Finally not a chicken failure

At least not a, letting a hen hatch out some eggs failure. It's only taken four years, but it finally worked.

Where have we been?

August 5th of last year. That's the last time I wrote anything on the blog. I think I got a little burnt out on documenting everything, and things got a little lazy-ish around here. The horses were doing the same horse stuff.

We never did get the fence finished around the back of the yard so the chickens came in and ate most everything in the garden. Connie and I gave up weeding it and it looked like a jungle. They ate the corn seeds out of the ground and what didn't get ate, got flooded. The squash took over the world. The chicks we hatched either got ate by the skunks or hawks. I had three survivors to speak of when it was all said and done, and they weren't even ones we hatched, they were ones we bought.

Three survivors in front

We got a few loads of firewood.

Jess joined the Army but came back home
 

 Heather made me get out of the house and go play in the snow a few times.

We lost Fudge

And added two new puppies to the EverStuff. Rudy is a Dachshund and Tanzy is a Cane Corso.  

Amye came out to visit for a few days.

Norman is still growing, pooping and getting ready for the freezer.

I've gotten in a little fishing

 

And that's where we are up to today. I got a bit of chicken wire fence up around the garden to keep out the girls. It's cloudy and rainy-ish and I was going to go put out some been and lavender seeds in the garden, but I just might stay in and wait for Scott to get back from Boise.

Making babies, We're in lockdown

We're on try number three incubating eggs. Three days before they're due to hatch you're supposed to take the eggs out of the turner, if you have one, lay them flat, add water to the incubator to increase the humidity, close the lid, and leave them the crap alone. No opening it for anything. Not for the first few chicks hatched. Quit turning the eggs, just keep your damned fingers out of the incubator. Yeah, that's gonna be hell for me.

I want to see what's going on inside those shells. I want to shine a light through the shell and see what's going on. So I compromised. I candled them all after I removed the turner. Out of 32 eggs

Dirty, Dirty Birds

The temps are starting to get back into nice, but the nights are still cold. We had a spell of clouds and rain that lulled me into not draining the hoses at night. I just wasn't getting below freezing. It wasn't getting much above freezing either though. Now the clouds have moved out and it's been in the 20's in the morning. Like low 20's. Scott went to go fill the horse's water the other morning and nada. Frozen hose. So it's back to slinging them over the fork in the tree behind the chicken condo and draining the water out. The chickens like it and run behind the hose and peck at the mud left behind the hose as it snakes across the ground.

Speaking of mud and dirt

One week in the Incubator, Traffic Jam in the nest boxes

Week one and we're still doing our thing. I took one Banty egg out already. When I candled it, I could see free floating bubbles in it. Ruptured air cell. I don't see any signs of life yet in any of the Banty eggs. I wonder if she's got such a fluffy feathered butt, and neither of the roosters are small enough to get the deed done.

Eggs in the Bator

Connie works for Valley Co-Op and got me a heck of a deal on a still air incubator. $30 for a brand new Farm Innovators model. I'd left 12 marked eggs in the nest boxes hoping to entice a hen to set them, and been holding a weeks worth of eggs on the counter at a time hoping. Every day I went out and no one seems interested.

 Don't these chickens understand that I lovingly go out every day and spread scratch grains and layer pellets for them? I make sure they always have fresh water to drink. I leave them to roam all over the property and never complain about stepping in a wet chicken turd when I go out on the porch at night in my stocking feet. I clean popped on shavings out of their chicken condo that Scotty built just for them so nothing will eat them in the night time while they sleep. Is it too much to ask for just one hen to want to settle her fluffy feathered ass on some eggs for me for 20 days?
So Connie got an incubator .

We set it up in the office and let it run it over night to make sure it held it's temp at 99.5, and put 26 eggs in the next morning. I have 9 green EE's, 3 olive EE's, 9 little Cochin, and 5 cream eggs from either the White Rock or the Austra White. The roo's are either my splash Polish, or the White rock.Today is day one, 20 to go, WOOT!!!

Here's the possibly Daddies

The Captain 

Einstein 

Mommas

Easter Eggers

Speckles- Austra White

Cochin Orpington 

The White Rocks, and the Austra White carry the Barred gene. The Polish carries the blue gene. The EE's have the blue/green egg gene, so it should be really fun seeing what I get out of these eggs.

Holy giant egg, steers at the butcher, finally had some snow

This winter has been especially dry. Last winter we didn't have to have our driveway plowed once. We managed to get snow on days we didn't have to work. This winter there just wasn't any snow. We had some flurries here and there. Nothing I couldn't drive the little green truck through to get out of the driveway. I had to drive the dodge a few times because of ice or slick roads from fog. Last week we finally got some snow. About 6-7+ inches of the white stuff. Still didn't have to plow the driveway, but we need the moisture so desperately.

Yay, finally snow.

Foxy snow pony

Foxy and Ben

The chickens got fed in the calf pen. They like to hang under there out of the snow and the wind.

I know the first eggs a chicken lays start small and they get bigger
the older a hen gets, but this was a little extreme.  I feel sorry for the hen who spit this out.

Easter Egger , Banty, and Holy Giant Egg

 And some pics of the rainbow of colors the girls are laying.

Two weeks ago, Scott and Andrea took the steers to Nate's house for him to slaughter for us. They've been hanging out in his shop in the cold to age for two weeks. We went over Saturday, late afternoon to help him cut and wrap our steer. Mostly he cut, Scott did all the grinding into burger, and I packaged. We brought home a fourth of the finished product Saturday night and we'll get the rest of it tomorrow. I think he weighed just under 400 pounds hanging weight. That means hide, head and innards removed.

This was a big 1000 pound bull that was hanging to age and waiting it's turn to be cut up.

Our little guy was not so big. 

Jersey T-Bone

We've made burgers from the ground beef, and man were they juicey. We're talking stand over the kitchen sink and scarf em down. So tasty. Last night we grilled ribeye steaks. Oh man oh man. They were so tender, and had so much flavor. Everything you hope you're going to get when you take that first bite of steak after smelling it grill. Scott seasoned them perfectly before grilling. I kept hearing people say that Jersey meat is so much better than beef cow. I don't ever want to raise anything else for the freezer again. Even if someone offered me a free angus steer, already on grass and just needs finishing. Jersey is the way to go.