![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2g2qDXh:
So we had 40+ mph gusts of wind all night long, and I was in the yurt. The yurt held up just fine, but let me tell you, trying to sleep in a round house made out of canvas over crinkly foil insulation over wood in 40mph winds was not actually a thing that could happen. Especially since the wind kept snatching the tarp over the door and flinging it around, and it sounded a whole lot like someone dramatically entering the yurt, and then as the gust died down, the edges of the tarp would slide around sounding like someone was tugging them. Very unrestful.
Even after about five hours of this where I said, out loud, look, I don’t care if death is coming for me, it can just come for me already– my brain wouldn’t let me fall asleep. I realized around 4am that my heart had been racing for hours because of the constant startle response. I even knew what was going on and was tired and didn’t care.
I’d turned the lights off at 9pm to try to go to sleep since I was sleepy. I gave up at 1am and started looking at Twitter. At some point I realized that the phone wasn’t charging, so I fiddled with the cord for a while until I noticed that the indicator light on the power strip was also out. Oh… I’d lost power.
I worried about the power being out for a while, but not enough to get up and go out into the gusty night to check. This morning I went and looked into the greenhouse, where my extension cord plugs in, and the fan was off, so I reluctantly concluded that the power was out everywhere on the farm, and texted my brother-in-law, who’d need to know. (Not only the freezers with all the stored meat for sale, but also the fence chargers protecting the animals…)
He came out and said, “No, it’s just you,” and I went in the greenhouse and sure enough, the fan was back on. My power didn’t come back, but. I don’t know.
Who knows. I’ll find out tonight when I hook it back up; I’d already unplugged for the day. One of those hundred-foot extension cords could go bad at any time. I have waterproof sealers on the connections, but I take them down and put them back up every day so they’re bound to get worn.
Anyhoo. We’ll see how today goes. It finally started raining, I bet I get water in the yurt because everything’s all askew from getting blown around.
Oh, baby chicken update–
the 30 fancy chickens I bought have been joined by 350 Isa Red hybrid hatchlings, the standard Rhode Island Red cross commercial egg layers. B-I-L drove to the hatchery in Ft Plain to pick them up, rather than chancing that many in the mail, and they all arrived alive and vigorous. The whole flock now doesn’t seem to take up very much of a brooder, but they zip around in there like little turbofluffs. They startle badly if you loom over them, but if you come in and sit down (ugh in the chicken poop oh well) they’ll run right over you, eventually. I plan today to find some treats to bribe them with so they’ll be interested in my hands, which is my nefarious scheme. Middle-Little actually considered buying some organic-certified eggs from somewhere.
The flock is supposed to be organic-fed from hatching, is the thing, so that they can be certified organic layers. The pasture is already certified organic, as is the feed, but the existing chickens come from mixed backgrounds– some raised here, some raised elsewhere and purchased as ready-to-lay pullets years ago, and their eggs can’t be certified organic unless their entire lifespan has been spent on certified organic feed.
So this new flock is going to be raised 100% on organic feed. Which means I can’t feed them homemade treats unless I use all certified-organic ingredients. The real thing is, of course, the certifying organization won’t know if I’ve hand-fed them a few treats here and there, but my sister is pretty uptight about it and since it’s her way of life, I don’t want to mess with that.
So… I figure I’ll stick to certified organic ingredients to feed them treats, as much as I can. And that way I can post on social media about it without feeling guilty or lying or worrying that someone will notice. It’s just easier on the mind to do it Right.
We sold six more of the oldest hens of the existing flock to a local customer who has been buying a few live chickens at a time so that he can teach his children to process chickens like he learned to as a kid in the Phillippines. This guy is very nice and we’re delighted to find a good home for the older hens. He doesn’t pay much for them but it’s not much work for us, so. We’ve gone through most of the ones we can identify as being older than 2 years, by now, though there are still a handful.
For pet chicken people, 2 years is nothing, but the commercial layers just don’t live that long. Well, they live, but they don’t produce. And when your margins are slim, you can’t keep feeding them forever. Un-culled, they can live to be 7 or 8. But, to be fair, as a child, with pet chickens, none of mine ever lived that long because something ate them, because chickens are fucking delicious. I think my beloved Patches the Rooster might have been 5 when a fox snatched him right out of the middle of the yard in broad daylight with my mother watching.
BABY CHICKEN PICTURES, to get back onto a nice topic:
Skeptical
Asleep (those are their two moods)
Variegated chick pile– see the different colorings? The ISA reds are just a pale brown, some with some stripes. I *think* the spotty ones are Speckled Homborgs, the black ones are probably Barred Rocks, and the stripeys are Silver-Laced Wyandottes, but I’m not sure.
And McMurray threw in, as is their wont, one Free Bonus Fancy Chicken, and we’ve named him/her Fuzzy, because s/he is.
(foreground)
I went out and was looking at the existing flock last night– we had to round up six as tribute for the guy this morning, ok not tribute but for him to buy– and there’s already a rooster who looks like a Silver-Laced Wyandotte in the flock, and another rooster who’s clearly a Barred Rock. There’s also a Barred Rock hen. The roosters are all random– many are Isa Red roosters from a poorly-sexed batch of chicks a couple of years back, and they’re actually quite nice roosters, big and white and keen-eyed.
I made the mistake of picking up the Wyandotte rooster, though, and found out that our hand-tamed flock as kids were not typical. In this flock, you can pick up the hens, but the roosters will spur the fuck out of you if you touch them. This one shrieked like a banshee and cut my hand, which I wasn’t actually that surprised by, I’d just thought he’d be more docile in the dark.
He’s beautiful, though, and clearly young, as his plumage is glorious– so he’s neither at the top nor the bottom of the pecking order. The high-status roosters are groomed nearly bare in front; the low-status ones are pecked bare in back.
And this is a flock with a ton of room! I can only imagine what confined chickens do to one another.
So we had 40+ mph gusts of wind all night long, and I was in the yurt. The yurt held up just fine, but let me tell you, trying to sleep in a round house made out of canvas over crinkly foil insulation over wood in 40mph winds was not actually a thing that could happen. Especially since the wind kept snatching the tarp over the door and flinging it around, and it sounded a whole lot like someone dramatically entering the yurt, and then as the gust died down, the edges of the tarp would slide around sounding like someone was tugging them. Very unrestful.
Even after about five hours of this where I said, out loud, look, I don’t care if death is coming for me, it can just come for me already– my brain wouldn’t let me fall asleep. I realized around 4am that my heart had been racing for hours because of the constant startle response. I even knew what was going on and was tired and didn’t care.
I’d turned the lights off at 9pm to try to go to sleep since I was sleepy. I gave up at 1am and started looking at Twitter. At some point I realized that the phone wasn’t charging, so I fiddled with the cord for a while until I noticed that the indicator light on the power strip was also out. Oh… I’d lost power.
I worried about the power being out for a while, but not enough to get up and go out into the gusty night to check. This morning I went and looked into the greenhouse, where my extension cord plugs in, and the fan was off, so I reluctantly concluded that the power was out everywhere on the farm, and texted my brother-in-law, who’d need to know. (Not only the freezers with all the stored meat for sale, but also the fence chargers protecting the animals…)
He came out and said, “No, it’s just you,” and I went in the greenhouse and sure enough, the fan was back on. My power didn’t come back, but. I don’t know.
Who knows. I’ll find out tonight when I hook it back up; I’d already unplugged for the day. One of those hundred-foot extension cords could go bad at any time. I have waterproof sealers on the connections, but I take them down and put them back up every day so they’re bound to get worn.
Anyhoo. We’ll see how today goes. It finally started raining, I bet I get water in the yurt because everything’s all askew from getting blown around.
Oh, baby chicken update–
the 30 fancy chickens I bought have been joined by 350 Isa Red hybrid hatchlings, the standard Rhode Island Red cross commercial egg layers. B-I-L drove to the hatchery in Ft Plain to pick them up, rather than chancing that many in the mail, and they all arrived alive and vigorous. The whole flock now doesn’t seem to take up very much of a brooder, but they zip around in there like little turbofluffs. They startle badly if you loom over them, but if you come in and sit down (ugh in the chicken poop oh well) they’ll run right over you, eventually. I plan today to find some treats to bribe them with so they’ll be interested in my hands, which is my nefarious scheme. Middle-Little actually considered buying some organic-certified eggs from somewhere.
The flock is supposed to be organic-fed from hatching, is the thing, so that they can be certified organic layers. The pasture is already certified organic, as is the feed, but the existing chickens come from mixed backgrounds– some raised here, some raised elsewhere and purchased as ready-to-lay pullets years ago, and their eggs can’t be certified organic unless their entire lifespan has been spent on certified organic feed.
So this new flock is going to be raised 100% on organic feed. Which means I can’t feed them homemade treats unless I use all certified-organic ingredients. The real thing is, of course, the certifying organization won’t know if I’ve hand-fed them a few treats here and there, but my sister is pretty uptight about it and since it’s her way of life, I don’t want to mess with that.
So… I figure I’ll stick to certified organic ingredients to feed them treats, as much as I can. And that way I can post on social media about it without feeling guilty or lying or worrying that someone will notice. It’s just easier on the mind to do it Right.
We sold six more of the oldest hens of the existing flock to a local customer who has been buying a few live chickens at a time so that he can teach his children to process chickens like he learned to as a kid in the Phillippines. This guy is very nice and we’re delighted to find a good home for the older hens. He doesn’t pay much for them but it’s not much work for us, so. We’ve gone through most of the ones we can identify as being older than 2 years, by now, though there are still a handful.
For pet chicken people, 2 years is nothing, but the commercial layers just don’t live that long. Well, they live, but they don’t produce. And when your margins are slim, you can’t keep feeding them forever. Un-culled, they can live to be 7 or 8. But, to be fair, as a child, with pet chickens, none of mine ever lived that long because something ate them, because chickens are fucking delicious. I think my beloved Patches the Rooster might have been 5 when a fox snatched him right out of the middle of the yard in broad daylight with my mother watching.
BABY CHICKEN PICTURES, to get back onto a nice topic:
Skeptical
Asleep (those are their two moods)
Variegated chick pile– see the different colorings? The ISA reds are just a pale brown, some with some stripes. I *think* the spotty ones are Speckled Homborgs, the black ones are probably Barred Rocks, and the stripeys are Silver-Laced Wyandottes, but I’m not sure.
And McMurray threw in, as is their wont, one Free Bonus Fancy Chicken, and we’ve named him/her Fuzzy, because s/he is.
(foreground)
I went out and was looking at the existing flock last night– we had to round up six as tribute for the guy this morning, ok not tribute but for him to buy– and there’s already a rooster who looks like a Silver-Laced Wyandotte in the flock, and another rooster who’s clearly a Barred Rock. There’s also a Barred Rock hen. The roosters are all random– many are Isa Red roosters from a poorly-sexed batch of chicks a couple of years back, and they’re actually quite nice roosters, big and white and keen-eyed.
I made the mistake of picking up the Wyandotte rooster, though, and found out that our hand-tamed flock as kids were not typical. In this flock, you can pick up the hens, but the roosters will spur the fuck out of you if you touch them. This one shrieked like a banshee and cut my hand, which I wasn’t actually that surprised by, I’d just thought he’d be more docile in the dark.
He’s beautiful, though, and clearly young, as his plumage is glorious– so he’s neither at the top nor the bottom of the pecking order. The high-status roosters are groomed nearly bare in front; the low-status ones are pecked bare in back.
And this is a flock with a ton of room! I can only imagine what confined chickens do to one another.
