September 2013 – A Month Of Photos From The Red Double Wide

Happy Fall Everyone!

The last days of summer went out with unusually hot temperatures, and the first days of fall came in very wet (for around here anyway).  September brought lots of changes with me going back to teaching at our local Christian School, and the girls going back to school there.  My poor garden has been severely neglected, (it’s more like a jungle than a garden) but as you can see we are still harvesting the benefits of our early summer work.

Onions

Harvest

Bread
Whole wheat bread and hamburger buns.

Saturday has become my, baking/laundry/blogging/gardening/chicken coop cleaning day!  I am trying to learn how to plan meals ahead of time and get as much done on the weekends as i can.  I want to keep cooking real food from scratch as much as possible with this new schedule.  This is a big challenge for me, as my organization skills are MINIMAL! (just ask my husband)  Good thing my girls are big enough to help and the men in the house are patient. 😀

Peppers

Eggs

PumpkinI have learned that gardening is all about NEXT year.  So many things I want to change and do better next spring. I guess that’s part of the excitement of a garden. 🙂

StinkyThis past month I posted about butchering our Cornish Cross chickens and then I wrote a story about Stinky going to the fair.  After that post I had several people express concern about Stinky someday ending up in the cook pot.  I want to assure everyone that Stinky will live out her free range life here at the Red Double Wide with no fear of ending up in the cook pot! 😀

Thanks for visiting and have a good week!

Chickens in the Snow

When I go out to the chicken coop first thing in the morning I open up their little door and they all rush out.  Usually walking and jumping on each other, trying to cram through the door two or three at a time.

IMGP4301 (1132x1280)-1But the other day when it snowed a couple inches, it took them a few hours to wander out and most of them headed strait for the barn so they could take dust baths, dig around in the fire wood for bugs and harass the barn cats.  That night we had to carry a few back to the coop, they didn’t want to walk back through the snow!

IMGP4302-1

On Christmas day we received a foot of snow (we blame this on our 9 year old, she was praying for a white Christmas 😉 ) and it’s not melting off very fast.  The chickens now refuse to come out of the coop.  They will step out, look around, fluff up their feathers and jump right back in the door.  You can’t blame them, that white stuff is cold and deep.

With no free ranging going on they have been going through a LOT of feed and water!!  I highly recommend  that if there is any possibility that your chickens can be let out to forage around….let them!!  I’m guessing it cuts the feed costs by half, if not more. (I am keeping track and will let you know exact numbers later). Not to mention it makes for very healthy, happy chickens and more nutritious eggs.   Anyway, I got worried about the hungry little buggers getting bored all cooped up.  Bored chickens are not a good thing, they will start pecking at each other and if it gets to bad the results could be deadly. 🙁  So I cut open an acorn squash and gave that to them, and they spent hours picking at it; the only part left is a thin layer of peel.  The next day we hung up half of a large cabbage in the coop.  They seemed disinterested at first, but when I went out that night to shut the door most of the cabbage was gone.  We hung up the second half of the cabbage the next day.  This one didn’t last long!!  Hanging them up is purely for the entertainment value, (for the chickens, not us….well maybe for us too).  Watching chickens chase a spinning, bouncing cabbage around the coop WAS very entertaining.

IMGP4316-1These little treats seem to be keeping them happy and occupied during these snow bound days.  To my surprise, being stuck indoors has not affected their egg production at all.

This spring I intend to plant tons of cabbage, pumpkins, and squash just for the chickens to have next winter (and maybe enough for us to have some too).

Egg Laying Machines

I was going to title this post “Waiting for Eggs” but in all honesty, we didn’t have to wait!  Everything I’ve read says most chickens will start laying between 5 and 6 months old.  So I was hoping to have some eggs by Christmas, that would be right at 5 months old (and what a great Christmas present).  It was November, cold out and day light hours were getting shorter and shorter.  Hens need 14 to 16 hours of light a day to lay eggs.  So after Thanksgiving I bought a timer so we could plug in a light to increase their hours of light.  I also bought layer feed for them.  Before I could get the light plugged in or change their feed, they started laying!!

Our first 2 eggs!!  A little splotchy, but we were so proud 😉

We quickly got the light put up in the coop and set it to come on at 3am.  I mixed the layer in with the remaining grower feed and HOLEY COW!!  They turned into egg laying machines.  It is now 5 days before Christmas and we are getting 15 or 16 eggs a day from our 17 hens!!  They don’t seem to mind the freezing weather at all.  They have been laying all these eggs by 7:30am and then they get turned out to free range for the rest of the day.

The only problem we had was when they first started laying.  Some of them would peck their egg, (one little hole or even just a crack)….kind of like they were curious.  Then one hen started eating an egg every day.  I would go out to the coop at about 8:30am and find wet straw and little pieces of shell in a nesting box.  I had NO idea which hen was doing it!  This went on for several days and the only thing I could think to do was just get out to the coop earlier before she had a chance to snatch that egg.  So when it was just barely light enough to see I headed out to the coop.  It worked!  No more broken eggs,…not even any cracks!  On most days we even get a double yolker or two.  Now my only problem is what to do with all these eggs!….I love problems like this. 😀

                          Meet Ginger one of our super egg laying machines!

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