The other night I was driving home from work late at night.  It was dark, cold, and pouring rain.  It had been a long, hard day at work, and all I wanted to do was get to my peaceful, quiet home, eat a good dinner, and get some sleep before going off to work & starting again early the next day.  And then I saw it - the largest tree ever fell and was laying across our dirt road, blocking the only way home.  It was so discouraging to see that tree.  Why do trees only fall across roads at the worst possible time?  There was no way to drive around the massive tree.  It was a huge, old, dead tree.  The recent rain brought it down and made a muddy mess of the road around the fallen tree.

I couldn't get a picture of it as I didn't have my camera with me, and it was so dark and raining it would have been tough.  I called my husband, who luckily was home, and he drove out from home to "his side" of the tree and surveyed the situation from there.  It was no problem for him.  He climbed over the tree and brought me a change of clothes from home so I didn't destroy my work clothes, I changed in the car, then we both climbed back over the tree and he drove me the rest of the way home.  While I made dinner, he and the neighbor made short work of getting that monster tree out of the road.  They cut it up with chainsaws and pushed it out of the way with the tractor.  It was amazing how fast it was done.  What was I fretting about?  No problem for 2 men, a chainsaw and a tractor.

I took these pictures the next day when the rain finally let up.

  

at 10:50 AM Comments

One of my favorite poems is The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. I can't say these pictures are of a road not taken, because it's the only real road to our house, but it's a road less traveled than the paved streets.  And I love our place down the road less traveled.

 

at 11:26 AM Comments

Autumn is here, we've been selling firewood.  Leaves are falling, deer are everywhere on our property.  And the chicks continue to take their fare share of our time every night.  It's been almost 3 weeks since we got the chicks.  We prepare treats (veggies like corn, broccoli, lima beans, squash, lettuce, raw spinach)  for them every night.  Sometimes we even found some earthworms for them - that always goes over very well!  It helps to make them tame when we spend time with them.  I've learned that they like the front of their necks & chests rubbed, now many of them line up to have their necks rubbed.  Even the wildest chicks (such as the little leghorn rooster-to-be) seem to calm down when I rub their necks.  Every now & then a pair of chicks ends up in the chick infirmary inside the house.  Just today 2 chicks were released back into the coop after spending a few days inside.  It seemed one of them was very weak, would barely stand up on her own.  She came into the infirmary & passed out on her side as soon as she & a friend were separated from the flock.  We learned chicks like to be with other chicks, so we try to bring 2 inside together.  The latest pair spent several days being monitored, were well fed and watered, and the one little girl got her energy back up & is spunky again.  I never thought raising chicks would be so complicated, but it's fun. 

              Here's Little Leghorn on Day 1                                             Leggy on Day 20

at 8:15 PM Comments

It's been a week since I posted about the chicks - they are growing up.  They are getting feathers, tails and combs.  They grow so fast. 

There have been some tragedies - we lost 1 chick and 1 guinea keet because of the momma hen.  The guinea flew over the mesh barrier that divides momma hen's side of the coop, despite the fact that the barrier is 6 feet tall.  Needless to say, momma hen doesn't like guineas.  That night everyone got their little wings trimmed.  Then another day momma hen crushed one of her own chicks by jumping on it by mistake.

We used to have 1 Araucana which seemed to have a twisted leg when he was real small.  Luckily that grew out & is all better now - she's running just fine.  One yellow Bantam chick had one tiny speck of black on a wing feather on each of her sides, and for some reason the others started pecking at the black dot on one of her wings.  Within just a couple hours she lost half her wing.

at 9:05 AM Comments

The chicks have grown so much in the past week!  I consider the 18 chicks without a momma hen and the 5 guinea keets to be "my babies".  The hen is momma to her 8 chicks, which are maintained separate from my chicks.  My chicks are much friendlier than the others, they love to be held & fed.  They run to us when we enter the coop, and taste anything we feed them.  The other chicks with the hen are timid and eat only what momma hen approves.

The baby chicks love treats.  That's how we've taught them to come to us - we give them a treat at least once a day.  They love squash, broccoli, corn, lettuce, spinach, and especially earthworms.  We cut up the veggies into tiny pieces for them.  The earthworms are their all-time fav.  The chicks with their momma are not too sure about eating the veggies, but they also love earthworms.

The baby chicks are developing feathers on their tails & wings.  They have learned to roost somewhat, at least when they are awake.  One of the funniest things about the chicks without a momma is how they sleep - they lay down flat on the ground.  We thought it was because we started them in a glass aquarium which had a heating pad underneath.  They would fall sleep flat out on their sides or stomachs, with necks stretched out and heads laying on the ground off to the side or in front of them.  And they would all sleep on top of each other, in a big pile, chick heads & bodies everywhere.  But even after they've moved into the chicken coop, they still sleep like this.  If they fall asleep on the short chick-size roost in their chicken coop, their heads eventually fall to the ground when they pass out, causing them to fall off.  Our chicks & keets take sleeping serious, I guess.

The guinea keets get along fine with the chicks - we were wondering/hoping all would go well with them growing up together.  The keets are somewhat older/larger and are much more aggressive when it comes to eating treats.  We just have to make sure there's always enough treats to go around so no one gets left out.

at 3:30 PM Comments

Last Saturday the chicken coop/barn/shed was delivered.  Before delivery we had to cut down low hanging tree limbs off many trees in the area where the building was going, and also above the entry road for the truck to drive.  It was a cold and rainy day on Saturday when the buidling was delivered.

After we got the building, we insulated the interior and put up interior walls to cover the insulation, built an interior wall to divide the chicken coop from the rest of the building, put in a door on this interior wall to enter the chicken coop area, and caulked, sealed and painted the interior.

at 2:20 PM Comments

Today we increased our flock by 1 white Leghorn chick and 5 Guinea keets.  Randy wanted Guinea hens because they are good bug-eaters, and we have ALOT of ticks outside in the summer.  We plan on letting the birds free-range when they are adults.  We got the Guineas and Leghorn from an Amish family - we really didn't want the Leghorn, but they gave it to us for free because it was raised with the Guineas & they didn't want to keep just one chick.  The Guineas and Leghorn chick are larger and more developed than our Bantam and Araucana chicks, but we put them all together so they will get used to each other now.  The Guineas already have feathers; the Leghorn is still a puffball, but has more developed wings than our other chicks.

So, to recap, now we have 5 Guinea keets, 1 Leghorn, 7 Araucanas, and 10 Bantam chicks, plus a Bantam hen with her 8 chicks.  Hopefully in spring we'll have eggs!!  The Araucanas are called Easter Egg chickens, because they lay blue and green eggs - should be interesting.  I was told the Bantams lay brown eggs and the Leghorn has white eggs. 

We got the barn/chicken coop delivered today, but it needs some work done before it's usable as a chicken coop.  I'll keep you posted on the progress.

at 5:17 PM Comments