Yes, still have a lot of chicks.
Lost a few small ones and nursed a couple more that seem to be doing better. Yesterday, one of the little Rhode Island Reds cut her head, right behind her ear and others were picking on her. They were chasing her away from food and I thought we were going to lose her. Washed her little face off and isolated her in a separate cage inside the pen, to ensure that she was able to eat, drink, and sleep. Within a few hours, she was alert and ready to go back. The others didn't pick on her anymore and all seemed better. Then, today, I noticed one of the Barred Rock chicks had pasty butt. It still had food in it's crop, and was still eating, so I think I caught it early. I had to soak the chick in a pan of warm water to get the poop off. Holding it on a warm washcloth just wasn't doing a thing and the cloth just kept getting cold. Within a minute of putting the chick's butt into the water, the pooh released and fell off into the water. I wrapped her up into a little wash cloth and held her on my chest to keep her warm until I found the hair dryer. Set that up about eight inches away and let it blow on her until she was all dry. Wasn't even ten minutes because she's so small. Put her back with the others, and she went right to the food and started eating. Fingers crossed on both of them.
We decided to add an extra feeder into the pen and put the other warmer into the pen. That's been a big hit. Plus, every day is Sheet Cleaning Day with this many chicks. I try to change the sheets every day simply because, well, there are a lot of little poopers in there all at the same time. Normally, I can wait about three days between changes. But not now!
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| 24 hours of pooh from 16 chicks |
The baby RIRs are starting to fly and jump over things. That's a good sign that we are about ready for shavings. BUT, the baby BRs are not quite there yet. They seem to be about three or four days behind the RIRs at this point. When we got them, the RIRs were much smaller than the BRs. Now the BRs are much smaller and somewhat delayed in abilities. It's all good, but I would like to have them all in shavings at this point so I won't need to keep washing sheets.
The other BRs finally figured out their dust bath! It was almost full and now it is almost empty. They are mite and lice free at this point with just a few nits left. I am still keeping the heater going as that will help those nits hatch and fall into the DE. One more week and I will clean out the entire cage to ensure we have all mites and lice out of there, and put all fresh stuff in there and we should be back on track, pest free. These BRs have gained weight and have more feathers, so they look much better.
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| 4 or 5 wk Barred Rock Pullets |
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| Dust Bath Emptied |
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In the greenhouse, we have tomatoes, bell peppers, cilantro and lettuce. I had transplanted the plants from the nursery into gallon milk jugs because they were getting root bound in the containers. They were doing really well outside until the storms came in and started pelting them. One of the bell peppers got the most damage, so they are back in the greenhouse for now.
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| Cherokee Purple Tomato Clones |
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| Sweet Bell Pepper Clones |
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My starts, from seed in March, are finally looking good. The lettuce also is doing very well. I have three types of leaf lettuce. The cilantro just sprouted this week. I will need to thin that out.
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| My Itty Bitty Starts are Growing |
Potatoes are finally looking good. Strawberries are still blooming. Peas (planted on two weeks apart three times) are all doing very well. The marjoram that I started last fall in the green house, then struggled to keep the bugs from killing it, is actually thriving. Last winter, I just took the pot outside and figured I would just start over in the spring. But it just came back on its own. Go Figure?
And lastly, the clover seed that we sprinkled out last week has already sprouted. We tried to dig out all the thistles that had taken over some areas of the back yard and it looks like the clover is going to fill it all in. So today, we scrapped out some areas that were filled with moss in the shade to see how long that will take. Little by little. I purchased 10 pounds of seed, so we have lots of areas to experiment and see how it does.
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| Crimson Clover Sprouts |
