Today, as I was swearing about that necessity of dodging various piles of “fertilizer” in my front yard, I was considering banning all non-pet varieties from the yard. Then, I remembered that bug control is paramount. Unfortunately, bug control requires chickens in the yard. And yes, the chickens are the primary offenders in this instance. That said, though, the sheep were in the yard for 5 days before their “deposits” became so numerous that I got fed up and kicked them back out. Then today, I saw the still-pregnant ewe and thought about the consequences of my frustration. Since I am more unwilling to find another lamb after it is too late than I am to dodge the bombs in my yard, the sheep are once again in our yard. Her bag has been full for almost a week now, so she should deliver soon. Then I can put her and her baby in a small pen for a couple of days and kick everyone else out with a clear conscience. I really really hope the barn does become usable this year, and that the sheep fence really does get put up so the sheep can stay where they belong. Those two things together should give us a system that will help minimize the lamb loss.

I am getting there.  Stairs and upstairs hallway are all sanded now.  I have spent the last two days cleaning up so I can stain the floor.  I tried to wash the walls first, that didn’t work out well.  They were covered with so much wood dust I kept having to change out the water.  I then decided that vacuuming the walls was the answer.  That worked out very well.  The only problem with that is when we were building the stairs I opened them up.  At the landing it is 20 feet to the ceiling.  Mind you it looks great.  We even added a second window up high to let in the light… it is very painful to get to the ceiling when there is a 36inch diameter light hanging down in a 48inch wide area.  I was standing on the ladder with our push vacuum jammed in place near the top and me holding it in place with my knees while I used the wand on the vacuum cleaner to suck up dirt off the walls and ceiling.  I also vacuumed off the light (it has been wrapped in plastic for two years, while we textured and painted walls and sanded floor).  Of course now that I am finishing the floors I realize that the walls need to be painted again.  I missed some spots and since there are no lights in the hallway yet, you can’t see them.  When I turn on the construction light they are glaringly obvious.  So I get to paint in the evenings after the floor is done (and after it is dark outside).  I have a Gorilla ladder, that lets you adjust its two legs to different heights, so I can work on the stairs.  As I am standing on the top of it, balancing the vacuum cleaner and waving the wand around I realized that this is how people get hurt.  Cause if I fell, it was gonna break something.  Of course, I didn’t stop, but I did realize it wasn’t a safe (stupid) thing to be doing.  Just think those people at work don’t think I have any sympathy for them, if they only knew, I have been there and done that also.

I have a stupid problem.  It really shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is.  It is not life threatening but is starting to annoy me to no end.  The chickens are laying were they should NOT.  The section of the wood shed that I had blocked off with a tarp had a 1.5 foot gap at the top of the tarp door and there was a back window opening to the outside.  Sarah came in and told me there were a “butt load” of eggs under the tarp covering my old road bicycle.  After lecturing the child about her language I went out to the wood shed.  Twenty Six eggs I had to break against the stump!!  Another 2 dozen!!!  I think the chickens are doing it just so they can have a feeding frenzy when I break the eggs open for them.  Again, this is a stupid problem.  I just want to collect the eggs so I can sell them.  At this rate I am going to have to go back and see how much money I have lost.  The chickens are cheating me out of cash.

I went and got some chicken wire out of the fencing pile (1 of 5 piles on the property) and put wire mesh over the window and more over the door.  The chickens SHOULD not be able to get back there now.  There are a few 6-8inch gaps at the top of the wall, I really hope the chickens don’t get in there now.  I also added three more nest boxes (for a total of four now) around the wood shed walls.  I even got some barley hay and lined all the nest boxes.  The momma cat that had her babies in the wood shed had moved hers to the chicken coop and the chicken coop lone cat baby was moved out today by her momma.  So I grabbed the cat carrier, stuffed all the babies, caught momma and took them out to the barn.   I made a tunnel with the hay bales and stuffed the cat carrier in it so she could feel safe.  Informed the child that a new rule was in effect, NO cats or broody hens are allowed in the nesting boxes!!!  Throw those broody hens outside into the weather until they decide to stop being broody and keep moving the kittens out if they come back.

Of course as I type this Annmarie spotted the momma kitty with a kitten in her mouth heading toward the chicken coop!!  I just saw her go by with another kitten.  She will get tired of it after a few days.  I NEED those chickens to lay in their nesting boxes.  Like I said, a stupid problem…

Last week when I sprayed the weeds it was an almost perfect day, cool, cloudy and virtually no wind.  I sprayed that afternoon and it didn’t rain until the next morning.  Of course since then it has been raining or the wind is howling and I have not been able to spray the old orchard.  But I did most of the important stuff last week.  I have burned weeds for the last three years and have made great progress, I have also been digging the large weeds by hand, but nothing beats herbicide when it comes to large tracks of land.  It is amazing stuff when used correctly, here is a picture of my thistles going away and the grass just getting greener.

There are literally hundreds of thistles dying at this point just on the hillside.  This is the back creek that runs off of pure snow melt runoff.  It started up this year the first week of April.  We hope it will run until July at least.  A good year is 5 months of running and we did not get that kind of snow this year in the mountains.  I suspect we will only get about 3 months out of the creek this year.

It is another month so time for the monthly egg report, courtesy of Annmarie’s spreadsheet she made for me.  If you know anyone that has chickens they can download the excel spreadsheet for free at our website (the link is on our blog homepage).  I love summer.  The chickens always cost less to feed and they lay more eggs.  Now considering I have been negative for the first three months of the year, I figure I need to make all my profit in six months so I can afford to lose money for the other six months.  Not exactly a sound business plan, but unfortunately I cannot control when the chickens lay lots of eggs (I can’t even control where they lay eggs!).
 So April was a profitable month.  I made a whopping $40.75 net profit on 33 hens laying (for the year my net income is –$14.27/month.  I had $43 in expenses mostly food (for the year my monthly expenses are $45.72).  We collected a total of 524 usable eggs averaging 16.9 eggs/day collected (for the year the average is 8.3, remember I had 20 babies that matured and are now laying, April was their first month of them being solid layers).  The chickens ate 0.48#food/egg (for the year are averaging 0.84#/egg, remember I count my feed expense against the laying hens.  So when I am feeding babies the adults are responsible to make up the difference).  Feed cost was greatly reduced per egg which is why the month was my first profitable month of the year.  In April it cost $0.08/egg (my yearly average is $0.21/egg or $2.52/dozen.  I have been selling my eggs for $2.50 dozen since the beginning of the year.)  I may have to up the price in the winter to $3/dozen.  My production will drop about 60% in the winter.  Hopefully, only 40% during winter but i doubt it.  So I am finally making a profit.  I am –$57.09 for the year so far.

The chickens are definitely not a huge money maker, I am hoping to get them to a place where they bring in around $50-100/month.  There is definitely an economy of scale to chickens.  I think that around 100-200 chickens is probably the most profitable for a small scale operation.  This is around 1500-3000 eggs/month (125-250 dozen/month) or around 31-62 dozen/week or around 4.5-9 dozen/day or 55-110 eggs/day.  Gotta have a full size refrigerator just to hold a few days worth of eggs, better not miss a farmers market or you are gonna be buried in eggs.  All those eggs have to be directly sold to a consumer or else you have to grade them.  Which requires a grading room which requires a sink, running water, sewage, and power = $/expenses.  So we are not going there yet.  Gonna stay at this level for a while.

That was probably more information that most people needed, but it is very interesting.  Remember, my chickens free range so that is why my food expense goes down drastically in the spring/summer and fall.  The chickens eat everything not nailed down.  Here is a picture of some of the brood.  You can see Sprout (small dog), Bailey (chocolate lab), one of the momma cats and lots of chickens (23).  They are all following the golden rule “Comply or die” and getting along famously.  The sheep are currently in our front yard mowing the lawn.  We are going to leave them in for a few days to see if one of the ewes has a baby.  Tired of the coyotes killing the babies.

I have been busy, sorry about not posting sooner, will try and catch everyone up.  Sarah injured her left ankle at home on the way to play practice,  so Annmarie had to drive her over to the hospital the next day (she wasn’t wanting to bear any weight on it).  She ended up with a bad sprain, took it easy for a couple of days and is now able to walk around with her aircast (ankle splint).  We went and saw her in the play last night.  It was good.  I so would have been in drama class if we had had it available.  It was a cute play, “Til Death Do Us Part”.  She has one more weekend of the play then it is back to swim team four nights a week.

I have been having issues with the chickens stashing eggs in unapproved locations.  They are not consulting me before finding a new nest.  I have seven boxes in the coop for 33 hens.  So 5 hens/box, and they are large boxes so more than one hen can fit at a time.  Trouble is the cat took over one to have kittens in.  I thought this was going to be an issue, but not so much.  I find the kitten curled around 2-4 eggs every day!  The chickens just jump in there and lay an egg.  If the momma cat is in there they just lay it near the front.  The real trouble is I have two hens trying to go broody on me.  Annmarie has forbidden me from having any more chicks until I start killing chickens off.  I am up to 54 chickens if you include the babies that are 8 weeks old now.  I am starting to run out of space.  So those two brooders are just like squatters.  They camp out and won’t let anyone else use the box.  I had already added a door to the old wood/coal shed.  The chickens were sneaking over to the coal side and laying eggs.  I gated that section temporarily ( hog wire panel and a tarp covering it) until I have time to add a wooden gate (stairs have to be done inside before I can start on the outside again).  So I was out collecting eggs yesterday (child is still on injured duty) in the wood shed (unapproved laying region) and looked over in the far corner and spotted some eggs.

Of course there were not supposed to be any over there.  Their unofficial spot is just across the wire along the back wall so I can just reach through and collect them.  I had to move the fence and collect them.  Of course I don’t know how old they are (less than 6 days, probably 4, but not positive) so they get to become chicken food.  I didn’t have a basket so I just gathered them up a few at a time and placed them on the ground through the fence.  Sprout and Bailey were running around and Sprout was sniffing the eggs and then he ran outside.  I threw all the eggs at a stump to break them open for the chickens and cats.  Every once in a while the chickens get in the way and get thumped with an egg.  They really don’t like that.  I found 13 eggs in that nest.  Last month alone I wasted 48 eggs from the chickens not complying with my plan.  Plus, I don’t want to sell eggs that I am not sure of the age.  Scares some of the customers.  So, Sprout ran around the yard for about 10 minutes until Annmarie let him in.  She noticed he had something in his mouth.

It was a whole chicken egg!!  He had been carrying it around the whole time after he snatched it.  He had not broken it.  It had a few teeth marks, but he had not broken the egg.  He is a little thief, you have to be careful with setting down tools when he is around also.  I never would have guessed that he could get an entire egg in his mouth.  He weighs just under 10#.

I did go out and add another temporary nest box in the coop and a semipermanent/temporary one in the wood shed.  I also moved a bunch of stuff in the corner to make it so the chickens won’t want to go lay eggs over there.