BYC Café

[KingOfFools]

Hi, and welcome, Margie. I'll bet a café you don't have to travel to would be nice in Colorado right now. I'm already on the iced coffees for the afternoon. It was a bit chilly tho morning though.

I like how you described the kids. How long have you owned chickens? You grow up with it or are you first generation? I'm the first I know of for maybe three or more generations.

Well gotta go spend some much needed one on one with the wifey. Poor woman has nothing but a baby and a two year old to talk to!

 

[Mtn Margie]

I think it has been 7 or 8 years now with chickens. We have raised our own Holiday turkeys, various meaties and had a couple of geese for a year and a half and now have some quail for meat and egg birds. That was last summer's science experiment that worked out better than expected. This year, a neighbor and I are going to try rabbits as well. We will just have to see on that one....
My Dad was in the military- lifer, so no critters and my Mom was terrified of anything inside/outside that moved besides a small dog or cat, so definitely no critters even if my Dad had wanted them!
I have a degree in Animal Sci and a fondness for genetics so I am just going to assume that I was adopted!

My grandmas all came from rural stock, one even came out west on a covered wagon as a child so I am figuring I got the knack from somewhere...

I will say, that the time when I had a 2.5 yr old and a nursing baby was probably one of the most stressful and exhausting times in my entire life. I am glad you are there for her.
Enjoy the beautiful day!

 

[IttyBiddyRedHen]

Hello Trib! Great idea for a thread!

What part of the Navy are you in?...Fleet? Seabee?

 

[KingOfFools]

Hey, Moxie. Well I was a surface ship Sailor in combat systems, but I traded that for a little more shore duty for my hard working wife. Admin world in a program where I could spend the rest of my career on shore if I chose, though I don't think I'll do that the whole time.

I've only been raising chickens for about a year now. Never thought I would enjoy it this much. The wife and I want to retire in SoCal and start a free-range chicken farm, with goats, bees, sheep, rabbits and maybe pigs and turkeys just for us.

Margie, Good luck with the rabbits. I've heard they were very easy and very hard to breed and nothing in between, lol. I would love to work in animal science and since watching a documentary on Crick and Watson, I have been very interested in genetics. My degree will be in Environmental Science. Pretty rare for a libertarian lol.

Well thanks for joining in on the discussion.

Trib

 

[IttyBiddyRedHen]

Ah..ok Trib. I am not all that familiar with Fleet designations. I was a Navy wife (seabee) for 15 years though, and my father was a WW2 seabee, Pacific theater.

I am new to chickens also. My new husband wanted them back in 2011. I knew absolutely NOTHING about chickens. Or any bird. So I ended up here to hopefully get enough of an education to keep them alive. So far so good. We started with 13, now have 29. We are raising them for eggs and meat. Learning to process/cull is an ongoing process though. We have 7 to process within the next month.

 

[Mtn Margie]

Moxie. can you find someone to tutor you on the processing? I have taught 5 different people and walked them through their first time and they have all been okay with the process at the end of the day. I use a traffic cone, scalpel, Cajun boiler for the plucker (turkey fryer) and always say thank you to them. Seems to work and then after they taste the home grown goodness, they are hooked.

 

[Chickerdoodle13]

It's been freezing cold here and we have so much snow. Sometimes it feels like I live in a tundra! I look very forward to the day I can say adios to this place! It's nice in the summer (which last it seems a couple of months!) but the winters are long, dark, and cold. I'm hoping to get out to the west coast. I fell in love with Arizona when I was there!

 

[IttyBiddyRedHen]

Moxie. can you find someone to tutor you on the processing? I have taught 5 different people and walked them through their first time and they have all been okay with the process at the end of the day. I use a traffic cone, scalpel, Cajun boiler for the plucker (turkey fryer) and always say thank you to them. Seems to work and then after they taste the home grown goodness, they are hooked.

We are doing ok with it...the processing. I have even done a few all by myself. We looked at you tube videos and I read up on it in here. DH bought a processing kit online, and it is just a matter of doing it, seeing what works best, discarding what does not work.

 

[KingOfFools]

Lauren, I do not miss New England at all after being in SoCal now. I don't even miss the green trees! The Southwest is like a different planet. The people, weather, and everything else is amazing. Wouldn't try to start a potato farm in this sand and rock, but it's great for chickens. Wouldn't care to ever see a Nor'easter again!

Margie, What kind of quail do you raise? We have four button quail in my wife's outdoor aviary to pick up after our budgies and redrumps, but I couldn't imagine trying to get a spoon full of meat out of one of those!

Moxie, I always told my wife that she's the one serving, not me. She has a terrible schedule, looks after the kids, pays the bills, cleans the house, cooks the food, does the laundry... On a sea tour, she gets very little help and almost no social interaction. I get to go out to sea and get fresh air while I play find the submarine games, or shoot large machine guns. Pretty awkward when we're out in public and someone tries to thank me for my service while ignoring the woman that keeps everything together and somehow manages to stay sane with a smile on her face. Feel like it's the Navy wife's that should be thanked, not the Sailor most of the time

. I work at a NOSC right now and take care of the evals and awards, and administrative separations for a lot of SELRES Seabees. Real hard to advance as a Seabee right now. It's a shame when results come out and the advancement rate is 0% or 1%. It's gotta be tough.

Well my chickens have gone on strike all of a sudden. When from 4 eggs a day to 0. None are molting, or sick. The stress level is low, and the weather is great. The have an outdoor light on at night (drug dealing neighbors that mean us ill will right now so all outdoor lights stay on at night). Never had a problem with egg production, so I don't know what's up. Hope that snap out of it, or at least molt do I know they're alright.

Trib

 

[IttyBiddyRedHen]

Hello again Trib ...and Tribs wife

Yes, been there done that with the deployed husband...3 kids at home....myself 1,000 miles away from family. My friends were the other wives of the battalion men. It was an interesting 15 years.

My chickens went on strike back in November. But they were molting. Pretty badly. But at least I knew what was up with them.

Maybe you'll figure it out Trib....and get them back into production. Mine ..the older hens...are finally back on track except for one. But I also have a few who have reached POL and are happily popping out pullet eggs.