Aussie-Chookmum
Obeying her avian masters
Good golly that's insanely busy!Ok, all caught up… sorry for the flurry of late replies everyone. I’ve been crazy busy. Short on feed, waiting on cheques that have been sent express post, signature required and should have been here on the 18th at the latest. They are still not here, so I borrowed some money from my father to get by until they arrive, spent an hour on hold and another half hour being told by the postal worker that they can’t do anything to speed it up. This is worse that the Covid Christmas Mail delays!!!
I was so out of it after the vaccine I failed to notice it was not the Blind girl that passed on, but my buff lady I was going to send in on July 6th with the meat birds as a cull because she seemed to have internal laying. She was looking uncomfortable, but not like she was so uncomfortable as to rush things that much. So our Blind lady is still doing well; well enough in fact that I couldn’t tell she was still in there and disabled during routine chores (that is my lowest maintenance tractor though, Hawk takes care of his own girls and I like to give him the room to do so).
I did lose a girl to heat and lack of feed, in a manner. Finger pecker must have made a jump for the empty feeders hanging up at the top of the tractor and either landed on her back or broke her neck on landing. This happened while we were on super short rations trying to get feed in around some crazy schedule stuff and with no $ for it thanks to the mail delay. I live on a small island, so feed runs are a bit of a pain even under ideal circumstances. Of course we will get more cash on Friday and Saturday from deliveries and the Market (yay for that being allowed again!) but that didn’t exactly help with the immediate problem. I’ve been supplementing with as much treats etc as I can (cooked rice, buns, etc) but it’s been stupid tight trying to stretch feed until we could get it in. This of course happened while we were making sausage, and I found her when I went to put the chickens up at night, before returning for more late night sausagemaking. We worked until 2 am that night.
We have a custom order for sausage from another Islander, made with “some of his venison”. Just a couple deer. I was thinking a day’s work no biggie. Well, these were not our local little white tail deer. Mule deer (supposedly) but one was practically elk sized! We have an 8’ box on our truck, and I came out and it was 2/3 full of primalled deer in black garbage bags, frozen. Up to the gunnels. Four solid days of work. So far we are 2 people at one 14hr day, me for another 6hr day (would have been 12 except our patty press was missing a piece and DH picked it up on the way in today with those much needed pellets, we loan our equipment to a friend that runs the Cafe, and it just got misplaced). With many more kilos to go I reckon about 50-60 more kg left. It’s going to buy a lot of scratch and pellets, that’s for sure!
That’s about it for here. Yes the heatwave is here too, so the Chooks mostly hang out in the woods or in deep shade. Mamas are doing well. Mean meat mama has 3, young Marans lady, Black Sapphire Marans, and my Mars Bar mamas each have 2. My Bully girl is going broody again, but I may just give her some foster chicks, as I think my friend has too many chicks to handle for his property and sanity.
Thank you for taking time to visit. It's always great to hear from you.
