Category Archives: Family stories

Nothing to do with chickens really

I just wanted to say how blessed I am to married to my husband, Calvin.  He is the a wonderful husband.  He has the patience of a saint. He is the only man that I ever met that I have really felt like he is my soul mate.  He makes me better.  He makes me feel whole.

Recently, we went in Walmart looking for a web cam which we know nothing about.  We got separated and a lady asked him if she could help him.  He said no but you can help my wife.  Realizing he was looking around for me, she asked what I looked like.  He said she is very pretty.  She then told him he is a keeper and wanted to meet his wife.

The purpose of telling you that story is so you can see how blindly in love he is with me, too.  We dated when we were 16 and with our fathers being military men, we moved apart.  We never forgot each other and kept in contact all thru our lives.  I married and had three children but he never married because he always said I was the only woman he loved and wanted to marry.  My husband passed away from a motorcycle accident.  Calvin and I married in 1996, thirty years plus after dating during our freshman year of high school.

If I am grouchy, he looks outside to see if there is a full moon but doesn’t say a word to me.  We just laugh.  I feel so irritable when there is a full moon.  Obviously, he is making excuses for me.

I don’t know if we would have lasted all these years had we married out of high school.  He is an easy going man and I was …. well, I was difficult to settle down.  But, I have settled down now and we are perfect for one another.  We enjoy the same things. And we laugh all the time.

He is the stability I have always needed in my life.  I know he will never leave me, cheat on me or hurt me.  He has worked hard all his life and is retiring in December with forty years working for the government so he has a retirement pension.  He has bought property and just made some wise decisions in his life.   I am so proud of him.  He is so happy to be able to take care of me.   Oh, we are a long way away from being wealthy but we are healthy and love one another.

I can hardly wait for December to come and be able to spend every day with Calvin.  We have gotten up at 5am for so long and it will be great to sleep in and spend the morning together enjoying our coffee on the back porch.

And we plan to travel, too.  I always wanted to be an archeologist so we are going to be adventurous and go look for diamonds and stones and gold…oh my.   But first, we will go see our new grand daughter, Catherine.  She will be eleven months old by that time.

I know the world is in a mess right now and the economy is struggling.  There are people without jobs, people losing their homes, and people who are hungry.  I believe it is all in God’s hands and everything that happens, He has allowed to happen.  So reach out and help your neighbor, if you can.    And don’t forget to thank Him for all your many blessings.

So I just wanted to say, thank you Lord.

Barefooting with chickens

I hope you realize you can’t go outside barefoot or in open-toed shoes around your chickens with bright red polish on your toes.  There is always one curious chicken that is going to follow you around and peck at your toes.

Another thing I realized,  you need to wear shoes in your chicken yard that are flat bottomed.  I have worn tennis shoes in my yard and it took forever to clean out the crevices.  The water pressure from your water hose is great to clean out those crevices and you don’t have to touch the nasty stuff.

Also, I would  like to point out that “barefooting” around chicken poop is not a good idea.  When I was at the doctor’s office (because I was losing a toenail due to an infection related to going barefoot), the doctor told me that going barefoot is a bad idea even when you don’t have animals.  He said the dirt has germs in it that can cause infections.  That was a few years ago and I still go barefoot.  I live in Florida…it’s hot…and putting on shoes take time and I am always in a hurry.

Also, if you  run around barefoot like I do, there is a handy way to get  your feet clean before you go inside.  I water down an area in my yard that is real grassy and then do a little “mashed potato” dance.  Just rubbing your feet on the wet grass will clean my feet better than soap.

And speaking of cleaning…another handy thing I have learned is how great leaves work to clean my buckets.   My white buckets filled with water tend to turn green if they are out in the sun for a day or two.  Algae, I guess.  The chlorophyll in the grass and leaves works just like bleach but cheaper.

I was out in the yard one day filling the water buckets and one had some green on the edges and my scrubby was no where in sight.  I needed something abrasive so I grabbed a leaf off the tree and used the underside of the leaf to rub the green off the bucket.  It worked great.  Even better and faster than the scrubby.

God sure did a great job providing us with everything we need in life.

Neighbor down, chicken count up

My neighbor has asked me if I want her chickens. How could I say no?  She loves her chickens and was almost in tears just thinking about not having them anymore.  At least she can look over in my yard and see her “babies”.

Gail is a great neighbor.  She is 100 pounds dripping wet and has the energy of 10 people.  I exaggerate just a little.  Among the many things she does, she recently had a children’s book published.  “The Tales of Sweet Day Farms: There’s a pig in my kitchen and a horse on my porch” is the name of her book.

But in the meantime, she is scheduled for surgery and recovery time is 6 weeks so she can’t take care of her animals. So, now I have another momma with three baby chicks, one rooster and fourteen hens.  After her recovery time, she may be headed back to Pensacola, Florida to help care for aging parents.  So sad for me and her.  She loves her home and animals.

We worked yesterday putting up fence for another yard.  We had planned to make another yard eventually but we had to get on it right away to help her out.  We got outside early to start working but it turned hot quickly.  Thank goodness, it turned stormy outside and the winds started blowing and it clouded up with no rain.

I managed to find all the ant piles outside so I have bites on my feet, legs and arms and even one on my chest.  I was so hot that I was wearing as little as possible so there was more skin for the ants to bite quickly, I guess.  I don’t know if it is my imagination, but I swear I feel feverish when I get a bunch of ant bites….and I am sure I have at least 15.

Gail was amazed at how fast we got the fence up and were ready for her chickens.  We already had a house that wasn’t being used but none of them went in there last night.  I do hope they manage to find the nests I put in there so they will lay where I can find the eggs.  They were pretty upset with the move so they may not lay for a few days.

I just can’t imagine having a better neighbor than Gail and it makes me so sad to think of her and her husband moving away.  She is always willing to check on my animals while my husband and I took a couple days vacation.  We had many a conversation over the fence about our chickens, dogs, kids, husbands and whatever else came to mind.  I have only been in her house once and she has only been in mine once in five years.    Sounds funny, I guess but visiting over the fence is about all the time either of us really has.  She is outside feeding her animals and I am doing the same and that’s when we visit.  She also has a day care in her home.  You would be surprised how much you can know about someone even though it is just conversations over a fence.

I am headed outside to make friends with my new chickens.  I am going to go into the yard a lot in the next few days just to get them use to me.  I call “chickie, chickie, chickie” when I go in with food so they will come close to me instead of run away.

Hatching chicks is addictive

OMG, I love waking up in the morning to hear little peeping coming from my incubator.

Yesterday morning, I heard peeping and found a black little Silkie chick standing  in the incubator.  It is amazing to me that a chick can peck its way out of the shell and be walking around the next morning.  I always check the eggs just before I go to bed and there wasn’t even a chip or crack in any of the eggs.

Then this morning, I heard peeping again.  Much to my delight, two baby chicks.  The dark one was up and trying to walk and was actually pretty dry looking.  The little grey one was still trying to get up on its feet and still a little damp looking.  They fluff out so quickly.   The dark one I put into the bath tub with the other four chicks that have hatched out in the last week or so.  The little grey one I will keep under a heat lamp by itself for a few more hours.  She just looks like she wants to sleep.

I call all my chicks “she” from the time they are hatched.  I like to think I am speaking it into existence.  Hens are easier to sell and of course, there is the whole egg thing.  Not much production from the rooster.  As my husband so eloquently put it,” the hens lay the eggs and the roosters lay the hens. ” So unless you want fertilized eggs, there isn’t much use for the rooster.  And yes, the chickens do lay eggs without a rooster.

I do feel the rooster protects the hens.  My neighbor said there was a stray cat in my yard the other day looking like he wanted chicken for dinner.  He said the rooster charged the cat a number of times and the cat left the premises.  I wish I could have seen that.

The rooster is also frequently more colorful than the hen and of course, who doesn’t love the sound of a rooster at 5am.  lol

If you look at the website backyardchickens.com you will see I am not the only person addicted to chickens or hatching  out chicks.  That website has been a wealth of knowledge for me.

Well, I have three more eggs in my incubator that should hatch in the next day or so and my second incubator is loaded down with eggs but they won’t start hatching until the end of the month.  Oh yeah, don’t wash your eggs if you want to hatch them.  There is this protective “boom” on the egg that you don’t want to wash away.

Leah, a fellow chicken raiser, showed me a great system for hatching eggs.  She uses two incubators.  One incubator has the egg turner in it and the other does not.

I write the date I put the egg into the incubator and I know 21 days later I will have a chick if all goes well.   I remove the eggs as each egg reaches the 18th day and put it into the second incubator to hatch.  You just lie the egg down and leave it to hatch now.

Don’t forget to set the incubator up 24 to 48 hours ahead of your date you intend to put eggs in it.  You need to get your temperature and humidity correct before adding eggs.  So, I don’t get the second incubator ready until day 16.  That gives me two days to make sure the incubator is working correctly.  And please go buy a hydrogrometer (I think that is what it is called) to check your humidity and temp.  You can see it in the next picture.  I got mine at Walmart for about 6 bucks, I think.

So let’s say its day 18, and four of the eggs need to go into the second incubator.  You put them in the second incubator and they will hatch there in three days.  The next day, you have three eggs that need to go into the second incubator.  QUICKLY, open the incubator and put the eggs in.  I say quickly because once the eggs reach the 18th day, they should go into “lock down.”  That means you don’t turn the eggs and you normally would not open the lid.

Because I do not get forty eggs in one day, I use this system and it works fine for me.  Just don’t have the second incubator open any longer than you must.   You might have to add more water and you need to add more eggs as the 18th day arrives.

Once the egg hatches and the chick emerges, leave her in there.  Let her dry some and get her walking legs though wobbly they will be.  I have read you leave them in the incubator after hatched for 24 hours.  Doesn’t happen for me.  I am so excited.  Again, I quickly grab the baby chick and the shell and remove them to be put under a heat lamp with the temperature already at 100 degrees.  I have a themometer lying in the bed where the new chick is will be so I am sure the temp is not too hot or too cold.

This box is about a 10×10 inch with a folded t-shirt in it.  She will stay in it until I see she is walking around and pretty much fluffed out…usually a matter of hours.   The heat lamp is red.  This is the little grey chick hatched this morning.

I use stained t-shirts or old towels for the bedding.   Of course, I have washed them and they are clean.  I think the babies can get better footing on the t-shirts and get up and going faster.  I have seen other people use plastic containers with wood shavings.  Slippery to me and I think I read you shouldn’t use wood shavings.  Chicks eat anything.

These are chicks in the bath tub under the red heat lamp.  Chicks needs to have 100 degree temperature for the first two weeks.  The little chick at the bottom of the picture  is the dark chick that hatched out this morning.

Your chicks will not need food or water for three days but I always have it in the chick’s yard/tub/box waiting for them to get the urge.  The yellow yoke was the baby’s food and water and it was absorbed into the chick thru the rectum area.  That is what keeps them satisfied for a couple days.  That is why chicken wholesalers can send baby chicks thru the mail when they are one day old.

I hope the things I tell you are informative.  I really enjoy my chickens as you can probably tell.  It really gives me something to look forward to each morning after I get my hubby off to work.  As soon as it is daylight, I am outside feeding my chickens and seeing that all of them made it thru the night.  I have a couple of broody hens right now and I soon will be checking them daily to see if any new baby chicks have hatched.

My chicken yard looks rather red-neck right now but I have lots of plans to make my chicken yard/houses look like a nice neighborhood.  I am going to put a privacy fence around their yard, too.  It is fun for me to make drawings and make plans for the future for their surroundings.

Maybe it is the motherly side of me or the creative side of me or the control freak part of me that makes me enjoy this life so much.  I am looking forward to the fall when we will prepare our soil for our first garden, if all goes well.  Vegetable seeds are so cheap and any extra food we grow and don’t eat will go to our relatives first and then the chickens.

This is indeed, a quiet and peaceable life.  I love it.

Re-using things for my chicken yard

I am continually using things for my chickens and their yard instead of throwing them away.  Sometimes I go to Habitat and get wood and boards.

Recently, we had a 4×4 porch top that was getting old and we were going to burn it.  Instead, we put it up on cinder blocks and it made some shade and a place for the chickens to hide in case they felt threatened by a large overhead bird.  Picture below.

We also had a piece of particle board that was laying around somewhere and we took it and made a shelter for our animal’s food.  It works great.   Particle board is the cheapest board around that I have seen.  The below example has been used for about 7 years and moved all around from yard to yard.  You can also see the yellow crate that I use for the chicken to stand on to get onto the perch or into the nest for laying eggs.  The crates are also great for nests.

I also use one gallon containers that I get from Bojangles to use for water containers in the yard.   I ask the manager to save the coleslaw containers for me.   If I am cleaning out one of the containers and forget a scrubby, I grab a leaf off the tree and use it to scrub.  It works great.  The chlorophyll is like Clorox.  I was just looking for something abrasive and did not expect the leaf would actually get rid of the algae inside the container.  I try to put my water containers in the shade so they do not get the sun and get the algae but sometimes they get shade part of the day and sun the other part.

I also used an old dog house for a broody house for a hen.  I had to put a fence up in front of the entrance for a couple hours until the hen settled back down and got back on the eggs.  They don’t like it when you move them even with their eggs.

One of the first broody houses I made was from a kitchen table that was rectangular.  I screwed wood panels around three sides with some chicken fencing up around the top four inches. I planned to paint it but that didn’t happen.

When I realized how hot it was and how little shade I had for my Silkies, I took a flat bed sheet and put a couple bricks on the top of the building to secure it.  Then I stretched it out on the ground and put bricks on it to hold it securely.   The chickens stay under it during the hot part of the day and I put their water under there, too. You can see the blue colored sheet in front of the chicken house.

Everything I see at Habitat, Flea Markets, Yard Sales or anywhere else is a possible find for my chicken yard.  I also used an old coffee table to put my chicken food dish under.  Now it isn’t fancy and it does look kind of junky…sometimes.  But I have a bigger plan down the road when my husband, Calvin retires.  His boss asked him what he was going to do when he retires.  He told him his wife would keep him busy…and hopefully healthy and young, too.

The table was free,  coffee table was free,  porch was free, and the sheets were free.   So, I just made use of the things that weren’t being used.   Adding some paint to some stuff will improve the look of your yard but I suggest you use colors that blend with your surroundings.  I am thinking about putting a privacy fence around my entire chicken yard.  It is definitely a work in progress.