Cabin Crazy in the Prairies
Saturday, May 29, 2021
Sunday, May 16, 2021
Busy weekend
This weekend has been crazy busy. There is a bit of a Covid outbreak in our region and I had to reorganize work accordingly so I can be home with my kids for online learning. (This will be very interesting with rural internet).
In other news, I have a very sick little baby turkey poult. I think it's the shavings because she hasn't been exposed to anyone or anything at all. She lives in the house since her hatch day. Poor little one has moved to 'Sick Bay' with Elian and being treated with vitamins for now until I can get other stuff. I wipe her little nose every few hours and clear out as many shavings as I can when I see them. Poor little one! I'm SO glad we switched over.
We also found Nolan's missing chick. I have no idea where he was but today he showed up in the barn! We did not, however, find Ares and I think he got eaten.
The meat chickens are outgrowing their brooder - quickly and I can't wait until they feather out some more so they can move outside to their outdoor coop and eventually free range with everyone else. In the past they don't really ... range ... very far.
We have 3 external pips on the turkey eggs today but nothing on the guinea ones. I really hope they hatch! My guineas haven't laid eggs in weeks! I'm fairly certain the dogs are eating their eggs.
Wednesday, May 5, 2021
Take 50
It's been over a year since I published a post. I was just doing them on Facebook but I want to get off of there so here we are again. Take ... 50 probably.
Since last year we have gotten turkeys and guineas. We have three turkeys - 1 Tom and 2 hens (Henry, Madison and Annette) We also have our first two turkey poults from them! (Alice and Felicita)
#Idontnamethem
My chick coop is filled with chicks growing (including many silkies and meat chicks) and we have 3 guines in the yard that randomly lay eggs whenever they want.
I will be posting more updates here over the next while and about our shenanigans. Keep checking back!
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Hydrant Shed
He started off by sleeping in. He wasn't out of the house for any chores until after noon. He dumped the loader for me and I then re-filled it and I finished cleaning my summer coop. Well, the chicken side. I still have to clean out the pig side but we have to take the wall down for that (that's another story). While I was shoveling, I got annoyed of him sitting in the loader and I demanded he be productive.
Now, if I could rewind this, I probably should have let him just sit in the loader. 😒
This set in motion a great many events. He made plans.
Magic.
#imjustsaying
Monday, April 20, 2020
1 month
Saturday, April 18, 2020
I have no idea what day it is
But. The best part of this is that I will only have TWO classes and TWO practicums left before I am officially done my certificate for ECE. It will then be onto my level III classes! EEK excited! Just gotta get there.
I've also been trying to order stuff for the kids' birthdays but Amazon isn't shipping ANYTHING that isn't essential. I get it but I'm a little annoyed. I want to make each kid a 'box' of fun, crafty, unique items for them. I do have quite a bit sorted out just need to get it organized now.
My hen in the bathroom is taking a turn for the worse I think. I should have gotten to her sooner and I think I could have helped her. She is eating a bit but is moving less. :( We are sad but are still hoping for the best.
In better news, three of our four kittens have wonderful homes to go to. Disclaimer, we don't actively seek homes for our cats because our farm is perfectly happy with many cats. It's a farm, it has mice and birds and other stuff I don't want eating my chickens. We have three outside cats and two inside cats (soon to be summer outside cats) and we will be keeping Amber the calico kitten. I will now have 4 calicos and Ginger. Ginger was given to us a few years ago by Azure, along with her siblings and Julie the mama cat. I was so upset when Julie got hit on the road. :( Ginger was eating chickens last year but this year … seems to have gotten over it. Hopefully she really is over it because she's kind of nice now.
I also forgot to get updated pictures of my chicks. Tomorrow (again) I will try to do a post just about them. It's their first day in their outside run tomorrow- I'll report on that.
Nikki learned to ride her bike today. She's been working on it for a few days and I'm glad she's gotten the hang of it because I'm tired of running.
Friday, April 17, 2020
Day 28 - RIP Auggie
Speaking of chicks, the chicks that hatched are doing well! One did pass away from what I suspect was a bowel obstruction issue, but from what I've been told the rest are doing well. There was also some farm eggs hatching at another person's house. Four of those have hatched out well and they are still waiting to see if there will be more.
Incubator update : Running two incubators is more time consuming. One of them is requiring hand-turning so I've been planning that about three times a day. At first I was turning every single egg, but then I imagined what a hen would do and I gently run my hands down each row and they kind of roll a little. (shrug) We will see what happens with that. There are over 50 eggs in that incubator. In the other one, with the turner, there are 17 bantam eggs (out of 18) and 19 standard eggs (out of 23) growing. Well, technically there are 4 eggs I can't tell in the standard ones but until I can tell I'm going to count them. BOTH incubators are having a bit of trouble stabilizing their temperatures all of a sudden, and I think it's the sensor in both of them. I am wondering if it just gets super dusty. I'm temped to vacuum it but … it would suck if the sensor broke completely. My turner is also losing it's motor. I've been checking it often and even turning it off for a couple hours here and there. I'm going to need to invest in two more thermometers. Right now I have one in each but I feel safer with two in each. I don't worry about humidity during the incubation until lockdown, then I bring it up to about 60% ish. The first eggs should be hatching close to the 1st of May.
Other news, it was finally nice outside for me to really take stock of the chicken yard. I had a friend make a chicken saddle for my hens and it works really well! Or … at least it looks adorable and she looks so fashionable wearing it. My friend is going to make me at least 4 more. These little hen saddles protect my hens backs from the roosters. A couple of my girls have gouges from being the 'favorites'. Poor girls.
I also have a hen in my bathroom, again. I really thought she would be dead by now but I can't bring myself to throw her outside. I have been giving her a bath in ACV and Epsom salts daily as well as hand spooning her vitamin water. Tomorrow I'm going to hard boil some eggs and give her two baths and hope that helps. I'm fairly certain she is egg bound OR the egg has cracked inside of her. I need to act quicker when this happens.
We are also looking at changing our feed. I want to start mixing it ourselves. Corey is less eager for this project. I will be looking for flax seed, oats, barley, maybe some split peas, corn maybe? I will see what's available around me from some local farmers. I want to get myself set up for the winter too, but that project might be trickier. We have to fix up our summer barn to be a little better for the winter so I can house MORE chickens than usual. Plus guineas.
Alright, that's a big update. I'll leave the rest for tomorrow!