Chicks

My dad got a bunch of chicks from our local feed shack- brown leghorns and lavender orpingtongs. We claimed a few, and G's cousin claimed a few, and Dad delivered them. 

We set up a tote in our garage. It's still too cold for them to be outside. Apparently, it's a little too cold in our garage as well. Notice how all the chicks are huddled underneath the heat lamp? That's a sign that they are not warm enough.

We had the idea of putting the tote on top of a table to keep them off the cold cement floor. It seemed to help. G put a rug underneath for more insulation.

The leghorns tend to be flighty and are big enough they can jump out of the tote. We put a metal shelf on top of the tote to keep all the chicks inside. So far it's working to keep them in! (Now they're huddled around the food. 😅)

The tote we started with ended up too crowded, so I split up the chicks into two groups. The second group is in a cardboard box, which seems to work just fine.

They're starting to outgrow both of these though, so my next task is to figure out a way to house them in the shed without any cats or Jip being able to get at them.

North Pasture

We let the goats into the north pasture the other day. The grass is getting longer back there and there's not very much grass in front pasture. Very slowly the goats made their way out there. Well, the big goats anyway. The babies didn't seem to want to go at first.

They stayed close to the house and bleated for their mom. They couldn't figure out where she had gone.

They figured it out soon enough though. You can see three tiny dark blobs in this picture when they finally made their way to the north pasture.

This of course means that the chickens and ducks can intermingle with the goats. Our poultry are very much enjoying picking over what the back yard has to offer.

 

Orchid Experiment Update

It appears as if my cuttings are still somewhat alive.  I ended up tossing the root system. The three roots looked good for a few days, but then mold appeared, so I took them out of water to hopefully stop the mold. That caused them to shrivel up. When I trimmed it again, everything was brown and hollow. Bummer. 

The green onions are doing well, as expected. 

See the tiny leaf? I'm hoping that will grow bigger. 

The flower stalk is mostly green, but there is a yellow part in the middle that doesn't bode well...

When I refreshed the water, I put in a drop of tea tree oil to hopefully keep the mold at bay. So far, so good!

Clean Out the Freezer

One of my favorite recipes to make for supper is " clean out the freezer soup". The recipe is exactly what it sounds like! All the little scraps of veggies etc that have been hanging out in the freezer get tossed into a pot and cooked into a delicious soup. 

This morning as G and I got ready for the day, it was quickly evident that our freezer was stuffed with too many things. A large portion of the annoying freezer items were gallon Ziploc bags full of veggies to make soup stock. Today was the day. Time to make veggie broth. 

This roasting pan has four gallon Ziploc bags of vegetable scraps/waste from earlier in the year - cabbage, okra, leak tops, garlic scapes, celery ends and leaves. Then I added crushed bay leaves and salt. This will cook for 3 or more hours around 200°.

The goats and chickens got the solid leftovers:

Straining in the sink just in case of splashes.

Preservation method for canning broth involves pressure canning, and that wasn't something I wanted to tackle right now, so I put four cups in the freezer and used our jar vacuum sealer to seal the rest of it in jars. I ended up with five 24oz jars of broth and one pint jar. 

We'll no doubt make soup either this week or next, so I know the broth won't go to waste!

It's the Little Things

I designed a new system for holding the plethora of paper towels we get at one time from Costco.

It's pretty simple- two fencing staples, two bungee cords, and a board screwed between studs. 

I found wood scraps in the garage that were just the right size. The vertical 2x4 isn't actually attached to anything; it's being used as a prop to keep the weight of the paper towels from unevenly pushing on the corner of the outlet box. 

It was so easy it makes me wonder what else we could store this way... 😅

Orchid Experiment

My poor plants really took a beating these past five months. When we were gone, we reduced our heat to a point  where my orchids weren't happy. 

Now that we're back and the house is warmer, they still aren't happy. I'm trying a last ditch effort to try to save them... 

This is what's left:

I saw a green leaf trying to grow out of the stalk and three new roots, so I trimmed off all the dead stuff and put it in a jar of diluted liquid orchid fertilizer.

This was going to be a new flower stalk. I'm not sure if putting it in a glass of liquid orchid fertilizer will let it bloom or cause it to root. 

We shall see! (The center jar is a bunch of green onions regenerating).

Lost and Found

We had an Easter mystery yesterday. 

Since Jip has been bothering the little goats, we have tried to keep him separate as much as possible, tethering him in the front yard instead of letting him loose in the back pasture. He's been behaving himself, and because of the rain yesterday afternoon, we thought it might be okay to let him loose with the goats while we spent time at my in-laws' house. 

G went over to check on them later in the afternoon and called saying that he could only find one of the baby goats. 

Our first thought was that Jip had killed them, but but there were no bodies or remains anywhere in the pasture. Our second thought was that he had eaten them. But how could he have eaten both of them in such a short amount of time and not left any evidence behind? That must mean they escaped the pasture. We found two areas of the fence where they could have snuck out.

Still, no evidence of kids outside the pasture. And surely they would've stuck close to their mom, right?

Here's my searching buddy:

After searching 40 minutes with no sign of them, I decided to recheck a couple places in the pasture.

The first spot I checked was the fence partly covering the garage window (the right side of the picture). 

We had installed that the first week we got goats because the goats thought their reflections were other goats and they wouldn't go inside even in bad weather. Doesn't it look like a kid could sneak in there? G and I had both looked behind there twice, but we hadn't used a flashlight. I use my phone's flashlight to check way down the far end of the fence. Sure enough I saw some furry little legs!

Together G and I unstacked enough of the firewood to pull the top of the fence away from the garage to guide the babies out of there. Both of the missing kids were tucked in the very end of the fence. 

Whew! 

They were wet and cold but otherwise okay. They were very happy to get back to their mom, and their mom was very happy to be reunited with them. Our guess is that Jip chased them and in their fear they discovered that hidey-hole.

New Life

Things are greening up around here! The grass is the initial thing we noticed, but my raspberry bushes are beginning to leaf out.

The goats are able to scrounge a little more grass in the pasture. They hardly ever come over to the west side so it was nice to see them over here.

The kids are bigger and stronger. Still enjoying dancing around the wood pile.

One of Mopsy's kittens had kittens (Gracie). She found a great place in one of the chicken nesting boxes on the floor. 

She had four kittens, but one of them died the second day. So far she's been taking very good care of them.

Backwards

Unfortunately, our chick numbers are going backwards. 😕 

We had left one hatched chick in the incubator overnight to continue to dry and strengthen (they have enough food reserves from the egg yolk to survive a day or two without food and water). This morning when we checked, it was dead. 

There had been a chick working on hatching yesterday afternoon; you could see its beak moving through the hole in the shell. I left it because it can be harmful to the chick to help it out of the shell. It can also take 12-24 hours for them to come out once pipped. 

Unfortunately, that one was dead too when we checked this morning. 

That leaves us with a total of five chicks. Here's a picture I took yesterday of our brooder setup. 

I candled the rest of the eggs to see if there were duds, quitters (eggs that started developing and then died partway through), or ones ready to hatch. I found around six duds, three-five quitters, and a bunch that looked questionable. The questionable eggs stayed in- two looked like they were pipping on the inside - and the rest got taken out. 

One more egg had just started pipping. Unfortunately, there was no more progress after supper and we suspect it's not going to hatch. No more progress on any other eggs. We had planned to pull the plug on Saturday afternoon, but tonight we were so frustrated we did it early. 

So our ending hatch rate is 6/41 with 5 surviving. 

What went wrong? We have some guesses. G tested our hygrometer's accuracy against the garage thermostat and our hygrometer is accurate. That means the incubator temp is off, which lines up with our first hatch being after 21 days. The edge of the incubator read 10 degrees cooler than it was supposed to be. 😬 No wonder our hatch rate was crummy. 

Further testing- G held it up next to the temperature probe, which read accurately. Hmm, that must mean the fan isn't circulating the air (another potential reason the hatch dates were off). 

G called the company and they said they'd send us a new fan to replace the old one. TSC said they'd replace the whole incubator for us. We could alternatively return it and get a different kind. We're still on the fence which route to take. 

In positive news, Jip actually was well behaved with the chicks yesterday.

Not so well behaved today though... All day he nipped/chased the kids here and there. I'd catch him doing it and call him off. He listened pretty well; he'd sit down and try to look innocent. 

After church tonight, G checked his phone and found a text from our neighbor saying that Jip had been dragging around one of the baby goats, the one with weak back legs. No! We got home as fast as we could, praying we wouldn't find a dead baby. 

Thankfully Blackie was okay (our neighbor had gotten Jip to stop). The poor guy was quite traumatized with a few bloody tooth marks on his legs. 

I whipped out my notes from the natural chicken keeping handbook I read earlier this year. This had recipes for treating chickens who had been traumatized by an animal attack and something to put on wounds. I figured if it works for chickens it'll work for baby goats. I had most of the essential oils on hand and the recipe whipped up quick. 

We shut the goats in the shed for the night so Jip could be loose and the goats wouldn't be afraid. I guess we'll have to keep Jip in the front yard for the time being until the kids get bigger. 

 

Three More!

Last night, we found one chick hatched and fluffy. 

Here's the discarded shell:

We saw two or three more eggs with pip marks. You might be able to see them in the above photo. 

This morning we discovered two had come out and two more were halfway out of the shells. 

It was hard to tell if any others were starting or not. Hopefully we hatch more than 5/41. 😅

Crackin

 

Don't Blow Away

The wind was crazy! The poor little kids got blown around a bit. They quickly learned that Mom makes a good windblock. 

Lockdown!

Day 18 of egg incubation= lockdown. No one goes in or out until the eggs hatch in 3 to 5 days. 

We took the egg turner out on Thursday and jacked up the humidity. Hopefully we get a good hatch rate! The first day they are due to hatch is today. Just like people, the due date is just an estimate. Some chicks could take a little bit longer, so we'll keep the incubator going for at least 5 days past their due date. After that point the remaining unhatched eggs are considered duds.

Note- the humidity is so low on the hygrometer because we had the top off to take out the turner. It's now in the 60% range.

Comfortable

Svetlana and her babies have been turned loose with the rest of the herd. We let them out for a sunny afternoon and it went so well we decided to just let them be together. It continues to go very well!

It is so fun to look out the window and see the three little babies prancing around the goat pen. Two of them are more adventurous than the other (the one with weak legs). They discovered the wood pile today.

It's not uncommon for the three of them to be hovering around their mother. They like to stand on top of the hay that she's eating, haha.

Jip leaves them alone. I think he knows that if he messes with them, mama is going to come for him! 

I think Jip has been integrated into the goat herd. Even Gerda, the one Jip chases the most, has been seen in his company from time to time.

Candling Eggs

Day 14 of egg incubation equals candling time again! 

We already candled the eggs on day 7 to check for signs of life. There were a few eggs that we weren't sure about, so we left those in the incubator. Both of us were looking forward to seeing how many of them were good! 

A lot of our eggs have dark shells, so it's kind of tricky to see what's going on inside. We discovered that G's phone camera can show a little bit more about what's going on inside. Here are a couple pictures we took while candling: 

Hard to see, but both of these have chicks growing inside! One week to go before they are due to hatch. 

We did find some duds. 

These eggs were removed from the incubator. We had eight more we weren't sure about, so we left those in. They are all on the right side of the incubator and the good ones are on the left. 

On day 18 we can candle again. After that, the incubator will be locked down until the eggs hatch. From what I've read, there isn't much of a benefit to candling on day 18. The chicks should be big enough you won't be able to see much of anything besides the air sac. However the air sac can shed some light on the humidity amount in the incubator. 

If the air sac is too small from too high humidity, the chick won't have enough air and can drown. If the air sac is too large from too low humidity, the chick can also die. We need a Goldilocks amount of humidity. Unfortunately that's not a simple answer. Because of different climates/the time of year, humidity levels can be all over the place.

Our incubator has an automatic humidity detector, but sometimes those are off on their measurements. Just in case, we have a second humidity detector we put towards the edge of the incubator. They're reading pretty close together. Judging by our air sacs, our humidity is a little high. This week, we're going to let it get pretty low to see if we can get the air sacs to an ideal volume before the 18th. We'll check their size on the 18th to determine how much water we need to add to the incubator before hatching.

Duck Pond

With the ducks locked in the pasture and unable to access their pond next to the garage (or their favorite feeding ground), G felt bad that they couldn't have any more fun. He made plans to set up their pond in the pasture. 

The problem is, he would need to run a hose across the goat/Jip pen in order to fill it up. The ducks are so dirty, we end up refreshing the water every couple of days. It would be a big hassle to have to stretch the hose out every time we want to fill the pond. G was going to just leave the hose lying across the pen, but I worried that Jip would use it as a toy and destroy it. 

In the end we scrapped the pond in the pasture idea and instead stretched a temporary fence from the corner of the garage to the wooden fence so the ducks and chickens can access their pond but still not get into the neighbor's yard. 

 Problem solved for now! 😁

Fulda Fun

This weekend we made our first trip to my parents' farm with J. 

He had a great time reading books with Gram and chatting with Boppa. He met Great Grandma and Great Grandpa. And he experienced his first picnic and sap boiling at Shady Acres. 

G and I brought crawfish boudin and alligator sausage from Louisiana to grill over the sap fire. My mom packed the rest of the picnic supplies. My brother made coffee over the fire. My nieces had their own little picnic table built by their dad (my brother-in-law, aka master of the sap). 

The girls had a blast playing in a dirt pile while the rest of us watched the maple sap boil. 

It would take too long to get the sap to boil all the way down into syrup, so they boil it down to a manageable level and then bring it home in pots to finish boiling it on the stove at home. Their total amount starting Sunday was around 30 to 40 gallons. This will only make a couple of pints. A lot of labor for a little bit of deliciousness!

Nevermind

I guess we need to clip the chickens' wings. 🙄

Escape Artists

I'm sure when you read the title you guessed that this post would be about goats since they are notorious for escaping their pens. It's actually about our poultry! 

We had locked them up in the pasture in an attempt to keep them out of the neighbor's yard. As you can see from this picture, they weren't huge fans. They kept trying to go into the front yard where there is more ground cover and plenty of tasty things to eat. 

They had only been locked up like this for maybe an hour or two when I looked outside and saw two ducks on the other side of the fence. The neighbor's side. There must have been a small hole under the fence that let them squeeze through. 

I threw J in a carrier and headed outside to see if I could plug the holes. I had planned to use cement landscaping block (on hand for a future project), but that was too heavy to do safely while holding J. I settled on using pieces of wood from our firewood pile. Those fit perfectly in the gaps under the fence. 

You might think that it's tricky to make ducks and chickens go where you want them to. You would be correct. I did get them corralled back into the pasture area by slowly walking and pretending that I wasn't trying to herd them anywhere. 😅 

That kept them in for a while. 

When G got home and checked the animals, one duck snuck underneath the fence between her area and the goat/jip area. She couldn't figure out how to get back underneath so G had to catch her in the goat shed and put her back on her correct side.

More logs got shoved into that crack. Now I think our fence is FINALLY duck proof.

Last night we brought some "sorry our ducks pooped on your lawn and our chickens ate your perennials" gingersnaps over to our neighbor's house and told them to let us know if any of our poultry make their way over again. 

So far, so good!

 

Jip and the Goats

Jip loves to play with the goats. They tolerate him. One way he gets their attention is to lie on their food... He stood up the split second before I took this picture. 

Fritz will headbutt Jip if he gets too annoying, so will Svetlana. Gerda is too timid and she often ends up 'stuck' on the woodpile to get away from Jip. 

Sometimes he'll climb up and sit with her though!

Maybe once the little kids are out, Jip will have playmates.