The Front Porch Swing

[Beekissed]

You're right, as usual. I didn't use medicated feed because I'd ordered the Marek's vaccine for the chicks and they told me not to. Is the immunity thing why it's so important to get those chicks out of the brooder and into a real environment as soon as possible? I'm using your heating pad method next time I get chicks. Now Ken's been trying to talk me into trying to hatch a few eggs if one of my hens goes broody. I don't know if I'm ready for that. I still have so doggone much to learn!

Yep, that's why it's so very important to get them early on the ground. It helps also to keep a nicely cultured soil that is not overstocked, compacted and slimy in the summer....the DL in your coop and run will help prevent all that as much as possible. Fermented feed is a nice addition as well, but not hugely necessary....I did without it for many a long year and still kept very healthy flocks.

Mostly it's early exposure, healthy and hardy stock to begin with, culling your flock for potential vectors, sunlight, fresh air, healthy foods, clean water.

Most important of all? Farm with God. Give your flock up to Him for protection, for whatever He wills of it, and praying daily for His guidance in all that you do with the animals....that's the most important factor of all and none of the rest is worth a ding diddly dang without that.

 

[Blooie]

Speaking of "THE finger", the first time hubs made me mad after the accident, I whipped that finger out and said "I can still do this ya know!" We're loving like that...
He did make up for it by buying me a heated muff from Cabela's so I could help in the shop longer because the cold really makes it painful. He's sweet like that too...

Good luck on your addition! Sounds like it will be awesome!

Last night at the meeting Charlie asked us, "What are you going to do with this addition? Extra living space?" Well, duh, Charlie - we're going to make a 16'x5' spare bedroom or a man cave! Here's your sign!

Evan will be here later. His dad and other gramma are here and they're going to surprise him by visiting his classroom today (his last day of school) and then they'll stop by Tammy's, load his stuff, and he's gone for the summer. I miss that smile of his for these 3 long months! His Gramma Jan and I have remained good friends and all of us here maintain a very civil relationship with Tammy's ex as well. It's for Evan - we all believe no child deserves to be a pawn in grownups playing kindergarten games so he knows his mom and dad are divorced, knows it had nothing to do with him, and knows that both his Wyoming family and his South Dakota family love him and want to be fully involved in his life. If Evan's giving Tam fits with some school behaviors or something, she and Dan do a conference call - Tam, Dan, and Evan, so he knows both parents will not tolerate that. They always present a united front, and it shows in how well he adapts to his summers in SD and his time here. Between times there's a lot of Skype and Facetime with Katie, so his life is pretty well stable. God bless parents like that!

 

[Blooie]

Aliza's first hot tub while on our fishing trip.....she's a hoot! She loved it...after this pic we put her down in it just a little more...just butt and legs. She about went to sleep....

CUTENESS ALERT< >CUTENESS ALERT! Warn a person, will ya? I missed this somehow when I was back-paging. She's too stinkin' cute! My grands all love the hot tub - we turn it down for Kendra because of her decreased nerve and circulation issues, but she's crazy about being in it. One good thing - with her being cathed 5 times a day and her nightly enemas we don't have to worry about floaties in the tub!

Yep, that's why it's so very important to get them early on the ground. It helps also to keep a nicely cultured soil that is not overstocked, compacted and slimy in the summer....the DL in your coop and run will help prevent all that as much as possible. Fermented feed is a nice addition as well, but not hugely necessary....I did without it for many a long year and still kept very healthy flocks.

Mostly it's early exposure, healthy and hardy stock to begin with, culling your flock for potential vectors, sunlight, fresh air, healthy foods, clean water.

Most important of all? Farm with God. Give your flock up to Him for protection, for whatever He wills of it, and praying daily for His guidance in all that you do with the animals....that's the most important factor of all and none of the rest is worth a ding diddly dang without that.

"ding diddly dang?" Another addition to the Front Porch vocabulary. Maybe we need a dictionary called the "Veranda Vocabulary"!

 

[mimischicksnat]

God bless parents like that!

Yes indeed! X2

 

[bruceha2000]

That's my turkey scalding pot. You should see the size of the turkey cone. It's parked in the driveway.

I have double wall ovens in the kitchen, which are the larger size of home ovens, but not big enough for a 50 lb bird. I got a 40 lb bird in, just barely. I am wondering about replacing them with a single commercial oven so I can cook jumbo turkeys in one piece.

Ooorrr, you could just send them to freezer camp when they hit 25 pounds! Easier to sell and cheaper by far than a commercial oven

So what did you do in your spare time? <ducking>

Well, I mowed the lawn around the house Monday afternoon after the garden tractor came. It was a foot tall and wet from rain but waiting for grass that tall to dry would have taken DAYS of no rain (which doesn't happen this time of year) and it would have grown even more. And I mowed the field behind the barn on Tuesday. That is where the tall thick grass was! I think there are decades and decades of animal fertilizer back there. I can't mow around the pond though so my electric battery weed wacker is going to get a work out. Lots of stinging nettle and thistle back there. Have to get to it before the thistle is tall and thick and before the nettle flowers and sets seed (he says HOPING to do it this year!). The tractor had to live outside until I finished the drive bay repairs yesterday. Fortunately I have a huge piece of black plastic stuff that came wrapped around some of the wood that was delivered last summer for the house rebuild. Fit nicely over the tractor so it wasn't out in the rain and I am also using it in the barn because the wild birds poop everywhere, just like chickens, but they do it from above.

Mowing with a 54" deck should be fast but when the grass is waaaayyyy too tall, it is SLOW going and only about 18" per pass. I mowed what was a riding ring (actually rectangle) yesterday. Don't have a need for a riding ring since I have no horses but I don't want it to go to weeds, then trees. According to the neighbor across the road the owner before the people we bought from grew potatoes there. Probably they only place on the property that doesn't have rocks just under the surface! And I mowed the lawn around the house again since the first mowing Monday left lots of large clumps of wet grass (no surprise there!) which will kill the grass under it. That smoothed out the rough cut and spread a lot of the clumps far and wide

So IF I can keep up, I will be mowing 5" grass for the rest of the year.

We pick him up next week! We are picking out names this week! He's going to be our Chicken Dog! He's a Maremma and about 8 weeks old now. I'm pretty excited but nervous at the same time. I've never had a dog of any particular breed before!

Lastly, how does one entice the chickens to lay in the nest box rather than somewhere in their elatively large run that they fancy (under numerous 5' tall ferns). 2 days ago we got 5 eggs, yesterday 4, and today 2... from 6 chooks (Plymouth Barred Rock). Today the two eggs we found were in the nest box, but we searched the run for any others to no avail. Not putting it past them to only have laid 2 eggs, but it seems like a big drop. We have only had them since Sunday (Saturday? Friday?), and they have been through a bunch of work (hammering, fence building, no roosts, beautiful roosts... Nothing new for them today, but tomorrow I need to finish the door that separates the hen house into a 6x6 foot coop, and the feed/dog house. I didn't take any before photos, but there were two old camper windows that the previous owner's 3 sons had spent many a day throwing marbles at... and broken glass all over inside. Lots of cleaning and now she looks like this:



A good 18' of roosts (easily removed), room for another 6' of roosts, and 4 nest boxes (easily doubled), and about 4-5" of sawdust. I would be a happy chicken there! It smells so nice! And boy do they love their fermented feed!!! They follow me and flock all over me whenever I get near the coop! They don't seem worried by the dog (our ancient deaf, partly blind, pet heeler cross). If anything they flock to her too!

Now, won't DH be surprised when he gets home in 1.5 weeks? The kids are all excited and want to go check for eggs every 5 minutes...

What's the cheapest way to redo a roof? Currently there is a 25yo cedar shake roof that rains potato bugs on me when I swing a hammer! I can see through it in various places! It's mostly water proof because of the moss holding it together though!

Nice coop, lucky chickens and chicken owners. And DH is a lucky guy! All that work done and HE didn't have to do it!

Having looked into LGDs, I'm wondering if you and the breeder went over the very serious need to train the dog properly? Especially since you've never had a dog before. I have had dogs (not for ~40 years though and just house pets) and I understand there is a lot more to training a LGD than simple obedience one needs for a house pet. Not only to teach the dog that the chickens are not to be messed with while letting the natural guard instinct develop but also that every person in the house out ranks the dog. I think you will have to train the kids AND the dog, especially if your avatar is a recent picture. The dog will outweigh the kids in 6 months and has to know that he must obey them, not the other way around.

Bee is right on the eggs in the nest thing (no surprise!!). I've only found 1 egg outside EVER and I don't even know when it was laid. It was under an old piece of porch that was taken off the back of the house and put behind the barn. Big boys with big toys are VERY helpful. The excavator picked it up and drove it around behind the barn and placed it over the fence as far as the bucket could reach. I would have had to take it apart and move all the pieces, then put it back together! Of course, I guess I don't know what I don't know as well. They COULD be laying in other places but since I have eggs from all the girls in the nests at some 'reasonable' schedule I'm pretty sure they come back to the coop to lay. I've certainly seen them a goodly distance away and then in the nest later even though all the other girls are still out.

I agree with Bee on the roof. Assuming the rafters are sound, metal roofing is not too expensive and not too hard to install. I found this: http://roofingintelligence.com/ it might be of some use. Google is my 'go to' resource for repairs

I assume the plywood decking is not in great shape if the shakes are rotting and you can see through in some places. If it is bad, replace it. You don't want to trap a bunch of wet wood under the metal roof.

 

[LindaB220]

Morning all!!! A good day today after my day of He// yesterday. Got the incubator indoors and running nicely at 100 w/ usually 40 humidity. I candled last night and DMRippy can really pack some eggs. All were in great shape. I have 6 good ones intact and 8 intact porous ones. I'm keeping them all for right now. I'll be lucky to get any to hatch after the heat of yesterday. With no insulation in my new storeroom even with the air cond. on it was still 100 in there and 110 in the incubator. There were ok until it got hot after lunch. I spritzed with water and took entirely out of the incubator or a couple of hrs. Still 100 in there. Maybe I'll have a slight chance. And I really wanted the blue eggs.

 

[Beekissed]

CUTENESS ALERT< >CUTENESS ALERT! Warn a person, will ya? I missed this somehow when I was back-paging. She's too stinkin' cute! My grands all love the hot tub - we turn it down for Kendra because of her decreased nerve and circulation issues, but she's crazy about being in it. One good thing - with her being cathed 5 times a day and her nightly enemas we don't have to worry about floaties in the tub!

"ding diddly dang?" Another addition to the Front Porch vocabulary. Maybe we need a dictionary called the "Veranda Vocabulary"!

Must confess...that's not my own. It's from a movie called The War, with Kevin Costner and Elijah Woods.....and the infamous characters, the Lipnickes. And it should be said with an extreme southern accent, BTW, or it just doesn't ring true.....

 

[bruceha2000]

And this power pole is why we are going with a long and skinny replacement. Means I have to move my bleeding heart, hostas and astillbe,, but if I get storage space out of the deal I'll make that sacrifice! You can see the separation here.

Ya sure you don't just want to pick up that power pole and move it instead?

If the addition has to be free standing, I ASSUME you can still connect the siding to the MH as if it were originally part of it so you don't have that gap issue? My reading of your description did not say that it couldn't be attached to the MH, just that it can't depend on the MH for support. So you build it just like you built your coop, freestanding but up against the MH. Sonotubes that go down below the frost line for supporting the floor joists. Remove the siding on the MH where the new building will be attached, spray low expanding foam insulation in the gap (minimal !!) between the MH and the framing of the addition end walls. Run new siding from there all the way around to the other side. Same with the roof. The addition will be attached but each building is self supporting, that meets the regs and it will be a MUCH nicer space than if they allowed something like you are replacing! And you can build shelves in the wall cavities on the side that is against the MH. Gains an extra few inches inside the space.

You'll be the happiest girl around when that new space is available.

Aww, thank you for asking. I just talked to her last night as a matter of fact! She called during our meeting so I had to wait until we got home to call her back. She's doing well. She has a lot of pain from the bypass - says she can feel the sternum shift and grind when she moves and it's painful. But her meds are keeping that tolerable. Dialysis is going well...she's not having the rapid blood pressure swings that she would get during dialysis before the surgery. She's registered for her cardiac rehab program and starts that next week. Energy levels are still up and down, but the up times are outnumbering the down ones. She should be cleared for transplant one month from the bypass surgery, so we are hoping that a kidney doesn't become available until after that month - she'd have to pass on it and that stinks because for her there are so many restrictions on the kidney she can receive. She was her usual upbeat self - cracking very bad jokes (is there any other kind?) and making me feel better. She has a way of doing that. I try to comfort her and end up comforted instead.

I think the Good Lord must favor her the way we do!

Thanks for the update. I have been waiting to hear! And thanks to Lisa for asking

Now Ken's been trying to talk me into trying to hatch a few eggs if one of my hens goes broody. I don't know if I'm ready for that. I still have so doggone much to learn!

How many roosters do you want? About half those hatched chicks will be male. Need to have a plan for that.

Bruce

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Ooorrr, you could just send them to freezer camp when they hit 25 pounds! Easier to sell and cheaper by far than a commercial oven

Zat was zee plan last year. You can see how well we did with zat.

I didn't quite get half of them processed at decent weights, and NOBODY wanted them that early (we ate one ourselves, gave one to a family with lots of foster kids). So then we bought the first freezer, and when that was full I wasn't allowed to process any more here on the farm.

I only accomplished getting the rest of the turkeys processed (at a USDA Exempt facility) the Sunday before Thanksgiving by pitching a fit to make a preschooler proud, and by then everyone HAD their turkeys (and they were huge so ...). I recommended we split them and give them to the crew as bonuses at that point (we've given out frozen store-bought turkeys before, as well as all kinds of cash & prizes, and some of our best poultry customers are the crew that works here) ... it would have made a TON of sense ... but ... nobody believed me that I knew how to part them out. Nobody thought to have the processing plant part them, either.

oy ... I'm gonna stop now or I'm gonna start sounding like just another complainer, and the point is to celebrate the yummy, quality meat I have available to me now, not moan about how sad it is I have so much to "deal with" before it goes to waste.

Nom nom! Yay me! Lucky me! Pass the cranberries!

 

[jmoeller]

Way to much cuteness going on today~ cute puppy, cute baby, cute southern sayings. You guys all make me smile.

Trying REALLY hard to be a patient and loving wife. Some days are harder than others. My chickens really need to live outside. I really need my chickens to live outside. My husband is building a coop, a real nice one. Probably sturdy enough to with stand a tornado. The problem is he is very slow at it. Please, don't yell at me I'm not man bashing, I'm stating a fact. Even other men tease him about how long it takes him to get something done. Every evening I round the chickens all up into my "chicken bus" to go on a field trip to my garden. Then I chase them all over the garden later when its time to go back inside. The garden is next to the coop so I find my husband watching the chickens and laughing at them, that makes thing even slower. Hopefully this is the weekend that things will start rolling along.


THE CHICKEN BUS.