We had a broody turkey mommy next to a hay manger in the barn goat stall. One day she had a hatchling showing itself with her. But, it looked funny for being a turkey, and that was because, it wasn’t a turkey! A chicken egg got in with her clutch, and she hatched out a little chicken chick!
But, turkey eggs need a week more of sitting than chicken eggs, and so we were worried she might stop sitting on her turkey eggs. Well, sadly, that sort of did happen, although 3 sort of hatched out. We actually tried taking them and all her eggs and putting them under a broody chicken, and 2 more tried to hatch out, but in the end, all 5 turklets didn’t make it. 🙁
However, this little one — I think now it’s a rooster — is still alive today and doing fine!
Here’s another picture of it with its “mommy” in the barn:
And then a video. I had to use a flashlight to try to get light on them:
Even though it didn’t go as we had planned, we are thankful to the Lord for granting this provision of the new chick, our first for 2022!
The last time we did a cattle update was when a little heifer was born back in 2015! I’m not sure why I haven’t followed up more…I think once I got behind, it just kept being pushed off because of how long it might take to do.
But now, without further ado, I thought I’d try to get everyone up to through last year (note that not all the cattle shown were/are Sue and mine personally)…
2016
At this point, our very kind and generous neighbor was letting us run the cattle on his land…some 400 acres! And so for those years, we didn’t have to buy hay, which was really nice! And so, here they are…
Here’s the herd sire who wasn’t ours personally, Manolete:
2017
We didn’t apparently take many pictures this year, as they are all of cattle headed off somewhere:
2018
This is Mateo who eventually became the herd sire after Manolete in 2019, which you can see as a little calf on this blog post:
While over on our neighbor’s property, we finally put up a somewhat decent corral to be able to…well…corral them for loading into trailers. 🙂
2019
Well, early in the year, our neighbor said he was turning his place into a wildlife reserve, so he graciously gave us about a month to get our land ready, which involved shoring up fences, etc.
And here they are back on the land. It was nice to have them back, actually:
We moved the corral to our place, and here they are during “cube” time:
Ummmm….yeah….
One day, Amistosa, our best looking Longhorn as far as pure Spanish traits, came strolling up really skinny. I thought to give her some special feed, which I had given her before when she had gone down just before one of our worst cold spells here (which you can read about in this blog post), because it had worked before, and I did, but I guess I had given her too much, as she ended up extremely bloated.
We shoved a bunch of baking soda down her, which helped some, but over the next several weeks, including a vet visit, she never quite recovered.
One morning, when I was out of town, Sue found Ami fallen over in a little ditch that led to a small watering hole in our inner area, which is where we were taking care of Ami, and she was just struggling and rolling around, and just looked in a bad way, so Sue made the executive decision that she just wasn’t going to make it, so Sue solicited the help of a neighbor here, and he graciously helped to put her down.
When I got back home, we wanted to move her to a final resting spot under some trees in our north field, and so we hooked up a chain around her horns and towed her up there:
…and then said a final goodbye…goodbye Ami…you were one of our first group of cows for us. We thank the Lord for all the offspring He granted from her…
2020
Continuing on, it indeed was nice to see the cows around the house:
…and out our front porch:
2021
And finally, onto last year…
Here’s herd sire Mateo again, a little older now. However, he started going through and jumping over (after fixing the “going through” the fence”) to our neighbor’s property, the gentleman who let us run our cattle on this land those years ago. He was nice about it, but I couldn’t control Mateo anymore, so I sadly had to dump him at the sale barn. Bye, big guy!
But now lastly, to close this blog post off, here’s the compilation video across the years (I was wrong in the video with the 2 fighting bulls in the back of the trailer about how old they were…it was actually 1 1/2 and 2 years old):
We are always thankful to the Lord for His provisions of the cattle, the meat He’s granted from them, the sales to be able to pay for hay over the winter, and the provisions on the land He’s granted to feed them through the growing times!
We are grateful to the Lord for Him granting two more rounds of chick hatchings this 2021!
Here’s group 6. We put 12 eggs under her, and we’re pretty sure she hatched them all out! They’re doing pretty well, although some, especially one, have shown signs of getting sick (standing kind of scrunched up, often with the wings down a little, not very active), so I’ve been giving about an 1/8 to 1/10cc of 660ppm angstrom silver, 2-3 times a day, tapering that over time…most seem basically better, except the one, although it seems improved as well, for which we are thankful:
And here’s group 7. 8 originally hatched out, and 1 had started but wasn’t progressing, so I helped it a little by breakup up its egg shell some, and it made it out, although I found it dead soon after. 🙁 However, the other 8 are still doing fine!
And here’s their video:
Again, we are always very thankful to God for these new provisions, and any food He might grant from them, for us and others, we pray!
This one wasn’t supposed to get pregnant this year, as she was born last year, but she apparently found a way. 🙂 And we’re extra thankful she had no birthing complications:
And here is their video through the whole kid season from births to leaving with their new owner:
We are very thankful to the Lord for these gifts, the healthy and safe mommies and kids across the board, and we are thankful for the milk He provides from them!
Here’s a picture of the okra, although it’s buried amidst a whole bunch of volunteer (ones we didn’t plant this year) sweet potato plants! We’ll see if anything actually comes of them:
Since there was so much of the sweet potato plants growing by themselves, we took some slips that were growing from the potatoes themselves from last year and planted them. They’re doing ok…you can see a little tuft in the picture above in the lower right from the area where I planted the potato slice itself. You can’t really distinguish them, but there is some growth from the slips we planted along that fence line on the right:
Here’s more of the okra and sweet potato plants:
And here’s a section of black eyed peas. We originally planted some really, really old ones, but nothing happened, so we planted these after the other section below:
And here’s the first section of black eyed peas planted:
And a flower!
And here’s the view from me in a lounge position on the ground, just to give some height perspective:
As always, we thank the Lord for these little miracles that “just grow” (from our perspective)…we can plant and water, but it takes God’s direct hand of providence to bring forth anything. And we pray He grant us food from them, if He might!
The Lord has graciously continued to grant more chicks this 2021!
This was a surprise pair, group 3. I heard some cheeping in the barn, and eventually tracked it to the loft, and sitting on a bucket of rope on the shelves in the left was a mama and a chick! Whaaaat? An egg had fallen off as well, but I grabbed her and her youngin’ and all the eggs and put her in the brooder barn in a caged area, and she ended up hatching out another one, so we have these 2 extras now this year!
Since this picture, one had gone knock kneed (ie. its knees bending the wrong way slightly) and spraddle legged, but I put an electrical tape binder around its legs to keep them together but spread apart like normal, and have been working with it, and at least now it’s able to keep itself upright. The other one is now out in the chicken pen:
And here’s group 4. We put 12 eggs under this mommy, and not a one was unhatched…wow!
And here’s group 5, which has 5 chicks in it! (although 6 were hatched, 1 died pretty quickly)
And here’s a video of them all. Group 3 I had to film at night because the mama hen was starting to pick on them, so I had to get her out of there that night:
As always, we are very thankful to God for Him graciously granting these new provisions on the homestead!
Following close on the heels of Tanya’s turkey chicks, another one of our turkey hens got broody in the barn also, in one of the goat stalls.
Tanya and hers were still in the brooder barn (aka. the summer kitchen), so we didn’t really have a place for Tasha, and I didn’t want to put her in a small caged area like we do for our chickens.
Well, Tasha’s chicks started hatching, so what we ended up doing was drop down a couple of extra OSB boards we had and stitch together two chicken fence-cages into a longer run like in the brooder barn. We then covered it all with blankets and bent one end down so I could lean over and access the inside, and we set up their water and food.
And then it was time to try to transfer her and the turklets. The youngin’s were already starting to walk away from her and explore a little, so we just started grabbing them and moving them into the caged area, and Tasha thankfully kept calm. And then with her, we put a large fishing net over her, grabbed her from within that, and put her into the caged area. Thankfully, that all went rather smoothly. 8 turkey chicks in all! Wow, and thanks to the Lord!
Sadly, 1 died pretty quickly, but the other 7 kept going and growing.
Quite a few weeks later, when they all were much bigger, one morning, one of the young was getting picked on, so, with them pretty close to big enough where we were planning on letting them go soon anyway, I decided to let them free at that time.
Here they are just before we got them going:
Well, that part did not go rather smoothly. I couldn’t get the end of the cage propped up with the blankets on, so I removed some of the blankets, and Tasha, who is skittish anyway, just seemed to panic and flew up and out of the caged area and out the north door. Arg! So, we tried to shoo out the turklets so they would stay with her, and they started doing the same thing, flying up and off walls, going all over the barn, etc.
Soon, we were able to get them all out the north door. Mommy was kind of running up the walk path up to the goat fields with a couple of turklets behind her, so we tried to get the other ones to follow, and everyone started scattering. It was quite a mess. We were trying to get all the yougin’s to stay with mama, but looking back, we probably should have just let them be in the cage, as shooing them out caused a lot of trouble.
Throughout the day, 2 of the turklets made it back, hanging around the other turklet group or wherever, and Tasha came back too. And by the end of the day, only those 2 were to be found. Sigh.
In the evening, one I believe went into the barn, the other sat down next to the generator box, and so we got it and put it in the barn. We were praying God might grant more come back, or that we would find them, or that He might grant their safety over night.
Later, as Sue was walking Brodey our dog, she had an inkling to take a bit of a different path, and lo and behold, she discovered 3 sat down next to the orchard gate! Wow, what a gift from God! So, we used a fishing net with them, and got them into the barn. So now, 5 were in the barn, and 2 still missing. And that was it for that day.
The next day, I was walking around, looking around for the missing ones, and walked by the hill of dirt that was the dirt dug out for the root cellar, and lo and behold, God granted I just happen to walk by one and see it sat down in the grass! Wow, another gift out of nowhere! So, we netted it and put it in the barn in the goat stall area where the other 5 were still hanging out.
And in the Lord’s perfect will, #7 never came back. We don’t know if it just crouched down and died, or just ran off, but that was it. But, God didn’t have to grant any of them to come back, and we thank Him for what He did grant, and His answers to prayer!
Today, the 6 are still going strong, and spending their days out and roaming the homestead. Mama never rejoined them at all, and within the last couple of days, she had gone missing. She had slightly injured her wing when she tried to fly out on that mayhem day a couple of weeks ago, but I had a hard time believing it killed her now. However, last night she made an appearance to take a dirt bath and eat some, so we know she’s still alive, and it looks like she might be nesting again. We do pray God grant her safety out there, if He might. Maybe we’ll be able to find her and migrate her into the brooder barn.
And now, without further ado, here’s their video, which includes the release day, and the followups with finding turklets, and the 6 eventually starting to venture out of the barn:
We recognize that nothing we have is our own, and that all things are the Lord’s to do with as He pleases. We thank Him for graciously granting the turkey chicks He has, and we pray we never murmur, and that He glorify Himself through them in some way, and always through us in some way.
Heb. 11:8-10 - "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
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