Broody chicken

We've got a few chickens from our original flock that are getting pretty broody - expressing their desire to stay on their eggs and try to hatch them into chicks. One of them has been very persistant, to the point of harranging other chickens to lay eggs after we've collected the ones she was sitting on. We decided to let her try her hand at motherhood - at the very least it means free chickens, and if she fails, we're really only out half a dozen eggs.



She's currently living in one of the old portable coops. I blocked off access to the second nest box so she stays in just one, which seems to be working. I haven't seen her off the nest once yet, although obviously she's eating the food and drinking the water we set out for her. I moved her on July 10th, so I'm hoping we should have chicks by the end of the month. We shall see!

Turkey pictures

These are the original three turkeys that we have left from our first seven. They're currently living in a hutch in the front yard, far from the chickens to avoid contamination. They're getting pretty big!

Here is the two we bought a week after our first batch - they're now quite big, and about 18" tall.


This guy is the last of the first batch - he's slightly smaller than his two brothers, but doing well. He's still a little downy but has mostly feathered out.

More turkeys

Our second order of turkey poults came in today - 6 healthy looking chicks. We'll see how well they do - so far they seem to be happy, active, and fairly quiet. I know chicks are noisy when they're unhappy and chatter a little when content, but I don't know where turkeys fall yet. I haven't heard the distinctive call the other poults had, but they're only 2 days old today, so maybe they're not feeling too social yet.

Hopefully lots of pictures to come tonight!

General update

Wow, it's been a busy month!

We butchered our last batch of meat chickens. Unfortunately I made a big error - I transported and stored the chickens in heavy cardboard boxes I got from work. I had punched 1" holes in them, but it was apparently insufficient - we lost about 1/3 of the birds we brought in. It was a devistating loss to what would have been one of our best runs. Well, live and learn - I think our next step is to invest in some cheap plastic storage bins. I used some of those for the ducks (and previously for chickens, and they seem to work well. I used a hole saw to cut eight 2" holes around the top edge, and could fit about 4 or 5 chickens in each 20 gallon tub. They're not space-efficient because they're so tall, but that could probably work for helping with airflow. They also don't stack tight enough for carrying on the trailer, so it's the back of the truck for now. I think maybe if I build flat tables for them with bars for holding the base steady, they might work better that way, but for now the truck has enough space for 18 bins, stacked two-high.

The turkey poults are growing like mad. We haven't lost any more since we lost the first 4 of our 7. The two older ones are big, almost the size of the grown meat chickens. The younger one has gone through a growth spurt and is quickly catching up with his older roommates. They're very personable birds - of any so far, I think they're the most likely I'll feel bad about butchering. They make a pe-pe-pee-peep sound when they're little, and we took to making that sound back at them, since they seemed to view it as communication. Possibly as a result of that, they're very interested in us and not afraid. When I come up to the side of their pen, they walk up to take a better look at us, and make little young-poult gobbles.

We are also current fostering a mama cat (named Juno) and her kittens for the local Humane Society. We got her about 4 weeks ago when she was fat with her babies. Right after we got her, Juno was scared by a dog and went nuts on my hand, but otherwise she's been a loving affectionate cat to us. The other cats, however, Juno picks fights with - even when not near the kittens. The dogs she generally tolerates, unless they wander close to where the kittens are hidden. The dogs never really had to deal with aggressive cats them, so they get confused when Juno goes into defensive-mama mode. I think they're most freaked out about how such a small thing can produce such rage. The kittens are finally big enough that Juno is taking them out for walks, however. They're very cute and in that clumsy new kitten stage. We're starting to handle them to get them used to human contact. Most of them seem ok, except for the one kitten who looks like Juno (a tiger calico). I was holding her last night and thought she was having trouble breathing and sneezing - after a minute I realized that she was notstop hissing at me, and occasionally spitting. I got her to calm down a little and she went down to occasionally hissing and the most ferocious growl a 4-ounce cat can produce. I'm a little worried she's hurt somewhere, but we'll see what happens as we start handling the kittens more. Juno's an ok mom, but she doesn't care much when we take the kittens - she's mostly interested in getting attention from us, and the kittens get forgotten.

The garden I planted this year is going so-so. We had some early hot weather while I was off work late April, so I was optimistic and planted a lot of seeds and a few greenhouse plants. We then got a few weeks of frosts at night, so much of the plants died and nothing seemed to sprout. The pepper plants I had picked up from a greenhouse seemed ok, however. Then I did a second planting in late May, since other tips I got said after Memorial day I should be ok. We got a second set of frosty nights, and then even the plants that had made the first frost died off. At that point I kind of gave up on the garden, and weeds started coming up. It was very heavily covered with chicken manure, so the weeds really liked it.

Then I looked at it again a few weeks back, and noticed that some plants were coming up! Sugar snap peas and bibb lettuce were part of my first planting, and they were sprouting in their rows. I had lost most of my squashes, but it seems that the melons I planted were doing ok, and one zucchini plant made it. Two of my red cabbages seem to have pulled through also. I went back and heavily weeded around the plants that were coming up, although much of the other areas remain overgrown with weeds. The lettuce has gone amazingly well. Only about 3/4 of the rows I planted came up, but that's still far more lettuce than we can eat on our own, and my wife really likes her salads. The sugar snap peas are growing up a simple EMT trellis I made for them, and last week they rewarded us with some large, juicy pods full of peas. There's even a small zucchini growing - although the melons are still bare and the cabbages have yet to ball up and show signs of insect invaders. I have a plan for next year, but having a one-year cycle time for my designs means that issues I find take a long time to fix.

Well, I brought in the most recent batch of chickens in to be slaughtered. Since I had more chickens this time than before, I tried using cardboard boxes with 3/4" holes punched in them for transporting the birds to the processing center. Bad idea. I lost about 1/3 of my chickens in between dropping them off and the center opening up (I drop off for processing because I have to be at my day job by 6am, an hour before the center opens up). This kills our cost for the chickens - suddenly we just paid an extra 50% on each bird for feed and initial purchase price (but not butchering). The lesson to me - sometimes it's good to scrimp, because you can get away with little (the chicken's pen is old wood from pallets and scrap pieces of fencing from the egg chicken setup). Sometimes, like today, you pay more in the end for being cheap. So, sometime between now and 8 weeks from today, I'll be building cages of some type.

Alongside that, we got our next batch of 50 chicks and 6 Rouen ducks. The ducks are supposed to be good for raising, so I want to see if they'll lay eggs and raise ducklings for us. A few ducks every couple of months would be nice, and we'll have some ducks to keep around the farm. Compared to the chickens, the ducks have a lot more personality. The egg-laying chickens are very flighty and tend to make me think more of wild birds than pets. The meat-destined chickens are lazy and inanimate - they evoke more an image of white fluffy boulders than an active animal. The ducks, however, are a nice mix - alive and active, but not quite so skittish as the chickens. They eye us, one side of their face cocked to us at a time. When I approach the pen they flee as a group - providing comic relief as they slip and get stuck upside down, without big wings to flip themselves over. They vocalize much more in a chatter than the chickens.

Part of my goal is to track this batch of chickens more closely, so I can calculate approximate costs. Therefore, some of these posts may be low on story and high on concise details, so I can go back and find out when something happened, and get counts (bags of food, etc.) To start these chicks we have a 50-lb bag of chick starter from our local feed store.

Yaris Towing Hitch

One of my first projects welding was a towing hitch for my Yaris - our tiny but fuel-efficient car. Why a hitch?

• My generous father donated his old bike rack to us - it only fit the one car he doesn't like.
• Someday I'd like to own a car dolly. When I need to take one of the cars in, it's such a pain to need to arrange for someone to follow me and give me a ride, and then take me back when the car is done. Anything past an oil change requires too much time to wait, also. If I could haul the car there with the truck, then drive off with the empty trailer, I could leave either vehicle there. The other option would be a light trailer for my motorcycle, as that's just hitting the limits of what the Yaris can tow, and the trailer would have to stay with the car for now.
• Towing small trailers - even if I lose 10mpg, I'm doing better than with the truck. I've got a little Harbor Freight 4' x 4' trailer that should fit behind the car just fine. At some point I'd like to put a tiny Teardrop Trailer body on the same trailer, for winter camping when a tent just doesn't quite cut it.

Welding my own hitch was not only a good experience, but it saved a good deal of money - the main tube was a piece of scrap from work, the side pieces were cheap pieces of trailer suspension, making the actual receiver tube the most expensive part.

Aftermarket hitches for the Yaris seem to mount in a few different places - either to the frame rails under the trunk, or to the tow hooks that hang down under the car. Given that the tow hooks were already at about the right level, and have a few mounting holes in them, I decided that was the best way to go.

Here she is, on her maiden test:

I figured if I could pick the back end of the car up (probably around 1000 lbs), it'd be safe for towing anything I had in mind.

It still needs a little work - the tailpipe cutout (reinforced by a piece of 2" x 2" x 1/4" angle iron) is a little too small, and the pipe rattles something fierce. I was able to pull the tailpipe up a bit with the rubber hanger, but I'd like to extend the cut instead. I also forgot to weld on chain loops, so I can attach safety chains. Most setups I've seen put these on the receiver tube, but just in case, I think I'm going to put mine on the cross tube.

Tiny turkeys

I found a local source for turkeys last week. We want to only raise a few, and most mail-order poultry places have minimum orders of 15 birds (for the birds' sake in shipping). Heather picked up the first three last week. They're tiny! Much smaller than I expected, and smaller than even the chicken chicks we've gotten. It's still frosting at night occasionally here, so we're keeping them in large plastic tub in the living room.




Unfortunately, we've already lost one. I don't know if he fell in the water and drowned, was sick, too warm, or something else. The other poults seem to be doing just fine. Heather had fun holding one tonight, and discovered that if you peep at them, they'll peep back at you from across the room.




We should have another four poults next week, when our local contact can hatch us some more. These are Blue Slate turkeys, a "heritage breed." Most commercial turkeys come from one of the broad breasted varieties, and grow large and fast. I have no need for anything as big as a 35 lb turkey, so I figured I'd go with something a little more interesting, and hopefully more hardy.