Chickens – Page 2 – Raising Wood

July 20, 2022April 23, 2026

Clunkers and Baby Spiders

I stopped at the end of the driveway to check the mailbox. When I get back in the car, a friendly grasshopper joined me. I gently encourage her to leave out the open door. While she hopped out, two more jump in. I grab them and toss them outside and quicky shut the door. Ain’t nobody got time for that! As I make the drive to the house, there were no fewer then 20 impacts on the side of my car. The grasshoppers clunk spook when you drive past so clunk they jump right into the side clunk of the car. Clunk. As crazy hot as it is right now (111f), there are the equivalent crazy volume of grasshoppers.

Jenny and some of the kids are down sick, so I’ve got all the animals and garden responsibilities this night. Usually I do the animals and maintenance tasks around the farm while Jenny cultivates and nurtures the garden after livestock. After several years of my anarchy gardening strategy, she has come along and enforced rigid rows and strict water disciplines. It’s working, even with the onslaught of grasshoppers doing their best impersonation of locusts this year. Clunk.

Gardens are busy places. Among the tomatoes I found flowers in the pollination stage, green tomatoes leveling up, and ripe red tomatoes for harvest. In the middle was a zipper spider, ready and eager to capture and consume grasshoppers tearing through the place. Look! Even a baby spider coming along nicely.

Taking a step away from any garden helps bring perspective. The distress and violence in always in the micro. It’s in the conflict of the insects and arachnids, weeds competing for water with the productivity plants, rampaging fungus flowering in the shadows, and dismal leaves rotting from ground contact.

When you see the whole macro garden you see abundance and re-creation. You see canopies of green making life from sunbeams. You see seeds wrapped in nutrients meant to be consumed. You see nothing is wasted, even the losses cycle back into the system for new life. I see the father God in that cycle, and it’s a reminder for me how he looks at the heart of the man and not just the problems obvious in the micro view.

“Robert make sure you find those two ripe cantaloupes!”

One nights harvest, so many melons to eat and preserve and share. Time to turn these chickens loose of the clunkers.

July 14, 2022April 23, 2026

Chicken Tractor 2.0

We built a second version of a chicken tractor for the incubator champion chickens and moved them outside to the grass.

The design is heavily influenced by the ubiquitous Joel Salatin builds from Polyface Farms. Since we had a truck bed liner salvaged from a neighbors trash, we used it for the canopy in the back.

Every day this gets moved to a new patch of grass, the food bucket is checked and the water is managed. Protection from predator and wandering off while befitting from the pasture and fertilizing the grass. Wins all around.

April 21, 2022April 23, 2026

Planning a Hatch

This spring we are planning on hatching chicken eggs. Jenny is actually, I’m mostly observing this project.

In planning a Hatch, there are steps. First, a daddy rooster and a momma hen… What’s that? Ok, you get it.

Because we’re American, modern, and do not have a broody hen, the fertilized eggs go in an incubator for three weeks. It’s like a spa for 22 chicken eggs that doesn’t at all remind me of humans hatching in Huxley’s Brave New World.

Now there are details to manage and this engineer farm lady is all over it. Adjust this dial to manage humidity, that one to manage temp, this one there to manage turning. Did I mention the turning and the lights? Because this little R2D2 unit is making sure it’s still busy at night on my dresser when sleep is what’s happening.

Sunday is our big day, although maybe we see some pips coming in Saturday. Who knows?? Or maybe nothing and our rooster is no good with his hen harem!

We are planning for life though and have the brooder pen ready with pine shavings, heat bed, water and feed. Give’m a month and they’ll be ready for outdoor time; just in time for the phase two hatching to commence.

Nice resort waiting to hit capacity with chicks

March 23, 2022April 23, 2026

Barnyard Backups and Fluffy Family Drama

We timed our goat kidding season to correspond with the spring bloom this year. That makes the feeding easier and more nutritious for the mothers and the temperatures are friendly to the kids.

One takeaway from last year’s birth season was to have the backup supplies ready on hand. So I packed up this bag with gloves, shop towels, knife, booster drench for momma and a colostrum substitute for a kid. We watched the calendar and buckled in for a season of new life.

Friday night we came home around 1130pm. Ain’t no party scene like the like take-the-kids-to-the-doc-and-24hr-cvs-two-towns-over party scene.

Step one, get the kids in bed. Step two, go figure out what the high pitch hollering down in the barn is all about.

It’s all about one new momma giving birth to twins. She birthed unassisted and took care of the first kid well. She ignored the second born, which is who we heard. Because goats are unintentionally a pain, it was the coldest night in a week and downright nippy for Texas. We had fun drying off the little guy and then convincing momma to nurse him too. Come 230am, we’ve finally accomplished all those objectives and it’s time for bed. One boy, one girl, all good!

Saturday, Sunday and Monday had frequent checks and cuddle sessions. My kids are great at snuggling the kids, and the goats seasoned with human interaction from the start are far easier to handle as they grow.

Monday morning, time for another birth! This one’s a single, and nursing was well underway when Jenny checked. Still wet though, not sure about that, so we dry him off. Come back out a few hours later and realize, we got ourselves a problem.

One of the twins muscled the newborn away and drank his milk! Just ran him off! Compounding the problem, momma was happy about it and was talking with the interloper while ignoring her own offspring! Not much else to do except separate them and hope it all works out.

Jenny goes to check a few hours later. Same story, same problem! The enterprising little one snuck through the fencing. He pushed his cousin off the milk and took up his rightful place as the adopted one again.

Jenny issued separation orders and then redid the fencing. A few hours later, same story. Restraining orders reissued and more fence changes. The problem is they are so small, think a Chihuahua, and they go through small holes.

“I see your fence and I raise you many escapes for play time”

So last night the youngest one got a supplement of colostrum for his dinner. The backup bag with backup supplies paid off. We’re optimistic about the future with these kids figuring out their own momma, just needs more time, right?

What’s that Jenny? He was in the wrong pen again this morning?… To be continued…

February 2, 2022April 23, 2026

Garden Variety Chicken

We did not do very well with winter crops in the garden. By not very well, I mean life caught us in a series of squalls and nothing was planted for winter. But spring is coming and we’ll start up again. Like baseball, everything works well in the spring.

In the meantime, what if there was a way to reduce the squash bug population, aggressively fertilize the earth, till the surface thoroughly, lower overall operating capital and labor while improving our protein machines?

Turns out chickens are good for all that. She is the supreme predator of the pestilent squash bug eggs. Hens are rapid and cheerful tillers, turning over the top soils and integrating top level biomass into the soil to accelerate composting. Free fertilizers with strong nitrogen content are deposited all over the garden. They do all this unsupervised while laying improved eggs daily. It’s a great deal and a fun example of integrative ecological systems benefiting each other.

In all of the tilling work they uncovered more troves of sweet potatoes from rogue vines. These are past a freeze date and not good for people to eat. They are also not part of the hen cuisine in our area.

But they are dynamite for happy piggies going through winter. More on that later.

August 24, 2021April 23, 2026

Hens Gone Feral

The chicken RV concept had a lot going for it. Chickens get grass and bugs, they can roam off for the day and come back at night, they can lay their eggs in the RV for easy human collection. These girls ain’t having it and started roosting in the wood pile. They went feral on us while we had sick days in the house.

The wood pile is nice and safe because when a human goes to snag the hen from one side she just flutters to the other side. Then she clucks at you while you do your best three stooges impersonation through breaking branches. Trust me, that’s how it goes.

Then the roosters and the hens realized they ain’t the same after all and the hens have run away from the roosters. They perch up on them there fences and cluck at the boys prancing about the yard. About sundown they make a run for it across the barnyard to get to the woodpile. The roosters try to nab a girl for the night. Most of them make it, some do not. Barbarians, these fowl.

Last night I managed to catch all the girls and stick them back in the Chicken RV. The boys just orbit around them now. Which may turn out to be useful, we can haul the hens around in their coop and the boys can free range grasshopper hunt around them without ever fertilizing them. We’ll see if it works.

July 27, 2021April 23, 2026

Chickens on Patrol

I decided the chickens were big enough to range freely in the pasture. Not knowing much about chickens, I waited for the cats to stop prowling around them for a few days. If the cats are scared off, they’re probably good to go.

The cattle are unsure, the goats don’t care, and the shepherd dogs have fortunately stopped chasing them around.

EDIT: that didn’t go as planned. They returned to the front yard to roost instead of the chicken RV. Re-boot is underway.

May 21, 2021April 23, 2026

Training Chickens

Chicks don’t stay chicks. They get bigger. As they get bigger they become more cold tolerant and more aggressive in their hunting and eating capabilities. Here are some adjustments we’ve made.

It’s time to start moving them outside in increments. Every morning with good weather we put them in the top deck of the mobile chicken home. They are sheltered in here until they are comfortable heading downstairs, and they are also learning that the stairs are actually there.

2020 was the year of the RV, and the chickens are no exception

Once they come down the ramp they have access to water, feed, and most exciting: fresh turf.

You can see the rope on the front and this allows us to easily move the chicken RV to a new patch of grass every day.

What does moving the chicken RV do? First it keeps the birds from hammering down and destroying the grass. Second, while they are on a patch of turf it is being heavily fertilized and aerated. Third, chickens like to scratch and peck and hunt, and every hunter loves new territory to hunt. Fourth, chickens eat plants. The chlorophyll is great for their bodies and new grass is tasty grass.

For now they come back inside at night, that will change next week. Ready to live outside fully when the weather is fully warm.

This week I found a 8in snake dead in the yard. I brought it inside and tossed it to the chickens. After watching the birds lightly peck the serpent for a while I got bored and went away. Then they found their taste for the snake because when I came back it was completely gone, which is where this picture came from. Good work chickens!

Chicken training so far: going down a ramp, drinking water, and eating snake.

April 28, 2021April 23, 2026

Birds yet to Feather

You know those weeknights where you know get some goods at the farm store, you have your kids with you and the chicks are half price after Easter?

Of course we come home with a dozen chicks. They are full of down and fluff and rapidly transitioning to feathers. I’m excited to get them in the pasture behind the cattle to harvest the fly proteins!

What’s the biggest threat to the birds right now? A curious and energetic toddler that wants to pick them up. So they get a lid and a heat lamp in the laundry room.