It started on Thursday… we went on a big 4 vehicle load run for free pallets. One place was a bit of a dud, but the other, whoooeeee! A great stash of good solid pallets. It was a super long day and had a little adventure, but basically the girls and I and their Dad managed to secure plenty of pallets for all our evil plans!

We are going to use some for a turkey roost. Some as bridges over our little creek. Six as a lovely garden compost center. One as a solid footing for a rain barrel by the big barn. A bunch as fencing. Some as a firewood stacking place by the fire pit. Many plans! Tonight, Saturday night, we moved about half of them to their designated holding areas, and have another half to move maybe tomorrow evening. They are pretty heavy, too bad we don’t have Cody ready to go, he would have made short order of moving those things! Soon! Someday!

Maggie’s Egg Empire has exploded. She now has about 7 regular customers, a waiting list of another 5 or 6 and now, front door sales as well! Problem is, we have had to turn people away! No eggs for you! And we don’t usually have anymore for the family! We get all the weird small ones or the cracked ones… slim pickings!

So, we got to thinking… sure, we have 5 pullets that should be laying soon, and another 24 chicks in the brooder, but they won’t be laying for another 5 to 6 months! That only left one thing. Buying some more mature hens at auction! But where to put them? The poultry barn!!!

Of course, all along we’ve been wanting to put a flock in that building, it’s huge and empty. So Maggie and I got some lumber, a rough plan and began to work late into the evening. By Friday night, we were pretty much ready to go. We don’t have a real roost or nestboxes yet, but we’ll get those in a day or two.

It’s a cool design, if I say so myself. We made two large boxes basically, each one is 7 foot by 8 foot in size. We basically have a coop that is 7 by 16 now. If we want to, we can section it off in the middle into two pens. Right now, we have it as one big one. Outside, we will be making a long run that is 40 feet long by about 8 or 10 foot wide. (Not sure on the 8 to 10 foot part yet. Probably 8 foot, so we can use store cut lumber and save a little time and all…) They will be very happy chickens for sure. By the time it got dark on Friday night, we were pretty much done and ready for our big auction adventure.

Maggie is testing out the inside feel of the place.

We made it 4 feet tall so that a person could walk around in there humped over, but still walk. And chickens do like to pretend to fly and such, they might like a little height to their condo. It’s pretty nice. I think it’s the best thing we’ve build so far!

We got up bright and early, grabbed our two roosters for sale, a lovely blue cochin roo and a cuckoo Marans that we raised from babies! Hatched right here on the homestead. We just have a few too many roos! 6 is a good number, 2 each for each flock. We drove up to Hillsdale and oh my goodness! It was crowded and busy! The wonderful weather had everyone out hunting for a bargain! Of course, we were one of them and we hurried to get our roos logged in and check through the offerings to make our choices. We wanted to get at least a dozen nice hens. Heritage breeds if at all possible. Our customers like brown and colored eggs and we love the beautiful birds. We had about 10 lots picked out. I could tell it was going to be hard to get a great deal but I had already scoped out Craig’s List and other sources and decent, young hens were going for $8 to $10, so I knew where I wanted to be.

The first lot, a cage of lovely young barred rocks, went high and fast. $11 a bird! Now part of that was it one of the first four or five lots sold and there were a LOT of first timers and families buying birds. Love to see that however, it does drive up the auctions!!! So I told Maggie we better wait a bit and watch. Sure enough they started to come back down to the 8 dollar average. Most of the families bought first and high and were done after a cage or two.

The first lot I won was a trio of beautiful golden lace wyandotte hens. Really nice. The auctioneer is a poultry judge and I could have popped him in the nose when he came to these ladies because he went ON and ON about how nice they were and how young they were and so on, so that everyone was interested!! But I held my ground and waited and they started off kind of low, at $2 a bird. I ended up as the high bidder at $7 a bird. Still, not a bad price at all. Maggie was thrilled. We have silver lace wyandottes, but no gold.

Second batch I won was a cage of 5 hens, for $5.25 each. Great price. Until we learned that one was a rooster that it seems someone pulled all his tail feathers out as he was a little raw looking back there and crowded into the cage of hens. A Dominique roo. Wow. Well, I thought, hey, that’s a fairly odd breed to see at this auction and I believe is on the watch list of the livestock conservatory group. Interesting. Well, hey, auctions can be that way, you need to really check things out before you buy. I do check the birds I’m going to bid on, but I thought he was a she as well.

I knew there was three cages full of beautiful Amerucanas coming up, about halfway down the list, and all hens. Really nice birds, young looking. You check their feet and combs and wattles… they should be nice and vibrantly colored on young, nice birds. These all fit the bill. Nine of these lovely blue egg laying beauties. Our customers love the beautiful eggs from our 5 birds at home. How delightful to take some of these ladies home. I got ready, in a good position. The fellow started to auction and then says, he’s going to group them! Agh! Maggie and I exchange paniced looks, this means you buy them all. She sighs and nods, we’re going to try. They started low low low… because of the whole 9 bird lot, people were not bidding. I finally started it at $1 a bird. And then of course, it’s starts going. $1.50, $2.50, $4.00… agh…. $5 $5 and a quarter, $6… My eyes are watching the crowd and back to Maggie and she is blinking, our special code, we want these birds… I bid $7 and a dude goes $7.25 and I wait… wait…. wait…. $7.50. The guy sighs and backs out! They are ours!!!

And we are DONE!!! I’m thinking, oh my gosh, we just bought 18 chickens. Haha…. At a tidy figure of $114.75. Yikes! Haha…. well… we wander a bit, waiting for the auction to finish up and not wanting to be tempted into any more! We mosey back to find out that our roos when for $14. So I’m gonna say our bunch cost us a hundred bucks. The coop cost so far is $50. I think the outside part will cost us about $50 more. $200 for this poultry expansion. Maggie used a good deal of her egg money and she’s broke now. I loaned her the rest and she was figuring it all out on the way home how many dozens she will need to work it off. She figures it will be about 100 dozen eggs to “re-coop” her expenses! But considering that she could easily sell about 15 to 20 dozen a week with her list, she figures to break even in about 6 weeks or so. Don’t you love homeschoolers? Haha… little entrepreneurs!

We got a really sweet little golden hen out of the bunch. She’s pictured above. Just as sweet and nice as you could imagine. Someone spent some time with her, she is really people oriented. A few are very skittish, but that’s to be expected. Not everyone babies their birds like we do!

Well, we got everyone home… we had to scrouge an extra box because we had thought we wanted about a dozen and nearly got two dozen! Luckily we found a big old microwave box in the trash by the auction barn! That really helped. It was as we were gathering up our wins that we learned that we had the Dominique rooster in the bunch. Oh well, he seemed calm enough and I was able to get him out of the pen easily. I actually considered raising them at one point and we chatted about maybe we would consider getting a couple hens and see what happened.

Well, we let him loose in the pen and he immediately starts fighting with the hens, and then grabbing them by the neck, yanking feathers and giving them the roo treatment like a mad man. He was relentless and all the birds were cowering from his aggressive advances. Maggie and I looked at each other and it was a silent decision in an instant. We do not tolerate mean animals here at the farm. Mean livestock gets eaten. Or sold. But to be honest, I hate the idea of selling him off to some other unsuspecting farm. I begin to suspect that the dupe was a real one… that someone purposely tried to hide him and pass him along the chain. Well, Maggie climbed in and cornered him, and he put up a pretty good fight, scratching me on the wrist pretty badly. I took him out to the empty rooster coop till his sentence is passed. He’d be tough eating… maybe crock pot? I don’t feel comfortable selling him. Don’t want to breed him, especially if this is normal temperament of this breed. Not totally sure what to do with him yet. Going to sleep on it a day or two.
We moved our original pair of rooster brothers into the coop. Argent and Flipper. Both homegrown lovely birds. They are still young so not quite the love machines of an older roo and thus gentler and more well, sweet towards them. Pretty much, right away the hens were fine with the boys and even later on, we found them all roosting together within their new harem, happy as could be and everyone content. Good roosters are worth a mint, in our opinion.

We still have to build some nice nest boxes and a better roost. We put in some temporary spots for them, and they are so stressed out from the day that I doubt we will see many eggs for a day or two. However, one laid one pretty blue egg at the auction and then another laid one in the coop on the floor. The second got stepped on and then they all ate it out of excitement. Lovely. Little vultures! I suspect they were all very hungry from their crazy day and eating is just a calming thing in animals. Some seem like they might have been cage birds, they have very long toe claws and such. We’ll single out a few of the rough ones and give them a little manicure assistance as the days go on. Don’t like to handle them over and over when they are getting settled, it’s just too much for their little bird brains. We’ll just let them relax, eat and drink and just get their pecking order settled out for a few days. Get the nest boxes together, spoil them with some nice treats and quiet visits.
One of the golden wyandottes kept escaping as we were putting up the top netting. Of course, Maggie loves this one now, and her name is Houdini, and every time she jumped up and flew the coop, Maggie would catch her and tell her for punishment, she had to spend 5 minutes being held and fussed with. Pretty soon, Houdini was pretty much cool with the holding thing especially when Maggie started to feed her bread crumbs from her hand.

Windhaven chickens spoiled? Oh yeah…. big time.

Isn’t Houdini beautiful? I know that good old white leghorns are the chicken standard of the world, but I have to tell you, chickens come in so many beautiful and wonderful colors and patterns! I’m surprised every time I see more and more breeds up close and personally. One of our friends and customers, Gina, she loves feathers and Maggie has been saving her lots of beautiful feathers for her collection! I hope we can add a couple of Houdini’s to the mix!

At one point I thought some of the hens were in the nest box we sat in there. An old apple crate with hay. But then Maggie laughed and said, no… it was the two rooster brothers. Sure enough, Argent and Flipper were cuddled up together, just watching the girls and hanging out in the cool fort they had found. Silly boys.

This little girl was in with the rooster and at first, we were a little worried. She’s a scappy fighter and was really being rough on the others. She has no doubt learned from that mean roo. We watched her for awhile and thankfully, she began to calm down. Probably a little more fear driven then real leadership desires. After we brought out the snacks and treats, she started to relax and finally found a spot with the little gold hen on top of the crate to doze quietly. I think she’ll be okay, she was just really stressed and scared. They are all flighty, but that’s to be expected. There were SO many people there, it was packed in the poultry barn alone. And all the noises and scared bird calls and the people and transportation, its a wonder more chickens don’t expire from it all. These girls will be calm and lovely in a week or two. Once they get into our routine and they know they will get good food and water, treats and no more Mr. Meanie Roo…. they will tame up and become nice birds. Maggie is a good chicken whisperer…

Of course, Bucka Roo knew there were new ladies on the farm pretty quick and came in to visit and extend his welcome to the girls. He walked around and around and then hopped up on the table to check it all out. The roo brothers came over to visit their Dad, and Bucka gave the ladies one of his finest rooster love dances, but alas, the chicken wire barrier was too much for him and he wandered off after a while. He’s got his own flock and figured these girls were not interested in his goodwill gestures. However, shortly after, we got an inspection by the sheep. It’s crazy how everyone just comes and goes around here, always butting in to what is going on. We love it.

Holly offered to check out the feed barrel and make sure it was okay for the new chickens. Our sheep are thoughtful like that.

Of course, we made sure it was up on the table, with a strong bungie cord to tie it down. Don’t need the greedy sheepies to suck down a whole bag of hen crumbles…

Cody was interested when we were using the power tools but when it was just chickens, ah, he could care less. He doesn’t particularly like chickens. Or sheep. He just tolerates them for the most part. He does like kitties though, but that’s another story.

We took a little rest as we were tuckered out after a full morning and early afternoon, but it was so beautiful out, we were back outside, sorting and dragging pallets all over the place. We got about half of them into their spots on the farm. Maggie finished wiring up the garden pallet fence and then a little temporary fence between the sheep shack and the big barn. Jessy and I went to get water. It was just so beautiful out! I can’t believe it’s not quite spring yet. We have daffodils in the yard blooming and the trees are all budding, it’s simply stunning outside. I know we can still get a dump of winter and cold, but gosh, everything seems to point to a nice early and beautiful spring!!!

Tomorrow will be a day of rest for us, as we are going to help out at a family benefit for our neighbors grandson. Should be a good event and I hope lots of folks turn out to help the family through some rough medical expenses. Gabe is currently in the hospital with complications from his illness, and pneumonia! Poor little fella! I hope they raise a lot of money and even more hope and prayers for the family and Gabe! It’s a spaghetti dinner, raffles and fun stuff going on, from noon to 6 pm at the Toledo Speedway. If you’re in town and want to help out a great cause… consider coming by! We’ll be there!!

Well, we have a wonderful week ahead… going to be finishing stage two of the poultry barn expansion, and just getting more to do cards done in the lovely weather. We’ve got 24 active and wild little chicks that should be moving out to the barn in a week or so, and we’re gathering stuff up for a quick spring yard sale in about 10 days or so. The sales we’ve seen, so early in the season have been fantastic and packed. And we sit RIGHT on the busy main road of our county, so we’re sure to get some good attention! Raise a little cash to help with the well and spring things! Going to try and get our raised beds ready for some cool weather crops… and get all our animal barns dug out and freshened up for the spring! And of course, we have all those pallets to play with! That should take a few days for sure!

All that lazy time in the winter, waiting for the sun to shine, has got a powerful yearning in our hearts to get busy and working on things! Gotta get a good head start on everything before it gets too hot!! haha….

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