Everything's Growing

The garden is growing weeds faster than I can snatch them out of the ground. The corn is growing even if it looks like a drunkard on a three day binge put it in the ground. I'd take pics to prove that the strawberries have taken off like crazy this year, but the older chickens eat them before I get a chance to see them. I keep telling myself I'm going to go out there and put wire around the berries, but I never remember till it's after dark.

My second batch of meat birds are getting closer and closer to processing time. The roos are all battling with each other. They start with the beak to beak stare down, hackles raised and then one jumps at the other. I swear that sometimes the stare downs last longer than the fights. I keep calling this batch the Red Meats instead of the Creepy Meats. They still swarm me in the morning, but I don't expect the ground to shake as they all run towards me. There is a lot less lumbering as they run. They actually run instead of waddle. Before it got so blessed hot they actually did much more ranging around looking for food than the Creepy Meats.

My first batch of pullets that I picked up with the Creepy Meats look like full grown chickens now. They are 12 weeks old now. One of the Sagitas is a rooster. One of the White Plymouth Rocks is a rooster too. The Sagita has been giving me the stink eye recently, lowering his head at me just a little, and generally not getting out of my way when I wander on through the herd. I think he's gonna be a freezer camp candidate. I call him and the first batch of pullets the Marauders. Four Sagita pullets, one Austra White, one White Plymouth pullet, and the two roos all tend to hang out together. They bully the Red Meats, eat first, and range further than the other chicks. The Sagita roo is right there watching me and making sure I'm not picking on His chicks to push around though. Some where around four more weeks to go before I can start looking for eggs from the Marauder pullets.

Austra White Pullet

Jersey Giant hen taking a dust bath

White Plymouth Rock Rooster Dust Bathing

The Easter Eggers (EE) have all their feathers in. I have two darks, one with a grey head, and one with an orange and black head. There are two white with red barring. One with a grey head and one with an orange head. Those two are my favorite colored chickens. The EE's are so hard to tell rooster from pullet. They have little bitty combs, and no waddles. The muffs they get under their beaks remind me of owls for some reason. They are much smaller than the Sagitas and the Jerseys, but not a tiny as the little Cochin Banty.

The other groomer I work with started chicks this year with her kids for 4H. One of the Polish Cresteds turned out to be a rooster. I brought him home with me today. I really wanted a fuzzy headed chicken when I was in a chick buying frenzy earlier this year. They aren't super good layers, and I didn't want to get a chicken I was going to feed just to look silly. I knew out of the 6 straight run chicks Shelly got, that one was bound to be a roo, and I just needed to bide my time. He's a little guy with a mop of feathers on his head. I have him in with the banty and the ee's for now. they're all his size.

Norman is growing a little more every day. Dairy calves don't get as big as fast, or put on as much weight, and have a slighter frame than the beef calves. I take him for a walk every couple of days, or just turn him loose while I'm out with the chickens. He likes to eat weeds. He's eating his hay really good now. I still have him on milk once a day and Growena calve grain once a day. He still flips the bucket over his head after eating his grain or his milk. 

Morning Pictures From Around The Farm

This morning was so nice out. I got to sleep in for an extra hour and a half. Went to grab the camera to take pic while I did chores and it was dead. I had my phone though, and took a ton of pics with that. I had the whole crew out with me this morning.

Kiki, Fudge, Fudge, Bastard, Wiley, Molly

Ashley and the chickens all came too. 

Ben is all butt hurt at us. It's finally warm enough at night that we don't need a tank heater to keep the water from freezing. I threw his fat hiney in the round pen. He spends all day pacing, so he's getting some exercise with his diet. 

He eats faster then Apache, and then would clean up Apache's hay as well. He's starting to look like a hippo. Even though he's only walking, he spends most of his day moving instead of just standing in the dry lot, or laying down. A little exercise is better than no exercise. 

Apache is getting all his hay now. He wasn't getting thin really, but he wasn't packing on the pounds like Ben was. He could stand to gain a few. He's almost totally blind now from as far as we can tell. He doesn't see anything out of the left eye any more. He still stands and looks towards the garage every morning waiting for his breakfast. When I call out Pooooneeeehs, he whickers to me and can focus in on where I'm coming from. He finds his hay by smelling for it and I shake it so he can hear where it is. 

Dave turned his horses back out from his catch pen, into the pasture last night. Apache got pretty upset calling out for them and trotting back and forth along the fence. I kept an eye on him for a few hours to make sure he wasn't going to try and go through the fence, but he settled down. I would have put Ben back in with him if he had gotten too upset. By this morning he had settled back down and was eagerly looking for breakfast. 

The boys got wormed again last week. We used Zimectrin Gold. 

Dave's horses back out on pasture with Stormy looking for breakfast

The chickens even came with me this morning, clucking and talking the whole way. They followed the dogs and the cats across the dry lot out to Dave's pasture. 

You can see the chickens off on the right hand side following us back up the road.  Kiki and Bastard were right behind me

The chickens last year never really ventured into the trees out front. This year though I think they've realized the treasure box of bugs and worms hiding under last year's dead leaves. I lost Mr. Mean, the rooster, a few days ago. He followed Rebeccah's girls back through the whole in the fence. I went out there with a few scraps of chicken wire and he hasn't made it back over again. Of course Rebeccah's girls are missing out on the buggy goodness under the cottonwoods, but... 

We got most of last year's old dead grass burned out of the front pasture. With only two horses out there, there was a lot that didn't get eaten. Burning off the old dead stuff makes way for the new grass to come up better, and adds a few nutrients back into the soil faster than letting it rot away. 

Old Man Fudge got pretty heavy this last winter

I actually had to water the flower garden last evening. I have bulbs coming up all over the place. Some of them I have no idea what they are. They came to my in a box that Shelly at work had brought me. She dug them up last fall when she was redoing her flower beds. I have Dusty Millers out there that are coming back for their third year. They said they were only an annual plant when I bought them. I have a few violas that made it through the winter and have a tiny tiny flower on them. Tulips that I bought on clearance a few years ago. Daffodils that I found growing out along the bottom of the drive way that I dug up and divided out last year. I have two hyacinths at the bottom of the bed that are coming back for their third year, and a row of grape hyacinths along the house. 

And some more random pics I snapped through my morning

Apache

Bastard Kitty

Friends

Apache and Kiki

Chicken in a box

Kiki

Bastard Kitty and Kiki

   

The girls got a new boyfriend today

When we got the chickens last year they came with a rooster. They were all Jersey Giants. The rooster was never very thrifty, he was an older bird, and never seemed to be able to get the job done and give me little baby chicks. He wasn't here too long before he started getting skinny, and one morning he just wasn't here any more. I let my chickens free range during the day, and I'm not sure if a hawk picked him off or where he went. I never found any traces of him.

Winter came on and with the shortening of the daylight hours the girls' egg production came to a halt. We thought about putting a light in the coop, but the girls decided to molt and would be putting feather production before egg production, so we just let them rest through the winter. I wanted to replace the rooster before then, but we never got around to it, and with the girls not laying it wasn't something I was worried about it.

In talking with my neighbor, and admiring her chickens (mine are all boring black) she told me how she had split a chick order with a friend of hers, and had gotten 10 little Silver Laced Wyandotte pullets. She was pretty sure one of them was turning out to be a rooster. She didn't want another rooster. She had little bantam chickens and one of them was already a rooster. A big rooster would harass the little girls until he might crush or kill one. She asked me if  I might be interested in her rooster. Absolutely.

This morning when she went out to feed, she locked up the rooster, and this afternoon she loaded him into a crate and brought him over to me. What a handsome man he is. He settled in to eating pretty quick and within the first 15 minuets of being in with the girls he was trying to get down to business. I'm hoping with loading him into a crate, and driving him over instead of handing him off over the fence line I won't have to worry about him wanting to go back where he came from. I'll keep him locked up with the girls for a week and see what happens.

In other chicken news, the girls all finally decided that they were going to use the condo as a roost again, and all five of them slept in the top where they belonged for the last two days. I would have between 1 and 3 of them go up the ramp and sleep in the top at night. I still had one hold out that wanted to jump in the rabbit hutch for the night. After many many evenings of gathering everyone up and placing them in the top of the condo, we finally got it all right.

Here's the new rooster.