Fall blues (and greens and yellows...)

Our chickens were beginning to tell us that they didn't have what they needed -- they gave us a very wrinkled egg one day and I went on the warpath. More oyster shell (free choice), more protein, better and fresher water... And so far it seems to have worked. We have 36 chickens... wait, we have more, but that's coming... we have had 36 chickens for some time and lost three of them. One to Brisket - perhaps two, really, who thought the chickens were play things and were a little rough with them. We lost a few red hens - the ones we were supposed to eat, but couldn't catch (ten of them hid in the forested area behind the barn), and one more, I think, just died of a heart attack.

But we weren't getting any eggs, so Mike, almost single-handedly, added another three feet of fencing around the chicken area and completed the last segment of regular fencing. So now there are only three of them that can get out. The other 33 stay in the large area which has a ten by 20 space inside and about double that outside. Now, with the regime of very clean water, with oyster shell and more protein, we get about a dozen eggs a day. This still isn't very good, so what did we do?

We bought more. And because we bought some really foul fowl (cornish, instead of cornish-cross), we were looking at a whole year of not having good roasting or smoking chickens. So guess what? We bought more!

We bought 25 more cornish-cross (The right ones this time), and 25 more barred rock chicks (for eggs. they'll produce in another 5 months).

The photo shows them in the old chicken coop, with a heat lamp and feed. Mike had them shipped and when he arrived at our tiny little post office in Bastrop, he could hear them in the background being quite noisy. A few people stopped him and were surprised that anyone still purchased chicks through the mail, anymore. "Oh, how cute!"

We also have a rat in the tack room. We bought some traps and are hoping to capture it at some point.

The geese are fine. Too damned fine, if you ask me. I think I saw two of them mating this afternoon - they were using our stock tank (which now needs to be cleaned out) to do this deed, even though there is a piece of plywood floating in it (it should be hung over it, but it fell and the bungee cords are also in the water, now).

More later if there's time...