Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Small Farming/Homesteading is mostly shoveling Sh#t.... and finding eggs it seems





I am finally finished err caught up on the shit shoveling around here. As anyone who owns livestock can tell you shoveling shit is NEVER finished. In fact I am not sure which chore takes up more time, harvesting, stacking and feeding hay or shoveling shit. Seems I am usually doing one of the two around here. Lately however I been shoveling more shit than anything else.

I took another three loads of manure I pulled out of the equipment shed and spread it on the hay field today. I then put the manure spreader away for a few weeks as I have now managed to get all the manure piles removed. I think I took out 12 loads of manure in the last week and a half.

It was then time to go into the barn and begin the set up for tomorrows sorting and putting the ewes in with the rams. Tomorrow is going to be a day for the record books let me tell you. There will be only two animals on this entire farm happy tomorrow. That would be the two rams. The ewes will be unhappy, the yearlings will be wanting their mommies and the chickens will be upset because their dusting grounds are now full of sheep.

However before tomorrow starts I have to set up the barn for sheep sorting and that includes freeing up two stall doors.

It seems no matter how much stuff I grade out of the barn, no matter how much shit I shovel these two stall doors ALWAYS have their bottoms buried in shit.

So there I was once again shoveling shit and making yet another dung heap.

This time though I had a new supervisor in the form of a chicken named Hennypenny. All the other chickens stay at a respectable distance but this one hen likes to fly up onto my shoulder and get in between me and my work for some reason.

Now I haven't been spending much time in the barn lately. Everything has been outside work but it took me a couple of hours to get everything set up and dug out. While I was in there I heard a couple of hens making their usual egg laying racket and then one of the RhodeIsland reds came out from under an old saddle stand, looked at me and started fussing at me.

"That's kinda odd" I thought.

So I went and had a look see.

There were 22 eggs in a little nook the hens had excavated out next to a hay bale under there.




You could only see the nook if you actually leaned over the old saddle and looked down. The sneaky little tarts were hiding them from me.

I collected up the eggs not being sure how many were good or bad and went back to work shoveling shit.

Pretty soon I heard another hens making that bok bok sound only this time she came running out from under my portable cement mixer. Took one look at me and started squawking like I was trying to eat her or something. Sure enough a little investigating turned up another batch of eight eggs. Another episode like the first two about half an hour later turned up another stash of seven eggs.

Thirty seven eggs in two hours. When I went back to work my mother was checking them in a bucket of water to see how many were good. My suggestion was to just get rid of all of them except the warm ones but she boiled em up and so far they have all been fine. I had two for lunch.

No white or blue eggs in any of the stashes though so I think the little Hamburg hen has her own super secret spot I haven't found yet.

I wonder where they are going to find to lay now that I have discovered their three secret spots?

This free range chicken thing is a bit more worked than I thought although I kinda enjoy searching for the eggs it's like Easter every day!!!!!!

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!!!


13 comments:

  1. That sounds familiar with the chickens, I would find huge stashes of eggs like that. They will get pretty sneaky with you about it. One trick that I would play on them is to mark a couple eggs and leave them in the nest and they would keep using the hiding spot and I could just keep taking the fresh eggs out, they get wise eventually. I finally just stopped the free range stuff and gave them a big fenced in lot with nest boxes in the coop which put an end to easter egg hunting.

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    1. Sf - Why I was surprised at the number of people who started begging me for eggs the chicken idea from my point was more about bug control than anything else. However I have found the egg production is a huge bonus. I saw almost no black crickets this year around the barn or house although there were millions of them out in the field. I kinda like the free range thing even with the hidden eggs but the damned hens are making a mess with the hay bales too which I do find annoying.

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  2. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Welcome to the wacky world of chickendom! Just wait till one or two of those ol' gals goes broody.

    Put those eggs in enough water to cover them +1". The ones that either float or stand on end are no good. The ones that stay flat on the bottom are good.

    I commiserate with you on all the 'political' work... it is amazing how it piles up.

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    1. Hobo - I am kinda hoping one will go broody this Spring I would like to have a self producing flock. Mom was putting them in water all afternoon and she said she didn't find any bad ones. I doubt any of them were more than a couple days old anyway as I had been all over those areas right before going to Nebraska.

      I must say with the help of the tractors and the manure spreader I dealt with the manure much faster this go around though.

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  3. Shovling manure is on my list today its a regular occurance here too, it never ceases to surprise me how much is produced, just as well there is always a use for it :-)

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    1. Dawn - Luckily the sheep manure can go right into use. The horse stuff is a bit more of a problem though and your right the amount is astronomical really.

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  4. PP,

    Shoveling _hit is a full time job!!!
    Egg searching keeps you on your toes. You've found all the hiding spots, now your chickens will have to find new places.

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    1. Sandy - I think they already have. We have about two spots that are open and used by one hen each day that don't seem to mind us taking them. Each of those spots already had an egg this morning but the secret spots are still empty. The little tarts.

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  5. I used to have sneaky hens, too. But since we started locking them in the coop/run (with the nest boxes full of golf balls) for 2 weeks every spring, we've eliminated that problem. So far. Knock on wood. I'd still rather hunt free range eggs than lock them up for good!

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    1. HG - Ya so far we have had good luck with the free range thing. I imagine the problem will lessen as the hay supply dwindles this Winter too. Right now the hens have almost a limitless supply of hiding spots.

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  6. Perpetual Easter for you! 12 loads of poo is a lot! I think I'd pay to see Hennypenny on your shoulder!

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    1. DFW - I was sitting on my moms porch yesterday and she was out by the side of the house and came over and jumped up on my arm while I was sitting there. I am afraid she isn't going to last long though the other chickens pick on her and she will wander up almost into the dogs waiting mouth. Eventually she is going to do that when no one is around to keep the dog under control.

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  7. congrats on your eggs and it must be so much fun to go hunting every day! that poo is worth gold - if you have too much, you can mail us some - bahahahah! but shoveling poo is...well...a really sh*tty job! (see what i did there? pretty funny eh?)

    go check out my latest post - i think you'll like it. it's a rant.

    sending love to you and yours. your friend,
    kymber

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