Chick Update

A mixture of fun and frustrating is how I could sum up the chick raising process for us this summer.  I decided I would give an update now that we are probably at the mid-point.

Yesterday I took some pictures of our latest chicks to hatch.  This White Rock hen hatched 14 chicks on June 21st, so they were 5 days old yesterday afternoon in these pictures, and doing great.  It was fun to see so many chicks hatch! 

13 chicks were dark and 1 was white.  I use the past tense terms because tragedy struck her brood last night.  Lisa saw a hawk attack at dusk while she was in the garden, but the mama and chicks went into their box so we couldn't see how many of the 14 made it.  I don't know how many chicks a hawk could take at one time.  Maybe something else besides that one attack had happened also?  But this morning there are only 7 chicks with this mama, 6 dark and that 1 white one.  There was another dark chick left in the nest dead with an apparent broken neck.  How did that happen?  It is very frustrating to go from 14 to 7 in one evening.

Meanwhile, Buffy still has kept all 12 of her brood, not loosing a single one (yet).  All 12 are dark, but are showing some pretty markings.  They hatched June 12th so they are 14 days old in these pictures.  They have been very fun to watch.

The first chicks to hatch this year are now 25 days old and so much bigger!  Of the 11 original chicks, this White Rock hen is down to just 5; 3 dark and 2 white.  You can see in the above pictures what a pretty pattern two of the dark ones now have.  I think they are both cockerals.  The other dark one is staying pretty much black.  I wrote about the 5 that got taken by the coon and then the very next day, Matthew saw a hawk flying off with another of the chicks!  It was frustrating that while we had the coon captured in the cage, we see a hawk swoop right down above the coon and take another chick!

On another frustrating note yesterday.  One of the White Rock hens that had been setting on a nest since June 16th walked off the job yesterday.  I had been noticing that she seemed to be neglecting her nest more and more the past few days, but now she seems to be done with it altogether.  So those 15 eggs are now no good to eat or to hatch.  (At least they will still be a benefit for the pigs!)

We also found the black hen that I knew had a clutch of eggs somewhere in the wild.  For the past three weeks or so I would see her for a few minutes as she got food and water, but she would always disappear before I could see where she goes.  And then yesterday afternoon, Simon heard chicken sounds under our house right next to the back porch!  We were able to peak under the house and saw the hen, some eggs, and at least one, wet chick!  How fun!

But... it seems that our mama cat was also interested in the strange sounds coming from under the house.  After dark, we heard some wild chick peeping sounds like something was getting them!  We didn't exactly see Fritsie or the kittens with any chicks when we looked all around, but the kitten Puff was not very hungry for the can food when we decided to give it to them.  Not fun!  I hope we gave them enough food that they were full all night and left the mama hen and nest alone!  The nest is in a location that would be very difficult for us to get at and move, and since the eggs were just hatching we thought it would be a bad idea to move them anyway.  At first I thought she was a smart hen for picking that place because it is too tight an area for the dogs to get in, and I know that Luna eats eggs if she can find them!   I guess later today we will be able to see if any of those chicks survived their first day of life, or if our cats continued to feast!  If they can get hatched and established, I think the mama hen will be able to keep the cats away like the other mama hens do.

In addition to the hen under the house, we still have 3 other hens setting on nests as of this morning.  A black hen is setting on 10 eggs in a nest we made in an old hamper and they should hatch this Saturday, the 29th.  A White Rock hen has 7 eggs in the dog house that should hatch the following weekend, and another White Rock hen has a clutch of 14 eggs in a cage set to hatch on July 12th.  I'm sure they will each give us a mixture of fun and frustrating experiences during the upcoming weeks, but I hope they will be mostly fun!

If you are keeping up with our chick count, we now have 24 living chicks between the 3 mama hens as of this writing.  Maybe there are more with the hen under the house.  I'm sure we will have some additional frustrating losses as the summer moves on, but hopefully we will also get to enjoy some more fun hatches as well. 

You know, after thinking about it, those words "fun" and "frustrating" are two words that pretty much describe every aspect of our entire homesteading adventure!  Life sure is complicated, isn't it?

The Culprit Is In Custody!

 It did not take long to catch this masked bandit!  It was a case of the criminal returning to the scene of the crime, but this time he walked right into a trap!

Check out those hands! 

Those hands are perfectly designed to be able to reach under nest boxes and snatch chicks from unsuspecting mama hens!

The mama hen that got robbed the night before was not going to be an unsuspecting victim this time! Perhaps the attack affected her more than I thought, or perhaps it was just her God-given instinct, but she refused to go back into her box/cage last night, even though I fortified it with bricks along the outside.  She actually hopped into the coop once with some of her chicks following her, but since a couple did not figure out how to get into the coop she settled on roosting outside on top of one of the other nest box cages.  She would have been a sitting duck had she stayed there.  I waited until complete darkness to move her into the safety of the coop.  I grabbed the mama and Matthew, Simon, and Timothy scooped up the chicks.  They seemed content to be in a nest in the coop, and I hope they will go into the coop by themselves tonight.

The other chickens were not bothering them at all this morning, but I decided to let them out of the lot anyway.  Here are the 6 surviving chicks, now 19 days old. 

I think that the markings that are coming out on the dark chicks will make them very pretty chickens, if they survive.

 

I finally took some pictures of the clutch that Buffy is raising.  I never could get all 12 in the picture at the same time, but they are all dark with some light markings.

They are one week old today, and doing great!  I am pleased that this mama has not lost any of the ones she hatched during this critical first week, and I hope we will be able to keep them safe in the future.

And since I had the camera out this morning for the coon, I thought I would snap a few pictures of some of the other chickens.

 Our Buff Orpington/Jersey Giant rooster always has something to crow about!

I like my Barred Rock hens because they remind me of one of our early flocks sired by Big Daddy Dommer.

We don't like chickens roosting on our benches, but it makes for an interesting picture anyway.  This is one of the White Rocks that is not yet setting.  Of the 9 White Rock hens we have, 1 already hatched a brood and 3 more are currently setting on nests.

And this is one of the Jersey Giant mixed hens that came from the Joe Castle homestead.

Now, I have to decide what to do with the coon.  Should we just shoot him and be done with it, relocate him far away and release him, or kill him and go to the trouble to try to make a coon-skin hat?  I haven't been able to see this one's tail, yet.  If we go for the hat, I would want a nice tail.  We've never tanned a hide before, but we've been saving our deer skins with the thought of learning how.  I'm sure it would be easier to start with a smaller skin like a coon, and I've seen patterns for making the hat on the internet.  If only we didn't have so many other things that need to get done around here, and if only I wasn't bent so much toward laziness, I think I would go for the hat experience!  But as it is, we will probably take one of the easier ways out.  We'll see....

We Lost 5 Chicks Overnight

Argh!  I'm so mad! 

I've always tried to share on this blog both the good and the bad of our life here at Pure Water Hollow Homestead, even though I naturally tend to lean more toward the positive aspects.  But more often, things do not go as perfectly as planned around here.  I'm sure this is due to the fact that we are not perfect.  We just go day by day and try to do the best we can with the limited skills and knowledge we possess, making plenty of mistakes.

Yesterday evening I moved the nest box/cage where our first hen hatched out those 11 chicks.  She is still using it as the place to take her chicks in for night, and then she waits patiently for me to open it up each morning to allow her to free range with her chicks.  I guess I had not cleaned out enough of the hatching mess from 17 days ago, because I noticed that it was starting to smell pretty bad.  I decided that it would be wise to move it over a couple of feet into some fresh ground and make up a nice, clean, new nest of hay for them.  The mama seemed to be happy with the new arrangement and took all 11 of her chicks into the newly remodeled, clean nest.  I closed them up, like usual, to keep them "safe".

This morning I opened it up just like all the other mornings to let the mama and the chicks out.  To my horror, there were only 6 chicks instead of 11!  I saw all 11 go in last night, but only 6 are there this morning!  After examining the box closer I saw the problem.  These box/cages I am using for most the setting hens are old boxes that we built in 2006 and the wood is getting rotten around the bottoms in places.  They are really over-due to be replaced, but it never seems like we have the time around here to get so many other things done that I deem more important.  So, I've been making do with what we've got.  I place bricks, cement blocks, or logs around the bases of the cages in places that seem weak.  This particular cage was pretty firm and well settled into the ground before I moved it yesterday evening.  But after moving it, I guess the bottom of the box was up a bit off the ground in places.  I didn't notice a problem last night, and it doesn't look like there is more than an inch gap anywhere, but I guess it was enough, along with the weakening, thin plywood back, to invite calamity.  I believe something like a raccoon was able to reach under that back wall and pull the chicks out from under the mama, one at a time, and have a feast.  (I have a very disturbing mental image that I can't seem to shake.)  The only evidence that was left was two single, small orange legs that were lying outside the box, right next to the back wall, un-attached to any meat.

Of course the mama hen does not seem bothered by the tragedy at all, and she was going on with her morning routine like she only had 6 chicks from the start.  I guess that is one of the ways God made us humans to be different from the beasts of the field and fowl of the air. 

But it still infuriates me that this mama hen could have done her job so well, and keep her 11 chicks alive and healthy for 17 days, safe from the hawks and crows and foxes and dogs and cats and whatever else likes to eat baby chicks, only to be let down by her trust in me, that I could provide a safe place for her family to sleep.  And it worries me that this creature of the night will return, and I don't know if any of my box/cages will be able to keep a determined coon from getting a meal.  Buffy is in a similar old box at night.  Her chicks are now 6 days old and she, too, has been able to keep all 12 chicks safe so far.  (I still need to take a picture of them.)  And I have the white hen in another old box/cage that is due to hatch a clutch out in about 4 more days, and a black hen on a nest that should hatch the end of June.  (We're using an old hamper for the black hen since all the box/cages are taken.)  Coons and other critters like to eat eggs, too, if they get the chance.  I don't know if I can really keep any of the chicks, mamas, or eggs safe enough if the dogs fail in their nightly patrols.  (It was raining last night, so I don't think the dogs were paying as good of attention as they often do.)

By the way, we just pulled two more setting hens from the coop into private nests last night.  Since I don't have any more of those old box/cages, I made up the nests in old, cracked 5 gallon buckets.  We put one bucket with the hen and 15 new eggs in a small cage.  The other hen had been setting longer, so we put 7 partially incubated eggs that she had been setting on in the bucket and put the newly conformed bucket-nest into a little-used dog house.  The dog house is in no way secure from predators, but I hope it will be safe being closer to the house where the dogs most often stay.  We'll see, I guess.

I am pleased that we are having so many hens go broody this year.  We don't want chickens that have had the mothering instinct bred out of them, even if they do lay more eggs.  I want to be able to continually raise our own flocks through the years, without having to depend on ordering chicks through the hatcheries.  And since we tend to go through periods with high chicken mortality rates around here, I don't think we can hatch too many chicks.  Plus the more chickens that survive to maturity, the more meat that will be available for the family.

But for there to be future meat and eggs, I must keep the chickens protected!  That is always a challenge in this sin-cursed world that we live in, (along with the thorns and thistles).  I'm sure that God allows chickens to hatch so many offspring at one time because many of them would not survive in the wild, but my chickens are not in the wild!  I do not want to lose any of them!  Even though some losses seem inevitable, I know that I can do things better in our chicken raising operation.  Today is a rainy day, but I still plan to locate and set up our old live traps around the nest boxes, as well as see what I can do to make the box/cages more secure.

Sitting here on this gloomy morning, thinking about smelly nest boxes and dismembered legs from precious little chicks whose lives were snuffed out in the night, reminds me that homestead life is not always the picturesque scene of beauty and tranquility that is often portrayed.

A Brief Reflection on Our 2012 Homestead

The year 2012 has absolutely flown by, it seems!  On this final day of 2012 I find myself reflecting about many things in my life concerning the past year.  However, for this post, I'm going to try to stick to mainly my thoughts concerning our "homesteading" aspects during 2012.  It is with some difficulty that I attempt this, as the entire year of 2012 seems like a blur to me.  I notice that I only blogged sporadically and missed writing about many daily homestead happenings throughout the year.

We were very successful raising 3 hogs from feeder pig to butcher hog during 2012.  Our new lot worked well, they grew fast and large, and did not present much trouble at all!  Simon took care of the feeding and watering chores most of the time.  These pigs reminded us that raising home-grown pork could still be done very efficiently and also be a rewarding experience.  We had two of them butchered in the summer and then processed the final one ourselves in November.  I regret that I did not find a boar to go with that 3rd hog as my original hope was.  I think she would have thrown excellent piglets as her genetics seemed to be of  a fast growing large hog!

We also had some bad experiences trying to raise some pigs from an outfit that sells "show pigs".  These were supposed to be superior genetic hogs, but ours did not want to grow and actually had trouble surviving!  We first bought three girls and they all got sick.  When the first one died the fellow gave us the boar I was wanting for free.  I wonder now if he was worth the price, because he has also had trouble growing!  A bit later another of the girls died.  It looks like the other girl along with the boar have at least survived as they are now 9 months and 7 months old, respectively.  We think they have bred so I have decided to keep them around to see if they will have piglets and then see if those piglets will grow better than their parents did.  I am afraid it will all turn out to be a disaster and we will have to start over again with new stock.  But, let's try to be optimistic and enjoy the adventure!

Our garden did well in several areas, although it seemed difficult for us to focus on it the way we should have.  Our artesian well did the job keeping everything watered during the drought.  Thanks to the drought, there was not much weeding that needed to be done early in the season.  This turned out to be bad for a family that was having trouble focusing on the garden anyway because sometime in there the drought was over and the weeds were ready to make up for lost time!  Since we never got in a good habit of working the garden earlier, it seemed like in no time those weeds completely took over!  We learned that tomato plants and pepper plants are very forgiving as they still provided abundantly for us, even when they could not be seen!  We had a modest harvest of most of the crops that Lisa planned, although the watermelons and pumpkins did not do anything.

Our honey bees did a fine job keeping everything pollinated.  2012 was the year of the swarm as they swarmed much more than we wanted!  Perhaps it was the mild winter, but whatever the reason, they swarmed and swarmed and swarmed!  Sometimes we had two and three swarms hanging in our trees at the same time!  We were able to capture 3 swarms and start new colonies, but one of them was a partial swarm and did not make it.  We did get 10 quarts of honey from the strongest hive, but since the other one swarmed so much they didn't produce as much honey and we decided that they would need what they had to survive the winter.  As we end 2012 we think we have four good stands of bees.  We just need to get into them and take out the queen cells so they won't swarm themselves to death in 2013.  If all goes well, they should make plenty of honey for us this next season!

We also attempted to re-stock our chicken flock in 2012.  Twenty-five white-rock chicks arrived on July 13th at our post office in town.  Due to the fact that we free range our chickens amongst a predator laden environment, we were expecting to lose some of them.  I thought we may even lose a third of them by the time they reach maturity.  I expected, however, to still have at least 17 or 18 at this time of the year.  I am sad to report that we only have 11 white-rock pullets as we close out the year!  We lost them gradually.  Some were taken off by hawks (I even witnessed it once), some were hit in the road, and some just disappeared.  But the 11 we have right now are all beautiful, big hens and should start laying eggs any time now.

The worst chicken news of 2012 happened one of the nights that I did not close up the cage where those chicks slept with their surrogate mother, One Feather.  One Feather was the beloved game hen we had had for 8 years who had raised clutches of chicks every year, sometimes 2 and even 3 times during some seasons!  She could always be counted on to go broody and she was always an excellent mother to any chicks we gave her.  She was one of the hens helping to raise some of the new white-rock chicks. They would free range during the day but One Feather always took them back to the safety of her cage at night which I would then close up for the night.  I had been lulled into a false sense of security as there had been no night-time evidence of any predators for quite a while. 

That night had not been the first night I neglected my duty, but it turned out to be the night that I severely let our beloved mama hen down.  We heard the squawking from the house after we had gone to bed, and got out there as quickly as we could.  She obviously fought the predator off as evidenced by the 50 foot trail of scattered feathers leading away from the cage down to the creek to where her body was left.  At least the predator did not have the satisfaction of having One Feather as a meal and, as best we could tell, all of the chicks under her care were also accounted for.  We found them scattered all over the yard, hiding in different places, but not harmed.  One Feather gave her life to save these chicks!  She will be greatly missed and I doubt that we will ever have another hen quite like One Feather.

So as we end 2012, our laying flock consists of 3 mature Buff Orpington mixed hens, 11 almost mature White-Rock hens and I think 4 black pullets from eggs we hatched that a friend gave us later in the summer.  By next summer we should have 14 to 18 hens laying for us, so we will be getting plenty of eggs!  We have already been getting one or two eggs a day these last few weeks of December which we have been happy with.  Our butchering flock currently consists of one Red-Star hen (who developed a habit of eating eggs and plucking feathers), as well as 6 black cockerels hatched from those eggs from a friend.

The summer of 2012 was also the summer of the horse as Christina and Simon took lessons with Gracie as we had her trained.  Gracie did very well and is now a good saddle horse.  The children had fun and I think it was a great experience for them.  After we finally got Gracie moved to Pure Water Pastures, the children did ride her some on their own, and I expect they will more as the weather gets better this spring.  I think we have a potentially nice place to make a horse trail along the river up there, but some fallen trees will need to be cleared.

Fall found us fulfilling a dream of having a family milk cow.  Violet, the 4 year old Jersey cow, was already in milk and had two bull calves with her.  Dandelion, the 2 year old Jersey cow, was expected to calve in December.  So our plan was that we could milk Violet now and dry her up around March or April in order to help her have a healthy calving in June.  About the time Violet was being dried up, we would be milking Dandelion pretty heavily.  A note about Dandelion calving:  today was the last day of December and she has still not calved!  She has been put up by herself in the barn since December 10th, and it has been driving me crazy wondering where her calf is.  She still seems healthy, and as far as I know, she is ready to calve any time (just like she was on the 10th.)  It looks like the New Year will find us learning much more about raising dairy cattle!

It was a great accomplishment to get a large section of our pasture fenced for Gracie and the cattle.  I was amazed at how quickly the field got eaten down, though.  It has really demonstrated the need to get some more areas fenced as soon as possible so we can rotate pastures in the spring.  It was also wonderful to see the shelter being erected for the cattle that Matthew, Christina, and Simon have been working on.  There are many, many other projects that still need to be done, however, both there at our pastures as well as here on the home front!

After re-reading the above paragraphs and thinking over the past year, I can't help but notice that our homestead in 2012 was only marginally successful.  At every turn there were challenges, setbacks, and unfulfilled plans.  I think the word I used about the garden sums up our entire year:  a lack of focus.  There were some serious distractions that we were dealing with throughout the year (which I have not written about), and I believe that they affected our overall family and homestead more than can be measured.  It is difficult to stay focused on anything while dealing with serious emotional disharmony and stress. 

These issues are still not completely resolved, but, for the sake of my family, we need to regain our focus in this coming year!  As we enter 2013, I want my life, my family, and Pure Water Hollow Homestead, to glorify God in every aspect of what we do!  We cannot do that without living purposefully and staying focused on the tasks at hand while also staying focused on God and His will!  To Him be the glory and we give Him thanks for all he allowed us to do in 2012 and for the lessons He taught us along the way!

Pure Water Hollow Chicken Operation Limping Along

I tell you, I am getting frustrated with our chicken losses! The coons are not bothering us as much now, after catching and taking 3 of them off, but we are still losing chickens from both feathered predators as well as metal ones! Most of our predator problem is now coming from the sky, but it really saddens me when we loose a hen by getting hit on the road. During the past 33 days we have lost 5 of our good McMurray laying hens, 3 to hawks most likely, and 2 to the road. A Partridge Rock hen and a beautiful Light Brahma hen have been hit on the road in front of our house! Two Black Giant hens and our largest, most beautiful Buff Orpington hen have turned up missing during the day, and we are constantly spotting hawks flying around. This morning a Blue Jay flew over the lot and all the chickens made the alert sound and disappeared under cover, so I think they know what is going on. Just yesterday (the 21st) was when I lost the last Black Giant and we lost the Buff Orpington on Sunday (the 19th). The other Black Giant hen was lost back in June, but I am furious to loose 2 good hens in just 3 days!

If the hen losses are sad, then our chick losses are downright chilling. I hate to even admit these numbers. In the past, we have had chicks hatch off and we let the mamas free range with them all day long and we close them up in a cage at night. They usually loose one or two chicks that way, but the vast majority survive. We have never before had crows that would come and steal the chicks away, but that is what is happening this summer! Unlike the hawks, they can go down to a lower branch and just drop right down and snatch a chick before the mama can do anything. Ok, here is the disgusting number: we have lost 14 chicks this summer during these past 33 days. And I’m afraid we will loose more! Right now we still have 17 chicks that we are trying to keep safe.

As a result of all this carnage, I am keeping most of the chicks caged (but they have a way of getting out somehow), and I am keeping the hens in their lot later into the evening now. I really like letting them all free range starting sometime in the afternoon, but between the road and the sky, it seems to be too dangerous. This means I will have to feed them a bit more.

One of the reasons to free range is how much it cuts down on the feed bill. (I also think they are happier and healthier and lay more eggs when they free range, but not if they don’t survive.)

Cost Analysis:
We have quite a few chickens, but I can make a 100 pound sack of cracked corn last for almost a month feeding just the 2 dozen or so coop chickens. The cost for that bag has been about $11.30 for the past year now. (I remember when it was just $7.30, as well as when it skyrocketed to $15). That comes down to about 38 cents a day to feed the coop chickens.

Unfortunately, our numbers of layers have gone down by 5 now, but we are still getting between 6 and 10 eggs a day, even with some of them in molt. We are down to just 12 mature laying hens in the coop now, with 2 others raising chicks. We also have the 7 pullets in the coop that are not yet laying and 2 roosters. So, for less than 40 cents a day we are getting enough eggs for a family of 7 with enough left over to sell or feed to the hogs. I figure it is coming out to about 4 cents per egg right now. or 48 cents a dozen, but in the spring we were getting many more eggs for the same feed money.

Where we are probably not making much money sense is feeding our "meat flock". We need to have several more serious butchering days like we did earlier in the summer when we butchered those 7 roosters. We have a flock of 11 birds still in the ravine lot, 8 waiting to be butchered, and we are still raising 9 roosters in the duplex lot for meat, as well as 2 Light Brahma roosters that are ready. Those in the duplex are not yet full grown, but they will be to a good butchering size by fall. Those in the ravine lot are just costing us money in corn. The meat will be valuable, but I don’t know if it will be much of a bargin if we keep feeding them! So between them and the chicks, I go through another 100 pound sack of cracked corn pretty easily.

Keeping all the chickens shut up most of the day, I will probably need at least 3 sacks of corn in a month, feeding them twice.

Current Count:
So even after our recent losses of those 5 hens and all those chicks, here is the tally of the birds God has entrusted us to care for. I already mentioned the 19 birds for meat, and the 17 chicks that are still alive. In the hen department, we still have 4 Light Brahma hens, 3 Black Giant hens, 3 Partridge Rock hens, 2 Buff Orpington hens, 1 Black Australorp hen and 1 Game hen, for a total of 14 hens. Our pullets are 3 Rhode Island Reds (still not sure if these might be cockerals), 2 Buff Orpingtons, 1 Black Giant, and one Buff Orpington/Black for the total of 7 pullets. In the rooster department I am still keeping 2 Buff Orpingtons, 1 Black Giant, and 1 Light Brahma, a total of 4 roosters. So if I add all that up right, we still have 25 chickens that we are caring for as well as 17 chicks. We also still have 3 geese and 2 ducks (having lost 1 goose and 2 ducks earlier).

In conclusion, I know I need to keep better watch on our poultry. We also need to get the butchering done so we can save on feed and also open up some more cages to keep the chicks better. We are thinking about putting a scarecrow by the chickens to fool the hawks and crows and I am planning on sitting back there with a shotgun to see how many crows I can kill. I am thankful for the poultry we still have and want to take good care of them!


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Glory Farm on July 22, 2009 at 9:18 am
Crows took out all 24 of my friend's ducklings. I didn't realize they were so nasty.

Rhonda
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jlgoinggreen on July 22, 2009 at 10:38 am
Thanks for posting all this (very useful to a newbie) information. These are things that the books I've read do not mention. "Real" life on a farm. Things I really need to prepare for. My dh (after a lot of explaining) has finally convinced me to allow my son to get an air rifle. After reading this, everything he told me makes sense. I guess my son will be making good use of his air rifle.

I will be praying for your family and your chickens safety.

God Bless you and yours,

JEN

PS- Thanks for stopping by my blog and leaving your very helpful thoughts.

Our Chicken Predator Is Still Loose / Current Chicken Count

I have not updated about our chicken tragedies lately, but this morning’s sad incident losing the new kid has gotten me thinking about our other losses.

I have already posted about the Black Giant hen disappearing on May 15th and of Wingleg, 5 Buff Orpington chicks, and 2 White Rock chicks turning up gone on May 20th.

On May 24th I decided to put our 4 Buff Orpington hens along with Sir Lancelot back into the enclosed lot in the ravine in order to get some more pure Buff Orpington eggs. On May 28th, Matthew saw a raccoon next to the lot at 9:00 in the morning. This was the middle of the day, so maybe this coon is the one that got the Black Giant and Wingleg and the chicks. The Black Giant hen was fond of going to the ravine and Wingleg’s feathers were at the top of the ravine road. That evening, of the 28th, the dogs caught a raccoon after dark in front of our house. The dogs gave it up when we went out and I thought it was pretty much dead, even though it was still breathing. I went in to get the shotgun to put the coon down, but when I returned it had disappeared! It apparently wasn’t hurt as badly as we thought!

Well, on May 30th I found a half eaten carcass of one ot the Buff Orpington hens in the ravine lot! This lot is made with fence that has 2×4 inch rectangles, so a coon could easily reach it’s paw in. The body of the chicken was still in the lot, next to the fence, with the feet resting on the other side of the fence, still attached. Sir Lancelot and the other 3 Buff Orpington hens were still in the lot and everything looked normal. They were just wanting to be fed like nothing had happened.

I decided to move the Buff Orpingtons back to the main coop, and we set 5 of their eggs under a broody Black Giant hen. Meanwhile, One Feather decided to roost in the tree with all of the chicks. On the 31st we were missing one of the remaining Buff Orpington chicks and also one of the Rhode Island Red Chicks!

I have put One Feather in the coop, now and am keeping the chicks in the duplex full time, for their own safety. Currently we have 4 White Rock cockerals that are about 9 weeks old, 2 Buff Orpington chicks 8 weeks old, 5 Rhode Island Red chicks 7 weeks old, 3 Black Giant chicks 7 weeks old, and 3 Black Giant/Buff Orpington mixed chicks that are 7 weeks old. For time reference, those Black Giant and Buff Giant chicks all hatched over Easter weekend this year and the Buff Orpingtons hatched a week before Easter. I pray we can keep the remaining chicks safe.

I have 8 mixed eggs under a Black Giant hen that should hatch this Thursday, June 4th and 10 mixed eggs under a Partridge Rock hen that should hatch on Friday the 5th. They are in small cages, so I will probably have to risk letting them out a big part of the day once they start growing. The 5 Buff Orpington eggs I put under the other Black Giant hen are due on June 17th, but they may be Buff Orpington mix depending on which rooster fertilized the eggs.

While I’m counting chicks and eggs, I guess I should record the rest of the chicken numbers as they stand on June 2nd. I have 7 Black Australorp hens (one is going to the freezer due to her destroying eggs), 5 pretty Light Brahma hens, 5 Dominique hens, 4 Black Giant hens (2 are currently setting), 3 Partidge Rock hens (1 is currently setting) and 3 Buff Orpington hens, and 1 game hen, (One Feather). In the rooster department we have 2 Buff Orpingtons, 1 Black Giant, and 3 Light Brahmas (2 of them are for the freezer). So that’s 29 grown birds that roost in the coop, 3 in nesting cages, and 3 in fattening up cages, along with the 17 growing chicks in the duplex. (I almost forgot about those 7 game cocks that we still have not butchered in another lot. Their time is short.)

We have more chickens than we need right now, but I still hate to loose any of them for no reason. I would rather thin down the flock by selling some for a profit and butchering some for the freezer. I am not raising them as food for coons, foxes, or hawks. We will have to stay diligent and do the best we can to keep them all safe.

The Pure Water Hollow Snake Slayers

I do not relish my role as a Snake Slayer, but someone has to do it. My 13-year-old son, Matthew does not want to be a Snake Slayer, either, but he can do the job if he needs to. He was poised with spear in one hand, hoe in the other. I, with a smoking .22 caliber pistol in my hand, and the snake, he was looking at the bullet between his eyes!

We were once again on our way up in our mountain to enjoy our regular Sunday afternoon walk. The weather was magnificent today, with blue skies, a gentle breeze and a comfortable 70 degrees temperature. This was about as perfect weather as you can have, especially after the rain and dreariness we've been experiencing. (Everyone always says that if you don't like the weather in Kentucky, stick around and it will change!)

Like last Sunday, one of our goals was to check the walnut trees on our property. Like I've mentioned previously, walnuts are one of Lisa's favorites nuts. Last Sunday (after Simon's stings were feeling better) we gathered 5 or 6 walnuts from the trees near by; for some reason they have never borne many nuts. We found one good tree way out in the "back 40" last year. I'm afraid we might miss harvesting the walnuts because it is getting late in the year, and the tree that produced the most nuts is about as far up in the hollow as you can get. We do not get up there as often as we would like to, even though it is a beautiful part of our woods. It is within easy walking distance if you don't mind walking straight up a mountain for about a half-mile! We usually take the truck up to the head of the hollow and then walk from there.

We stopped the truck at what we call our "clearing" about half way up. This is a nice level area carved out of the mountain and would be a good house seat. Right now it is where some very good and plentiful blackberries grow in the summer and also where we have our annual Christmas fireworks.

We stopped here because from this point there is a trail that we named the "Paw Paw Trail" a few weeks ago because of all of the paw paws that were growing all around. (Some years we have been blessed with an abundance of paw paws but other years there don't seem to be any.) It looks like this year there will be a good harvest if we can get them at the right time, so we wanted to check on them before we got up to the walnut tree.

There is also a woodpile up there that we use for our fire at Christmas. The tarp had come partly off, so Matthew decided to cover the wood better. He lifted the old, blue tarp up a bit, and then dropped it again with a breathless gasp and got off the wood pile in a hurry!

"It's a snake! There's a snake under the tarp!" Matthew said this with a bit of urgency but not panic. We asked him what it looked like and he described a light and dark brown pattern with dots in between the dark spots. We have one common poisonous snake in eastern Kentucky and Matthew had just described it: a copperhead! (We also are supposed to have rattlesnakes around, but thankfully, we have never seen one.)

This was one of those afternoons that we had not thought to bring the pistol with us and we did not even bring any hoe or shovel with us. I went up to the wood pile and began to carefully look around and I saw the one Matthew saw and as I uncovered a couple of pieces of wood with my walking stick, I found some more of the same marked snakes! I couldn't be sure how many but I was sure this was actually a den of copperheads!

We sent Matthew back down to the house with the truck to get the .22 pistol, a hoe, a shovel, and our Peterson Field Guide of Reptiles and Amphibians. He is only 13 years old, but he handles that big old '79 Ford truck like he has had his license for years. I gave him his own key to that truck even before he turned 12 because he was doing so much work with it and had shown how responsible he was with it. (He of course does not drive it on the road; only around on our own property. Erica, our soon to be 15 year old, can also drive the truck with no problem. I would have no reservations at all allowing her out on the road if she could have a driver's license now. It will be a big help to us when she can drive legally!) Anyway, Matthew returned soon, and it was time for the Snake Slayers to go into action!

Peterson confirmed that we were definitely dealing with copperheads. We also read that they sometimes den up with other species of snakes as well. I want to kill copperheads, since they are poisonous, but I don't really want to kill snakes just to be killing them.

Matthew and I began carefully digging through the wood blocks with the hoe. There was a big pile of these sawmill blocks and slabs of wood so it was pretty difficult moving them around. We were disappointed at first because we were not finding the snakes and were getting pretty tired, and nervous. After all, we were standing on what may be a huge den of snakes and we could not see them!

Finally we uncovered a couple of snakes, but they were getting out of the way quickly. I tried to chop, but could not get a good strike at them because of the wood. I decided to shoot. Even though I could not see the head, the body was exposed, and I figured it would slow it down anyway. BANG! A direct hit through the body, but it did not seem to slow down any at all. It wound this way and that, and we were frantically overturning the wood to try to follow him. There was another snake near, too, and I awkwardly hit at it with the hoe and tried a shot at it but it seemed to get away! We were finally able to uncover the first one's head and I got a shot off that hit right behind it's ears! (Do snakes have ears?) I fished this big snake out so I could see the other one better. Lisa thought that this other snake that seemingly got away was bigger than the one I shot! I had hit it a couple of times with the hoe, so maybe it was wounded, and a bullet maybe grazed it, so I thought we would be able to find the thing. Surely it was just resting someplace near by. We overturned block after block and dug through the whole pile, but we never found that one.

We did overturn one block and found another copperhead! Actually it was Matthew again that found it! (Could this be a gift of his?) This one did not send us on a wild chase; it just stayed curled up there and looked at us! It was an adult, but not as big as the one we already got. They can strike, so I did not want to waste too much time. I just took aim and ... BANG! This bullet went right through it's head and also hit it in the body because of how it was curled up.

We searched through the pile for another 20 minutes or so but by this time it was starting to get too dark to see if a snake did jump out at us. I am sure there was at least one other snake that we were fighting. It either found an escape or else we just did not overturn the wood it was hiding under at the right time. I plan on making time to go up there again during the day sometime soon and remove the entire woodpile. I will be on guard, for sure, and hopefully I will be able to eliminate any remaining snakes, as well as clean up our woodpile.

One thing I don't want in Pure Water Hollow is a poisonous snake! There are now at least two fewer that we have to worry about. By the way, one of the snakes measured 35 inches long and the other one was 24 inches long! Peterson says that copperheads range from 24 to 36 inches long with a record one being 53 inches long! Who knows how long the one that got away is! My role as Snake Slayer will not be over until I am confident that they have all been eliminated!

We did take some pictures of them, even though it was now dark.

I wish to end this post with a prayer of thanksgiving.


"Dear Lord, thank you for keeping that snake from striking at Matthew when he uncovered the first one. He was right there on top of the pile and he could have been bitten, perhaps by several snakes. Thank you for putting your hand of protection over him. Thank you also for keeping me safe, and for allowing the outcome to be a positive one. Help us to clean up the woodpile and get rid of any other snakes that may endanger us in the future. Thank you most of all for your son Jesus, who is the real Snake slayer! In Jesus name, amen."


3 comments
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Sunshine on October 2, 2006 at 9:39 am
now, walnuts are something I DO know about: my mom has a huge black walnut tree, and we are annually cleaning that up!

first, ours do not ripen and fall until Thanksgiving. Dad says there has to be a frost before they will turn black. we get our first frost long before then, and they hang onto the tree, all shriveled and black, but they do not fall in bulk until after thanksgiving.

also, it took 20 -odd years before the tree actually started to produce fruit. I don't know how old your trees are – I would imagine a lot older than that, but…

that is our experience with walnuts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jessica on October 2, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Uncle Eric, you are kind of scaring me with all the say of yellow jackets and copperheads! I hope we have a wonderful time when we come to your house! I am so glad you and Matt are safe! I am praying for you, and tell the kids hi for me! Have a great day!

Love,

Jessica
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Purewater on October 4, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Hello Jessica! Thanks for visiting the blog. We sort of live in the wild but it is a good, safe place, overall. Nothing to worry about, much. There are black bears and bobcats occasionally reported to be around, but we have never seen any animals like that! And we hadn't seen a copperhead in about 10 years before last Sunday, so hopefully they are not very plentiful. We are looking forward to you all visiting next week if you are able to! Tell everyone "hi" for us.

The Story of the Pure Water Hollow Chickens -OR- The Legend of Big Daddy Dommer

The Pure Water Hollow flock was practically decimated and the remainder was unruly and undisciplined and seemingly only good for coon fodder. The grand chicken experiment had been declared a total failure!

But then, from out of the west, came a bold hero, a champion! The flock’s savior had arrived! Who was that masked man, I mean barred rooster? He became known as Big Daddy Dommer!

Here is Dommer's handsome profile.

Our current chicken story began on a sunny day in May when a friend from down the road brought us six game hens and one game rooster. (This was from a particular line that had produced losses at the chicken fights. We do not appreciate chicken fights but they are very popular around here, and we were happy to get the chickens.) We were not interested in the fights but figured that they should be able to give us nice farm fresh eggs. And they did at first! They laid 75 eggs between May 24 and June 19 and they stayed in the coop pretty good! Since we were having such good success, we decided to take another hen and 13 more pullets from those same friends. We did not know at the time that it would be a big mistake!

So, the Pure Water Hollow flock started out with 21 head that fateful summer of 2004. Unfortunately, the new pullets and hen never got along with the first six. They turned crazy and they all decided to fly the coop! Literally! Not even the original six were staying in the lot anymore. The rooster fought with the pullets and they fought with each other and the hens started fighting each other and the pullets. Things were not happy on this chicken farm and we had no idea what to do. We went out night after night to try to get the chickens out of the trees and put them in the coop. We could usually get some but not all.

Throughout July and August and September the flock gradually dwindled down as the wild animals picked them off one by one. The silly rooster was one of the first to disappear. We got some eggs during this time but nothing regular and they sure did not want to lay in the nests we provided. We had to hunt for their nests, which was not fun. These game hens were so crazy that we actually found an egg once in a tree wedged between two branches! What kind of chickens lay eggs up in trees? We had gotten tired of fooling with them and decided that we would start again sometime in the future with a more tame breed.

By October the flock was down to only 4 wild, crazy hens.

That was when a mysterious stranger from over the mountain rode into town. He was big and stocky, with a muscular build, making two of our old game rooster. He called for the hens and they gladly followed their new leader. He was black and white barred and we thought he looked a lot like the pictures of the Dominique breed of chickens. He does not have the rose shaped comb but he sure looks like the pictures besides that. I guess he is just a common farm chicken but the children named him “Dommer” after "Dominique" anyway. We didn’t know at the time that he would stay around and become our miracle rooster. We just let him roost in the trees with those wild game hens at first.

One of the hens got hit in the road but the other three survived the winter and Dommer stayed with them the whole time. We just let them be wild chickens and did not even try to keep them in the coop. I don’t know for sure if Dommer was actually keeping the wild animals away but it seemed like it.


Then in the spring of 2005 we noticed baby chicks running all around with the game hens! (Everyone calls them bitties around here.) We got to counting them and found that each of the three hens hatched 10 or 11 for a total of 31 bitties! Sadly, we were not in the best position to care for them and I guess they were too many for Big Daddy Dommer to keep up with. Only 18 of them survived, 10 pullets and 8 cockerels, and every one of them are barred and look like Dommer!




On May 28, 2005 we built a better more secure lot to keep them in and this time it worked! It seemed that Dommer liked the coop and promptly ordered his flock to their new roosts. The chickens all go into the coop voluntarily now, following Dommer’s lead, and they stay in the lot if we keep it closed!




Most every afternoon we let them out to pick through the grass and find dust baths and then they all go to the coop when they are ready to roost. By winter, the 10 pullets had turned into fine layers and the 3 game hens began laying again too. (Before the fall was over the 8 cockerels provided good food for the table and freezer!)


Throughout 2006 we had good success with our egg production. I started to copy the totals for each month here in this post, but decided that it would have made some boring reading so I’ll just give you the grand total: 874 eggs from January 1st to August 31st! We thought that was pretty good considering that not all of them were laying at the beginning of the year and the most hens we had was 13. Plus, through the spring, many of them went to setting and quit laying eggs. Sadly it was a rough summer with the wild animals and a dog and we lost 4 hens and many more new bitties. (one small dog can kill a mama and 15 bitties in just a couple of minutes)

We now have 9 mature hens and 11 new pullets (all look like Big Daddy) that have not started laying yet. And we still have Big Daddy Dommer looking after them all. We are thankful for what the Lord has provided for us and I now enjoy taking care of the Pure Water Hollow flock of chickens.

Now you know the story of how a mysterious rooster named Big Daddy Dommer saved the Pure Water Hollow chicken flock! It is the stuff legends are made of that I’m sure we will remember long after Big Daddy has moved on…

This has gotten rather long so I will save the question that I had on my mind for a later post...


3 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crooked Creek Farm on September 26, 2006 at 7:44 am
that's a lotta eggs! We're still waiting for the 30 new hens we got this spring, as chicks, to start laying. Our older hens are slacking, too.

That's pretty cool, that a rooster would just show up and start taking care of your hens!

Thanks for your comment,

I'll have some new posts up soon!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Renee on September 26, 2006 at 4:57 pm
Hello!

I thought we knew you all so well and now I am getting to know the other-side of you. I feel guilty that I didn't know about your chicken's and your rooster. We need to talk more! We need time together without holiday's and such. It' s sad to have to learn about your new found hobbies and your name for your land from a blog…. We Love you all!! Please keep writing so we get to know you all a little bit better:)

Renee
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Unlikely Homesteader on May 9, 2007 at 10:20 am
You need to post a comment on the chicken contest and enter. I just love reading everyone's chicken stories!

~Nancy