Trixie's Travels...

Roosters

In our collection of chickens we have a number of roosters.  For all purposes, we really only need one, if that.  The old ladies tend to keep things in order just fine ~ they even keep the roosters in order.  

We are trying to decide which will be the "Rooster Finalist" around here.  The one man who gets to rule the roost, so to speak, and watch out for the best interest of the ladies.  

These are the rooster finalist requirements:  

1.  He must be good with the ladies, not overly aggressive.

 2.  He must not back down from protecting those who have been entrusted to him.  

3.  He must NOT come after the hand that feeds him, namely us or others that decide to visit.  

 

So these are the candidates:

These first two were picked out by our oldest children and purchased at Tractor Supply Co. in Dixon.  They are very handsome, still on the small side and have yet to show any protective nature.

This young lad only lets us know that he is around.  He likes to kind of sneak off into the pig pen to see what little treats he can find. 

This young man only wanted to show me his tail feathers

 and then recline beside his buddy.

Our third contestant is Pook's frizzle, Sam, named from Sam of Lord of the Rings.  He really has a Napolean complex and likes to chase the ladies that are twice his size.  He makes a good run at it, but always falls short of catching up to them.  He does have that gorgeous red color going for him though.

He has that awesome stare down working for him too.

Our fourth contestant is one of the newer additions.  He has some lovely color markings but has yet to show any true rooster characteristics other than crowing. He is still quite young.

This one is the latest contestant to enter.  I have yet to observe him, so I can't really say what he has going for him.  He does have some nice markings when the light hits his feathers.

Last but not least is "The Big Guy".  He is the biggest chicken in the yard.  He and Sam actually share pretty well but he backs down immediately when one of the old ladies let's him know that he has crossed the line.

He is very handsome with the exception of one thing....

no tail feathers.

 It seems that he had a run in with one of the ladies....

and they showed him who was the real boss.

I am sure that we have at least one or maybe even two more in the mix, but they have yet to reveal themselves.  

So who would you choose?  

What would be your requirements for the "Rooster Finalist"?

The Hen House

Last week, I enlisted the help of my Dad for our latest project around here. We have come to the place where all of these cute little fluff balls

that came to us in March have grown to be considerably larger.  

The old ladies have come to a place with Hot Rocks that they are no longer welcome beyond the pasture fence.  

You see, these lovely ladies, have begun to invade his garden.  

Since we are a couple months behind on proper planning times, the seeds that have been planted have become GOLD.

Hot Rocks does not take their invasion lightly.  Electric fencing has surrounded our backyard.  Chicken wire lays on top of all newly planted beds.  Are you getting the picture - he has declared war on them.

With all of this in mind, it was time that I took action and since a chicken coop is a project that I cannot do alone ~ I called on my Dad.  He is a handy kind of Dad to have around and it is certainly a bonus that he is retired!

One afternoon we got together and "drew up plans" ~ in our family, that means that we sketched out a real rough drawing of what we would like it to look like and then we kind of break it down from there.

I knew that I wanted it up off the ground.

It makes for easier clean-up.  I also wanted chicken wire to be on the bottom with 1 x 3's laying across the top of them for the birds to be able to walk better on the floor.

We were able to finish that in a day.  (I think that it is a good idea to mention that my Dad does not stop working until he gets to a point that has already been established in his mind before we even begin).

Today we put up the walls and the roof rafters.  It is quite tall, about 7 feet in the front and sloping to about 6 feet in the back.  

We still have a couple more days worth of work, but by the time we are done, I believe the layers will be quite happy with their new residence.  I know that Hot Rocks will be!

 

 

Smokey the Pig

Yesterday, in the early evening, the sun appeared and we were able to do our animal chores without rain showers soaking us. It didn't seem to last for long but we were still thankful for a little reprieve from the weather.  Whenever Smokey sees us it usually means it is time to eat and she cheerfully greets us or runs along beside us to her pen.  

She had finished eating and we opened her pen door so that we could scratch her and love on her.  

We like to think of it as tenderizing the meat for future use.

She usually backs up into your hands when you are scratching her hind area so that you can scratch harder.  She is a pretty funny pig until she steps on your foot or falls on your feet because you have made her a 50 pound ball of puddy from hitting just the right spot.  

Each week I am amazed at how much she has grow.  In all honesty, I am not surprised that she is gaining the amount of weight that she is because Hot Rocks feeds her like she is a queen.  He faithfully makes her gourmet pig slop. There has never been a batch that didn't smell delicious.  He boils up the biggest soup pot I have full of fresh vegetables and bread.  This mixture is combined with some of her feed and topped off with fresh goat's milk.  This kind of meal makes for a very happy pig.

Somewhere along the line, she and Maggie have come to some kind of friendly agreement.  

If Maggie lets Smokey tackle her

then Smokey will allow her to eat the few bits of that delicious gruel left in her bowl without going after her.

This seems to work out well for them. 

I don't foresee this kind of agreement continuing after Smokey hits the 250 mark in weight but until then it is a win-win situation for them both.

I am just glad that everyone gets along at this point in the game!

 

 

 

 

Rain

We woke up this morning to the rain pounding on our rooftop.  That meant it would be a wet morning feeding the animals but by the time I got outside the animals were all soaked.  The rain had come down so hard that even their dry areas were drenched and water was puddling up all over the ground creating lots of mud in the back.  I switched up my order of things so that we could start moving animals around to get them to a little dryer area.  

Sis was up and came out ready for the mud after I had milked Delilah.  Pook rolled out of bed after we had gotten all the goats to the pallet pen. Sometime after the goats were put up someone snagged my camera and started shooting a couple of shots of Pook trying to move the turkeys to a dryer area.  

Turkeys can be fun but the only way to get them to move anywhere is with food.  We had already given them their morning feed but they were just going back to the same ole' spot that was soaked and puddling up with water.  

I was off trying to get the pig situated with her morning feed and making sure that her pen was somewhat dry and secure from the wind.

We eventually got everyone to a dryer area but we had almost fallen in the mud a couple of times and were pretty soaked ourselves.  Who knew the joys of rain in JUNE!!!

 

Round 3

I am having a love/hate relationship with my chickens right now.  The old ladies to be more specific.  They know better, but they just keep right on doing whatever they want.  Then when they are done doing the really bad thing that they keep on doing - they look like this....

just sitting there resting like nothing happened.

But something did happen and it has happened twice!  but Nooooooo - they just sit there relaxing under the apricot tree.....

resting with even their eyes shut....

This one though looks totally guilty.  She knows she has done something wrong but tries to give it that "Who me?" look.

But I am onto them and this time they were deterred.  You see since the end of March, the kids and I have tried to start seedlings and just when they get to the point of being hardened off outside, these lovely ladies come and EAT all of our seedlings.  The bad thing is they haven't done it just one time, they have done it TWICE!!! That kind of horribleness (is that even a word ~ I am not getting spell check so it must be) is just unforgivable.  The third time around we got smart and put our seedlings out in front of our house where the old ladies can't get to them.  

Look at how lovely they are!  

So happy and green ~ growing peacefully undisturbed. They aren't being scratched up, ripped apart, flung to the ground to die a cruel death.I bet you didn't know chickens could be so evil, so inconsiderate....so .... so.... IN TROUBLE!  I will forgive them though because they continue to give me eggs even in their old age.

I just came to terms that our garden is going to be so late in producing fruit this year and the weather has been so crazy the past couple of months that our summer might last further into the fall.  It will be wonderful to see how the heirloom seeds do in our garden and as long as I can outsmart our chickens we should do pretty well!

Here's to outsmarting chickens and a happy healthy garden!

 

 

My how they grow!

I was looking through my pictures trying to see where I had left off on the work that we had been doing over the past couple of months when I ran across these pictures of Samson....our first born son on the ranch.  That was just to fun to resist.

When he was born all eyes were on him...

Even at a little over a month and a half, he still has that sweet little baby-ish face about him...

Now look at him, becoming all grown up.  

Even after the debudding, his hormones were so strong that his horns came back a little.  We just couldn't stop them from growing and we weren't going to take him to UC Davis to have them put him under to have them removed. We will clean them up a little bit but what you see is what you get at this point of the game.  

We have definitely been in a learning curve lately.

 

 

 

 

The First Birth on the Micro-Ranch

When Delilah finally made it to our house, it was a strong possibility that she was pregnant.  We were pretty sure that was indeed the case because she kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger as the days went on after her arrival.  We just didn't know when she was actually due.  There were days I thought for sure that she would have her kid(s) ~ she was just getting so moody!  Yes, goats get moody.

One morning in March, I was up early to take care of the animals.  Hot Rocks had just gotten home from work a couple hours before I woke up so he was just getting into that deep sleep when I came barreling into the house screaming "She's having her babies, everyone get up!"  I had found Delilah curled up in a corner of her pen kind of on her side with a little bit of mouth poking out of her bum.

Everyone promptly threw on their boots, gathered some towels and some latex gloves, just in case we needed to help.  

We got on the phone and called the family we had bought the goat from for some moral support and to make sure that all of my reading had paid off. Mrs. C was on speaker phone while Delilah pushed.  Hot Rocks kept to comforting her and was up by her head and I went to the rear of the matter to help.

She didn't need my help that much.  I did clean out the kid's mouth so that it would liven up and help get out but the two of them had it pretty well taken care of.  

Delilah cleaned it up as she should and once she was done and the kid had eaten, we took it and wiped it down with a towel really well to make sure that all of the bag was off.  

She ended up only having one kid, we waited for a little bit to see if she would have another but nothing happened.  

Delilah had a boy and we named him Samson.  He was a pretty big kid considering that she isn't a really big goat.  We aren't sure of what breed she is but she has been a great mom to him.  

Since he was the first born here at the micro-ranch, we decided to keep him to help control the weeds.  Everything that lives here has to have a purpose, we don't have enough room to share with animals that don't pull their weight.

He seems to be pulling his weight just fine and he has his momma's good temperament ta boot!

Until next time!

 

 

 

 

 

A Different Kind of Living

When I did I leave you?  It was about the time that my laptop crashed, I lost all my pictures and we started to acquire some animals.  Maybe the word some isn't the right word to use...we started to acquire a lot of animals.  We didn't really have that intention, it just kept happening and before we knew it "POOF!", we were considerably outnumbered.  

I will spend the next few days recapping on what has gone on here at good ole' Red Boot Ranch, since we last spoke with each other and I will add in a few of the things that we have been thinking about to live more sustainably.  I am not sure if that is even the correct term to use, but I am sure that eventually you will figure out what I am talking about and if you don't that is ok too; because I am probably not making any sense then to anyone but myself.  

On Monday, February 28th, early in the morning, I received a phone call from the post office telling me that a live animal package had arrived and needed to be picked up.  We had known the approximate date of arrival and we had set up their little living area a few days before that.  I was down at the post office in 10 minutes, I had never received a live animal package before and I wanted to see how many had survived as I had heard all kinds of stories.  (There are as many animal delivery stories as their are baby delivery stories and they are all over the spectrum!)  

I grabbed my box, said my thanks you's and ran to the truck.  I just had to look and when I did I saw 40+ puff balls of cuteness all alive!  Our rainbow layer chicks arrived in a box like this:

and since I haven't received any other packages from other than the hatchery that I ordered from, I am completely oblivious to what other packages might look like.

Now look at these ..... aren't they adorable?  This is what I got to see before anyone else did and it just was a "proud parent" moment (ha ha).

When I got home, the girls rolled out of bed and helped put them in the container that they would reside in for about 10 days.  

We used the biggest storage container we could buy/find and put a layer of Barn Dry Animal Bedding on the bottom.  A heat lamp with a red light was put above them to keep them warm.  The red light allows them to sleep at night whereas the white light keeps them awake.  (This is what I was told)

They outgrew the container so quickly that my Dad thought of this:

and this living container lasted until they were moved outside to a bigger confined area.  It was made from 5 medium size moving boxes from a local home improvement store.  Four boxes were cut on one corner and then attached together with a small piece of 1 x 2" wood for extra support.  The another box was opened up and put on the bottom and Barn Dry bedding was placed on the bottom.  I built the PVC light holder.  I got the idea from my Urban Farm magazine.  This same design was used for florescent lighting for starting seeds.  I was "starting" chicks and I needed lights so this was a win-win combination.  

Now back to the arrival day of the chicks......

A little later in the morning, Sis took each one and made sure that they all had a little water with electrolytes in it. She would take each chick and stick its beak in a small bowl of water with "chick-saver" in it and would watch them until she felt that they had taken a sip of it.   We did end up losing three within the first 48 hours, but that was the extent of our losses and that was well below 10% of what we had purchased.  The hatchery reimbursed us for the loss and I was extremely happy with their wonderful customer service.  

They are all growing up splendidly.  Here are a few shots of a couple of the birds...

It will be exciting to see what bird lays what color egg.  I am still trying to figure out what I would like the chicken coop to look like.  Most people that build coops have 10-15 birds ~ we have 50+ to house, so a cute little coop really isn't in the future for us...it is more practicality and protection than anything else.  

So begins our homesteading, sustainable living, green life, whatever the heck you want to call it....I just like to think of it as plain ole' old fashioned way of living...bring back some of that wholesome living.  

Until next time!  

 

 

 

 

 

Delilah

We would like to introduce you to the newest addition of our farm family, please meet Delilah.

She was camera shy and kept turning her head when I pointed the lens at her. She is about 7 months old and possibly pregnant.  Delilah is a sweety, very gentle, and not afraid of people

She arrived today and she is going through separation anxiety from all her buddies she hung with all day long.  We bought her to help keep the weeds down, but it looks like we are going to have to get another one to keep her company and help her out.  She has a lot of ground to cover!

I told Hot Rocks that I had this sneaky suspicion that I would be the one delivering the kid if she has one, because undoubtedly he will be working or serving the U.S. of A when she goes into labor. Nothing like on the job training!

Hopefully over the next week or so I will get a better picture of the little cutie!

Chicken Wranglers

They just wanted to go wrangle up the chickens...

so they got in their wranglin' duds -

every good chicken wrangler needs a pink hat!

They caught the one they were lookin' for...

and brought her in the shack to watch a movie with them!

End of story.

P.S. Karrie, these are the eggs from Zing-Zing.