Animals...the beginning

Animals...I figure since I have updated you on the kids and house and projects I should move on to the animals.  When we first talked about moving to the country we knew we wanted enough land we could have animals (farm animals that is).  We also knew it would take time to get the larger animals, we didn't just want to jump into too much at one time.  We decided to start small...chickens.  I had done some research on chickens and houses and thought I was all ready for them...HA!  Man have I learned A LOT about chickens in the past two years.  I will take you through some of my chicken adventures...and more...

Back to I was ready for chickens...so I thought...I did have a house plan.  So our first big work weekend I mentioned in an earlier post, my dad & I built my chicken coop.  I wanted it to be cute so it wasn't a big eye sore on the property.  I think we did great!

The front

Here is a picture of the inside before the chickens moved in

And the back...obviously after chickens moved in

Here is a picture of my nesting boxes where my chickens leave their wonderful eggs.

When I bought my very first round of chickens I had already decided I did not want plain ole white eggs.  So I chose my chicken breeds as to their egg colors.  I knew I wanted Brown eggs but I had also read about chickens that laid colored eggs.  I knew I had to have some.  So my first round of chickens I got 21 chicks that were 3 different breeds.

Don't they look SO good (They are)...I still love all the variations of brown and the green ones

So fast forward a little...I am skipping the details about where I did a lot of the learning about chickens...we lost 8 birds to predators, I rescued 3 other ones from near death from wounds and we ate one because he was getting MEAN!!  That doesn't sound good but we had decided he needed to go before he hurt someone and we weren't going to waste him.  So with all that loss I was down to 11 hens and one rooster.  Not getting the egg production I had expected since I wanted to sell eggs (which I do), so what did that mean...I need more chickens.  Again, to the research about how to bring in chicks with one year old birds.  Did you know most of the sayings about chickens are true...there really is a "Pecking Order" and as the person who deals with them everyday you have to be established in that order with your rooster so he doesn't attack you...because of the pecking order you can't just add new birds (especially babies) to your existing flock.  They will literally peck them to death.

Other true chicken sayings:

A bunch of cackling hens - they can really get going

Like a chicken with it's head cut off - I won't give you the gross details but when we ate the one rooster I defiantly found out what that meant when we killed it...

Chickens have come home to roost - they all put themselves to bed on the roost every night!

Sorry, back on topic...with all my research the best way to bring in more is to have a separate coop for the new ones and have a joint fence.  That way as the younger ones grow big enough to mix in with the original ones they get "face time" through the joint fence so they will "know" each other when you add them.

So back to the drawing board and a new coop idea is hatched...haha, couldn't resist.  My husband took some convincing that I needed a second coop.   I explained it wouldn't just be for the babies I was bringing in, he couldn't see building a complete coop to bring in one round of babies for a couple months...what would it "do" after that.  I explained if I had a hurt chicken (which by this time I had already had 3) that needed to be separated I could put her in there so she could heal, or I might need more babies at sometime (not a good example at the time).  I had my reasons and uses all listed out and he agreed it would make sense to build it.  Once he heard all the uses he nicknamed it the "Chicken Hospital"...it would be used as a nursery for the babies, an ER if I had a wounded and so the name stuck.

So here is my second coop "The Chicken Hospital"

Equip with directional signs and all...

This is a picture of the nesting boxes (before the bottom was closed in)  because I might need boxes if a girl is only wounded.

 I must say, my hospital has been used much more than I had even anticipated.  I will give you a quick walk through of all it has been used for...

 So it's original use, getting new babies.  Yes, I ordered them online and they came in the mail.  The post office called and told me I had to come pick them up.

 They are always so cute and fluffy when they are little.

 Austin with one of the babies.

It's next use was to hatch babies.  I had a hen that went broody and insisted on sitting on eggs, so after trying for almost a week to make her quit I decided since I had the space I might as well see what happens...as you can see IT WORKED...(much more research on hatching babies and a new adventure with chickens)  Did you know you can hold an egg up to a light a certain way and see inside as the baby is developing...it is called candling and is VERY neat! A little bit of chicken knowledge for you to take away:)  I actually have now hatched two rounds of babies:)

This is from the internet but you can see the veins and the dark spot is the chick.  We did this and the kids thought it was the coolest thing!

My mama with three babies hatched:)

Just about the time the second set of babies was almost ready to move to the big pen, the feed store in town http://www.bearcreekstore.com/ (happens to be owned by my boss also and where my husband is employed) got in turkeys.  I had said last year I wanted to raise turkey's for Thanksgiving but wasn't ready with just getting chicks.  Well, thanks to my hospital I was good to go.  So I got 8 turkeys and brought them home...had to kick the second round hatched babies into the big pen, clean out the coop and tada...we had turkeys.

They look almost like chicks (just a little bigger and their coloring is different).

Well, that brings on more research and more learning...already lost 3 (only 2 1/2 months in and still researching...)...but have no fear, the store got more and needed someone to buy them (insert big cheesy smiley face here).  Do you know what that means though...I have 5 turkeys that are pushing 3 months old that I can't put baby turkey's in with.  Turkeys grow VERY fast.  They are already bigger than all my chickens.  If I put babies in there they would squash them.  I had already told my husband (who loves me SO much and puts up with all my crazy chicken stuff) that I was going to want the turkeys out in a bigger pen so they could get more green stuff since we are going to eat them...

So operation build a new pen began last Friday night since I had 4 new turkeys at home already in a box...and since he convinced me to get the 4 more...

So here is their new "hut" outside so the babies could move in the hospital...

Here are the original 5 enjoying their outside...I told you they were already big.  They will be SO yummy though:)

To add to the chicken adventure, a visitor we have to watch out for is snakes.  It's bad enough we live in the country so they are pretty much always there but with chickens you get the added Chicken Snake to watch for (they are also called rat snakes).  Known for eating chicken eggs, it is pretty obvious when we have one hanging around the coop (actually think we have one now).  We will go from getting 15 eggs in a day to 3...no lie that was our count the last two days.  Chickens lay an egg, on average, every 27 hours (see, now you are getting more crazy chicken knowledge).  That's about a egg a day so to go from 15 to 3 there is a problem...

This is my husband with the last one we killed...

  So, needless to say it has been quite an eventful couple years with the chickens (and now turkeys).  All the knowledge I thought I had when I started the adventure was nowhere CLOSE to the things I have now learned about chickens (some I could still do to not know but I guess it's too late for that).

We are starting our new adventure now with a show cow that I will tell you about next time...new research to do..oh yay;)

I will leave you with this.  We did finally come up with a name for our place and a logo (since we will be getting larger animals we will need one and a brand)

Here is our Logo...our name is Wing N It.  

 We wanted to use a N for our last name but not use our last name...this one is fitting since that is pretty much what we have done with all the new adventures we have come across the past two years on a farm.

Hope you have enjoyed my chicken adventures as much as we do.

Time Flies

WOW...Time can sure fly by without even realizing it.  I feel like it was just a couple of weeks ago I wrote the last post here and it was 2 years ago.  So needless to say A LOT has happened since I last wrote.  I will give a quick run through (trying to touch on a little of everything) and then I WILL write again talking more on some of these more in depth.  I can say this "Paper Cowgirl" is truly becoming more of a True Cowgirl...we now have 23 hens, 2 roosters, 5 turkeys, 2 dogs, one show calf and two beautiful children.
So first off, the children...

Now 12 & 6

Can you believe it!!!  It is hard for me to believe and they live with me:)  Lauren is going into 7th grade (third year back in public school & she had a great transition) and getting ready to be involved in MANY things.  She had a great 6th grade year with straight A's, because of her hard work she was one of only 4 students in her grade that made straight A's ALL year!!  She also made the BETA Club!  During her 7th grade year she will be enjoying her second year of band (she played the flute last year and is wanting to try percussion this year), she will be playing volleyball for her first year and her biggest adventure is a show calf.  Meet Scarlett...
 

This is when she first started working with her.  (More on this subject later)

Austin will be in FIRST grade this year.  He absolutely LOVES school and is so excited for it to start again.  He also had a wonderful year last year with having the highest GPA (not sure how you have one in Kindergarten) of the boys in his class.  He loves to read and tries to spell everything.  He is loving living in the country and is growing up so fast.  He is quickly learning many "Cowboy" things and wants to be a real cowboy when he grows up (no Paper Cowboy for him).  He is excited to help his sister with her cow anyway he can (he really wants to show a pig but has to be 7...almost there).

Austin and his Kindergarten teacher

On to the house.  We have done a lot of work in the past two years.  We now have flower beds that go around three sides of the house, we built a deck out back and we are slowly getting grass to grow so we don't have so much mud:)  Our biggest project that was just finished was clearing the front fence line of all the over growth, ripping out the old falling down fence and having a new fence with entrance put in (and a side yard fenced for the show calf).  So I will go through a quick blast of pictures here to give you some visual updates.

 Just a reminder of what the house looked like when we moved in...

Here is a recent picture with all the flower beds around it:)

Here is a picture of the back before..

 .

And now with the deck.

 

I love all the space we have to hang out and entertain now

 

We will move inside now (because I am excited to show you this) and then go back out for fencing pictures.

 

Remember this wall I said we wanted to take out...(notice the corner of the entertainment center on the left)

  

Well, with help from my parents...WE DID...

Once we cut the sheet rock there was no turning back...

 

View from the kitchen to the Living Room...took us a while to decide how to frame it but once we found this old barnwood we knew it would be perfect...

View from the Living Room...we also decided to use the barnwood to make the TV wall more interesting (that is the same entertainment center pictured above...the flowers are where the saddle was)  It opens up the house SO much.  You may also notice the living room has been painted (thanks with help to my wonderful mom!!)

Back outside to the fences.  So those that have been to the house before know we used to have a pretty thick tree line right at the road.  This offered a nice bit of privacy and some block from all the road dust.  However, there was also a fence in the thick of it all which was falling down and was no good for use.  We still eventually want cattle and will need a working fence for this to happen so we decided to just have it all cleared to make way for the new fence.  Many people would wonder why we would take out the above listed benefits of the tree line but in the end I LOVE how clean the property looks now.  We will in time plant crape myrtles and other things to add some of the privacy back but without all the crazy growth like before.

So here are a couple of pictures before the clearing...

 See all the thick crazy growth...

And after...

This one was as the guy was clearing the trees...

This is now driving up to the house...

 

Our second entrance....

The main entrance...

 A little hard to see but you get the idea

And here is the new "side yard"...we borrowed the neighbor's cows to mow and test the new fence for a couple days:)

We are so happy with all the things we have accomplished in the last two years and it seems like no matter what we get done there is always a list a mile long of more to do.  

I hope you have enjoyed this little catch up and tour around.  I will write again soon because I didn't even get into the chickens (that is truly a whole nother story to tell with more chickens, another coop, hatching babies, turkeys...).  I will catch you up on that and more on Scarlett next time.

Until then there is always something to get done...