The Lord graciously granted another couple of chicken hens go broody this 2019, and here are the results!
This mama hatched out 8 as our 3rd group this year, and all 8 are still going strong, thanks to God. I’m guessing all the eggs under her were hers as every chick basically looks like her…I don’t remember something like this happening for us before. 🙂
And this mama hatched out our 4th group this year, 9 this time, and all 9 are still alive and healthy too!
And here is their video:
As always, we are thankful to the Lord for His continued provisions. May we look to Him for ALL things, in every spiritual and temporal matter!
We recently had one of our young hens from last year go broody early this year. Usually if they go broody late in the year or during winter, we just pull the eggs so we don’t have to deal with trying to keep a place warm for new chicks during very cold weather.
But I decided to let her go this year, and she hatched out 7 new chicks! And they are all still alive today and doing well, thanks to the Lord!
We did run the heater in the summer kitchen a couple of nights where they were when it got down to 20 degrees F outside, and it all worked out just fine.
On an aside, this mama had a pal hen that was part of the clutch she came from, and these two hung around together. Her friend was white colored, and I called her Nilli (for Vanilla). And so with this one being grey, and them being friends, I call her Granoli (for grey-Nilli 😀 ). Sadly though, Nilli was killed by a predator late last year, but God is granting her friend make up for her loss with the new chicks. 🙂
And here they are:
And here’s their video:
We are very grateful to God for His graciousness in granting these new chicks! We pray they, and our entire homestead and community, are used by Him for His glory and the benefit of others!
The Lord graciously granted another hen get broody this 2018, and she hatched out our 5th set of the year! She hatched out 4 with 1 sadly not making it more than a day, but the other 3 are still doing well as of today!
And then one day, Sue was taking the dogs up to their goat field for their evening running around, and lo and behold, there was a hen walking around with 5 chicks following her! Wow! We eventually tracked down that she had been sitting in a pecan tree fenced-in area. Thanks to God for allowing her to sit out there for at least 3 weeks without being eaten herself!
We gathered them up and got them into the summer kitchen brooder building, and here they are. She had 5 with her, and they also are still all going as of today!
And here is the video for both groups:
As always, we are grateful to the Lord for granting these provisions, and His extra graciousness in preserving the mama and eggs outdoors for all that time!
With us not really having a great way to manage the turkey flock we have now, after a rogue Black Turkey heritage breed hen just showed up at our homestead one day, it becomes difficult when the females start getting broody. They often find quite remote places to nest, and sometimes just hide in the grass somewhere in a field. Although we have lost one to that situation, the Lord’s been gracious to allow us to usually track them down as they perhaps come back in the morning to eat or drink or what have you before returning to their nest, and then we can follow them.
Now though, we try to make sure to collect any turkey eggs we find, and then, if we find a turkey on a nest, haul her in and any eggs in the nest, and put them in the summer kitchen, and add any other eggs we have.
Well, we did that this year with Olivia, the female from last year’s hatching, who had quite a few of her own eggs.
And while she had 5-6 under her, only one hatched out, but by God’s graciousness, this little turklet (I call them “turklets”, like “chicklets”) 😉 made it all along, is still going today, and is almost adult size! We believe now it is a “she” turkey, and she is our first grand-turklet!
Here she is with her mommy back in August, obviously a little older than just a hatchling by this time:
As you can see, the turklet liked to walk all over Olivia 🙂 :
One sad note: we did the same “grab and put in the summer kitchen” with one of our other hens, Tasha, and she hatched out 2 turklets, but not long after they were born, each disappeared. We assume a snake got them, but I never found the culprit in there, and often we do. It’s still a mystery, but it was not the Lord’s will they continue, and we agree whole-heartedly with Him in His sovereignty, wisdom, and goodness!
And here is the video of Olivia and her hatchling, which progresses from the pictures above to when we permanently let them out of the summer kitchen to just this week! The video does include the other mama and one tiny little turklet that was left at the time:
And as always, we are very thankful to the Lord for His graces and mercies and the perpetuation of the animals!
Sadly, our multi-colored buck Rocky was too injured to do the job, and so eventually we had to put Shakespeare with the younger nannies as well, which ended up spreading out the birthing over a couple of months.
But Shakespeare did the job, and here are some of the results! Interestingly, it was 3 to 1 bucklings to doelings:
Earlier:
(What a great picture, IMO: 😀 ):
And then on the day they went to their new home:
Sadly at the end of one day, one of the little bucklings was stammering around, and couldn’t keep his balance. With the extreme heat, we thought maybe he had a sun stroke. We got him into the barn to try to help, but over a few days, he got worse and worse, and eventually, when it sounded like fluid was building up in his lungs and I didn’t want him to drown, I gave him the coup de gras. Sigh…that’s always hard to do, especially when all your efforts are to try to keep the animal alive. But, death is a reminder of sin, and something I believe should help us understand a little as to how much God hates it.
But, we are thankful also that there were no other issues with mama’s giving birth or kids dying…thanks to God!
But, sadly also, over the winter we lost Gracie, and then Winnie. We’re not sure what the reasons were, but we are thankful to the Lord for all of the provisions He granted from them.
Winnie started it all way back when. She was always the queen goat…I called her “your highness”. 🙂 Goodbye Winnie…
And here is Gracie. Goodbye Gracie…
And sadly as well, Rocky ended up maybe too injured to do much, and after moving him into the barn to take care of him, he eventually succumbed to something, and we lost him too. We thank the Lord for all of the kids He granted from him as well. Goodbye Rock…
However, another buck that had been used by others in the fellowship became more available for us to take over care for, and so he and Shakespeare have been pals ever since, and we look forward to him going to work with our younger does this November, Lord willing:
Finally, here’s this year’s 2018 kid provisions video:
We are always grateful to God for His provisions, and try to never take them for granted. We deserve none of them, and so every one is a gracious blessing! And we now thank Him for the milk He is supplying from them!
We hear at times from people who really would like to get away from the rat-race and live in the country, homestead, raise animals, grow food, etc., but they lament just how daunting that whole idea is, especially if they are a little older. And that is sure understandable.
But it is doable! And the Stongers take you on their journey as they have worked on building a homestead, creatively, with reduced means, and in the unfriendly (sometimes hostile!) land and weather environments of central Texas.
Homesteading with few resources does take creativity, and God blessed the Stongers with that as He has guided them in the development of a homestead, with goats, a milk cow, chickens, gardens, orchard trees, solar power, catch-water systems, etc.
And now, their adventures, progressions, successes and missteps are documented in their new book. In it, they provide information about all sorts of off-grid homesteading topics, like rain harvesting, solar, land/soil, etc., and then provide practical and inexpensive ways to accomplish all of these various things, based on their own experiences, including materials lists and costs.
For example, they initially put up a fence around their main homestead environment made out of palettes, I think at least most of them being free, until such time they could put up something more permanent.
They are also planning on adding how-to video examples of these various homesteading subjects at their YouTube channel Doable Offgrid.
And even if you aren’t interested in homesteading, but, say, gardening, there is a wealth of information that could be beneficial to you too.
So, I would encourage everyone to consider getting a copy of The Doable Off-Grid Homestead and adding it to your collection!
Heb. 11:8-10 - "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
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