Eggs For Dayz

On our farm we have not only cows but also chickens. Since the chickens we have now are about 3 years old, we are just about due fore new ones. This fall we decided to get roughly 130 baby chicks. We had them shipped to us and we had to pick them up the post office same day. Starting them off at a day old, we had to set up an incubator and keep their body temperature at around 95 degrees and each week back off 5 degrees; until they get bigger and their feathers grow in. Every few hours we were checking the temperature so they wouldn't freeze or die of heat stroke.

Fun fact is whenever you have chickens, the magic number is roughly 60 percent of the chickens will be laying eggs. So we should be expecting roughly 78 eggs/day which turns into 6.5 dozen eggs each day. We do have our regulars who buy eggs off of us especially during holiday seasons. Our chickens are free range so that means they are not cooped up in boxes only to lay eggs (ours can run around outside if they please). 

I enjoy having chickens because if I'm ever hungry, I can whip up some egg whites anytime.  

Here are some of the baby chicks at a day old 

This is a picture of the chicks about a month old

Stacking Them Bails

When you farm, its all about getting as much hay in as you can while the weather is still nice. This past summer of 2017, we ended up bailing hay about seven times. We got around 600 square bales and about 100 round bales to add to the hay from last year.

When it comes to the bailing, we would have two tractors running; one with the bailer and another with the trailer following close behind. While my dad would bale, the bales would shoot out and land on the ground. Thats where we come in; if you are on bale stacking duty, you lucked out because you don't have to walk anywhere, you stood on the trailer and stacked. If you were on bale toss duty, you walked the 25 acer field picking up every bale and tossing it up onto the trailer to be stacked. Of course, being the only boy in our family, I got stuck with bale toss.

When it was time to unload the trailer, we had to unstack all the hay we so perfectly stacked, just to re-stack it again in the top of the barn for storage. Now that it is the winter season, the grass is not growing as fast so we need to feed the hay to the cows. Of course its up to me once again to throw all the hay down that we so perfectly previously stacked twice.

A few weeks ago, I cleaned out the an area of the barn to accommodate about 40 more bales on top of the 30 that we throw down at a time. So yesterday I threw down 70 bales and re-stacked them, once again, in the barn to feed the cows. The whole process can take an hour or more, depending on if I get any help.

It was the most gruesome hay bailing season I've been apart of. It feels like the work never ends on a farm.

This is a video of whenever we were done bailing and heading back into the barn to unload the trailer.

Here is a neat clip of the round bailer releasing the bale. 

Time to Clean

Yesterday happened to be a decent day on the farm; not to cold, no rain, sun was out... you get the point. Basically it was a perfect opportunity to clean the barn. Starting around 9:00am we began shoveling manure into wheel-barrels to take outside. My dad was operating the John Deere, with the bucket attachment,. He waited for us to dump the wheel-barrels into the bucket, and he then transferred the manure to the compost piles we have. About seven hours later, we were finally done. It took us about 45 wheel-barrel loads to get the barn all cleaned out. I felt like I burned 5,000 calories by the time I was done. You best believe I slept like a baby last night.

This picture was taken as we were finishing up cleaning the barn. Nothing is as peaceful as the country.

A Thanksgiving For The Books

Every year we have the family over for Thanksgiving. This year was no different, the family came up, hors d'oeuvres were set out, and I was still in the barn taking care of the animals. When I finally got inside and showered, we sat down and ate a fantastic meal.

As soon as I got done eating, I decided to go check on the expecting mother cow. Good thing I did, because she was in the process of giving birth. This was her first calf and she was exhausted from pushing so she was having trouble calving. Myself, along with my dad, sister and cousin, all assisted the brith by pulling the calf out. The whole process took about 45 minutes of nonstop pulling. This calf was ginormous; almost the size of a two month old calf. After we helped deliver the baby bull, i went back inside, showered and ate my second thanksgiving meal of the day. It was a thanksgiving I'll never forget!

The first picture is the new born and its mother and the second picture is new born in the front and the two month old calf in the back.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving also!