tough times

The day after Christmas was a particularly tough day. Christmas night I had looked in on the chick that hatched in the morning. It was deformed. It's top beak curled over the bottom one, and it was missing an eye as everything in the head curled around toward one side leaving no room for it. It would never be able to eat or drink. I had heard of this sort of thing happening, but had never seen it. I was amazed that it even got out of the shell. Other than the deformity in the head, it was a healthy, robust little chick, and I was not looking forward to killing it. I've had to kill chicks before that were near the end, but I've never had to kill a healthy one. I didn't want this little guy to suffer slowly. So, Dec. 26, right before work, I took it outside in the cold and set it down in front of the cat. She showed absolutely no interest. This was the great hunter of wild chicks in the barn - swallows, sparrows - you name it, she's caught it, killed it and eaten it. However, this little deformed chick must not have posed much of a challenge, because she turned her nose up to it. This meant that I would HAVE to be the one to do the deed. I was running out of time, and I was having a hard time thinking of options. The weak chicks weren't that hard to suffocate, but this little guy would not be put down so easily. I settled on smashing it with a bucket that was full of ice. It would be quick and from what I could tell, only painful for a second, if that. I set the chick down on the driveway and prayed that it didn't move, which it didn't, and brought the bucket down on the chick with all my power. The ice in the bucket broke, and when I pulled it away, the chick was dead. It was awful. I hope I never have to do that again.

Later in the day, my daughter called and told me that Porterhouse, one of our dairy beef steers, was laying down on his side and wouldn't get up. He had slipped and fell on the ice. I called the vet. Kellie went to the neighbors who moved him off the ice. I was stuck at work, Chris was on his way home from getting Alex his driver's license. Later that evening, when the vet finally arrived, we got him in the barn. He had been jarred, and would probably lay for a few days. We needed to give him some grain and hay in the barn. We would need to turn him over so he spent time on each side. It was a horrible feeling thinking that he might die.

New Year's Eve wasn't that great either - Porterhouse had gotten himself laying flat on his side/back and was starting to bloat up. We called the vet again. As Chris was on the phone with the vet, I got him up on his side/belly and he belched and started eating hay.

Today, Porterhouse is still laying in the barn, but hopefully over the next few days he'll find the strength to get himself up. It's been tough to deal with because you can't just lift him to his feet as he weighs 300 lbs. The vet said it could take two weeks. Arg!

Red Letter Revolution

I just finished reading the Red Letter Revolution by Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo courtesy of BookSneeze. I don't think I could say enough good about this book. Every follower of Christ should read this. I grew up thinking that God was a big judge up in the sky. I had to follow a lot of rules and condemn all the sinners around me to go to heaven. Since then, I've rebelled and came back to the church, but it is a far different church that I attend now than I did when I was young. It's been an insane journey. Today I attend a church that is very focused on outreach and community. Reading this book really was like reading a confirmation that I'm on the right track. It really wasn't like I was learning anything new, but I felt convicted by the book as I am a selfish person really. In pretty much everything involving our lives in the world we live in today, we are to set ourselves up as lesser than our neighbor. That's pretty much the gist of it all. I comes down to Love God, Love Your Neighbor. So many of us don't do that today, and here in America, we're all pretty guilty of thinking only of ourselves. There are a few haves but a great number of have nots. They gave examples of things they have done that have worked for them and helped those that needed it. They advocated teaching and uplifting rather than doing for or in place of those in need helping themselves. While reading this book, I ended up having a great conversation with a gentleman who asked what I was reading and what it was about while waiting for my daughter's band concert to start. It really was quite amazing to get into a conversation about Christ with a stranger at a public school, all just because he asked what I was reading. My Facebook posts reflected what I learned as I read this book. I can't say enough how much I recommend this book.

It's been quite awhile since I posted here ... So I should give an update. I'll start with the cows. Sirloin is weighing in at a whopping 450 lbs. He is afraid of the weight tape, which is really quite funny. I think he just doesn't like getting his shots (wormer), and associates our sneaking up on him with the weight tape as if we were going to give him a poke. Tenderloin and Porterhouse both weigh about 375 lbs each. Porterhouse is the thinnest, and I think he's the most picky about what he eats. There's still quite a bit of edible grass out in their pasture, but we give them a square of hay in the morning and another in the evening. They sit there and bawl and bawl for it. They are worse than the goats.

Speaking of ... the goats are doing well - better since we gave Joey to my brother and his family. The rut went smoothly in their pen. Joey is a whether, but he thought he was a buck and caused a lot of trouble for Freddie. And thanks to Freddie, I do believe that Lily, Betsy and Ginger are all pregnant. Lily is gigantic!

We butchered about 8 roosters, 5 ducks and a couple of turkeys. The chickens have been tried, and I must say that they are quite tasty. I'm looking forward to trying the ducks and turkeys. We still have Lucy and Foreman and Quagmire and Georgie. We also have 38 hens, and I kept the pretty Wellsummer rooster. We're just not getting a good amount of eggs. I don't understand it! We get about 5 eggs a day. Tanto, the little Indian Runner duck lays an egg pretty much every day.

Henry is looking for a girlfriend. That poor peackock1 I can't believe how pretty he's getting!!! We do need to find him a lady friend.

That's all for now - even tho we got an extra hour, I'm beat - at 8:15!!!!!!

Crazy Dangerous Review

It's been awhile since my last posting ... but I have another review to conduct, book courtesy of BookSneeze. I recently read Crazy Dangerous, by Andrew Klaven. This was just what I needed at the time. I'm not talking about the material, but about the adventure. The main character, Sam Hopkins, is pegged as a loser, an easy target for the bullies around him. Unfortunately, he pulls a stunt that lands him right in the thick of the bullies that really do stick him between a rock and a hard place. His new crowd, the guys that were really out to beat the tar out of him, are into some pretty bad stuff. However, Sam essentially has a great heart, allowing him to befriend someone he never thought would get under his skin. He finds himself defending her to the point of getting himself into a world of trouble. Also, in doing so, he learns just how odd she really is, but he learns that she knows the truth of what is really happening even if she can't articulate it in ways uneccentric, regular people just don't take the time to understand.

This was an odd book, and easy read, and I could recommend it to those looking for a bit of suspense and action. It is geared toward young people, but does include violence and sketchy subject matter. As it is a "Christian" book, (and I say that loosely because there wasn't much on that subject but dealing with living essentially the right way versus giving in completely to living as a bully and not standing up for the weak), the points were pretty obvious. I was pretty sure that Sam would end up doing what was right. This book was pretty obvious.

Death on Deckers' Acres

It's been a rough couple of weeks. T-Bone came down with bloat and the vet eventually told us we shouldn't bother sinking any more money into these calves. He said that he most likely had an abcess on his lungs and probably wouldn't make it. Chuck had died the day prior to general poor health. He tried hard, but he just wasn't going to make it. I think he might have been sick from the get-go, but we'll never know. T-Bone died a couple days after the vet told us we shouldn't bother with him anymore. It was pretty sad. Sirloin is doing well, now weighing in at around 170 lbs. He's a nice big fella.

23 pheasants hatched, but one by one, they died off. Now there is only one in the bin. I never saw signs of any fighting or pecking. I did have a bit of trouble with the lighting, and they'd crowd eachother. Perhaps we'll get the chance to buy another bunch of eggs in the near future.

We did buy 2 more dairy beef cows. One is actually a cow! A girl! They are twins, which is why we got the girl. She's what they call freemartin, meaning she's a she most likely born with male parts. Her twin is a little bull, and when you have one of each sex in the womb they share the same placenta and the makings of their reproductive parts get mixed up. She'll be infertile, which is why we got her. Her name is Tenderloin. The little bull's name is Porterhouse.

Porterhouse

Tenderloin

Pheasant Mama?

Saturday I was at the Ravenna auction waiting to bid on a dozen Maran eggs. They were a mix between blues and cuckoos, which I really didn't want, but I had to get them for a friend of mine. The eggs I gave her didn't work out. It looks like they only made it about 10 days before giving up and dying in the eggs. I say I didn't really want them because I was hoping for another breed of chicken like Americauans or Barred Rocks. I ended up buying Americauna chicks for 25 cents each and was sold some Campines (white egg layers, pretty chicken) for 25 cents each. It was a good day for buying chicks, not such a good day for selling them. There were quite a few people there, they just weren't buying the chicks. A man behind me was also bidding on the doggone eggs. The bid got up to $6.50, and I stopped. It was getting to be too much and I didn't know where the eggs came from. I wasn't 100% sure of the viability to go that high for chicken eggs. The only ones I would have gone higher for would have been black copper marans. I ended up losing on the eggs, but took home about 15 adorable chicks. I still had an egg problem. Someone reminded me I should call Randy, the guy who sells amazing chicks of all sorts, both at the auction and on Craigslist. So later that day I made the call and agreed to meet him at 6pm on Sunday.

Mother's Day went by pretty quick between church singing, the message and later the Hume Home service. Then it was back home for a quick lunch and the painting of the picnic tables. Kellie about turned green! I rototilled my garden until I nearly ran out of gas. Then I almost fell asleep in a chair in the sun. It was so beautiful.

It was time to head over to the poultry farm. As it turns out, Randy has quite a nice setup. He has about 4 rows of bird housing with everything from rare green pheasants to polish chickens in them. He is very careful about his breeding, being interested in the best of the varieties he has. In other words, out of two roosters of a particular variety, he kept the larger one to breed with his hens. He also cross-breeds color varieties of chickens to get a larger, better bird of the color he wants. He has turkeys as well: royal palms, red bourbons, blue slates and bronzes. He has high quality birds, and any chicks I've purchased from him at the auction have a very high survival-ability rate. I was impressed with his set-up. His birds are happy, not at all overcrowded, and the pens are clean and well-kept. I'm looking forward to the eggs hatching for my friend.

Chris informed me this morning that the pheasant eggs were cheeping and pecking holes in their eggs. We have 29 eggs that are getting ready to hatch. Just a minute ago, I learned that I'm a pheasant mama! I'm so excited! We're going to release them when they get bigger, and hopefully, we'll be able to see wild pheasants on the farm as well. Oh, the birds that Decker's Acres has been able to raise! Now if the calves would just get healthy and stay that way, I'd be happy!

Dreary Weather and Calves

When you have sick calves, the dreary, damp weather isn't very helpful. The calves have been battling pneumonia for the past few weeks, and it's getting old real fast. They don't want to eat much with the weather being so icky. It's dark and dampy and drizzly, and they just don't want to eat. We've been trying to get them three bottles per day to get them healthy and bulked up a bit. The additional food was supposed to help them pump up their health so that they don't get the pneumonia again. Two of them had shots from the vet that were supposed to ward off the symptoms for two weeks. One didn't want to eat late last night, and the other didn't want much and had to be pretty much forced. This morning the one that didn't want food late last night ate fine, but the other one I tried to force feed, but he didn't take much. He did want to eat hay, however. That I could not figure out. We'll see how they are when I get home. Perhaps they'll be hungrier, or perhaps I'll find the hay manger is half empty.

On a more pleasant note, during a cease in the rain yesterday, we let the ducks and turkeys out, mostly to get them out of their muddy, poopy pen and out in the grass for a bit, and also to see how the ducks liked the slugs. The ducks loved finding all those slugs. They have no idea just how many slugs they can have to eat, and all the better as well, because I don't want to lose any more goats to deerworm. Anyway, below are pictures of Kellie surrounded by small turkeys and holding little Leonard, and one picture of our lonely little turkey chick. I'll probably move him tonight.