This picture was taken last Friday, 3 weeks and 1 day since this picture. Our new brooder guard was a success. The garage stayed much cleaner, the chicks had plenty of room as they grew.
We only lost 2 in the first 3 weeks, moving 126 birds out to pasture on Saturday. I like those numbers.
(Still doesn’t look like 126 birds, does it?)
Train crossing over Sugar Creek
Our farm is bordered on the west by train tracks. Living less than a mile from the grain elevator as we do we see at least one train a day, more during certain seasons.
Several years ago my grandma (who will be 92 this summer) passed on to me a dozen quilt squares hand-pieced by her mother-in-law, my great-grandmother. They had languished in my cedar chest since then, waiting for me to decide what to do with them. The fabrics are now too delicate to stand up to the use of a large quilt.
When I repainted the kitchen I decided I’d like something other than plates on the plate rail. I remembered the quilt squares and the proverbial lightbulb went off over my head.
The squares are each about 16 inches square. None of them were truly square, however. I took my rotary cutter and evened them up a bit.
I found out a 16″ square frame is hard to find, and expensive when you do, and I’m not very good with tools so there would be no making my own. Then I ran across these 16 x 20 inch frames at Hobby Lobby for $7.50 each on a half off sale. I sewed solid brown strips to make each square long enough to fit the frame, which made them look even more like pieces of a quilt. Voila! My quilt square art gallery was born.
Love that little flower face fabric in the middle
Here’s some closeups of my favorite bits…
Great greens
Fun paisley-ish print
Wish I had yards of that brown/white/orange combo
A while back I think I mentioned something about a chicken decorating post. I’m sure you’ve been on the edge of your seats since, waiting on me. (Right.)
Late this winter I got the urge to repaint the kitchen. And my inspiration was that rooster up there, Little Bigfoot. (He’s a Lakenvelder cross.) The picture doesn’t do him justice, but hopefully you can see how his body is white interlaced with a lovely cream color. His tail feathers are delicate gradations of gray and brown. And his bright red comb and wattle makes everything pop.
(And by now you’re thinking, this girl maybe watches too much HGTV and also maybe does not get off the farm enough.)
What I was after was that grayish-brown in his tail feathers. Or is it brownish-gray? “Either way it sounds like a depressing color,” said my mother. I thought it sounded like the perfect neutral.
But how to color match a rooster’s feathers? One day when I was in the coop I grabbed ahold of them and tugged, thinking surely one would come loose. Nope. All I got was an indignant rooster.
My mom suggested I catch him and take him with me to the hardware store. Maybe they could stick his tailfeather right there in that machine that automatically detects colors from things like fabric samples and sheets of wallpaper. Could be fun.
But I just winged it (ha ha) and came home with the perfect color. Brownish-gray. Grayish-brown. A color they call “greige”.
That’s it above the plate rail, and around the window. I really love how it turned out on the wall and plan to continue it into the dining room, perhaps a shade or 2 darker.
Tomorrow, more on those quilt squares…
The irratic blog posting around here is indicative that things have taken a turn for the busy. It’s one of the blogging life’s ironies that in winter, when there’s more time for posting, there isn’t so much going on. Now, with all kinds of things to blog about, there’s no time to post. Let’s call it “Miller’s Paradox”. I’ve always wanted a paradox named after me.
For now I’ll throw up a little pictorial of the springtime activities around here:
The garden has been started – mesclun, spinach, radishes, peas, potatoes and onions.
Soccer. What a difference 6 months makes. Last fall Rafe refused to play. If he didn’t make the goal, he stomped off the field and sat on the bench to pout. Just a tad competitive. Now he’s out there kicking at the ball and having fun. “I’m going to be a big sport, Mom.” Right, except you mean good sport.
Softball pitching practice for Madeline, and one more volleyball tournament to play next Saturday. And one more band concert, one more vocal concert, and two more dance recitals before school’s out for the summer.
Beekeeping! We now have a hive on the farm. Matt’s learning, and he keeps trying to teach me things. I keep telling him I don’t want to know because if I don’t know it, I won’t have to do it. I don’t need a new skill right now.
Time to get the motorcycle out of storage.
Matt’s been dredging up those carpentry skills his foster dad taught him. More on this project after the coming weekend.
Olivia took on the dreaded “pick up sticks” chore last weekend. But only after negotiating a wage for doing so. There are a few chores around here that I’ll pay for. This is one of them. (Hand picking potato beetles is another.)
Good old number 68 with Burt and Nan
Wednesday morning as I drove in after taking Rafe to preschool, I noticed Mr. Bull laying on the bedding pile with all 6 of his calves.
“How cute,” I thought, “I’ve got to get a picture.”
I went in the house, grabbed the camera, and headed out. As I walked up to the fence I noticed 2 brand spankin’ new calves on the ground. I looked around to see who the new mama’s were. I knew good old number 68 was close, and indeed she was nosing one of the calves. But the other 2 cows that haven’t calved yet didn’t even look close, they weren’t bagged up at all.
All of a sudden the lightbulb went off over my head.
“Wait a minute,” I said to good old number 68, “you didn’t have twins did you?” Indeed she had.
Good old number 68 was one of the first cows we started our herd with 4 years ago. We bought her at the salebarn, and she surprised us that first year with twin bull calves. The last 2 years she’s had single heifer calves. 6 calves in 4 years. I think we’ve got our money’s worth from her.
But having me near the fence made her nervous. She trotted off with one calf following her. But the other calf was too weak to maneuver the mud and yuck that’s built up with this week’s rains. I left, but all morning I kept checking on them from my office window. And all morning she stayed off with the one calf. And all morning I shouted through the window, “Go back and get your other baby!”
Finally I had to stop stressing about it. Worst case scenario, one calf dies. It would be sad, but it’s not like we had twins in the business plan. Our cash flow projections wouldn’t be affected. Second worst case scenario, she only accepts one calf and we have to bottle feed the other. (Of course, this would be Olivia’s best case scenario.)
But good old number 68 is a good mother and this morning I saw her nursing both calves at once. Tomorrow the rain is supposed to end, and the temperatures are supposed to be back up in the 70’s. That will get everybody warmed up, dried off, and feeling good.
So this year’s twins are a boy-girl pair, named Burt and Nan (of course).
As much as I enjoy complaining about Matt’s cows, I have to say he’s built a pretty reliable herd. Those cows will lay down and pop out a calf, in sub-sub-par conditions, and be the kind of mothers that can keep their babies alive in those conditions. Now if we can only build a sow herd that does the same.
Pretty Girl licks Charlie, while Six and Simba look on. Photo courtesty Maddog Photography
Wow, such good guesses today! But nobody got it right.
Cow hip lifter. That is the answer to yesterday’s Whatchimacallit.
I know! Who knew there was such a thing?
Last week Monday we watched as Pretty Girl had her calf, a nice little black whiteface bull calf named Charlie. No complications or problems.
Wednesday morning Matt and Madeline came in from chores to report that Pretty Girl has fallen and she can’t get up. (No, of course that’s not what they said.) She was on her side, unable to stand or even sit up.
The vet was called (the one that’s not camera shy and yet I don’t have a photo of him in action) and at first he thought it was something in the clostridial family. That’s something we vaccinate for, but he said other vets had been seeing a number of these cases. So perhaps a new strain? Except she wasn’t running a fever. She was given the usual treatment – antitoxin, antibiotic, megadose of Vitamin B – but these types of illnesses usually result in death.
But by noon she seemed to perk up and was able to sit up. However later in the day she was on her side again and bloating. The vet told Matt to get the tractor and lift her up with the loader bucket. He did, she let out a big burp, and was able to sit up again.
The view out the kitchen window. In the center of the picture you can see Matt checking on Pretty Girl.
Then the vet brought out yesterday’s whatchimacallit. The cow lifter. The way it works is the eyes of the cow lifter slip over the pin bones in the hips. The rod is tightened up to clamp the thing on tight, and the lifter is attached to the tractor loader bucket. And the cow is literally lifted to her feet. Unfortunately I was never in the right place at the right time to get a picture of the cow lifter in action.
A diagram of the hip lifter in action, courtesy of Wiggins & Associates
Once up, Pretty Girl could stand, walk, get to the bale feeder to eat and to the water tank to drink, and nurse her newborn calf. However it took a couple of days for her to regain her strength enough to stand up on her own after she’d layed down again. Friday morning Matt had to lift her up with the tractor again.
After ruling out things like calving paralysis, the vet thinks she may have had some internal bleeding that turned into an infection. We will probably never know for sure. But she seems to be back to normal. Thank goodness! (Though Olivia was hoping she was going to get a bottle calf out of the ordeal.)
I’m going to take a page from High Hopes Gardens blog and Mark’s Thinga-ma-jig Thursday series. Anybody know what this contraption is that Matt’s holding?
Leave your answers in the comments and I’ll give you the story behind the whatchimacallit tomorrow.
Nothin’ but blue skies, do I see
Isn’t that the most gorgeous blue sky?
The hardware store guy got a chuckle out of Olivia, picking out this skull-and-crossbones kite over the pink princess kites and the purple pony kites.
“This kite’s for you?”
“Yep.”
Chicks will pick a sunny spot on the floor over heat lamps every time.
Chicks arrived last week Thursday – 128 of them! And I have a new brooder guard, courtesy of my dear husband. We start chicks in the garage attached to the house. In the past we’ve set up the cardboard guard and then surrounded that with chicken wire. But it was quite flimsy. By the time the birds were ready to go to pasture they’d usually trampled down the wire and there were chickens (and litter and dust and down) all over the place. The cardboard and wire would be destroyed and have to be thrown away.
Matt had some homesawn boards made out of old power poles (something he has lots of access to as a lineman) so the materials didn’t cost too much. He ripped these down into 2-by’s and made 6′ x 2′ “frames”, crossbraced, with chicken wire stapled to one side. He added L-brackets at the bottom of each panel for stability.
The panels are hinged together into whatever configuration we need. We made a 2-panel by 1-panel rectangle, for a total of 72 square feet of brooder space. The cardboard liner goes around the inside of it to cut drafts and keep the litter inside the brooder. I figure we could start up to 150 chicks in that area for up to 3 1/2 weeks. And if we need it larger it’s easily added onto. It will break down and stack neatly out of the way, and no more buying chicken wire every year!
After this picture was taken I did add a third heat lamp. Two wasn’t quite enough to keep everybody warm. It sure doesn’t look like 128 chicks, does it?
