Category: homesteading

Chicken Rescue

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A few days ago while on the phone with my sister I glanced out the window and saw something white floating in the pond. It took me a second to realize what I was seeing. A chicken had fallen into our pond and was floating on the surface. At first glance, it looked dead, but then I saw the tiniest bit of movement from its head. I threw my phone down on the bed, yelling at my sister to hold on, then ran outside to grab this hen. She was absolutely soaked through, hypothermic, and barely alive. I knocked on my son’s window yelling “Bring me a towel quick!”. I wrapped her up and brought her inside and we started the process of trying to get her warmed back up and praying that she made it.

I have never had to save an animal like this before, but we at least knew we needed to dry her off and warm her up. The first thing we did was towel her off as best we could. Then we brought out the blow dryer and started drying her feathers and warming her body. I have heard you don’t want to heat them back up too quickly, and of course, we didn’t want to burn her with the hot air, so we ran the blow dryer on the low setting. The whole time we were drying her she just twitched. She didn’t fight us, she didn’t complain, she just twitched her legs almost like a shock response. When she finally started shivering again I was so happy. I felt like we were at least making progress and her body was fighting. Once her feathers were pretty dry we grabbed our brooder heat plate, wrapped her up, and let her lay on the heat. We also tucked a sock full of rice, which we microwaved for 1 minute, and a bottle of hot water under the blanket with her to give her immediate heat.

I don’t know how long she sat there and warmed up, maybe an hour or two, but she finally pulled through and started trying to stand up. Eventually, I was able to take her back out to her flock and she went about her day as if nothing had happened.

I am unsure exactly what happened since I didn’t see it, but I have a theory. We have a small fish pond in the back yard and the chickens like to perch on the side and drink out of it. They have their own water, but they seem to prefer to do this anyway. This particular day was very windy and I assume while she was drinking on the side she slipped or the wind pushed her in. Our weather has not heated up yet so when she couldn’t get out she sat there and got cold. Even her comb had started to turn colors almost like frostbite. I told the kids I think she was pretty close to not making it. I am so very thankful I happened to catch her in time and we were able to save her.

If your animal ever gets wet and cold, dry them off and then slowly warm them up. I have heard from many sources to not feed the animal anything or try to get them to drink until they are fully warmed back up. For us in this situation a hair dryer and then some sort of heat pad were what worked really well. A heat source like a heat pad, or a heat plate might be something worth investing into if you plan to keep livestock. We never know what emergency is awaiting us around the corner.

We’re in

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We did it! We have moved into our new home. I haven’t been able to post and this will be short because we still have no internet. I am currently using a hotspot from my phone and it’s not the greatest.

I think the one thing I have been a little shocked at is how windy it is here. It was windy where we were before but it is so much worse out here. I am dying to get out into the garden and get it cleaned up but it’s too much in this wind. We had a storm roll through this week so I am hopeful that once the weather clears back up the wind will settle down. A little wind is fine but this is knock you over kind of wind. I didn’t realize our new property would live up to the name Home on the Windy Prairire quite so well.

It will probably be a few more days until we can get internet up and running. We are waiting for some parts to be mailed. Once we do have internet I hope to have many gardening and homestead adventures to share.

Tomorrow we close!

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We close on our new house tomorrow! Some of the family say it feels like it went quick but to me it feels like we’ve been waiting forever. The final walkthrough was last night and it was good to walk back through the house and see it again. That is one of the hard parts about buying a home, you tour a house, fall in love, and then can’t see it again in person until the end. It was nice to reassure ourselves we still liked it after all.

The house is smaller than we are already in but, the new property has just over 3 acres. The man who owned it before us did a lot of work so it comes with a bunch of small trees already planted, a chicken coop, a small pond, a garden area, and a storage shed. Not to mention most of the property is already fenced, including a backyard area for the dogs. Knowing we don’t have to start everything from scratch is so good.

Homestead Plans

Getting ready to move in early spring put a bit of a damper on my seed-starting plans. I already don’t have a good seed starting set-up so I decided to skip seeds this year. My plans for this year’s garden are to start seeds in the ground that are ok with that, and then buy plant starts from the local greenhouse. I won’t plant a large garden this time as we need to get used to the new property and figure out where we want everything to go. Containers will be used to grow a few items like herbs that spread while we figure out their permanent place. I am hoping to get a few fruit trees planted this year and maybe a few berry bushes. What I would really like to do is jump straight in and go crazy but I have to rein it back and have patience.

In total, we now have eight chicks. One of the ones we got from the store was sick and passed a few days later, and then we hatched three from our own eggs. I am still playing around with the idea of adding a few layers, but we have friends who we get eggs from so it’s not a huge issue if we wait for the chicks to grow. Our three Swedish Flower babies are what I am most excited about at the moment. I am hoping they are not all three roosters, but I would like one to be. I can’t wait to see them grow and have that question answered.

Lastly, I have found a local source for Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats and hope to add them quickly. We are not set up quite yet but that is at the top of my list to get done. I think chickens and a few goats is probably enough for a first-time homesteader like me. This last year was my first with a real garden and it went well so I am confident I can handle that with time, but I am a little nervous about having livestock.

All in all, we can’t wait for Friday and the beginning of this new chapter.

Hatching is done

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This round of hatching is done. It was not what I would call a successful hatch, but we do have three adorable little chicks from it. I will need to go back and have a look at my incubator to find out why the egg turner wasn’t working as it should. Other than that, this was our first time hatching chicken eggs so I will call it a learning curve. I am not sure if we will try again with more Swedish Flower eggs, since we have access to them, or just stick with what we have for now.

In total, we ended up with nine chicks. We purchased six from the store and three we hatched on our own. That will be plenty of chickens to keep our family of four in eggs. However, we do have friends who would like eggs in the future so, maybe we will stick with the chicks we have for now and if needed add a few adults later.

For now, I am thrilled with what we have and can’t wait to watch them grow. I do have one Welsummer chick that I am very curious to see if it may be a rooster. They are all supposed to be female but sometimes even the hatcheries make a mistake and honestly, I really want a Welsummer rooster so fingers crossed!

Moving day will be here soon

Moving day is next Friday! We don’t have to be out of our current house quickly so we plan to take our time, but we get the keys to our new place in 5 days. I can almost not even wrap my brain around all the possibilities we have. I have been looking forward to putting roots down for so long now and having a place to really settle into. There are silly things that I haven’t been able to do until now. Things like berry patches, an orchard, things that take years to really get going. I think the hardest part will be having patience and not trying to make it all happen at once. When you’ve been dreaming about something for so long it’s hard to rein it back in and take it slow. Friday is the beginning and I feel so very lucky to be making this move.

One Hatched!

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We had our first incubator chick hatch. I peeked into the incubator last night on the way to bed, not expecting anything, and found egg pieces on the floor. The chick was halfway through zipping already and we were so surprised. For the next 10 minutes, my kids and I sat there and cheered this little chicken on, it was so fun. We’ve been waiting to hatch our own chickens for years and it finally happened. This morning we have one more who has pipped and 3 more yet to go. This really is a dream come true. I still can’t believe we are actually taking steps towards our own little acreage and homestead.

Upcoming Changes

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With a new name change comes content changes as well. We are still homeschooling and that will always be a part of what I share, but we are also finally moving out onto a small piece of property and getting ready to start my homesteading dreams. We even have baby chicks sitting in the living room right now! This is something I’ve been dreaming about for the last 8 years if not longer. I can’t believe it’s finally becoming a reality, and I can’t wait to share some of it with you.

Chickens are here!

Chickens are sort of what started this whole thing as they tend to do. I’ve dreamt of them for years now, and have really been disappointed time and time again when we had to move somewhere that didn’t allow them. Pretty much as soon as our offer on the house was accepted my husband got me a dozen hatching eggs. We have friends who raise chickens and likes to have different breeds, so she sold us a dozen Swedish Flower hatching eggs. Into the incubator they went. Unfortunately, my incubator decided this was the time to act up and the turner didn’t work very well, so on lockdown down we found out only five had made it that far. Five chicks, with the possibility of a decent number being roosters, meant we needed a few more. We headed to our local farm supply store and came home with six more chicks. We chose two Black Australorps and four Welsummers which are already sexed and should be hens. Now the problem we face is that these won’t lay for months and I am wondering if I should find a few adults to add as well. Chicken math sure does kick in quick.

What’s Next?

I am so excited for what the future will bring. I plan on starting a large vegetable garden, an herb garden, flowers everywhere, an orchard and berry patch, and of course our farm animals. As much as I would love to do this all right away, I know it will take time and I will have to be patient. So I hope you will all follow along as I work to accomplish my dreams.