Larsen Poultry Ranch - homesteading journey

[farmerjan]

I don't know when you did it, but from my experience you never add chicks during the day. Always tuck chicks under a hen at night when adding extras. They seem to be more accepted... and some hens will not take new ones... sometimes won't even take the ones she hatched if there is one or 2 that are different colored or marked different.

 

[Bruce]

That has been my experience Jan. The one time I tried before it was REALLY REALLY dark I had to pull them and do it again the next night.

And Anais wouldn't take chicks no matter how dark it was, try to stuff them under a wing from the back and she'd turn and peck. BUT! Once she was broken, about 5 days, it didn't matter if the chicks were Mama Heating Pad brooded or brooded by another hen she REALLY wanted to help raise them and would stick with them until they were 3 months old or more even when the "mother" had bailed on them weeks before.

 

[farmerjan]

Chickens can be so notional.... and they call them dumb clucks?????

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

I have added chicks to a broody before, and as you experienced, was successful during the night instead of the day. I wasn't planning to stick around my parents house for another two hours until dark so we took a chance and gave them to her during daylight. The annoying thing is SHE TOOK THEM. She was mothering them, snuggled them and kept them warm all night. I don't know what happened during the day to cause her to reject them, but it was deadly to the chicks.

I will be very happy to get the birds on my property where I can see them and intervene when necessary. It's extremely difficult to intervene when the animals in question are a 30 minute drive away, plus me being 8 months pregnant. The set up there is not friendly to people who can't get up and down from the ground easily.

The chickens at my parents house were my dad and my thing, mom likes them and takes care of them now that dad can't, but it would be nice to cut down on the numbers, especially since there are a lot of freeloaders. I'm thinking I want to go through all the hens in spring and get rid of any not laying, to decrease the flock to 8-9 hens plus the rooster. I can then add young birds each spring as needed and remove the older ones. I'd like to get another standard sized polish, as mom likes them, we had a sweet polish hen a few years back.

 

[HomeOnTheRange]

They can blather about how well built mobile homes are, but that’s all a bunch of hooey. If the power goes off in the summer, in 20 minutes this place would bake cookies.

Did you always want an Easy Bake Oven?

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

I was watering my garden this morning and got sprinkled on! Just enough to wonder what the heck was going on and look up to see the weird clouds zooming by overhead. I doubt it will actually do anything more, and it's supposed to get in upper 90s to 100 today. It might cool down to lower 90s this weekend. I am ready for cooler weather. Rabbits are still doing ok, but I'm pretty sure they are tired of the misters.

Tomato plants are looking off, I'm wondering if I should just pull them out. I'm not getting enough to make heating up the kitchen to make sauce worth it, and they have completely taken over the pathway. The tomatillos are still big and green, I can't tell if the fruit are getting any bigger. They look like little lanterns.

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

On Monday hubby and I went by TSC to look at fencing, as I've been pushing to get the front garden set up so I can decrease the hand watering needed in the garden. We tried to buy some no climb 6' but ran into issues with understanding which fencing was which price. I purchased what I thought was the right fence. I was in the truck while hubby was chatting with the forklift driver trying to get it loaded. They discovered I ended up buying the wrong stuff (welded wire), but they were completely out of that kind anyway. The manager actually ended up coming out and came up with a potential solution. He had three rolls of 100' welded wire 6' tall that had been damaged in delivery to the store. We could return the one roll I had bought ($180 plus tax) and buy the three rolls for $50 each. Sold!! Some parts of the rolls are really messed up, but since we wanted to make more loops for protecting the trees it will work perfectly. The rest should allow us to put up the garden fence and keep the deer out. Hubby does plan to have a tractor sized gate in the east and possibly west side in addition to the man gates, we aren't as certain about the west side as the tractor would have to drive over the leach field.

Once we build the garage I plan to replace the fence with a nice block wall, stuccoed, with a moon gate. The wall will be attached to the garage and go up to the neighbors fence along the property line, and then over to the house (hopefully expanded by that time).

I plan to try to lay out the garden this weekend while hubby works on the dining room floor with his dad.

 

[Mike CHS]

Welded wire should work fine for a garden fence plus you got a great price.

 

[farmerjan]

You did good on the fence after all. That is a good price, welded wire is not the best for some things but ought to work good for what you want and for that price it will be great....

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

Yeah, hubby doesn't want to use welded wire for animal fencing, but for the garden it should be great. I wanted the no climb for the orchard, to help keep the deer and other animals out. Hubby doesn't want to do anything with the orchard fence until the connex is out of the orchard zone. I think we can at least do the front side up to the gate post since that should not be changing and we can move the connex through the future gate zone.

I'm excited for the garden to get going and the yard to get laid out. Mom said she is going to come over and help on Saturday.