Category: Farm Animals (Page 3 of 4)

The Escape

September 18, 2009 / admin

It was Saturday, and we had plans. Over scrambled eggs, the girls and I had decided I would take Ana (and Armando) shopping that afternoon after dropping Madelina off at a birthday party. It was a good plan, a win-win: I had the whole morning to get some jobs done around the farm, Madelina could hang with her buddies, and Ana could “you know, like maybe go shop around Kohl’s or JCPenney’s; you know, do girl stuff.” (Insert lots of hair fluffing and hand waving, Lord help me.)

Ana was so excited about our plan that she ran upstairs to put on mascara. I don’t let her wear makeup on a regular basis but try not to make a big deal of it when she does; my theory is the more we freak out about stuff, the more the kids want to do it. Wrong or right, it’s my theory. And anyways, have you ever seen pictures of me in high school? Holy cake-face.

I digress.

It was beautiful outside, so I decided to sweep the sidewalks and garage. Marcel had already finished probably 15 major projects by now–he’s a total overachiever like that–and was impressed by my surprising show of Saturday morning ambition. We were chatting as I swept, and he mentioned that the cattle hadn’t eaten the grain he had given them the night before. Had I seen them yesterday morning when I fed them?

**Insert note here: We are feeding grain to 4 Charolais steers that are not a part of our grassfed beef herd.**

“Well, no, actually. They weren’t in the barnyard when I fed them. You don’t think they could’ve gotten out do you?”

Marcel replied calmly, “Nah. I’ll go check on them down in the pasture.”

It is at this point that I’d like you to understand how the pasture that connects to our barnyard is at the end of a very long lane. It isn’t uncommon for us to go a day or two without seeing the cattle. What is strange, however, is that they hadn’t eaten their feed. Ground corn and oats is to a cow what a Snicker bar is to a teenager, if you know what I mean. It might give them pimples or a muffin top, but they’re not gonna pass it up.

It took all of 25 seconds for Marcel to see that they were gone and had pushed through the fence down by the sweet corn: the electric fence had obviously not been working. A situation like this makes a farmer like me go “Doh” and slap my forehead. If you have livestock you absolutely must have a working electric fence. You see, cows are an awful lot like rich people’s kids. Sure they have their every need and want fulfilled by their over-indulgent parents, but that only fuels their desire to break free from their suffocating life of priveledge to experience freedom, danger, a walk on the wild side, man.

I’d better stop with the lame metaphors before I cause y’all some stomach illness.

We grabbed the kids and set off on a long day of looking for the cows. We started the search by walking our cornfield, stop #1 on the cow’s Freedom Tour. We found their trail and our hearts sank when the trail crossed a section of downed fencing into the neighbor’s soybean field. Cursing ensued.

We drove over to the farmer’s house and asked them if they’d seen 4 white cows. “Nope, but feel free to walk the farm,” which we proceeded to do, to no avail. We did find the cow tracks around the whole perimeter, though….the cows had made a complete circle around the field. What the…???? Maybe they had returned to our cornfield??

They hadn’t, but we did. We even saddled up a horse to help us cover ground as we, once again, searched for cows in our 60 acre cornfield. We saw no new signs of them, however, so we went back to the neighbor’s field and re-followed the tracks. Sure enough, we found a spot where it looks like they ran out into the road. A very busy road. Oh Lord help us, someone could’ve been killed had they driven into a cow.

Unfortunately this is where the trail went dead. There was no cow poop, no tracks, no nothing to be found in any direction. It was noon, we had been searching for 3 hours, and we had lost the trail.

To be continued…….

Break Out

September 13, 2009 / admin

We’re starting day two, yes DAY TWO, of a first class, bona fide Irish-Grove cattle round up.

No, this is not the open rangelands of the West. But our 4 Charolais cattle think it is. They’ve found themselves a nice new home in the midst of a neighbor’s bean field. Did I mention the bean field is a mile away and across a very busy road? Or the fact that we didn’t know these people before yesterday? Yes, it’s a tricky situation. One that has been much alleviated by the complete graciousness of the farm owners. I’ll fill you in on the whole sordid story once we get these buggers caught.

We’re off. Wish us luck……

Of Life and Death

June 13, 2009 / admin

The last time I wrote about learning opportunities I was scoffing at a silly mistake I made that could have broken a part on our tractor. In all honesty I was making a joke to deflect my embarrassment at being a dope. A dope that forgot to unplug the tractor before she drove it.

What I’ve come to realize, however, is that being a dope and breaking a tractor part or two is the least of my worries when it comes to the farm. The farm is about more than that. It’s about more than a simple tractor part, and it’s definitely about more than my silly vanity and pride.

The farm is about life and death. Life and death. It’s as simple and basic as that.

The lessons I need to learn and the opportunities that have arisen to provide me with those very lessons have been numerous and varied this spring, as are the emotions that come with the living and dying on this farm. These circumstances have come at a time when I have been feeling impatient with the farm’s progress, with the organic conversion, and with the cows who hadn’t calved and who also hadn’t been very cooperative in my new grazing systems. “I’ve been at this three years,” I kept muttering. “It shouldn’t still be this difficult.”

Yet three years didn’t prepare me for this:

This is our bull and a pregnant cow lying dead in our pasture. They were struck by lightning during a thunderstorm.

Two good cows gone. All of a sudden my grazing difficulties don’t seem all that important. Instead, my impatience was transformed into dismay and concern. Our bull was so gentle and easy-going. How could we replace him? And this mother cow was one of our lead cows, not to mention that she was due to calve any day now. Death on the farm. It happens, but who expects to find this scene after a routine thunderstorm?

The cows were extremely distressed, so we moved them to another pasture so we could remove the carcasses. In fact, I think it was stress that put one heifer into labor. Our very first calf of the season was born that night. Ironically, the bull’s first offspring was born the day he died:

We named her Storm. And she is a beautiful, spunky little Murray Grey.

Life and death at the hands of a lightning bolt.

The shock wore off after a few days as I busied myself with smaller farmer duties–you know, the ones I like to do because I can manage them. The ones that rookies can’t screw up. (And if we do, we can write funny little stories about them.)

But then my favorite heifer was in labor, number 11, and she was in trouble. She had progressed to the point where the calf’s hooves were coming out and then stalled. We let her work for 2 hours wondering if we should pull the calf or let her alone. A cow will suspend her labor if stressed, so if you bother her too soon you’ll cause problems. And yet if you let her go too long, both she and her calf could die.

As a rookie, I have no experience in making these calls. And the literature says you just have to have a “feel” for it. Great. That’s helpful.

Finally we decided to pull it. We corralled her into the chute and called Farmer Scott from down the road. He’s a dairy farmer and is absolutely not a rookie. He showed us how to hook the chains around the calf’s second foot joint and then how to pull it down and away from her backbone. He and Marcel strained, and I mean strained, for about 10 minutes. They got the calf out and he lived, but barely. And number 11 was OK. Ahhh, life. Sweet, sweet life.

Disaster was averted and a lesson was learned.

Or so I thought. Because today we lost one. A nice large heifer calf died because we didn’t pull her soon enough. We acted quicker than last time, but the placental bag hadn’t broken. Farmer Scott came to help once more and told us that if the bag isn’t broken in time, the mother can’t get enough traction to push the calf out and the calf suffocates.

I had seen the intact bag and thought it had meant there was time. Precious time, ticking away for that poor little heifer calf. “It’s hard to say,” said Farmer Scott. “Sometimes an intact bag means you should leave the mother alone a little longer. You just have to get a feel for it.”

There it is again. That “feel” thing. The way I see it, the “feel for it” is a farmer’s way of saying you need to be experienced enough to know. And as easy as it may be to learn to drive a tractor or make good hay, this calving thing is throwing me for a loop. A very precarious loop. After two difficult births, it’s hard to say if I’m really getting a “feel” for calving or not. The first time we waited longer and had a live calf. The second time we acted and it wasn’t soon enough.

I am, however, getting a “feel” for the ups and downs of farming. The joys and sorrows. The celebrations, the frustrations…the life and death of it. I’m just not sure I have enough experience to know how to deal with it.

My Bad Week Continues

May 21, 2009 / admin

I went out this morning for my regular chore routine, which involves:

Feeding grain to the Charolais calves

Letting the chickens out to pasture

Checking the horse/goat water tank and filling if necessary (it was)

Walking around and acting important

This amounts to a whole 10 minutes worth of “work”, so you can see I’ve got it pretty tough.

But then I checked the egg refrigerator and noticed that the eggs weren’t collected last night. That happens a lot when I work my two evenings at Atwood. It’s no big deal–really–it just means that I have to stick my arm under hens that are laying today’s eggs in order to collect yesterday’s eggs. Understandably, this doesn’t make the hens too happy. They squawk at me, fluff their feathers up all big and poofy, and once in awhile a real grumpy one will peck at my hand. Hen pecks don’t feel too good, so I’ve learned to hold their heads in one hand while fetching eggs with the other.

Well, as I walked with my egg basket into the dark corner of the barn where the nests are, I noticed a hen cowering on the floor. Her head was all bloody and she was looking pretty beat up. Oh no. She was injured badly enough that I knew it wasn’t just a pecking order injury–she had been attacked by something. And when something gets into our barn it’s usually one of three animals: a raccoon, an opossum, or a skunk.

Raccoons kill lots of chickens in one night. We’ve had raccoon attacks that wiped out 20 birds in one fell swoop. The most frustrating part is that they eat only the chicken’s brains and neck. They like the blood, not the meat, and so waste the rest of the carcass.

Opossums will kill only one or two chickens at a time because they will tend to sit and eat the meat. They are also a lot dumber, and don’t leave the barn once daytime rolls around. Instead they find a dark corner to hang in, where inevitably they meet their demise at the hands of a few unnamed farmers. Ahem.

Skunks usually go for the eggs first, although they’ll take a chicken if it’s conveniently in the way. I can usually tell if one’s around before I walk into the barn because of their signature perfume, but I have had 2 really close calls with skunks in my barn. I consider myself very lucky, because a skunk can accurately hit a target up to 12′ away. Yikes.

Obviously we don’t want any predation on our hens, but we’d prefer an opossum or even a skunk over a raccoon anyday. When I found that bloodied hen, however, my heart sank. Her head was bloodied, her body perfectly fine. It must have been a raccoon. Which means there will be other casualties.

I walked slowly around the barn and found 4 more hen carcasses. Four large, healthy, young hens…lost. And another dying.

That’s the type of week I’ve been having. A long, crappy, frustratingly bad week. What next?

Frustration

May 19, 2009 / admin

You know those lovely cows I’ve been so enamored with? And how I think rotational grazing is the most awesome kick-butt farming system out there?

Well today I can’t stand either one. And the only butt that’s getting a kicking is mine.

I’m frustrated. F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-E-D.

You see, we’ve been working hard to set up our leader/follower grazing system. What is a leader/follower grazing system, you ask? A leader/follower system is where we take a section of our pasture and divide it into small paddocks. The yearling calves that are fattening for market are let into that fresh paddock first. They eat as much yummy goodness as they can until they get moved to a nice fresh paddock the following afternoon. They are the leaders.

The followers are the pregnant mothers and the bull. Once we move the leaders into their new paddock, these ladies (and one guy) get put into the paddock just vacated by the leaders. They clean up what the leaders left behind, which includes some yummy goodness, but also the less yummy stuff like weeds, alfalfa stalks that have been stripped of their delicious leaves, etc.

This systems allows all of the cattle to fulfill their nutritional needs, but the leaders get first choice at the sweetest, highest energy plants in the paddock, which translates into nice meaty grassfed steers by the end of the summer.

Sounds great, right? Harrumph.

First off, it took us two days and many trips to Farm and Fleet to get the system set up. We had the water tank, but the float didn’t fit it. We got the float to finally work, and then the connection was leaky. We got a new connection but then needed longer hoses. Hoses in place, we found we needed another polytape reel for the extra paddock divisions. Trying not to lose my patience, I bought or found what was needed and moved forward. You see, Marcel isn’t so sure about this grazing stuff, and I didn’t want to show any weakness in the system.

Which in hindsight makes me laugh. Or cry.

Here we are, getting the water tank in place. Ah, the confidence I was projecting. I look pretty convincing, don’t I?

Next we sorted the calves at our place, loading the grassfed steers into the trailer and leaving behind the four Charolais calves that we’re going to grain feed. We haven’t been too enamored of these Charolais so far, and Sunday was no different. They are so skittish it makes the whole group nervous. Because of them, the separating took a lot longer than planned.

But we got it done, and hauled the Murray Greys over to Mom’s pasture. We let the steers into their ‘leader’ paddock, where they got to rub noses with their mama’s across the electric fenceline.

And all was well. For one day, at least.

‘Cause on the very second day of grazing, my lovely children were having so much fun running through the tall, lush pasture grasses…….

that they spooked the leader calves right through the electrified backline that separated them from the mama cows.

Oh the joy!, the ecstasy!, the sheer delight that overcame these calves as they were reunited with their mothers once again. It almost brought a tear to my eye.

Almost, but not quite, as this wonderful, joyful reunion undid two solid days of work on the farm. It undid the previous day’s work, plus the long day’s work of separating the calves from their mamas that happened a few months ago. On a not-so-nice day, if you recall.

By this time I’m feeling discouraged. How are we supposed to re-separate the calves from the mothers in the middle of the pasture? How are we supposed to keep the bull away from those two young, impressionable heifers that he now has access to?

Most importantly, how do we restart our leader/follower system without discouraging Marcel? I need him to buy in to this system because…well, frankly because he’s the backbone of this farm. Without his enthusiasm and belief in this system it’ll be an uphill battle for yours truly. One that I will likely lose.

Ok. So we need to re-separate the calves, but at least for now they’re happily grazing in a nice, fresh paddock, right? Wrong.

When I went to check on the cattle this morning I found two very stubborn, curseword-inducing calves outside of the temporary electric fencelines. They had somehow escaped the paddock.

You’ve got to be kidding me!

It’s not like they were going anywhere, as the perimeter fence would keep them in the field, but the water was in the paddock. And on a sunny, windy day like today, they’d soon be thirsty.

I called Marcel and grumbled in his ear for awhile. He suggested that I take down the whole system, let all of the cows back into the barnyard, and we’d start all over later tonight. “OK. You’re right. That’s fine. I’ll take it all down.”

NOT.

I hung up, grabbed the pick-up truck, picked up Armando from preschool, and proceeded to torture him (and those two darn calves) for over an hour. I even broke the first rule of cattle rusting–never herd cattle alone–but I’d be d*mned if I was gonna take all that work down and accept defeat.

I moved the mothers, calves and bull into a fresh paddock full of yummy goodness so they wouldn’t pay mind to the fact that I was lowering the electric fence on one side. I pinned the fence down for a 20-foot opening, and then chased those two stubborn calves around the open field until they finally (finally!) saw the opening and crossed over.

I swear they stopped in front of the opening at least 6 times before they decided to cross into the paddock. And speaking of swearing, I think I gave my 4 year old an education, if you know what I mean.

So there you have it. My frustration runneth over, my rotational grazing system runneth amuk, and my yearling heifers runneth with the bull. And I’d better stop saying runneth, or I’ll be talking with a lisp for the re-thst of the day. Laugh.

At least I’d be amused. That’s a lot better than frustrated.

Calving Season

May 2, 2009 / admin

Calving season is upon us.

May is the month our calves are scheduled to be born, if the bull did his job right, that is. And how hard is it? All he’s gotta do is be a typical bull and work the crowd, so to speak. He doesn’t even have to compete for the ladies. He is their only option.

I do believe he did a regular fine job, though, because I saw him all frisky and sly, all coy and cudly; I saw him whispering sweet nothings in the cows’ ears and…….umm……maybe I’ll just leave it at that. A bull deserves some privacy, doesn’t he?

In defense of my creepiness, when the future of your farm depends upon one bull doing his thing correctly….well, I’m trying to say that my spying from the edge of the field had nothing to do with any socio-psychological problems of my own. Really.

Lord help me. This farm stuff can be embarrassing.

Anyways, i.e., how can I get myself out of this awkward situation, what I’m trying to say is that I’m really looking forward to seeing this:

and this:

I love how they play follow the leader like that.

I also love how they strike a pose and act all tough like this guy:

And then, of course, there’s this sweet scene:

Oh, dear. Maybe a call to my therapist isn’t such a bad idea.

Sorting Cattle

March 11, 2009 / admin

In Irish Grove, the time has come to separate our young Murray Grey calves from their mommas.

Unfortunately for the calves, this is pretty darn awful. They’ve got a good life…I mean, who doesn’t like a little milk with their hay? Add in a mother’s watchful eye, some playful nudges here and there…..well, there’s no better feeling in the world than Mom.

But the mother cows are pregnant, you see. And if you’ve ever been pregnant and nursing a babe at the same time, you’ll know that it isn’t much fun. And then you’ve got a certain bull with a certain, um….drive to, um……well, you know….checking out those poor little heifers, all innocent and cute and much too young to be initiated into such wordly matters.

Yes, it was time to move the babes onto the next phase of life.

Of course, we picked the most lovely of all late winter/early spring days. It was so lovely, in fact, that more than a few Irish Grove farmhands tried to get out of the job.

But being the whip-crackin’, ass-whoopin’ farmer that I am, I was having none of it. I mean what kind of farmer reschedules a work day because of a little rain?

Marcel and I are all geared up and ready to get working

and yet Marcel’s still stalling on account of the rain, the wimp.

When you separate the cattle herd, all of a sudden space becomes an issue. All the animals need access to a water tank and shelter. We’ve got two barns and two groups of cattle. No problem, right?

Wrong.

‘Cause we need shelter and water for the horses and goats, as well. And if you’ve read this blog for awhile, you’ll know that Lucero and cows don’t mix.

So we spent a few hours moving the horses and goats to the chicken pasture. First we had to get the animals to move, and then we had to move the gear. Or bale cages, to be more specific.

You see, horse bale-cages and cow bale-cages are different.

The tractor has ahold of a horse hay-ring. You can see that the sides are open at the top. In the background is a hay-ring for the cows (on its side). There’s a top bar on that one with diagonal supports. The cows have to stick their heads through the holes to eat while the horses get to raise their heads high and chomp in fashion.

Life is stacked against the cows at most every turn like that.

Anyways, Marcel brought one cow cage down from Mom’s place for the calves, changed the horse cage over into the chicken pasture, and then filled them both with hay. In the meantime, I was very handily opening and shutting the gates for him. Yeah, it’s a no-brainer, but also an immense help and time-saver for the tractor driver.

After everything was in place, I walked the lane down the hill and back up to Mom’s, opening all the gates through which we’d soon be running the calves. Did I mention it was raining?

It’s pretty much not a good thing when your pasture has been converted into a mini river.

Anyways, to make an already long story a little bit shorter, we got the calves shut in the round barn and sorted out rather nicely. I gave my mom the camera to take some action shots, but then we had to ask her to hide around the corner because her presence in the doorway was keeping the calves from wanting to run out. Sorry Mom.

So unfortunately I have no pictures of me manning the exit gate, swinging it open to let a calf out when it came round the bend and quickly shut again to keep the momma’s in. This was pretty hard, seeing as both my boots and the gate were sticking, in that suction-type way, in the ankle-deep “mud”.

No photos of Gordy, our most recent Irish Grove addition (and Mom’s new beau), as he dodged the bull and bravely shoo-ed the calves through the barn

No photos of Marcel, cattle-handler extraordinaire, as he weaved in and out through the mass of cows, calves and bull–31 of them to be exact, skillfully separating the mothers from the babes and telling me when to open the gate, and when to quickly shut it.

Just this photo of us in ankle-deep in “mud” after we had the calves first separated,

and this one, after we had successfully driven them through the pasture, up the lane and into the barnyard at our house:

A job well done.

Processing

February 28, 2009 / admin

We’re hearing a distinct clamor in Irish Grove these days.

What began as a few appeals, inquiries, and an occasional nudge, perhaps, has steadily grown to what I might deem a racket, a ruckus, a downright cacophony.

Allright, so cacophony may be a slight exaggeration.

People want chickens. They want home-grown, cage-free, organically-fed, pastured chickens. And I can’t say I blame them.

Most of you know how I feel about store-bought chickens. If not, go get enlightened here.

But raising a couple hundred chickens for these nice, chicken-loving souls who find themselves at the mercy of Tyson concentration camps….well this endeavor holds one very large, daunting, avoidance-inducing problem for your friendly Irish Grove farmers.

The problem is the processing. Butchering. Killing. There I said it. Yes, unfortunately we have to kill the birds to eat them. PETA followers be satisfied.

(An aside: Joe Salatin says PETA stands for People who Eat Tasty Animals. Which is funny for everyone except PETA members.)

(In full disclosure, I used to be a member of PETA.)

(And a vegetarian.)

The only USDA certified processing plant in Illinois is in Arthur, IL. Which is a 4.5 hour drive from here.

4.5 hour drive!!

This would be my day on processing day:

2:00 AM: Load chickens into crates.
3:00 AM: Leave for Arthur.
7:30 AM: Drop birds off for processing.
8:00 AM: Take truck to car wash for cleaning.
9:00 AM: Eat something.
10:00 AM: Try to nap.
2:00 PM: Pick up processed chickens, pack into coolers.
3:00 PM: Leave for home
7:30 PM: Arrive home.
8:00 PM: Move chickens to freezers.
9:00 PM: Shower!
10:00 PM: Collapse in bed.

How much fun is that!?!?!

Seriously, guys. When we talk about sustainable farming, we sometimes forget to take into account how sustainable the operation is for the farmer, as well as for the land and animals.

Can I do this once each summer? Sure, definitely. Would I do this more than once? Not so sure. Would it be worthwhile to invest time and money into the cages, coolers, moveable chicken pens, etc., for one trip to Arthur with 150 birds or so? Yeah, probably not.

And therein lies the problem. I want to raise chickens for ya. I really do. I know the demand is there. So I ask you:

Would you buy chickens that were processed on the farm?

Would you come on a pre-planned day, bring your own plastic bags, bag your own processed birds, and keep your committment to do so?

Most importantly, would you mind buying chickens that have been processed while on roller-skates.

I’m really asking the hard-hitting questions now, aren’t I? But I ask for a reason:

We call this photo Roller Pluck.

Honestly, home processing is really the only way I can imagine raising chickens for ya. Let me know what you think.

Thirsty Birdies

January 18, 2009 / admin

I have a part-time job where I work at an environmental center. One of the classes we teach is called Outdoor Living Skills. We use something we call “the Rule of 3’s” to teach kids how to prioritize their survival needs in an emergency. Everyone needs food, water, air and shelter in order to survive.

Let’s put those in order of importance:

You can survive 3 minutes without air. (Better get out of the water!)

You can survive 3 hours without shelter. (Weather dependent)

You can survive 3 days without water.

You can survive 3 weeks without food.

So assuming your lost and also assuming you’re not submerged in water, you’d better start looking for some shelter ASAP. Once you can protect yourself from the elements, then you worry about water.

Should you worry about food? Well, maybe. But most likely you’ll be found long before you’d starve to death.

So what does this have to do with farming?

Well, when you’re a livestock farmer, you’ve gotta be prepared. The animals depend on us to provide them with food, water and shelter. I don’t know if the Rule of 3’s is exactly the same for animals–the time ratios likely change. But it does help me prioritize what needs to be done first.

Shelter in the winter is of utmost importance. Animals have no electric blankets, no heated barns, no tea kettles on the burner. We must provide them with a place to hide from the wind and snow, and a nice straw bed in which they can hunker down and keep warm.

But water is a close second. The animals rely on their metabolism to keep themselves warm. They ramp it up in the cold weather, and it won’t “fire up” without lots of fresh water.

So when I walked into the chicken barn the other day, I immediately knew something was wrong.

First off, the chickens ran towards me, not away. Hmmn. The chickens and I have a pretty cool relationship. They don’t fear me, yet I’m not their favorite person either. When things are running smoothly, they could take me or leave me.

But not today. Today these birdies were all over me.

In fact, they were fighting over the snow on my boots.

Next I saw this:

That’s the heat lamp that keeps their water thawed out in the winter. You see, we have automatic waterers for the chickens. And we worked very hard developing our system. (I use the term we very loosely here.)

We have a heat lamp on the spigot where the pipe comes up from the well. We tied insulation around the pipe to keep it nice and warm. We connected a garden hose to this pipe, around which we have wound electric tape, around which we have added another layer of foam insulation.

(You might do well to substitute he for we in that whole paragraph, if you know what I’m saying.)

The insulated hose runs through a window into the interior of the barn here…..

…and to a water trough equipped with a float:

It works pretty similar to your toilet. When the water levels drop, the float opens a valve to let more water in.

We farmers are an ingenious lot. Cough.

You did notice the cat in the picture, right?

In Irish Grove, we believe in inter-specie-al harmony.

Anyways, someone put a chink in our system by knocking the light bulb out of the lamp. And the float froze to the trough.

Our chickens were so thirsty, that one of them had stuck her head out a little hole in the barn door to eat snow…..and got stuck. I didn’t get a picture of her because I was so distressed.

Her head and one wing were outside in the elements, and the rest of her body was inside, smushed under the barn door. Poor birdy. If I hadn’t checked on the chickens that morning, she would’ve died for sure. I gently slid open the barn door, trying not to break her wing, and set her free. She was OK. Whew!

I knew the birds were thirsty because they all ran outside into the snow and started to eat it.

Chickens normally don’t like snow.

Then I spent the next 3 hours running back and forth from the house to the barn. I was boiling water on the stove to pour into the water trough. I was trying to melt the ice-jammed float.

Finally the ice melted, the water started flowing, and the birds got a drink of fresh water.

Disaster averted. Barely.

When you’re a livestock farmer, you can never relax. If you do, you threaten the very lives of your animals. That’s why I developed the Farmer’s Rule of 3’s:

Check your animals, 3 times a day.

Eggs Galore….”Ooh, Aah”

December 16, 2008 / admin

There are eggs galore here in Irish Grove.

“Ooh, aah.”

With some forethought and a little luck o’ the Irish, we timed our replacement pullets rather well this year. Since the hens take a much-needed break from egg laying in the late fall, we have a really tough time filling our regular egg orders. Let me tell ya, it can be mighty frustrating to have a barn full of chickens and find 2 or maybe 3 eggs in the nests each day.

And I always wonder if our egg customers believe me when I explain to them that the hens just aren’t laying right now. Egg production is seasonal. The hens need lots of light stimulation on their pituitary gland in order to lay regularly. The short winter days just don’t provide enough light to keep them going. We keep a light on in the barn to help counter that, but like everything else, artificial just can’t compete with the natural.

Can I repeat that?

Artificial can’t compete with natural.

Thanks.

Anyways, spring is the season for high egg production. Which is why we color eggs for Easter and not Thanksgiving.

We mucked through a month or so of little to no eggs as best we could, and I got to wondering if maybe the pullets (young hens) were gonna hold off until spring to start laying. But then, all of a sudden, we started finding little mini eggs here and there. Yeehaw, the pullets are laying!

Now, unless you’ve raised laying hens sometime in your life, you probably didn’t realize that you can tell the age of the chicken by the size of their egg. Yeah, nature is all neat and tidy like that.

Sometimes.

Pullet eggs are tiny. So tiny, in fact, that when I found an aqua-blue pullet egg (from an americana hen that lays greenish blue eggs), Madelina argued with me that a Robin must have layed an egg in the chicken barn. I tried to explain to her that Robins don’t lay eggs in the winter, and that most of them migrate South.

She wouldn’t buy my explanation for one second. Stinker.

Pullet eggs will often have a little splash of blood on them as well. Mothers, I’m sure you will readily confirm that that first one is a tough one. (Sorry, guys.)

More seasoned hens lay nice large eggs. The size of egg you ideally buy from a local farmer, or at the store. These eggs are by far the most common egg we find in the nests. And it doesn’t take long for a pullet to close the gap, size-wise, with her eggs. Maybe 2 weeks, tops.

But the old hens? The ones you should cull and sell as stew birds, but can’t because you believe they’ve earned their retirement? The ones that are losing money beak over claw? Yeah, these old ladies lay an egg maybe once a week, if you’re lucky. Even during egg season. But when they do lay an egg, they are huge, honker eggs. Huge-mongous eggs. The eggs that make it hard to close the carton eggs. Jumbo eggs.

And once in awhile……and I mean these ladies must be sitting on their eggs for a month or so…..they’ll lay a super DUPER doozer of an egg–a double-yolker. And we call these eggs, courtesy of my Gramma Alice, “Ooh-Aah” eggs.

Why, you may ask? Please, you’ve just gotta ask me why, ’cause I can’t wait to tell you.

Gramma Alica calls the double-yolked eggs “Ooh-Aah” eggs because when the hen is pushing the egg out she says, “OOOooooooooh”, and when the egg is finally out she says, “AAAaaaaaaah”.

Ha, ha ha ha, hoo hoo, ha!

I think that’s pretty funny.

Here are some photos of eggs, progressing in size from pullet eggs to an “Ooh-Aah” egg. The photos don’t do this subject justice, but I haven’t added photos in awhile, so here they are:

The pullet egg:

The regular egg:

The “Ooh-Aah” egg:

As you can see, I am cooking platanos con huevos fritos for breakfast. In Panamanian that means fried plaintains with fried eggs. Yu-u-mmy!

My (delicious) breakfast is providing the perfect opportunity to prove to you skeptics out there (and don’t think I don’t know about you) that yes indeed, some eggs have two yolks.

Watch. And. Learn.

Here I go, cracking that “Ooh-Aah” egg you saw above:

There you have it, people. A double-yolked egg. An “Ooh-Aah” egg in the flesh, or pan, as it were. Ok, so I did break one yolk when I cracked the egg shell. But you can obviously see that the two yolks came from the same egg….just look at the egg white.

You better believe that with a breakfast like this one, I’ll be muttering a few oohs and aahs myself.

Let’s just hope there’s no accompanying egg.