I have decided that at the end of each month I would like to try to reflect on the happenings of the month in a summary form. I usually keep day-to-day happenings down on some calendars, but I thought this format might be more helpful in the future.
Chickens:
This January we have received a record number of 165 eggs from our hens!
The old record was 136 from last May. We do have more hens than last year, but they all are not yet laying. There are 21 hens in the coop and 9 hens/pullets that are currently free ranging.
We harvested three roosters in January for about 11 pounds of finished meat in the freezer. We still have 5 big ones to go and several cockerels that are still growing.
All these chickens need food to eat, especially in the winter. The expense for keeping all these chickens was a bag and a half of cracked corn, which is now $9.80 for a 100-pound bag. So we fed them about $15 worth of corn in January. Just a year ago the same bag of corn cost $7.60.
Sadly, we had 2 hens mysteriously die in January, one on the 12th and one on the 21st. The rest of the flock seems to be very healthy.
Pigs:
They have grown much in January. We have utilized the bigger feeding trough that we built in December and have continued to pick up old milk for free from the distributors and mix it with corn feed meal. We have usually mixed two gallons of milk with the corn meal to fill up a 5-gallon bucket to 2/3 full. They get 2 buckets of this at each feeding and we usually feed them twice each day. When we knew we would be able to get up there only once we usually took a little extra time and gave them three buckets full. We are also giving them some dry "pig chow" that is supposed to have all the nutrients they need built in. This was given to them on a hit or miss basis so we need to be more consistent. For most of January the four pigs have shared between 6 and 8 gallons of milk a day mixed with corn meal plus some pig chow.
I have bought 3 bags of corn meal in January, two for $8.50 and another for $8.75 a bag for a total of $25.75, and I bought a bag of pig chow for $14.00. Total feeding costs: $39.75.
We have put a total of 12 bales of straw in their pen to keep them warm this winter, with 3 of them being given in January. The bales of straw I am getting cost $4.75 a piece, so we have used $14.25 of straw for the pigs in January.
We noticed some bugs on the pigs so I put some Insectrin dust on them January 24th. We need to dust them every 10 days until they are all gone.
The bottle cost $7.37 but it is a big bottle that should last a long time, and we can use it on our chickens also.
During January we have still been giving them water in just a 5 gallon galvanized pan by carrying water in buckets from the pond. It has been difficult to keep them provided with clean water. We worked on a better watering system during the month. I actually have it all put together, just still trying to get it clean. I am going to try using a nipple waterer coming down from an old pick-up truck toolbox. The pipe and nipple are installed and do not leak. (Hurrah!) My problem is that the toolbox was so oily that the water still shows rainbows from it. We have scrubbed with soap, but it still looks oily. I don¹t know if traces of motor oil would hurt them but I certainly do not want to make my pigs sick! Lisa needs to work her magic on it. She can make anything clean! (I will try to post some current pictures of the pigs soon.)
Garden:
I tilled the garden on January 27th. It felt good and I was glad the tiller fired right up.
Lisa purchased various seeds this January, spending $21. They are:
1- 1 oz. package of Early Golden Bantam sweet corn
3 – 20g packages of Sugar Dots sweet corn
3 – 1.7 oz. packages of Blue Lake Bush 274 garden bean
3 – 2 oz packages of Tendergreen Improved garden bean
3 – 175 mg packages of Rutgers-Select tomato
2 – 200mg packages of Brandywine tomato
2 – 500mg packages of Jubilee tomato
1 – package of 20 Jelly Bean Hybrid tomato
1 – package of 20 Supersweet 100 VF. Hybrid tomato
2 – 600 mg packages of Sugar Baby watermelon
1 – 200 mg package of Black Beauty eggplant
1 – 2.4 g California Wonder pepper
1 – 9.6 g package of National Pickling cucumber
1 – 8.4 g Black Seeded Simpson lettuce
1 – 14g Tall Gold sunflower
1 bag of raw peanuts
We are looking forward to seeing all these grow!
Weather:
A very mild and warm January, except for today.
We have seen snow showers or flurries on 5 days, but no accumulation, except on the 25th when we got a dusting which stayed around until about 11:00am.
We also had some freezing drizzle on the 21st.
The lack of snow has been discouraging for us because we all enjoy snow.
Only the last couple of days have we had freezing temperatures most of the entire day. We had 12 days with temperatures in the 50s and 60s. The warmest days were Jan. 13th in the 60s, Jan. 14th reaching above 70 degrees and Jan. 27th in the 60s. For lows we have only had 7 early mornings in the 20s on Jan. 11th, 20th, 24th, 26th, 29th, 30th, and 31st. All of those days got into the 40s by afternoon except for the 29th, 30th, and 31st which have been our three coldest days of January. The other 12 days in January saw temperatures in the 30s to 40s. It seems that it is always warmer at Pure Water Hollow in the winter than what the computer says it should be on the weather forcasts.
Today it was 18 degrees this morning and only in the 20s right now. A storm is poised to possibly bring us a couple of inches of snow to start out February. We shall see…
My rain gauge registered about 2.6 inches of rain for the month. I have never kept track of rain before so I do not know if this is average or not for January.
Misc:
We put up a new, larger mailbox to start the month.
We were blessed with free mulch from the RECC that we hope to use in various ways this spring.
We also discorvered a great East Ridge Riverview and enjoyed one afternoon up there.
All in all, a fairly typical month at Pure Water Hollow, except for the lack of January snow!
We are blessed! Glory to God!
5 comments
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Debi on January 31, 2007 at 8:15 am
I need to do this.
I wondered if you would show your pig pen? We are looking at getting some feeder pigs.
You guys have been truly blessed, what a beautiful place God has given you to take care of.
Blessings,
Debi
Purewater replied:
Pictures of our pig lot can be seen by browsing through the category up on the right "Learning About Pigs".
Thanks, and God Bless!
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Anonymous on January 31, 2007 at 9:20 am
LOL! Nice to see a full update of your 'doings'. You're doing a wonderful job with what God has given.
Marcella
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Anonymous on February 2, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Hello!
What do you all do with all those eggs? Do you have any recipes that you could share?
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Purewater on February 2, 2007 at 10:19 pm
We eat them….
Actually we gave one dozen to the lady next door and then she asked to buy two dozen more. We are not trying to sell them yet, because we are able to consume many eggs when we have them.
One breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast for our family of 6 takes 2 dozen eggs if that is all we are eating, or 1 dozen if we have hot cereal or something else with it. Lisa also makes a delicious breakfast casserole for one meal that calls for a half dozen. (She said it is a common recipe you see everywhere. If you want it, she will type it up for you later.) And we all love omelets, too. So you see, even if we keep 11 dozen of the 14 dozen eggs, that only provides us with 5 to 10 breakfasts for our family during a whole month.
And then there are all the eggs that go into regular cooking of other meals for dinner and supper: deviled eggs, cakes, cookies,etc.
We could really use 14 dozen eggs every month. I hope we get that many again in February, but if these first 2 days are any indication we will be well below that number. A couple of hens have gone broody on us and are trying to set. When they do that, they stop laying until it gets out of their system, I guess.
Thanks for the comment, and may God bless you!
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Morning Sunshine on February 3, 2007 at 12:29 pm
I like this! thanks for posting how much feeding your livestock costs… it helps also to know what you are receiving for it. Maybe one day I will convince my husband to get chickens!
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