Portage River Farm
Notes on our struggles and successes on our family farm in rural Michigan.
(Pinckney, Michigan)
16 May Sat 2009
Worrisome News
Two days ago, I got a call from Janet's brother Tom. He has been caring for our chickens at a nearby farm for the past month. He called to tell me that one of the chickens had died of unknown causes.
I drove out to the farm to check on them. Since they were still a bit young to withstand the cold night temperatures, we had housed them in the back room of his butcher shop. We put litter on the floor and provided them with heat lamps, food and water. Tom has been very attentive to their needs and visiting them twice per day.
The chickens seemed fine. I hadn't seen them in weeks and they have really grown. I picked some of them up and looked them over without noticing anything unusual (not that I have that much experience). They seemed lively and healthy as far as I could tell.
Last evening my cell phone rang again and I could see that it was Tom. Expecting more bad news, I answered. Tom conveyed that he had found a second one dead at noon yesterday and a third one this evening. That makes three in two days!
We were both puzzled over what could be causing them to die. They didn't have any peck marks on them and no obvious signs of disease. We concluded that we should move them back to our farm as soon as possible where they can have access to the outdoors and have more room.
The trouble is that our coop is no where near ready to shelter young chickens! Right now it is basically a wooden stage standing at the edge of a grassy field. We have a number of friends coming over this afternoon for our "coop raising" party but even if we make amazing progress, it will be far from done. We also don't have any fencing set up to contain them or keep predators away.
The obvious lesson in all of this is that I should not have purchased the chickens before having adequate quarters set up for them. I vastly underestimated the amount of work it would take and how limited my time would be. I'm planning to spend the morning working on getting fencing set up. This is a pretty difficult task because the first 1 1/2 feet need to placed in a trench in the ground to prevent digging predators from finding a way in.
If nothing else, this episode makes it less likely that I will hatch any plans to purchase calves before we have fencing and some kind of shelter in place for them. So much for my idea of covering the living room floor with straw and turning it into a temporary barn ...(just kidding)!
I drove out to the farm to check on them. Since they were still a bit young to withstand the cold night temperatures, we had housed them in the back room of his butcher shop. We put litter on the floor and provided them with heat lamps, food and water. Tom has been very attentive to their needs and visiting them twice per day.
The chickens seemed fine. I hadn't seen them in weeks and they have really grown. I picked some of them up and looked them over without noticing anything unusual (not that I have that much experience). They seemed lively and healthy as far as I could tell.
Last evening my cell phone rang again and I could see that it was Tom. Expecting more bad news, I answered. Tom conveyed that he had found a second one dead at noon yesterday and a third one this evening. That makes three in two days!
We were both puzzled over what could be causing them to die. They didn't have any peck marks on them and no obvious signs of disease. We concluded that we should move them back to our farm as soon as possible where they can have access to the outdoors and have more room.
The trouble is that our coop is no where near ready to shelter young chickens! Right now it is basically a wooden stage standing at the edge of a grassy field. We have a number of friends coming over this afternoon for our "coop raising" party but even if we make amazing progress, it will be far from done. We also don't have any fencing set up to contain them or keep predators away.
The obvious lesson in all of this is that I should not have purchased the chickens before having adequate quarters set up for them. I vastly underestimated the amount of work it would take and how limited my time would be. I'm planning to spend the morning working on getting fencing set up. This is a pretty difficult task because the first 1 1/2 feet need to placed in a trench in the ground to prevent digging predators from finding a way in.
If nothing else, this episode makes it less likely that I will hatch any plans to purchase calves before we have fencing and some kind of shelter in place for them. So much for my idea of covering the living room floor with straw and turning it into a temporary barn ...(just kidding)!
John_3
12:00 AM EDT
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