Chicks in a Box

I'm happy to say that backyard chicken keeping is alive and well in Austin, Texas. This hobby has gotten so popular that I was finding it quite difficult to get chicks. I finally staked out my local feed store on shipping day and managed to get the 8 chicks I wanted.

I currently have 10 hens of various breeds including dominique, maran, americauna, australorp, Iowa blue, and penciled rock. They are all okay egg layers; just okay. They were purchased more because I fancied their egg color or thought they were pretty. 

This time my hubby insisted I buy some power layers to beef up the flock, so this is what I came home with: 2 New Hampshires, 2 brown leghorns, 2 black sexlinks and 2 barred rocks. These breeds are all rated as excellent layers, so I'm expecting lots of eggs in about 6 months.

One of the little barred rocks had some pasty butt early on. She is the chick with the little dingle berry in the photo below. Pasty butt can be a serious condition. The poop basically builds up and dries on their hiney sealing off their vent and preventing them from eliminating. Warm water applied repeatedly with a paper towel finally loosened the blockage and she was just fine.

New chicks need to be kept at a toasty warm 95 degrees. A simple clamp light with an infrared heat bulb works fine. I just raise or lower the light as needed and monitor the temperature with a thermometer. I'll reduce the heat by 5 degrees each week until I reach room temperature.

I had not previously considered raising leghorns, but this little leghorn chick is very sweet. Leghorns are one of the best layers of white eggs, but they are known to be quite flighty and are not a good choice for small backyard keepers. I'm going to judge for myself and see how it goes.

After thoroughly cleaning their brooder box, I went off to get my camera and came back to find the box already dirty. These birds are pooping machines. One of the brown leghorns was able to hop up on top of the food container. Yep, this one has trouble written all over her.

I noticed they seemed a little bored, so I put the empty paper towel rolls in the box to entertain them. Chicks are scared of everything, but also very inquisitive. 

In about 24 hours, the box will look like the photos below and the cleaning process will start all over again.

Really gals! Could you be just a little neater?

Just one more week and the chickies will head outside to the baby bungalow. When they are about 16 weeks old they will join the flock. I'll miss their pleasant chirping in the back bedroom, but I'll be glad to be relieved from maid duty.

For the Love of Homegrown

What would I do for the love of fresh, homegrown produce? So far, all sorts of crazy stuff including this story of the time we built a new vegetable garden in a weekend.

The story starts back in the winter of 2014 when we had some time to start clearing out some dead trees that had succumbed to the drought. When the sight was cleared, I looked around at all this wonderful space with a fabulous southern exposure and said, "We should build a second vegetable garden here."

And so in the Spring of 2014, I ordered a 12 yard dump truck full of soil and with the help of our trusty tractor, my husband and I built a garden. 

The white bags seen below contain recycled material from the House Rabbit Rescue folks up in Pflugerville. The material is comprised of rabbit manure, pelletized pine, Thomas hay, and alfalfa meal. We're composting the material, which appears blonde colored in the photos, in between the beds. It will help to create the paths now and when it decomposes later we will rake it up into the beds.

I had quite a few excess plants leftover from a plant sale, so I planted them in this garden and in an instant I had a growing, productive vegetable garden.

Sounds awesome, right? Well, it was until we started to get some rain. After the first rains fell in Fall of 2014, I knew I had a problem. The new garden was built on a deep vein of clay and drainage was a huge problem. I knew I would have to build the garden up, but that would take time. Apparently, time I did not have.

El Nino was brewing and Texas was about to start getting a lot of rain. My poor little garden just could not cope with all that excess water.  After a recent heavy rainfall, I started to formulate some ideas for drainage.

On Sunday, May 24, 2015, I dug some trenches as a stop gap measure to see if I could get some of the water to drain off. The weather forecasters were predicting a big rain storm for the following day and I was very concerned that any additional rainfall would only add to my existing problems.

Ideally, I would like to continue to raise the whole garden up and install a french drain down the front and side of the garden. I'm not convinced that a french drain would completely fix the problem, but it might be worth a try. I'm still mulling this over.

Another problem is that the beds create mini dams that trap the water within the garden. I dug some additional trenches to further facilitate drainage along the beds and my measures seemed to be working. The water was slowly draining away.

So far, the corn, beans and watermelon don't seem to mind being so wet. The cantaloupe is not happy, some of the tomatoes are wilting due to root loss, and the artichokes have given up the ghost. Of course, at the point these photos were taken, the garden had only been swampy for about a week to 10 days.

The fungal problems are also starting to take their toll on the tomatoes. I'm just hoping I can get my crop in before the plants really go to heck.

Amazingly, I'm still pulling out plenty of produce for now.

But, as long as this garden stays this swampy, it's impossible to get any work done or keep your socks clean.

Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, they did. A huge storm rolled in on Monday and dropped huge amounts of rain. Adding all this rain together, this is our wettest May since 1891. Yikes!

The photo below was excerpted from a video my husband took shortly after the storm ended on Monday, May 25, 2015. The water was already receding at the point this photo was taken of the trench I had dug the previous day.

Here are two interesting comparison photos. The first photo was taken on Sunday and shows our little creek managing the water flow quite nicely.  The second photo was captured from a video taken on Monday after the storm ended.

A year ago we were still in the worst drought ever and I don't think anyone saw this coming, least of all, me. What will I do now? I don't know. Any suggestions? I'm open to hear them.

I know there has been a lot of destruction caused by this storm and we all have very mixed emotions. One the one hand, we're happy to see the lakes are filling up and on the other, the loss of life and property is devastating to so many. My little problems are minuscule in the grand scheme of things. Knowing that helps keeps things in perspective. 

I hope you and yours are safe. Happy Belated Memorial Day.