chickens – Peacock Orchard

Am I the only one doing this?

Alright people, if you’ve been reading my blog at all you’ll be surprised by what is to come. I’m starting to feel like a weirdo. Yup. All the stuff I’ve been doing and I’ve never felt particularly weird about it. This pig thing though, it’s starting to make me feel weird.

Am I the only one “free ranging” pigs with other animals? Am I the only one not having any problems with it? It’s so easy. I have the laziest system set up in the entire world. This is awesome, because I am essentially lazy at my core.

I have considered that it is the area that has made me so successful at this. We have 40 acres. We have wheat fields in front of our acreage. Our neighbors houses are placed so that there is maximum distance between our properties. Our road is only used by 3 families. Also, it’s Wyoming, old wheat fields that have been over grazed since being developed into residences. In short, there is pretty much nothing to eat off of our property.

So, perhaps I am not having any problems because there is nothing tempting my little piggies to wander. Maybe I’m just lucky. I don’t know. All I know is I open the gate in the morning and all of my animals come pouring out. Chickens, ducks, geese, peacocks and pigs. They all hang out together in the barn until release. Then the smarter chickens follow the pigs around waiting for them to dig up delicious morsels.

The pigs themselves wander here and there. We have no fences around our acreage that would keep a pig in except for those around the barn and yard. A few times they’ve gone to the end of our property to nibble the weeds around the road. We escort them back when they do. The neighbors are used to the sight of fat black pigs wandering about. At night they put themselves up and I shut the gate again. A few times I’ve heard coyotes close and have gone out earlier to lure the pigs back to the barn with a bucket of treats. This is, of course, not because I’m worried about the pigs. It’s because I’m worried about all the birds who would be left with the gate open until the pigs returned. The pigs can handle themselves. Our dogs are terrified of them.

As I watch YouTube videos and read blogs of various people I notice pigs are treated with suspicion. People seem afraid they’ll eat the other animals or escape to never return. I admit to being surprised by this attitude and it makes me feel…well….weird.

I should also note I don’t feed them except when absolutely necessary. We give them our food scraps but otherwise spring, summer and most of fall they are on their own. Get out and find food or starve!

I don’t want to mislead you all though. We had a dog break in and kill our chickens. When I went in and started making a pile with the bodies I woke the pigs up. They went to work destroying all the evidence aka eating the dead chickens. I don’t know that I would leave someone actively bleeding out there with them. However, I’ve seen them wait and watch a chicken die. They didn’t approach it until it was actually dead. Then they ate it no problems. Pig morals.

They’re just wandering in this picture.I took it from our living room. I love watching them meander.

Kitchen Cupboards as Chick Brooders

As with most small holdings, chicks seem to be a never ending job. In the fall we killed every single bird we had, chicken, duck and turkey. The turkeys were fated for the table anyway. The ducks and chickens got themselves into that situation on their own. You see, the chickens were eating their eggs. We couldn’t figure out who was doing it so they all were culled. The ducks were laying their eggs in the pond and only the pond. I’d see them float to the top after they’d rotted. Not what I was keeping ducks for so they were also culled. At the moment we have pigs and peacocks and that’s it. Well that was it until yesterday.

I decided we needed to be more practical. No more random chick purchases and no more allowing the hens to hatch eggs (we had one hen that could hatch out 2 nests a year). We really only need 6 chickens for our personal egg consumption. I did not want to waste money getting a rooster either. So off to the feed store to pick up 6 red sex linked chicks.

I’d been checking the feed store for them so you would think I’d have prepped the brooder beforehand. I did not. Everything was a bit dusty and needed a rinse but it took only a few minutes to prep the old kitchen island for it’s newest chicks.

The chicks seem happy!

The island is large enough that even though the heat lamp is pretty close to them they can get away from it when they are hot.

View of the outside of the island here. I removed the drawers on the top and one of the doors for ventilation. I just used molding I already had to keep everything in place. Unfortunately the kids are always pulling the top screening down so they can peak in.

The following pics are of the nonworking brooder in the barn (nonworking as the power is out).

I just modified an over the fridge cabinet by extending half of it (again with things I already had hanging around). The extension is where I put the food and water. The bottom is hardwire cloth so everything just falls through to the barn floor.

I mounted the cabinet but had to use a bit of a prop for the extension I made.

So, if you don’t have any stock tanks or other containers around, old kitchen cupboards can find new life as chick brooders.

Life and Loss on the Farm

We have had an eventful few weeks. So many new babies around and so many more in the works that it is rather exciting. The peachicks have finally hatched and momma pea is doing a wonderful job with them.

In fact, she has kept them quite hidden most of the time. So much so that I had a hard time figuring out how many she’d had. Seven, I now know. She has finally gone into the barn where I have locked her up in solitary confinement. Don’t feel bad for her though, her confinement is approximately 300 sq ft. It did take some talented staple gunning though. I had to chicken wire the area between the run in portion of the barn and the tack shed, where the chickens sleep every night. I didn’t want the chickens getting into the pea area and drinking the water, which I have to medicate for coccidosis. I hope that by keeping her confined in the barn with the medicated water I can save the peachicks. In years past the momma peas have always lost every single baby to coccidosis. When I raise them I manage to medicate them enough to get them through but then they die as soon as I release them as, for some reason, they are mighty attracted to the dogs, who think they are delicious.

She has two blackshoulder babies and 5 india blue. I’ve never had a blackshoulder survive. I am very hopeful this year around.

Daddy has been quite occupied running about screaming his awful scream. He is the worst sounding peacock I’ve ever heard. It sounds like he has something stuck in his throat.

In other baby news, we had 2 chicks hatch. The mama has been taking very good care of them.

The ducks have eggs all over the place. Four of the hens have taken to sitting, two on a single nest.

They do an excellent job of caring for their eggs, even when they get up to eat.

I had to post this photo of Son helping me with feeding time. Now that he has discovered he can carry feed in his dump truck he is all in for feeding time chores.

Now the loss part of this post. Our twelve year old weimeraner has passed on. He was in awful shape for some time and suffered an injury that he was unable to recover from. Being blind he injured himself quite often but this last one was rather horrific. He is buried with his brother, Louie, and our dearest Celsus. This has been a great comfort to the children who are happy to know he is not alone. I like to remember him as a younger dog. A dog that caused havoc wherever he went and proudly caught whatever we sent him after.

Eggtastic Tuesday- The Fluffiest Scrambled Eggs

The key to fluffy scrambled eggs is a simple one, air. The more air you can get in your eggs the fluffier they will be.

Now, I do not claim to be an expert whisker but I’ve whisked plenty of things in my life. I whisked and whisked the eggs but I can’t beat the blender for adding air.

30 seconds in the blender and the eggs are airy and light.

These are hand scrambled eggs. Now, it should be known the eggs got a bit overcooked as we were having photo problems. Thankfully our first two eggs were equally over cooked so the experiment was still good.

Eggs in the blender. Noticeably fluffier.

Once I picked which method made the airiest eggs, I then tried adding a teaspoon of water and a teaspoon of milk to see which would would assist in further fluffing.

This is eggs poured into a hot and oiled pan after being blended with water.

Eggs blended with milk.

There wasn’t a very noticeable difference between the milk blended and water blended eggs. I do not believe it affected taste either. So I suppose that’s a personal preference thing. I will say that adding water or milk to thin down the eggs did produce lighter eggs.

So get out your blender and blend some eggs.

Oh, as an added note all of the eggs were laid that day so they were all the same age.

Eggtastic Tuesday- Italian Baked Eggs

This is something I thought was going to be gross. I was in need of a good breakfast and I was lacking in a lot of ingredients so, Italian Baked Eggs it was. Boy am I glad I made this. I love this recipe. I think hot sausage really adds to the dish, which would probably be un-filling and bland without it.

I had varying sized jars of spaghetti sauce, and various styles of sauce. The sauce I used for this was a roasted sauce with big chunks of veggies and basil.

Cook up some nice sausage patties. Spicy sausage really adds to the flavor!

It’s looking great already!

Mozzarella and Parmesan would probably both work great on this. We were out of Parmesan so mozzarella only was.

It is pretty once cooked. We prefer our eggs hard and the yolks were just cooked through.

Italian Baked Eggs

Ingredients:

4 eggs
2 cups of spaghetti or marinara sauce
Hot Italian sausage
1 cup mozzarella cheese
Salt and Pepper (to taste)
Basil

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Cook the sausage fully. In four soufflé dishes spoon ½ a cup of spaghetti sauce. To the sauce add a piece of sausage, one egg and salt and pepper. Sprinkle mozzarella over the top. Place in oven for 15 minutes, or less if a runnier yolk is preferred. Remove from oven and sprinkle fresh basil over the top. Enjoy!

Eggtastic Tuesday- Migas

Migas is a Mexican egg dish with tortilla chips. First introduced to me by my father-in-law it has become a frequently prepared breakfast dish at our house.

I like that it’s few ingredients, lots of eggs and is quick to prepare.

Begin by cutting the tortillas into strips and frying until crispy in an oiled skillet.

I suffer from an abundance of help while cooking.

Season and beat the eggs and add to the tortillas.

I used garlic and onion powder, chili powder and paprika as well as salt and pepper.

So easy a toddler can do it!

Serve with your favorite salsa or hot sauce. Enjoy!

Migas

Ingredients:

8 eggs
6 corn tortillas, cut into strips
3 Tablespoons oil
Seasonings of your choosing
Salt and Pepper to taste
Salsa (optional garnish)

Directions:

Heat the oil in a large cast iron skillet, add the tortillas and cook until crunchy, stirring frequently. Beat the eggs with preferred seasonings and add to skillet. Cook until eggs are no longer runny. Serve with salsa or hot sauce.