Rosemary is one of those strange plants that does not grow new buds. You can trim off parts and it will keep growing from the terminal buds. But if you cut off all the terminal buds, it will not grow any new buds or shoots like regular plants will. What happens is the plant dies. I thought I was just trimming them back for winter and coming inside. Instead, I killed them.
We had gone to the MFA store here and bought about 5 pounds of clover seed. I think it is red clover, I’m just sure it isn’t Ladino clover. It came with some kind of coating on it, could be an inoculant or something to help with handling the seed, not sure. Anyway, got the seed and went out just before dark Saturday evening and scattered the seed by hand over the area we plan to fence off. It covered the area pretty well. I’ll just have to see how it grows and survives the summer drought. Saturday night we got some pretty good rain, and during the day Sunday. So I went out Sunday and checked on the seed. The seed was still visible some, but had been worked down into the ground pretty well. I had forgotten to save a few seeds to test sprout inside. So I gathered up a few and brought them inside.
And in the process of doing things and checking stuff, we found the first egg Edith laid in the peacock pen. So she has finally come of age! Will have to keep an eye on her and keep Hot Rod away from her. Not sure what we plan to do with the eggs, I’ll probably try to hatch them and sell the chicks. Not sure that we want to raise very many of these smaller birds. They may be small, but I’m telling you, both of them have some personality! We’ll see what happens.
So Sunday it Rained and we didn’t do much outside. Grilled a tri-tip steak again. Has become a habit, almost a tradition that I hope we continue for a long time. On Sundays, especially when it is nice weather outside, we grill out. We got this steak Friday night and marinated it until Sunday. Then we put it on the smoker and smoke it using pear wood for the smoke. Takes about 3 hours or so. Oh, and we watch the Nascar Races while it smokes. Something new I am learning to enjoy with my new wife. Jimmy Johnson, #48 is our favorite. So about two thirds of the way into the race, the power goes out. Came on and off for a while, but eventually stayed off for over 2 hours. Good thing we were grilling or dinner would have been a poor fare. Had steak and steak fries from the grill. And just as we were getting ready to eat, the power came back on. Nice, as it was getting dark also. We also changed our clocks ahead one hour to Day Light Savings Time. But guess that is a whole other story. Not sure how I feel about it. Monday it really sucked because we aren’t used to it yet, and we had to get up in the dark again. We did like the extra daylight hours when we got home. So we’ll see.
Monday night we tilled up another section in the garden. Then we planted some of the lettuce plants and onion bulbs in it, along with some peas, beets and lettuce seeds. I didn’t have carrot seeds with me or would have planted some of them, too. We got another egg from Edith, but I dropped it and it broke. Emmy has 8 eggs in her nest and hope she starts to really sit on them soon. We got 5 other eggs from chickens, too. Moved a bale of straw into the coop and moved the Dog Igloo into the coop. Tried to get the pups to sleep in it, but don’t think that will work. Maybe the turkeys or something will use it for a nest box.
Moved 4 goose eggs to the hatcher, should hatch any day now.
We were able to find homes for the last 2 pups we needed to this weekend, so we are down to just mom and the two pups we kept, Bear and Nikita. We have started taking them out side to use the bathroom. At first it was odd for them, but they figured it out right away. OK, this is where I admit, Jeanne is the one takes them out mostly. And the first time Mom just went nuts, running around and around, and knocking them over. Guess she thought it was really cool to have some one to play with. And they have peed every time, and usually at least one of them poops, so that makes clean up in the house a lot easier.
But it has been cold lately, and the snow last night was new for them. We took them out tonight and they played in it well. We built two snow men also. One in the drive way and the other out by the swing in front. We did it mostly in the dark, so I’ll try to get pictures later.
Also, Emmy started laying eggs last week and I left the first one in the nest, but have been collecting them ever since. So this morning I put 4 goose eggs in the incubator. I’ve been reading up and how to do it correctly as I’ve had some problems getting them to actually hatch in the past. Getting them to develop if the egg is fertile is pretty easy, I think. Getting a healthy gosling to hatch is another thing altogether. Think temp and humidity has a lot to do with it. So I’m trying this new system the calls for opening the incubator each day after day 4 for about 15 minutes and then misting the eggs. Simulates mom getting off the nest to go eat and take care of things, and getting wet before she comes back. Hoping it makes a difference. Then I’m thinking after I’ve hatched a few of them, I’ll let her sit on some and see how she does. We have never had someone successfully set on a nest and hatch the eggs. Time to do that this year.
Started the year with 11 chickens, 3 roosters and 8 hens. All of the hens were mostly Americana’s and a few of them may have been crossed with Rhode Island Red. One of the roosters was a Rhode Island, and we put him in the freezer on 14 January, along with the last BBB Tom.
On 3 January, we purchased 3 dozen Barred Rock eggs for hatching and put them, along with several of our green eggs in the incubator. We also included about 8 eggs from the BBB hen, but none of them developed. I’m assuming none were fertile. On 11 January put 2 more chicken eggs and several turkey eggs in the incubator. None of those turkey eggs developed either.
21 January. One of the chicken eggs did not develop based on candling, so that leaves about 48 chicken eggs. Moved all but the last 2 of them into the hatcher today, and dropped one in the process.
I had done some reading and I’m trying what is called the “Dry Incubation Method”. In addition to controlling the temperature, the humidity must also be controlled. And there is a lot of different and sometimes contradictory information out there about how to accomplish this. The one thing that I have found to be pretty standard no matter where you look is the temperature. It needs to be between 99.5 and 100.5f for the first 18 days for chickens and 25 days for turkeys and peafowl. During this time the eggs should be turned several times each day to prevent the developing embryo from sticking to one side of the shell. This is referred to as the incubation period. Then they are moved to the hatching trays and the temperature is lowered a couple of degrees. The incubation temperature is for a forced air incubator, if you are using a still air incubator then the temps need to be raised 1-2 degrees. Sometimes the same incubator is used for incubation and for hatching, as I have done in the past.
Humidity is the area where the controversy seems to arise. Some say that it needs to be about 60% during incubation and raised to 80-90% during the hatching. You accomplish this by adding water to the trays in the incubators to raise the relative humidity. The larger the surface area that is exposed, the more it increases the humidity. This can be done by filling more channels or spots or by the use of a sponge or sloth of some kind to increase the area. I’ve had not problems raising the humidity. What I have had problems with is the chicks developing and seeming to be normal, only to pip the egg and then die. Some of them have real difficulty getting out of the shell.
Then I read about the dry incubation method. The basis for this method is the fact that the egg has to loose a certain percent of its weight before the chick hatches in order to complete the process successfully. If it does not loose enough, the chick will not have room to turn in the eggs to break out and will drown in the excess fluid. If too much fluid is lost, the chick will stick to the shell and will have difficulty breaking free from the egg. This can also cause the chick to simply die early. Additionally, if the humidity is too high during hatching, the chick will not dry out. Sounds real simple and it is, but not as easy as one would think.
Dry incubation is just what it sounds like. You add no water to the incubator during the incubation period, unless the humidity goes below 40%. I’ve been watching mine since day one, and it has stayed right around 60%. The ambient humidity is also 60%, so there has been no need to increase the humidity. Once they are moved into the hatching tray, the humidity needs to be raised to above 60%. This is where I’m working on it. When I first plugged in the hatcher, the humidity was 40%. I put in a pint jar of water and it has come up to about 50%. The reason is that the eggs themselves give off a certain amount of humidity, keeping it higher despite the increased temperature.
So today I moved the eggs out of the incubator and I’ll check the humidity again tomorrow and see what it is then. I’m hoping that it will be at or above 60% and I’ll just live with that. One of the biggest problems I’ve had in the past is the chicks piping but not successfully exiting the eggs. I’m hoping this will alter that in a favorable manner.
The purpose of hatching these eggs is to increase the size of our laying flock. There are roughly 50 eggs, and if we assume that half of them will be layers and half will be roosters, then I’ll have an increase of about 20 laying hens. They will hatch about 1 February and with the increasing temperatures and light days, they should mature faster and I’m hoping they will start laying in July or August. With the chickens we have now that should give us about 2 dozen eggs each day, or 14 dozen a week. By then we are hoping that we will have developed a market for them.
I may consider hatching additional eggs to sell as day old chicks. Not a lot of money in selling day old chickens, but some. And soon after that I should be getting turkey eggs to hatch also. And hatching them allows me to check out all my equipment and this new procedure and see how it works.
Where to begin? Puppies. They are getting bigger and starting to sit up and open their eyes. When we came home and let mom out, they were sitting up so nice and looked great, just we couldn’t get any pictures right then. And then mom came back in and guess it was dinner time for them, so couldn’t get any pictures then. Later, when we let mom out again, went in to get some and guess it was nap time. Had to try to wake them up and encourage them to look at me and try to stand up. I got a few, saw better ones, but just couldn’t catch in on camera. So hope you enjoy these. Some of them are getting big. Starting to worry about having mom, plus 10 puppies in the laundry room during the day while we are gone. And not sure where we can put them out side even if the weather was good enough for them to be out. Guess we need to work on that. You can see them trying to stand up and the eyes how they are more open. Got home and went out to check eggs tonight. Not a single egg in the coop! Not one! Not sure what the deal is. Got 5 of them yesterday and none today. Not even a turkey egg. Really irritated. Makes me wonder if maybe some one comes during the day and takes them. Checked in the peacock cage and no egg under the turkey there.
She is doing fine. Got some spray on skin at Wal-Mart and put it on her wound. Hoping it will make a difference, at least keep it from getting infected. Not sure if she will make it or not. Guess the goal was to breed her this spring but not to keep her all year long. I’d really like to get to use some of the meat from her, but if not, then so be it. And if I’m in this position again of trying to keep a BBB hen again, guess I need a saddle or to be more careful with her. She’s out in the peacock cage, and has lots of straw around her to help keep her warm, and she’s done well so far this winter. Just we are going to be getting some cold and possibly wet weather in the near future, and hope she can deal with it. Not sure it the cold hurts or helps.
And the best news of the day. Got a call this afternoon while I was at Wal-Mart. Told I needed to go over to HR tomorrow and start filling out paperwork for my new job. Didn’t really know I had a new job, and couldn’t understand what she was talking about at first, so I asked again. Seems that I not only got hired, I get to stay in the same room doing the same thing I’m doing right now. So one day I’ll work for Kelly and the next I’ll work for Springfield Public Schools. I’ve been a substitute teacher for a while now, but this will be my first job as a full time employee of a school district. And hopefully this will be my foot in the door to getting a teaching position in one of my certification areas. And also provide me the opportunity to get some of the extra certifications I’ve been looking at. Only draw back is the pay. It’s not really great, about as good as McDonald’s was, but since I got hired about half way through the school year, I’ll get half the pay. And it get spread out over the summer, so about half a years pay spread over 8 months. Not that good. I’ll know more specifics tomorrow. I hope. See how this changes things for insurance and the like. But I really believe this is a step in the right direction.
 Sunday, last day of the weekend. The pups are getting bigger, several of them have their eyes open and I’ve seen a few of them standing up, or trying to. They are starting to poop and pee a lot more than they used to and mom just can’t keep up with them. Not sure how we are going to deal with it, but there isn’t much we can do about it until they get big enough to be getting around and trained some maybe.
On to the birds. Yesterday while we were out burning trash we saw one of the Narragansett Toms trying to mount the Broad Breasted Bronze hen. For a minute or so he just stood there on top of her, then he squatted down and got his tail under hers, so I’m hoping he got the job done this time. And that he’s been successful before. I know the toms have been getting her regularly, but couldn’t say if all of them have or if any were successful. But she is so big, and so are the toms, we were talking about getting a saddle for her. Haven’t used one yet, but have wondered about it in the past.
When Jeanne went out in the yard today, she saw some blood on one side on the BBB Hen, so we went out to look at her. Her left side has a pretty good gash in it, but there wasn’t much blood. Looked like it wasn’t really fresh, so not sure when it happened. We put some hydrogen peroxide on it and locked her in the peacock cage. We accomplished two things that way. We isolated her from the toms so they couldn’t try to mount her again and make it worse, and we’d be able to determine if she was the hen laying eggs or not.
So in the afternoon Jeanne went out and checked eggs and found 5 eggs in the chicken coop, 4 green ones and a brown one. So a couple more hens are starting to lay. But there were no turkey eggs in the coop. Went out after we put them I went out and looked for the turkey egg. Didn’t find one in the chicken coop, but the BBB hen had one under her in the peacock cage.
Thing is that when I put it next to the other turkey eggs it is significantly different. Since I doubt the spots on her eggs change that much, I would think that means more than one hen is laying. And since we are going to have to leave her in the peacock cage for a while, we’ll be able to tell if we get any from the chicken coop. So still have 46 chicken eggs and 3 turkey eggs in the incubator, and I have 5 more turkey eggs that I’ll put in later this week. And I also have a dozen of my eggs in the fridge. And if we keep getting 2 or more eggs each day, we should be back in the egg business again.
Lets talk about eggs. Today is Friday and I only got the one green one, well maybe two. Yesterday I got 3 blue eggs, and none of them were the green one. But today I found 2 green ones, one in the nest box and one in the crate I put in it. So think that means I got 4 yesterday but only one today. The day before I got the green egg and a new blue one.
Turkey eggs. For the last 3 days I have gotten one turkey egg each day, but today there was no turkey egg. I know that the days are getting longer and the weather has been warmer the last few days, in the mid 60’s yesterday and upper 60’s today. Unusual for this time of year, but I’m loving it. Tomorrow is only supposed to be in the low 50’s, but the forecast for the next week only has 2 or 3 nights with freezing weather.
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