Old Tractor Tradeoffs

This will be the second winter for the old Massey, and though we've had out share of ups and downs, she has been a solid part of our farm since we bought her.

She's got some issues. Her carb leaks if she's not running, so we fixed that with a shut-off valve in the middle of the fuel line. Had to replace the starter, battery, spark plugs, wires, coil, breather, a few hoses, put new LED headlights on her, and it's time to replace the front tires as well.

She fires up everytime, and with the beauty of internet you find owners's manuals, and every how to video imaginable on YouTube, so I've felt like everything that's needed fixing was pretty straight forward. She's a simple machine, and that makes her even easier to trouble shoot. She's a bit too light in the front end to easily handle round bales, but for two years now we've managed to get the job done.

Overall, for the money, couldn't bee happier with the Massey Ferguson 135. Don't hesitate to buy one if you have the time and patience to do some work on them.

Incubating Chicken Eggs

Justin Rhodes' "Great American Farm Tour" has really inspired us to get serious about our production, across the board. As I wrote about yesterday, Jack the Ripper set us back a bit with the great Chicken-apocalypse of 2017 by murdering a dozen chickens.

Life goes on, and I loaded up the incubator with another 27 eggs, and they started hatching out 20 days later, by the end of today, after following instructions this time, we had 23 hatchlings out of the 27 eggs. Can't say enough good things about the incubator that Andrea bought me for Father's Day, it seems bullet proof. It helps that we have 3 roosters that are taking care of the hens.

Lessons learned: 1. Mark on a calendar when hatch is going to happen. 2. Don't open the lid unless you're have to add water to increase humidity. 4. A soaked paper towel is better for steady humidity than simply adding water. 5. You can help the chicks out of their shells after a couple of hours and still have them live. You just have to go slow and be mindful of not hurting the chick. The chick has to get itself out of the egg, you just have to help clear a path. If you attempt to pull the chick out you're likely to kill it.

We're going to try to increase the numbers of eggs we're producing and try to produce some extra laying hens to sell as well, so the incubator is probably going to be running non-stop for the next several months. I'll let you know how it goes.

You can find the incubator here: on Amazon. 

Jack, the Ripper.

Sweetest looking killing machine you'll ever see.

It's not all ice cream and cotton candy on the farm. Every single thing in Texas exists to kill other things, or so it seems. After doting on the eggs in the incubator for 3 weeks, or being surprised by the hatching of the eggs mid-week. In my defense, this snafu was due to me placing them in the incubator when I was working a variety of shifts during my Squadron's support of hurricane relief (Harvey, Irma, and Maria).

The chicks hatched out well, all things considered with 18 out of 27 hatching. That number isn't ideal, but since I lost track of the hatch schedule, they hatched without turning off the auto-rotation or adjusting the humidity upwards.

They did well in the brooder, and as soon as they were feathered they were introduced into the main flock in the middle of the night. Though small, they were accepted more or less the first day. The problems with young chickens is that they don't have a momma hen to scold and corral them. This is where disaster struck.

Jack is a terrier mix, looks like a Yorkie/Chihuahua blend of some sort. Like all terriers, his prey drive is extremely high, and basically anything that's his size or smaller, it's on like Donkey Kong to the death.

Enter the new baby chickens, oblivious to the cold blooded killer in front of them, and ignoring the rest of the fleeing flock, they apparently didn't give him much sport. We found his victims all within 15 feet of one another, after leaving Jack unattended for no more than 20 minutes. Lessons were learned, money was lost, tears were shed, a new nickname was earned (one of the fellows at work dubbed him Jack the Ripper, and I think it's going to stick), and life goes on.