The Return of Eggs

 Last year my first group of chickens started laying right after the winter solstice--January 2.  I've read elsewhere that the trend of day length matters as much (or more than) the day length itself.  Charting my birds' production this year reveals that their peak was actually in late May, a month before the summer solstice.  Then they slowly declined throughout the summer, still producing at 80% of their max as late as the end of August.  Shortly after the fall equinox I sold off the "Reluctant Egg Layers" (and brought in the Delawares), and the remaining layers went into molt, shutting down completely in early November.

Then in late December, actually a couple of days before the winter solstice, I got the first egg.  For the first week, I think it was just one chicken that had rebooted, because I found three eggs, all the same size and shape.  Now there may be a couple of them going.  It looks like I will end up with about eight eggs the last two weeks of December to finish out the year.  The Delawares may come online in late February or early March. Hope springs anew!

Transformative Kraut

 As I have mentioned before, more than once, I have made sauerkraut and it has worked pretty well.  This was true even last spring, when the temps were warm.  Holly at makesauerkraut.com indicates that the flavor is better when temps are lower (she says below 72, which I have often hit, but I now think it might be below 70).  All of my past batches have turned out about the same, but this fall I made some that was different.

I didn't start it until late November, after temps had crashed in the house and I was using the wood stove.  This time, the temperatures were solidly below 70, not just for the first few days but throughout.  The only caveat is that I initially located the crock in the same room as the stove, where temperatures hit 80 for brief periods when the stove is in use. Holly specifically warns about this.  I thought the increases were too short to matter, but maybe not: I had extreme sauerkraut tides to deal with; the moat would be almost dry then overflowing.  When I moved the crock to another room the situation improved, but on a day when the temp was lower indoors, the moat completely dried up.

When I carried it into the kitchen, some water did flow back in, so it was being sucked up.  On opening, things looked pretty normal.

And I got about the normal amount of kraut (eight pounds went into the crock, pretty much the standard amount).

The flavor was different, however, and much improved.  It has a nuance and subtlety that I haven't noticed before.  Maybe the cooler temperatures did allow different bacteria to work and leave their imprint. My other sauerkraut has been okay, and even good.  But I'm going through this so fast that I'm going to need more soon.  I've downed the two quart jars in less than a week, minus a half pint I've given to someone else.

Maybe this is a one-time thing, but I'm hoping I can replicate it.  Whatever I did this time worked out very well.

When Roosters Go Bad

My first Barred Rock rooster was sometimes a little ornery. But I could usually deal with it.  The second Barred Rock rooster, which I still have, is a definite punk.  I've renamed him Psycho.  He's never absorbed the age-old wisdom of, "Don't bite the hand that feeds you."  So I have to deal with him periodically.

 

 It's a challenging situation.  He's fairly fragile, but also pretty big.  And I have him for exactly this reason--to defend the hens.  He couldn't take on a bobcat or a fox, but I would expect him to charge a cat or hawk.

With both roosters, I have occasionally employed the tactic suggested in this YouTube video.  Unlike SSLFamilyDad, I have not found it to be a permanent solution, but after I engage in a correctional session with either one, I have peace for a while.  The first Barred Rock would behave himself for months, but Psycho is only good for about three weeks before he's apt to start acting out again.

Hopefully a solution is to work with the roosters when young.  I have a cockerel with my new Delawares, and he's first to the door of the tractor every day.  I'm spending some time stroking him a little and feeding him weeds.  Hopefully, that will pay dividends in coming months.

Predator Abatement for the Rabbits

 As I have mentioned before, I have an abundance of predators in the neighborhood. In addition to foxes and raccoons, I have once or twice caught bobcats on trail cameras, though never near the chicken tractors.  Rabbits are also pretty low on the food chain, and I have found signs of predation in my back yard (piles of fur, and once, a severed rabbit head).

The cages are pretty strong, especially the bottoms.  All sides are 14 gauge wire.  And the cages fit pretty tightly in the hutch and can be secured with wire.  Because of the location of the hutch, it's not really practical to put electrified netting or rope around the perimeter, meaning physical barriers will have to work (I suppose I'll revisit this if I come out to smashed cages and dead rabbits some morning).

The main point of vulnerability is the top of the cages.

I don't think anything could get in, but having a fox pacing on top of the rabbits probably wouldn't make for a very pleasant situation.  Eventually I will have water lines running along the top edge of the cages, as well, although that's paused for now because of winter.

My solution is to put some fencing along the top edge of the roof frame:

The distance from the frame to the top of the cages is about 24 inches, so the top row of the 28-inch fencing was clipped off and pieces straightened as before with the cages.  With the thinner-gauge wire, straightening it was relatively easy, and it was easily hung from hooks.

I'm using a couple of carabiners to hold the wire to the top of the cages along the sides.  I don't think this needs to be as seamless as would be needed if it were on the ground--anything trying to get on top of the cages will be jumping, and hitting a small gap won't be easy.  So for now, this looks good.

More on Rabbit Cages

On to the base (actually the whole framework):  In the last post I discussed building rabbit cages, starting with the basic wire-cutting and assembly.  The cage units are 5 feet wide by 30 inches, with each subdivided compartment being 30 inches square, or 6.25 square feet.  The height is 16 inches.  This is all fine according to the Michigan State guidelines.  I plan on getting New Zealand rabbits or similar, so they'll be about 11 pounds at the upper end.  There'll be more animals in the growout cages.

Two cage units side-by-side are thus 10 feet long, and 10-foot 2x4s were and are easily obtainable (albeit pricey in early-mid 2021, less later).  So it's a pretty simple framework: a 10x5 frame supported on legs with some diagonal bracing.  Because I planned to put a roof on, I moved the legs to the ends and then built another frame to hold the roof panes.

Because I was concerned about the whole thing being top-heavy, I made the top frame out of ripped 2x2s.  This was a mistake.  One of the long 2x2s warped and created a low spot in the roof.

This could (and did) cause water ponding and leakage.  There are a few ways to deal with that, from caulking to getting long panels that would cover the whole span with no cross-wise seams.  I also initially thought about cutting the end posts at an angle to provide for some runoff but did not do that in the end.  Because the roof panels were 8 feet long, I had gotten some 3-foot panels to give myself a little over 10 feet in total coverage. However, the sag attributable to the warped 2x2 was too much and the roof leaked not only along the seam between the 8- and 3-foot panels, but also from one of the longitudinal seams between the 8-foot panels.  Therefore, it was apparent that if caulking did not work (I tried it; it didn't), the 12-foot panels wouldn't either. Plus, even if it had worked, having some water ponding on the roof in summer wouldn't have been good--mosquitoes are not rare in Georgia.  So the roof support structure had to be replaced with a sturdier and straighter version.

 Here's a picture that shows the bowing in the one 2x2.  These were ripped out of the same 2x4 originally.

 

I built a new frame for the roof out of 2x4s, and also attached some better bracing:

Then I attached the new 12-foot panels.

Finally it was all assembled.

Next up: predator abatement.

Jack-o'-Lanterns and Slugs

 I'm not sure what the affinity is, but it's a recurring theme.

 

...There's no shortage of slugs in Georgia, and Halloween is usually before a serious freeze.

Stove Season is Here

 My last fire in the wood stove last spring was about the third week of April, though I didn't use it daily past early March.  That was substantially later (by about six weeks) than previous years.  Similarly, the stove season this fall is kicking off a little earlier than in the past.  Previously I haven't used the stove before the first week of November, but a week early, it was easy to see that things were heading in the direction of cooler weather.

I have a soapstone stove:

Allegedly, the soapstone is denser than firebrick and provides a flatter heat curve--the stove top won't get as hot, but it will stay warm longer.  Now that I am starting my third year with it, I'm not sure it offers much advantage--though it is true that it doesn't get as hot as a basic cast iron or steel stove with firebrick. My stove top temperature usually runs about 350, and I don't think it has ever been above about 450.  Nonetheless, when the chimney has been swept, it has been clean.  And as can be seen in the picture above, it's burning pretty clean, too.  The interior might get sooted up at some point with every burn, but then it always clears away.  Soapstone is at least more attractive than firebrick.

One of its idiosyncrasies is that the manual recommends at least one break-in fire, with just a few relatively small sticks, to gently heat the soapstone and help purge any moisture that may have accumulated in the off season.  So I did that this last week, with two relatively small burns on successive days.

They put out a little heat, but not much, and the stove top got to around 100-110, which is the target ("warm, not hot").  I didn't keep feeding them, and both died down fairly quickly.  The house was in the mid-70s at the time, so I didn't really need heat.  The first real fire came a couple of days later, when the house was lingering in the upper 60s, slowly drifting down, with a series of cool cloudy days that offered no prospect for solar warming.

It's wood-burning time again.

The Delawares Have Arrived

 I like the Barred Rocks, and they seem to do okay in the Georgia summers.  But I've decided to diversify a little, and I'm trying out the Delaware breed.  They were developed as meat birds, but are good layers, as well.  Even though they were originally intended as a meat breed, they don't have the short lifespan issues that the more modern Cornish Cross birds do.  So we'll see how it goes.

These were stereotypical yellow puffballs on arrival, and feathered out quickly. 

One week old:

Two weeks old:

Three weeks old:

Four weeks old (and outside in a tractor):

They grow up so fast...😢

Dark Fishing Spiders

 Outside I have a lot of wolf spiders, and on rare occasion I see one inside.  Sometimes they can be large.  Back at my old house, I recall sometimes shining my flashlight into the back yard; because of the angle of the light to the slope leading away from the house, the grass would be filled with brilliant little gem-like reflections of the wolf spider eyes.  Not always--but sometimes--particularly in late summer.

Wolf spiders are not troublesome, and they perform a good service in hunting insects.

Dark fishing spiders, on the other hand, are a bit of a different issue.  They're much larger.  I had never seen one before moving to my new house, and I've seen two or three in the house over the course of three years.

Their size can be attention-grabbing.  This is the biggest one I've seen, and it was not a welcome sight--I don't really care how many bugs it can hunt.  Something like this won't work in the house.

I go after spiders in the house routinely, mainly because if they set up a web, their droppings will soon litter the floor.  I don't always remove them immediately upon sight, but do try to keep up.  I don't see all that many, but one variety (not wolf or fisher) is relatively common.  While I might let some slide for a day or two, this one required immediate attention.

Below is a picture in better light after I dumped the body outside.

 

While one could argue it's not necessarily unattractive, relatively few people would probably like to have something like this running loose in the house.  The few who might like that would probably also be comfortable with an uncaged tarantula inside (some people have been known to do that; it was even something of a fad back in the 1980s...)

Making Rabbit Cages

 I've been contemplating getting rabbits for a long time.  When I got Joel Salatin's new book, Polyface Designs, I saw that many of the structures in it were super-sized and not really feasible for me.  The Millenium Feathernet on the cover is designed for 1,000 laying hens--that's only 100 times larger than my flock.  My birds probably wouldn't enjoy the space, and it's for summer only, in any case.  The plans for the archetype broiler tractor are also in the book; that might be worth considering at some point (probably downsized).

In the rabbit section, however, there was something I realized was doable.  It's called the Racken, for rabbit/chicken.  It's designed to be used in a quonset hut or greenhouse setting, with chickens on the floor to scratch through the rabbit manure and mix it in with the mulch.  With a roof it could go outside.  It is scalable--this video shows two cages side-by-side on some frames, and three on bigger platforms--but the twofer would be fine.  Four cages (two on each side), actually eight, because each larger cage unit has two smaller 30" x 30" compartments, one one base.

This could also be scaled to different-sized cages, perhaps even ones that commercially-available.  I looked online and figured I'd save about $200 by building my own.  So that is what I have set out to do.

The first step is to cut the wire to length and straighten it. 

 

It isn't as hard to straighten as might be expected, though it does get harder toward the center of the roll.  I just laid it curve pointing down on the grass, then sculpted the corners where needed to get it more or less straight.  Shown is one of the cage bottom panels, and it only took about two or three minutes to fix.  For the side panels, it's hard to get them completely straight, but relatively easy to get them 80% of the way there.

Next up, once all of the pieces are cut, is to join them together with J-clips.

 This is also fairly quick and easy, with one big caveat.  the two panels being joined do have to fit closely together, or the clip will end up getting wrapped around just one of them.  Then it's a pain to pry off and start over.

With the top portion mostly assembled, it looks like this:

As you can see, it's not completely straight, and the center divider sticks up a fraction because it's resting on the bottom (which is actually the top; it is flipped upside down in the picture).  I haven't figured out a workaround for this yet.  But it seems to work out okay, nonetheless. A little bit of slop in the fitting seems to be okay.

Next up: the structure itself.

 

Invasive Species

 I got 'em.

In north Georgia, the Joro spider has become pretty well-established and is expanding its range.  I first noticed them at my old house in the exurbs in late summer / early fall, 2018.  That was the same time this article appeared.  They seemed to be sort of centered on Braselton, along I-85, and were spreading up and down the freeway.  This article notes they were in 23 Georgia counties as of early 2021.

 

In late 2018, I moved to my new house, which is farther north and east.  No Joros at first, but in late summer, 2020, I saw a couple.  This year there are more.  The above pictures were taken at my former house.  The little spider seen in the web is the male.  The first article notes that the Joros seem to be getting along okay with no adverse impact, but I have seen fewer barn spiders around--and writing spiders.  I do, however, see spiny orb weavers in close proximity to the Joro webs.

Then there's this thing:

 

 

It's a hammerhead worm.  I had never seen one before a few mornings ago.  I lifted it with a stick and put it in the grass; by the time I found this article, it had disappeared.  I'm not sure I want a toxic carnivorous earthworm-eater to get established in my back yard. Alas.

Muscadine Harvest, 2021

 I have a muscadine trellis with six plants.  They have been in the ground for several years but had been growing rather slowly, root-hog-or-die style.  Last year I harvested a few from my Ison muscadine vine, and one or two from a couple of the others.  Then last winter I did some aggressive pruning and set them up for a good crop (I hoped).

In early August, the crop was looking very good.  I started picking in mid-August, and have pulled about 10 pounds off so far, mostly from the Ison.  Ison is listed by Ison's, the nursery that developed it and where I bought my vines, as an early variety.  Two others are early-mid season, Darlene and Summit.  I have been picking Summit for a while now--its yield will be about what the Ison was last year, a couple of pounds--and Darlene is just coming into harvest now, in mid-September.  The other variety I will harvest some off of this year is Late Fry, which should be ready in October sometime.

So far I am not doing anything with them other than eating fresh and freezing for further fresh eating.  At some point I might try to do something else with them.  If they continue to grow well, I'll have ... a lot... to deal with in good years.

I'm seeing some fruit flies and yellow jackets around the Ison now that they're ripening, and I have also seen a stink bug or two.  Overall, however, pest pressure has been minimal.  Hopefully it stays like that.

More on Refurbishing Chicken Waterers

 Well, this was interesting.

I coated the three-gallon waterer and the replacement two-gallon one with epoxy.  I mixed up enough epoxy to do both, and started with the three-gallon tankard.  It went well.  Then I moved onto the second, and it also...started off well.  Soon I noticed the epoxy beginning to get thick; then it was like cottage cheese; then it ceased to be usable.  This all happened over the course of about three minutes.

I recognized what was happening, and sped up.  As you can see, the interior is a little chunky, but overall it's serviceable.  What I didn't get to was the outside pan for the second one or the tops for either one.  Fortunately, I was prioritizing my coverage--though I'm sad for the lost epoxy.  It's too bad I didn't do some research first.  Those two links suggest that under hot conditions (it was upper 80s when I did this) the working time might be as short as 20 minutes or so, and that's probably about what I got out of it.  So for the future, only one can be done at a time.

I still have one more to do (the one I got off eBay) and more epoxy, so I'll probably give it another go--and maybe try to put the finishing touches on the two from this second effort.  Next time I'll be working with a stopwatch, too.

Lower-Carb Blueberry Pie

 I've posted before about using almond flour for pie crust to lower the carb content of a pie.  I haven't done this for fruit pies previously, mostly because fruit pies typically have some sort of top crust.  I decided to give it a try with a topless blueberry pie.

I used my go-to recipe for the almond flour pie crust:

1 1/2 c almond flour

2 tbsp Whey Low D

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 c almond oil (or butter, or coconut oil)

I mixed this up and pressed it into the pie plate:

The filling ingredients I got from a recipe online somewhere, but don't have the link:

1 1/4 c Whey Low D (as a lower-carb replacement for sugar)

1/3 c clear jel (as a low-carb replacement for flour)

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

5 c blueberries

The powdered ingredients are substantial:

 

In the shell, ready to go in the oven:

 

 As usually seems to happen, the crust got a little over-done, at least in appearance (after about 40 minutes at 425).

I don't have any pictures of what happened when it was cut open, but I have not had much success in getting blueberry pie filling to  hold together.  It tends to fall apart when cut, and that held true this time, as well.  Still, it was no worse than normal.  This was my first attempt with clear jel, and I thought that might be the solution (as well as lowering the carb count).  However, it didn't work out as hoped.  The crust's flavor was fine, even though it was dark.

The blueberries themselves have a lot of carbs, of course (about 18 net grams per cup, accoring to Fat Secret).  Assuming the Whey Low D has about 20% of the carb hit of regular sugar (see discussion here), the carb load for the entire pie would be about 300 grams, or 38 grams per slice.  That isn't exactly great; it's a pretty solid hit for someone who has carb issues.  However, it compares very favorably to a pie made with wheat flour and sugar, which would be around 150 grams per slice (increasing to about 168 grams if a top crust is added).  Relatively speaking, it's not bad--though a nut-based pie would be much lower.

It's something potentially useful to keep as an option for lower-carb baking.

More on Galvanized Waterers

 So far the epoxy coating is holding up well, but it will be a few months before I'll know if it really helps.

Meanwhile, the 'relatively new' 3-gallon waterer referred to in the previous post is definitely showing early signs of failure after about a month of daily use:

It's scheduled for epoxy before any additional use, but it would probably start rusting within another month with no intervention.

Queen Anne's Lace / Wild Carrot

 Queen Anne's Lace (QAL) is a common summer weed.  Its range is pretty broad, as witnessed by the University of Minnesota page on it.  I had some the first year I moved into my former house, but after mowing in the bloom stage, it disappeared and I never saw it again.  In my new house, I haven't seen it before this year. 

 

This year I have a bunch of it growing along a fence line by the road.  Some seeds apparently blew in from somewhere.  The above picture might actually be of a related plant, wild carrot. Until i went looking, I wasn't aware there was a difference between wild carrot and QAL.

QAL typically has a red flower cluster in the middle of the bloom.  The above picture (and all of what I have growing) lacks that.  However, according to Green Deane, QAL (Daucus carota) and wild carrot (Daucus pusillus) are related but the latter lacks the red flowers (QAL may sometimes be without the red center, too). QAL is non-native, but wild carrot grows here naturally.  Both have a carrot smell to them.  I think I might have nibbled on a root at some point, but in general, there's nothing worthwhile about these plants unless one is lost in the wilderness and starving.  Domesticated carrots are the way to go if one wants edible roots.

Thistles have nice flowers, but then they go bad. It's a similar situation with QAL/wild carrot.  I want to avoid having that happen if possible.  I don't really want a field full of them next season. So I headed out to where the plants are growing and snipped off the seed heads.

Fortunately, the problem is relatively contained for now, and hopefully my intervention will keep it that way--as it is, some of the seed heads had probably already released their seeds before I intervened.  I also expect the plants to respond to the loss of their reproductive capacity by putting out new flowers.  They seem to both stay in bloom longer than thistles and take longer to mature their seeds after the flowers close.  That gives me a little time.  Thistles transition from good to bad very quickly.

 If I'm not successful, the only other control mechanism will be mowing next year when blooms first emerge, and keeping it up as they re-emerge.

Refurbishing the Waterer

 My favorite poultry waterer is a two-gallon vacuum model made by Miller Manufacturing.  It can't be used with apple cider vinegar (two tablespoons per gallon is often used for chicken health).  I have plastic waterers for that.

Unfortunately, my waterer soon began to rust.  This is how it looked after about nine months of more or less daily use.

Online, I found a few possible explanations:

1. Faulty manufacture

2. Hard or acidic water

3. Adding vinegar to the water

4. Cheap construction, aka, they don't make them like they used to

I could rule out 3, because I had avoided that.  I had well test data for 2, and it was a possibility.  My old well water had a pH of 6.2, and the new well's water is still acidic, although less so at 6.6.  Both wells produce what the reports called 'slightly hard water.' Miller Manufacturing very graciously replaced my waterer but suggested that my water was probably to blame.

On backyardchickens.com, some people indicated that they had older galvanized waterers that had no rust after extensive use, but that new ones had rusted rapidly. They believed in their own cases that 4 was the culprit for their new ones that had corroded.

I bought an old galvanized waterer off of eBay of uncertain vintage and found it soon showed signs of rusting, too.

So I decided to adapt an idea I saw on backyardchickens.com by user dcwatson84--I got some pond liner epoxy and rust treatment. It's pond safe, so shouldn't pose any toxicity problems.

First, the rust needed to be removed. I used Evapo-Rust, which worked well, although it was very slow.  Because I didn't want to buy a sufficient quantity to immerse the waterer, I soaked paper towels and placed them over rusty spots per the directions.  It took up to 24 hours for the rust to (mostly) disappear, but most areas had to be saturated a couple of times because some spots in treated areas didn't have good contact with the towels the first time around.  It took a week of daily (or semi-daily) towel soakings and changes.

Then when I got the epoxy, I was surprised to see that it called for using an 'etching primer' and pre-sanding with 60 grit.  I had some 150 grit and wasn't coating a comparatively rough-surfaced pond, so I decided to give the 150 a try, sans primer (I had looked for some immersible paint or primer and only found Rust-Oleum 8400 [>$100 per gallon] as a possibility).  Because of the former rust, I reasoned that it was already somewhat roughened, anyway. 

Unlike the original poster, I did not coat the whole thing.  The epoxy is expensive, and if limited to water-contact areas, one 1.5-quart ($50! 😢) set should be enough to do several waterers.  Plus, people have in the past suggested that I am exceptionally cheap-another said something about being so tight that twanging in the wind was a possibility.  So mostly just the interior was coated, though I also did the outside pan--even though it did not have any rust (yet).

I also did not remove the rubber stopper but tried to paint around it.  Some epoxy ran down and stuck to it, anyway, so I carefully cut around it with a utility knife after the epoxy cured.  The result functions about like it did pre-epoxy.

Although it looks wet, it is dry in the picture above.  It dries glossy.  You can see where it's not very thick in some areas; it remains to be seen if rust will occur there.  This does not seem to have hurt and may help.

 

I have three more metal waterers--two that are new (the replacement 2-gallon one) or relatively new (a 3-gallon waterer that has seen only limited use and so far has no rust).  For the new ones, I plan to prophylactically sand and epoxy those, as well.  The eBay one that is now rusting will need to be pre-treated to eliminate its rust.

If I get three done with the $50 worth of epoxy, that's an extra $17 (roughly) in each waterer, plus a significant time cost (or $12.50 with four waterers done; I doubt it could do many or any more than that).  That may or may not be worth it going forward, even before questions of durability of the epoxy coating are answered.

But there is one bright side: the chickens are showing no ill signs after drinking out of it for a while.  I assumed it'd be safe, but one never knows for sure in advance...