another update

I have be out over the road almost a month now
our garden is doing pretty good right now.I hope we can harvest some veggies when I get home on the 4th.


All I can say are our cockerels are not 3 day old chicks when I left home. I have to make a better brooder for the next time we buy more chicks.

The ducks look to me like they are almost the size of our hens.


The Pigs... All i can say is WOW. it looks like Smoky has got a little chunky and patty is still smaller than he is. I just cant wait til we have some fresh pork in the freezer.

Anna's garden update

My wife is so happy of her garden. She has never grown anything like this before. This is was a trial garden. We have tomatoes,radishes,turnips,okra,spinach,lettuce,yellow squash, and cucumbers. I think this fall I am going to set up a small aquaponics to grow fish and veggies. There is nothing much going on right now besides we had to move the ducks and put them in with the hens til I can get home. I hope to be home on the 4th

They grow so darn fast

We got these chicks and ducks 2 weeks ago ,just before I left to go back over the road. I have another week or so to get home and now I can't wait to get home.We only lost 2 in the 1st couple of days. my girls even look alot bigger too. Looks like I have my work cut out for me when I get home . I have to finish both my chicken tractors,build my nest boxes for my girls and slaughter 14 or so fryer rabbits. I will need to go pick up some more straw,5 50lbs of rabbit food,2 50lbs bags of chick starter, 3 50lbs of whole corn and I think 2 50 lbs of layer feed and oyster shells. I think I will need to get a couple of more feeders and waterier for the ducks and cockerels.......Oh I almost forgot I have to hang more rabbit cages and put up more chicken wire up for my hens so they can't fly out. I know that I'm missing something but not sure what it is!!

conti

Pics of my wife's garden










Our ducks,chicks and Dumb dumb




Our apples and our 15 hens .Our Pigs Patty and Smoky with our 3 dogs and last one our grapes

Long few days

Some of you know I am an over the road truck driver. I have been to tire to update my blog, i left home on 6/8/09 and I have drove a lot of miles.

Elkmont Al to Axis Al 340 miles
Axis Al to Whitfield Ma 1313 miles
E. Longmedow Ma to Pooler GA 960 miles
Pooler Ga to Jacksonville Fl 135 miles
Jacksonville Fl to Myrtle Beach 462 miles
Myrtle Beach to n.Charleston Sc 110 miles
N. Charleston SC to Wausau WI 1294 miles
Owen WI to Murray Ky 723 miles Which I am now headed too

I'm just plain tired!!

I do have some updates
I believe the 3 ducks we have are too big to be with the chicks now. I am trying to get my brother to build a simple 5ft x 5ft fenced in area for the til I get home to finish their home. I have to figure out a new brooder for my chicks now because aka dumb dumb .......turkey is getting out of it.right now I am using a foot deep swimming pool and my wife had to put 3 foot high chicken wire around it. To keep them in but some how Dumb Dumb is not as dumb as I thought. It still is getting out.

my wife wanted a garden so she made small one while I was out over the road. When I was home I helped her work on it and now it looks like everything is growing. Our grapes are looking good and our apple tree is too.

Can you say happy pigs?

These are a few pic of Patty and Smoky. I got the 2 landrace from the Byrd family.I was not to sure about getting pigs but now I know I made the right choice.I thought that I would have trouble keeping the in the fenced in area. They do learn real quick about electric fences...no trouble yet.Besides they like to eat all the dog food up and piss the dogs off.You may notice a little black thing always with my pigs. Our pup and the pigs play with each other. I think .......he thinks he is a pig too. I'm not to sure how big of an area I have them in but they do love it . At the moment they are not sure about the pool yet. They drink out of it and play in their water pan we have for them.
I called the Byrd's today and reserved 2 more I'd like to get 1 cut bore and 1 not cut. I'm thinking about keeping my guilt and breeding her when my bore gets old enough. Only time will tell with that. OK I'm off to get some sleep. I'm sitting here in Jacksonville,FL and I will deliver my load tomorrow morning in Myrtle Beach,SC.

Chicken tractor with out wheels 4 now

For now my chicken tractors will not be moving any time soon I am in the process in building 2 of them .1 is smaller than the other one and it will be for our 3 ducks and its a 10ft x 8ft. All I have done to it is build the frame.

This is my other one ,its almost done but ran out of time. Dam home time doesn't last long enough.It's 12ft x12ft.I did learn one lesson DO NOT LET LITTLE KIDS DO THE PAINTING WITH OIL BASE BARN PAINT!! A gallon of safe paint thinner and scrub pads..............The kids didn't like that one bit.

New chicks/ducks/turkey

We just got these chicks Sat from Cackle Hatchery. We Ordered 100 cockerels and a turkey and 3 free ducks. Theses are our meat birds but we will keep one for our 15 hens.
We did receive 105 chicks. 1 DOA and 2 others died later. My boys and I went fishing Sunday and had 3 tubes of crickets left.We gave some to our hens and a bunch to the chicks and ducks. They went crazy and it got real noisy. It was so funny to watch them try to run away and try to keep the cricket for themselves. Ok I'm off to get some sleep. I Just delivered my load here in Westfield,Ma and have to go later to pick up a load in Long meadow,Ma at 2300 and take it to Pooler,Ga to deliver on the 12th.

I have to thank some one.

I have to say thank you to my loving wife Anna. She is stuck at home while I'm a OTR truck driver.She has worked hard feeding and taken care of all our animals,by herself. If it wasn't for her they would have died off.She is getting good at breeding our rabbits but she doesn't like to eat them because she takes care of them. I just hope she will not do that with our 2 Landrace pigs and our chickens....She wouldn't let me eat our goats when we had some.It does get crazy at times because she has to take care of our 3 boys and our farm. I have faith in her.........I LOVE U HUN

My 15 little girls

These are my girls .They are our 1st start with chickens.They are almost 3 months now.For some reason I catch myself sitting in the barn taken a break or two,just watching them. I think they are kind of funny to watch.We cant wait for them to lay some eggs. We just got the frying pan special from Cackle hatchery on Sat.We ordered 100 heavy breed cockerels and received 105.We had 1 DOA and 2 died during the weekend but we did get 3 free ducks and we ordered 1 turkey.If I get some time tomorrow I will post some pics of them and our set-up and our new homes for them.