Our journal of what we pray is our sojourn of life along the narrow way, even the old paths, submitting to the Bible as a light unto both.

Category: chickens (Page 9 of 12)

Introducing the Hoevator

Since most of the chickens that we raise end up spending some time growing up in the chicken pen area, which was put in an area shaded with oak trees, they end up liking to stay, considering that home base, and often perch in the trees when bedding down for the night. Well, out here there are just too many harmful critters that roam around at night, so we try to make sure to get the chickens into the chicken tractor. If I couldn’t stand on the chicken pen’s coupe, I was having to climb some of the trees to get them down. This got tiresome quite quickly.

One night, I thought I would try to just poke them out of the tree with something, and decided to try using the garden hoe. When I put the hoe head up to the chicken to push underneath it, I believe it just sort of hopped on; and I was able to just lower it down while it sat perched on the hoe head. Hmmm….let me try that again. And it worked again! And again, and kept working with very good success! Hey, pretty nifty! So, we thought we’d offer a demonstration of the Hoevator in action!

Once in a while, especially if I start the process too early in the evening, the chicken will fly off; but for the most part, it all works very consistently.

I know, it’s a simple thing, but it beats climbing the trees or trying to get the chickens to fly down. We’re thankful to the Lord for Him allowing us to discover this little chicken-retrieving technique!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: Fourth Batch of Chicks 2013

As we noted in the third hatching of chick the Lord granted us for this year, the mother hen that hatched out our second batch of chicks was broody; and by God’s graces and mercies, here is the result! She hatched out three more chicks, but sadly a week or two ago, while spraying fire ants, I broke my own rule that I had made after the last time I lifted the mini-tractor when I crushed a chick, and ended up with the same result — just stupid, and I knew better. And so now there are only two.

But we are thankful to the Lord for granting these He has granted! I have a feeling they’re both roosters because their combs are already showing a little larger, but we’ll see, Lord willing…

Fourth Batch of Chicks 2013
Another Pic of the Fourth Batch of Chicks 2013

And here is their video:

As always, we are so very grateful to the Lord for graciously perpetuating the flock, and may they bring glory to Him and benefit His Church in some way.

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: Third Batch of Chicks 2013

As hoped for when we showed the broody hen in our last chicken hatching blog post, the Lord granted the momma hen to hatch out some new chicks! She hatched out 8 out of 11 or so — one had the shell cracked all the way around, but sadly didn’t make it out; and it looked like another one had died during the incubation process.

From the mini-tractor, I moved them into the piano room so they have a little more room, and to get them away from the ants (although ants get into the summer kitchen, but just not as badly as sometimes in the mini-tractor). Once in there, one day I noticed there were only 7; and I ended up not being able to find hide nor hair (or skin nor feather) of it. And then a day or two later, one of the other chicks I found dead. I did see one of our smaller, homestead snakes in the piano room, so I’m wondering if it got either or both. Or the first one maybe got out of the fencing, and one of the hens we have running around the summer kitchen, while their backs are recovering from when the roosters service them too much and the feather are removed, got the chick. Not sure. But, we are thankful to God for what He has allowed to continue, and here is a picture of them — I thought I’d try to get them a little younger this time:

Third Hatching of Chicks 2013

And a short video:

And here is another hen the Lord has granted to get broody. This is actually the mother hen from that last hatching blog post mentioned above, going for another round apparently; and she’s about a week into it:

Next Broody Hen

We are so very grateful to the Lord for the granting of these continued provisions. May His works, both spiritual and temporal, bring glory to Himself!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: Next Batch of Chicks 2013

At the end of our blog post on our first chick hatching of this year, I showed a broody hen in our mini tractor. Well, the Lord granted she sit on them to term, and she hatched out 9 chicks out of I believe 10 eggs!

And here they are, several weeks later. We had to move them to one of the summer kitchen pens because they were getting too big for the mini chicken tractor, and then the ants kept invading as well:

Second Chick Hatching of 2013 in Summer Kitchen

But, by the time I took that picture, they were getting almost too big for the summer kitchen pen, so I believe it was that same evening of the day I took that picture that I moved them out into the chicken pen area, which gives them more room and the opportunity to start doing chicken things on the outside, in the dirt and hopefully eating bugs:

Second Chick Hatching of 2013 in Chicken Pen

And here is their video:


And a couple of weeks ago, another hen went broody, and here she is, waiting patiently; and the chicks are due to hatch out in a day or two!

Second Chick Hatching of 2013 in Chicken Pen

We are very thankful to the Lord for granting the provisions of these new chickens, and we pray for a healthy hatching for the next broody hen in just a couple of days, Lord willing!

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: First Chicks of 2013

Back in late March, one of our australorp hens went broody, and 3 weeks later, by God’s graces, she hatched out I believe 9 out of 12 eggs (11 were fertilized, but two of the young ones either died pretty quickly or didn’t make it out of the shell), and she raised the others very successfully! She hatched them out originally in our chicken mini-tractor, and then we moved them into the summer kitchen where we had our chicken nursery last year. Finally, just recently, I moved them to the chicken pen. As I mention in the video below, a few of them started getting sick in a day or two after moving them to the pen, and sadly, one died. I started feeding the other two that didn’t look well a little elixir the Lord granted I come up with — using an at least 3cc dropper, fill it with 1/4 cc angrstrom silver, then up to just past 1.5 cc’s with egg yoke, and up to 3 cc’s with goat milk (I did 2 1/2 for these little ones; rinse it down with semi-clean water — and they appear to be doing much better, thanks to God.

And here they are about 6 weeks into it:

First Chicks of 2013

And here’s a little video, that includes the mother hen:

And maybe 12 days ago, another autralorp hen went broody, and here she is in the mini-tractor:

Next Broody Australorp Hen

We are very grateful to the Lord for granting this provision of being able to continue the flock, and we pray they are used for His glory and the benefit of His Church.

— David

This Mite Be Trouble

Some time ago it was evident that one of our newer roosters was having some trouble walking — it would almost goose step. I noticed that its legs had developed a white crust on them, but thought that it was perhaps just a genetic defect or something. I picked off one of the crusties on the leg, and it looked like moist skin, like when a layer of human skin is removed. I wondered what was going on, but at the time, I just let it go. Then, over time, several of our chickens seemed to start getting the same crust on their legs or their scales started to look and feel “odd,” and I noticed that some of them were starting to have trouble walking, even some preferring not to do much of it.

Ok, something appeared to be wrong; and at that point, I figured I’d better investigate.

Here is a picture of the rooster’s legs:

Chicken Scaly Leg Mites Crusty Legs

In searching the Internet, and after finally working out a helpful search term, and after viewing several images, I discovered what I believed to be the culprit: scaly leg. This is apparently caused by a mite that burrows into the legs and causes the scales to protrude or that white crust I was seeing, and can in the end cause lameness. Wow! I was then glad I finally looked into it, although I felt badly for that rooster because I hadn’t researched it earlier.

And so, after further investigation, the simplest way I found to remedy this situation is to get some cheap cooking oil (not motor oil, because of the potential toxicity) and dip each leg in it for a couple of seconds (from an off off-gird standpoint, I assume we could probably use lard, but we just bought the oil instead rather than use up any lard now). This was supposed to be done for at least several days, and needed to be done to all infected birds, as the mite apparently spreads from bird to bird.

What I ended up doing was dipping each bird’s legs at night for about four days in a row, and then switched to every other day for about another week, and a couple more times at three days apart. Because we had so many to do, when I was dipping them every other day, I started alternating days with part of the flock. I used a pint jar so I didn’t have to have a lot of oil used at one time. It took a day or two to get the hang of not allowing the chicken to spill the oil, which I did by also holding the jar with the dipping hand.

Here I am dipping that rooster’s legs:

Chicken Scaly Leg Mites Dipping in Cooking Oil
Chicken Scaly Leg Mites Close Up of Dipping in Cooking Oil

And sure enough, a few weeks later, apparently the mites died, and their legs began to heal. And here is that original rooster:

Chicken Scaly Leg Mites Healed Legs

Nice!

Well, that little therapy appeared to work really well; and since then, it looks like the other chickens have had similar results.

We are thankful to the Lord for allowing us to fairly easily help the chickens, and we are grateful to Him for Him granting the healing that He did.

— David

Providence’s Perpetuation Provisions: Last Chick Roundup

When we last left our broody hens and chick-hatchings, we had just had another Austrolorp hen go broody, wondering if perhaps the Lord was not done in granting chicks this year.

And sure enough, we moved her into one of the little chicken pen areas in the piano room, and she hatched out somewhere around eight or so — Group 16!

I didn’t get pictures when they were younger and with their mama, and they have since moved on to our chicken pen area (which is our staging area for younger birds before going to the main chicken tractor), but here are a couple of them as they are now:

New Chicks 2012 Sixteenth Hatching in Pen Area
New Chicks 2012 Sixteenth Hatching in Pen Area Again

And a video:

We did have yet another hen start to go broody recently, but because of the difficulties in trying to bring chicks through the winter, we just pulled any eggs she was sitting on, and she eventually lost interest. I don’t like to do that, but we’ve had to try to take care of young chicks when it’s really cold, it it takes quite a bit of effort (you can see a little of what we had to do during the pretty bad cold-snap we had a couple of years ago.

Anyway, once again we are very thankful to the Lord for granting these provisions of the chicks throughout the year, and pray they are used for His glory and the benefit of His people.

— David

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