17 November 2012,
The Saturday before Thanksgiving, and we processed turkeys this morning. OK, so ALL DAY! We thought we have 10 sold, but then not everyone claimed their birds, and if the aren’t confirmed, we don’t harvest them. So we got up this morning, checked email, and no change. Went out and processed 6 birds. We started about 0830, and it was just after noon we went to town. Came home and checked email again, and we were back on for the other birds. So we got dressed up again, and went out back and processed 3 more toms and a rooster. The only bird left is Gimp, the one that got his leg broken. We will have him for Christmas at Granny’s.
Took us until about 8pm to get the birds all finalized and packaged, ready to go.
Things to work on for next year: Getting a plucker, and a basket for dipping the birds in. We also need better killing cones, and more than one. We did pretty good though. I’d hang one up and start it, let it bleed out, then remove the head before we scalded it. We used the propane stand and the new pot, at just under 150 degrees f. and it worked great. Check the wing feather and when it comes out easy, they are done. Then put them into a big tank to chill until I can clean the insides. Separate the gizzard and heart, along with the neck into a different container. We got a lot of the little pin feathers outside. Doing it in the big tub with a gentle over flow of water to flush the excess off worked great. Then we chilled them and finished the small feathers and made them all nice. We had just enough shrink bags for this year and they work wonders. The problem that I find is the vent hole is at the bottom where it is flat, and the air doesn’t come out well there. Works better with the vent hole on the top, but that is where the wrinkles are and makes it difficult to seal over. Also need some freezer tape to seal them with. Have to be sure to fold the neck flap over the neck bone and do something to remove the point from the tail or else they poke holes in the bag. Just shrinks right over them.
For the last two weeks or so we weren’t sure about birds. We put the geese in with the peacocks to have peace in the coop, in hopes the turkeys would go in there more easily. But not. Came home and they would be in the trees or somewhere. And trying to chase them into the coop only makes matters worse. So we weren’t sure if we would have enough birds to sell. But I came home early Friday and got them all in the coop. And them all having an empty crop sure helped make the processing easier. Now we need to check out the geese and see how difficult they are to pluck. Roasting goose will be the next challenge.
So our turkey flock for next year will start with 6 birds. 4 Bourbon Reds, 1 Tom and 3 hens, including the old Redd mom and the 2 new ones. We also kept Brownie and one of the mixed toms. So we can either let them all run free together or we can make two trios. Thinking about putting a trio in with the peacocks. We also want to let Redd and maybe Brownie set on nests, so I’m thinking about building new pens to put them in and they can build their nests, lay their eggs and then set on them. When the chicks hatch they can just stay in there with mom for a while. We had a real problem with losses this year, with the babies just running loose. Not sure what happened to them, if something got them, or if they just got lost and couldn’t keep up with mom. So next year, if we have a better plan to contain them all, perhaps more will survive.
We also need to build a few more pens to put the babies in when we put them outside. We have the 3 brooders, and need more pens for outside. Need at least one with a built in light and nesting area at one end for smaller babies or when it is colder out. The big pen is too big, so the new ones will probably be 5x10 feet, and figure three new ones. Put them in the field and just move them everyday or two will do great. And could be better than simply dividing the field up. Will still need to build a coop out there for them to sleep in when they get bigger. But any way. Those are some of the plans for next year.
ck here to edit.
Two weeks before Thanksgiving and we are getting ready. We don’t have as many birds this year as we did last year. This weekend Deer season opens, and then next weekend we need to process the birds. We only have about 10 of them this year, as opposed to 15-18 last year. So we will separate them Friday night, then begin processing them Saturday morning. Sunday we will deliver them to our customers in the parking lot of the local Wal-Mart.
The change from Daylight Savings time has really been difficult. It is daylight again when we leave in the mornings, but not it is pitch black when we get home. Makes getting some of the birds back in the coop a real pain. Tonight there are a couple birds on the roof of the coop, and a couple in one of the trees. I tried chasing them out last night, and I’m afraid it just makes things worse. So we are trusting the dog to keep them safe at night until I can convince them to go inside again.
The chickens are not doing well, either. I think there are ten hens, and we have been averaging 3 eggs a day. Every third or fourth day we get four. The other night we only got one! And then we’ll get five or six. I plugged in the light in the coop, so that will extend the daylight hours for them. I think some of them may have already started to molts and we will just have to weather that until they start laying again. When the turkey numbers are reduced after Thanksgiving it should make a big difference also. We are going to have to reduce the number of geese also, even if it means trying roast goose for the first time. Those 5 geese are running rough shod on everything.
 Well, we experimented with letting the hens set on eggs and hatch them, and all in all we did pretty good. Hard to say exactly on some of them, think they had just as good of hatches as me, and maybe better for some. The geese for sure. But we also had some real issues pop up that we are going to have to deal with and prepare for next year.
First is where are we going to have the hens set on their eggs? We had the geese set in a corner of the coop and then a Narragansett tried to make her nest in the same spot. That resulted in the geese standing on her eggs during the night, and getting poop all over them. She never did set on any of the eggs. Not a good thing. In the peacock cage we had Edith make a nest on one side and the Narragansett make one on the other side. Eventually the Narr. Would move over to Edith’s nest and lay her eggs there, then she finally just tried to sit on the nest with her. In the end I pulled the Narragansett out of the cage and gave her 4 poults from the incubator. One Narragansett hen set on eggs out in the tall grass in the front yard and hatched 7, including 1 chicken. Finally, Redd made a nest out in the Black Berries and set on maybe a dozen eggs.
The next problem we had was keeping track of how many eggs were under each hen, and preventing others from getting in and laying additional ones. I tried to mark some of them, especially when I could watch them lay the eggs and wait for them to set on them. I didn’t so much have a problem with more than one hen laying in the same nest, in fact it helps build the number of eggs in the nest faster. The problem comes when one of the hens finally decides to set, how do you keep the others from continuing to lay there?
And the last major problem we had was what to do with the mother and babies after they hatch? The natural instinct is to take the babies into the brush or grass and hide. And I didn’t think the moms were up to that, and I didn’t trust them or the wild animals around here with that. So I put her in a cage, but the babies kept getting out. So I ended up letting her roam free. Cost me 2 of her babies some where. When the Narragansett hatched in the front yard, she started taking them to the woods, so I put her in the cage, where she still is. She started with 7, the dogs “played with one during the night and she had 6. Then the other night we lost 2 more. They looked like they were trampled in the cage. Think Nikita was loose that night and may have harassed mom in the cage, or something else came around and scared her. So she is down to 4, and one of them is a chicken, go figure. Redd hatched out at least 7 that I counted, but she also had that many dead babies under her, several looked like they were half out of the egg. Then the white rooster got in the yard and chased her all over, and I think she lost some of the babies. When I went out tonight and looked she only had 4. So now we have to decide what to do with her and the babies and how to protect them best we can. I’m thinking about letting the Narragansett out with her 4 babies, they are a little bigger now and they should be ok, and putting Redd in the cage until hers get bigger.
What I have learned this year is that you can only have one hen in a small cage, either in the peacock enclosure or in the small cage I built. They will share nests when one of them is setting and after the babies hatch one will bully the other. And they don’t like to be caged after they the babies hatch. The babies don’t stay near mom. And I still worry about the babies getting enough to eat and drink, and have no way of controlling or making sure they get the game starter they need. The other thing that concerns us is there is no way of really securing mom and her babies for the night. So what do we do?
Ideally each hen would have their own space. Don’t think that is going to happen. I also need to separate the different birds, so the geese, chickens, ducks and turkeys each get their own living space. So we make pens of some sort and put 1 Tom and 2 hens in each one. When one of them shows a willingness to set try to remover her and out her on eggs in another space. When the second hen begins to set I can remove the Tom. If the spaces are planned right, the hen can just stay there with her babies until they grow some. Just need to think about how big the enclosures or what ever need to be. Obviously need to be tall enough for the Tom to get on a hen and partially covered to protect from weather. Both Redd and the Narragansett set on eggs out in the open with minimal protection, through storms and rain and such, so it can be done, but prefer not to force the issue. Have to think about it.
Took 20 turkey eggs out of the chicken coop and put them in the incubator. The Narragansett kept laying and sitting on them for a while during the day, but then she would get off at night and the geese would sleep on them. And poop on them. There is a Narragansett sitting on eggs in the front yard, about 8 I think and they should be hatching in the next 10 days or so. Redd just started sitting on a nest of eggs in the chicken yard the other day, so figure they should hatch about 25-27 May. There are 2 other nests in the Black Berry bushes, one has about 6 eggs and the other more. Not sure if any one is going to sit on them or not, but plan to just leave them be and see what happens.
Edith in the Peacock cage is sitting on several eggs also. There was a Narragansett in there also and it was getting crazy. There was one nest in the small house in there and one next to it. At first they each stayed on their own nest, but then they started switching and sometimes no one was on one nest, so I took some of the eggs and tried to separate them. Didn’t work. So this weekend did some major re-arranging of birds. We took the cage apart that had the Barred Rock babies in it. They are getting so big can’t really be called babies anymore, so we call them “Broilers”. We set up a new 4 foot fence in a new area, and moved them to it. The coop went with them. The cage got moved to a new area. We took the Narragansett from the peacock cage and put 4 new hatched poults under her to see if she would adopt them. Well, tonight she was out of the box and had at least 2 under her. I got in the cage and lifted her wing to make sure they were there and ok. And that was enough.
Trusting the birds to be good moms and know what to do is just a little new and rough for me. Because some of them have shown they don’t even know how to stop laying and sit on the eggs. As for babies, right now we have 4 babies that hatched a week ago, and 13 that hatched Saturday. It is 4 of the 13 that went under mom, so we still have 13 babies in the brooder in the house.
In the smaller cage outside are the 3 ducks we bought and 2 chickens that hatched about that time. Figure they will grow up together. Got their pen all set up and ready last night and then we had a thunder storm about 3am this morning and had to go bring them in. It was their first night out, but not the first time they’ve been in the cage, but instead of being under the light and warm and dry, they were in the opposite end of the cage, in the rain, wet and cold. And ducks are worse than geese when it comes to making messes with the water. So I’ve decided that we are going to make a special pen for the geese and ducks around one of the low spots out in the field. I’ll dig it out and put what is left of the old large plastic pool in the bottom of it to help keep water in it. I’ll plant some cat tails I think. Anyway, that is where the ducks and geese are going to be, and Next year I’ll let them sit on their own eggs and raise their own babies, and what ever we get is what we get for babies. Not sure I want to brood them any more; Let mom do it.
So I including the 20 eggs I just put in the incubator, there is probably about 70 eggs or so in them. So far this year think I have been averaging about 50% hatch rate. Not good, and I’m working on that. But that would still mean I have about 30 poults coming, plus what ever we get from the 3-5 nest birds are sitting on. So I’m placing my first ad on Craig’s List to sell the poults I have now. I mean, that has always been the plan, to sell as many as I can, and keep about 15-20 to raise and sell. And if we can get the birds to care for them as they grow up, why not? The thing we hadn’t counted on is where to put mom and babies after they hatch. How do you keep the separate and safe, but still together, you know?
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.
Today was quite the day. Started with not wanting to get up, but then again, that isn’t special or unusual. Driving thru Buffalo on the way to work sounded like we ran over something. Stopped down the road a ways and checked the tires, but couldn’t see anything wrong, hear or feel any leaks or find something sticking out of the tire. So we drove on in to Springfield, about 50 miles by the time we go to Jeanne’s moms house and everything. Then I went and got gas before going to work. Didn’t have to take Jeanne to work this morning because she went to an appointment with her mom.
Then this afternoon while we were out for the afternoon recess, the announced on the PA system that a white van in the parking lot had a flat tire. Yep, that’s me. And I knew exactly which tire it was and where it happened. So I used the portable air pump to pump up the tire some, get it off the rim until I could get it fixed. After school I pumped it up more, then headed across town to Big O tires. They installed the new tires in it a few weeks ago and fix the flats for free. Took less than an hour to drive there, and get it fixed. They took a piece out of the tire that looks like it came from the edge of an aluminum rim. It’s about 3 inches long. Amazing that it didn’t completely trash the tire, and that we were able to drive on it all the way to work.
Came home and the pups were still in the chicken yard. I put some boards up in the corner where they were getting out, and guess that helped. Checked eggs and we got our first turkey egg. Not sure who laid it or anything, it was in the nest box up in the wall with some other chicken eggs. So we will see if we start getting more turkey eggs.
Then we went out in the garden and did a little work in it. Mostly I wanted to plant the potatoes that were under the cabinet. First I used the tiller and worked up the ground, then we flopped the big tractor tire around and got a couple of large truck tires form the field. That made 3 sets of tires. I dug down in the soil and planted the potatoes. Some of them had pretty long sprouts on them, so laid some over and a few stood up strait, then added soil around them. On top of that I put some fresh straw and filled the tires up. I also used the rake to loosen the soil in the raised beds I made the other day and then covered them with straw too. For the potatoes, when the plants get big enough and start showing through the straw, I’ll add another tire on top and add more straw. Somewhere along the line I figure I’ll also need to add some type of fertilizer, maybe some of the composted straw I remove from the coop later. Not sure if I plan to clean out the coop this year or not.
The raised beds I’m building I plan to keep using for several years right where they are this year. That will help me with my plant rotation too. And I’ll try to add new ones to them as we go along. There will still be some areas for a while that I do not have raised beds in. Some of those will be corn, my melons and large vine plants. Some I’ll try to train to grow up a fence, and some of the vines can even grow through the corn and help shade the roots. Other than weeding and watering, I really don’t need to get into the corn or the squash and pumpkins and such until I harvest them. So that will be a good dual use of the space. And it should help keep the weeds down.
We have done pretty good so far in tilling the ground and removing the roots and such to get things ready to plant. I need to do some PM’s on the tiller, and then tear up the rest of the garden area. Plan to make a real effort to keep ahead of the weeds this year. I have a lot more in the garden than we are ever going to be able to use, more so because we don’t all eat vegetables and such. I’ll give some to Jeanne’s mom, to people at work or what ever. If we have enough, the thought is to try to sell some of it at the Farmers Market on the weekends, or when ever. We’ll see. We got some tomato seeds the other night, made sure they weren’t hybrid types, and put a bunch in baggies to sprout. So I figure tomorrow night when I get home they’ll be starting to grow and I’ll need to put them in little grow pots. Looked at the other stuff I have sprouted, and I have 2 Rose Mary plants and about 8 Thyme plants. Guess I better find a use for thyme. And plant more Rose Mary. And I need to work harder at getting Oregano to sprout. Evidently didn’t do to well with it the first time.
And lastly, in two days, on the fifteenth, the new list of jobs comes out. Not like I’m excited about it or counting days or anything. Lol. Can’t wait.
Today is Wednesday, 22 February 2012, and it has been about 10 days since I put the first goose eggs in the incubator. I have been turning them several times each day, and in the evening opening up the incubator for 15 minutes to let it cool down some, then spraying them down to simulate mom coming back from swimming. There are now 8 eggs in the incubator and 2 on the shelf next to it. I’ll wait a few more days to put them in. I’ve been putting them in about once each week. So tonight I got my candling light out and candled the eggs. What I found was pretty promising. It is only 10 days into a probable 30 day incubation, there isn’t a lot of growth to be detected. But it looks like there is development inside, you can see a darker shape inside. At least there is a significant difference between the ones that have been in for 10 days and those that have been in for only 3 days. In another week or so I’ll candle them again and see what changes here are. And judging by the number of feathers missing and the scrapes on Emmy’s head, I’m pretty sure he’s been getting the job done.
Which is more than I can say for the turkeys. We have two Toms, and not sure either of them has a clue. And I’m not sure if they have even determined which one of them is the Alpha Tom. Twice now I have seen one of them just standing on a hen, just standing there. I really have to wonder if he knows what he’s supposed to do. Usually the Tom started to lower his tail right away and trying to mount her. But he doesn’t and often the other Tom will come and push him off. That or they begin to fight while one is still on the Hen’s back. So I’m not sure what to do about this, but it isn’t promising. I’m thinking about dividing them into two groups. One of the Toms has a notch in his tail like Stripes had. I’ll probably put him with 4 hens and the other Tom with 3 hens. Have to decide where to put them and which hens to put with who. Thinking about building a new pen for the turkeys, and dividing the flock would be the answer because I was really concerned about building a pen big enough for 9 turkeys. I have a lot of building materials we’ve collected, just wasn’t sure what I wanted the final product to look like. Now I’ve figured that out. I’ll separate the Toms, 1 in the pen, 1 out. Then I need to divide the hens between them. May put 3 Narry hens in the pen and 2 out, and then I’ll have to decide if Brownie goes in or out, and Red goes with the opposite group.
As for the puppies, we just have the two of them left, (Polar) Bear and Nikita. Both of them are getting huge, almost too big to pick up. We had a few unfortunate incidents with mom in the house, so she is back outside as an outside dog again. That is where we want them all to be anyway, to help protect the animals. And it hasn’t been too cold out really. She has a nice dog house full of straw that she sleeps in when its too bad. Usually she is on the back deck or the front porch other wise. So we take the pups out in the evening when we get home, and let them run around with mom. And man, she plays rough with them. Nikita gets the worst of it, it seems. For all the tenderness that goes on between them, I really don’t think mom is being mean or cruel to them. She will run around and tumble with them, she’ll bite on them and play fight with them until Nikita fights back and really snarls back at mom. Not sure why Nikita seems to get it more. I have seen her go after Bear also, grab the fur on his back and just almost toss him over backwards. So we are keeping an eye on her and trying to learn what we can about moms teaching their pups about life and how to defend themselves and the flocks they look after.
I’ll try to get some pictures on here this weekend.
So we have these two turkey toms that have some kind of disease. They have shown symptoms before, and it seems to come and go, but I haven’t been able to find any ill effects other than the spots on their head. They don’t seem to have any respiratory problems or health issues, they still eat regularly and they get around in the yard with no obvious issues. In fact, other than the darkness on their head can’t find anything else wrong with them. Still I wonder what it is.
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