100 Chicks Wasn’t Enough So We Got More

One arm wasn't enough. That was a good one. Had to get my blood drawn this morning. So many, I had to get it in two arms. I'm actually seeing a doctor about different ailments including my Lyme, and I guess it includes extensive blood work, which I'm excited about. Now that it's over. Mama's tea. She's up next giving blood. Did you get blood back? I did.

It's already done.

I feel, she says I flow much better than you. Oh yeah, it was all that biscuits and gravy Rebecca ate this morning before drawing blood. Yeah, you're not supposed to eat before you draw blood. The post office just called. I do want to point out that everybody wants to go all of a sudden when it's Grandma going during chores. All right, Jonah, that means you and I need to get the brooder ready fast. I did not know the chicks were coming today. Look at these strawberries coming up though. Every, every white flower is where a strawberry is going to be. Everybody's happy? Any more casualties?

I don't think so.

Nope, I think we're through the new chick flush. Several have died, but now it seems like that's, that's chilled out. I'm happy about that. I'm looking for the, the other gallon waterer. Keep that in there. We have that one here. I don't think we're getting 100. We're getting fat chicks. We're getting big-boned chickens that are going to be really good egg layers. We're gonna get serious about these laying egg chickens in our field. Grandma just came. She's gonna take the kids. I think she's excited about that farm project. Here we go, go open the door. Get chicks today.

We're here.

Oh, we're here to get the chickies. Thank you. Okay, let's walk. Look how cute Cute! They're all waiting to get some water. There's our, uh, other gallon of water. I don't think that's gonna work. I would say that was a terrible shot. We'll go do this in a minute, or do you want to start doing it? We have a quart waterer, that'll have to do in a pinch. Watering mom's plants. We've got a feeder, we're good. Yeah, water mama's plants in the morning while you can retain moisture won't evaporate so fast. Oh, there's an acorn squash coming up. Lots of pumpkins coming up and zucchini. Those are more friendly vegetables, like, uh, zucchini and squashes, uh, pumpkins. Those are kind of the, uh, the vegetables I can eat. Let's tie two and two together so you see what's going on. You remember the cows and sheep were in here over the winter in the deep bedding pole barn? Well, they had the sacrifice area. We had them on wood chips. We only had a light layer, uh, so we used what we had, but we got more wood chips yesterday. We'll spread this out. And here, that's south, so it's going to get a lot of sun, is where we'll plant those big sprawling squashes and pumpkins. And look like they got me another load of wood chips right here. It was super nice being able to scrape on the concrete. We'll, we'll shove these in there one way or the other. I want to leave a way to walk around because you do the cows and you want to walk around to the sheep. I kind of pushed it a little far, it looks like. You can maybe put some more in here. Does this door have to swing out? Oh boy, oh boy. So we don't want to put any more there. So basically we got to put it all like right in there and we got to stack it high. You got to keep wood chips covered and they'll dry out. Otherwise they get rain and sun and they start breaking down.

Papa, watch this. Okay, Teddy, come.

Oh wow, sit. Oh, oh, you're getting trained, you're getting trained. Hey, that's fun to be around. Jonah, their priority is going to be warmth, so how do we get the heat lamps over here?

Oh, that's easy.

At least one of them.

I built these special.

I figured you did. Oh look, okay, that is special. And then make sure you put that tie around it because we don't want it falling down in there. Let me grab my mess catch. This thing's handy— 1/2-inch wire mesh on a wooden frame. Any, any shavings or poop on their way to get water falls through. Okay, we'll put the water on that. Put a ramp up to it because you want poop to be able to fall through it. He got the shavings. He's, he's going to build it up. Yeah, see, that's, that's better. And then— oh, don't put it in the middle because we want it to be able to fall through. All right, good job. I shouldn't forget y'all's legs. Super dry, super dry spring. Our potatoes are still managing to come up, our onions are still managing, but they could certainly use some help. It kind of looks like we need to hoe. Well, if we hoe and then water, that's no use because they'll just reroot. So we're gonna need to water today and then hoe tomorrow. Okay, but I hate to water these wheat. I should have thought of this and waited yesterday. See, We got some weedage coming up big time. All right, it's got to get at least an inch of rain a week, and if that doesn't happen, we got to make it happen with our sprinkler. You think they covered the Three Little Pigs' poop? I don't know. So an inch of rain is about 4 hours of that sprinkler going. How'd I know that? It looks like they covered their poop. That's good. You get like a tuna can or something and find out where an inch is, and you put it out at your sprinkler and you time it, how long it takes to get to an inch. I think there was a brush that went in Sally, wasn't there, in this bucket? Yeah, that's gone. Are there any brushes over here? No. I guess we're just gonna scrub it down. This will do until we get us a brush. Hey, I might have to take the, uh, The brush fund out of the Nerf gun fund. Let's get some magic water for them. A quarter cup of honey, warm, into that warm water. 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar, 2 cloves minced garlic. That is a Natural boost for stressed out chicks.

Look at that rooster, he thinks he's something else.

I want you guys to know something about this rooster. Grandpa Chuck, we call him. He's not supposed to be over here. He's supposed— you're supposed to be in the pasture posse, but he snuck over to the, the, the breakfast posse. These are handy for maybe a dozen chicks. It'll get you by in a pinch. Uh, we're probably— she probably got 60 chicks or something like that, maybe more. Uh, but this— that's kind of nifty. It'll get us by till we can get the gallon waterer here. So we got that in there, that's warming up. All we got to do is put their feed in. That's right here, we just got to put their feed from right there. Yeah, we got— let's put 2 hover birders in. You're right. So we got a little more to do. These guys are gonna do fine on one heat lamp now. They're going through about a gallon And that— how old are they, Jonah? I don't know. Uh, we got them Friday, so they're almost a week old, and 100 chicks are going through a gallon. But once they go through that in less than a day, we just switch it out with a 3-gallon, and by that time they're big enough to reach over this taller lip. All right, that looks super nice. These chicks that we're getting, they're regular chickens. They don't grow like monsters, like sea monsters. They'll be little tiny things too. You know what we lack? In both of them is a little bit of greens. Let's get them a little greens. Right there is a little clover patch. Perfect. A couple handfuls for each of them. Greens help prevent what you call pasty butt. There's also enough chlorophyll and 2 blades of grass to keep them free of any, uh, what am I trying to say, illness, sickness, uh, that's not the words I'm looking for. Disease, maybe. Maybe that's the word I'm looking for. It won't be their favorite. Grain is so certainly going to be their favorite, but they'll enjoy some of that grain.

We're home!

There you go. I'll get you a seat. Look who's back! Hey, how'd the vlog go, buddy? Good. You got some shots? Thank you. These are Red Stars hybrid egg-laying birds.

What are these?

Big boned, lay lots of eggs. They're black Australorp, buff Rockless, and speckled Sussex, Red Stars, brown Leghorn, silver lace Wyandotte, black American Conant White True Blue. So some of these are, are fun, beautiful blue laying eggs that Rebecca will put in her breakfast posse, but the rest are big bones like the Australorp and the Rockstars, we'll call them. If I'm counting right, about 67 chicks. That's about right. And there's probably about 85 in here. So what in the world are we going to do with 150 chicks? It's not— it's no problem. Definitely not a record for us. These are meat. We 6 chickens a week, uh, and these are egg layers. We'll put 30 out to pasture. Right now there's only about 10-ish, and we'll put the other 30-ish, uh, in the pasture. All our other chickens are going to retire this year. Yeah, as soon as these guys start laying eggs, we'll start retiring those other guys. Uh-oh, I've noticed the water has emptied. Y'all can finish dipping their beaks. Is there a hole in it? It's broken. Oh. Heater here so it's not so direct. I bet you it cracked it. I'm gonna be in trouble. That's Mama's blue jar. All right, turns out we don't want to use those blue ones anyway. Mom says they have lead in them, but we found us a clear one. I'll put the lamp a little further away. All right, hopefully that'll work. That would have been an absolute disaster if they run out of water on day one. We better go, it's 8:50, 20 past milking time. We're having to feed some hay because we're gonna have to slow the cows down. Grass ain't growing very fast. Even though it's spring, we don't have any rain right now.

Here's one of your brushes. Can I clean it with soap?

That's the one from the mower. Look at all the oil.

Yeah, can I clean it with soap so it's clean?

You gotta use like dishwasher detergent.

I'm using the soap that you used to— I'm using the soap that you used to put on your cows, put in the cow's water.

Hey, Gideon, why'd you use that food brush on the mower? Because. Because. The best excuse ever. Because. Looks like we got a Annette's still up from the chickens. Look at this grass. That's what I like to call sea monster grass. That's where they were last year, those meat chickens. What? Okay, that's the one you cleaned with the soap. Where'd you find that one? My favorite.

In the chicken area that we— that the chickens got moved out of.

Gideon found one in here, so really we're just missing one of those. But I'll have grace. You know what it is? Homeless Homeboy wants Nerf guns. I said organize everything you have, the tools, make a place for this. So we got to use this as a, a learning opportunity. This weather, it almost feels like summer. It's warm, it's downright warm right now. It's dry. Problem is Flossie's ready to go, ready to get over here, but we only need the bromance. Dona's gonna herd her away. There goes one. There goes Hamburger. Sheeps, you guys are gonna love this paddock. Look at all these brambles. Well, there's a lot of grass left in here too, but look, they're just gonna love it. We're done milking. The, the wood chipper guys are here. He said he's gonna come get the machine, but We gotta at least get him to get the brush out of the path for the boys. I did text him back and say, well, when you gonna finish? I don't know if he got that or not, so let's catch him before he leaves with that machine. All right, I caught him. All he's got to do then, John, is just level this, then you guys could go up through there. They've got some shacks, got some old shacks up there they want to play around. You still got to come back and get this stuff. We'll see when he's available. We're going to turn those log rounds into wood chips. Had a little chat with him. Looks like he'll be back in a week to get our rounds into wood chips. Oh, Randolph, he's taking a week off, but— oh, there's our dog food. He just dropped it over here. There's another couch. Oh look, he got the— he got the boards down. Oh, that looks good, that looks good. It's so open in here. Yay! We had a— we had a wall here. I wish I would have thought of that before because then we would have filled in our concrete, but I guess we can do that by hand. Yeah, we can fill this— still fill this up. Yeah. Well, the electronic guys brought in the subwoofer. But look, Randolph put in this— oh look, he's got an optional. He made this an optional. Look at that, Randolph, he's clever. Look at that. You want to go outside, you roll this up, it should slide. Oh look, I like it. Can you hold this? Sure, if you want to grab it. I got you guys in one hand and Tree box in the next. Look, Teddy knows what's up. I know Rebecca's calling them back because she said no, it was not delivered. Well, I found it. Good for them though, sending us another just on word. They're sending us another for free. Okay, so this is both the cats and then that's the dog. Organic chicken and liver recipe. Everybody cross your fingers. Let's see if old Lucky's gonna start. They're a curious bunch, the pigs. They got nothing else to do but check us out. Anyway, we got us a pile of mulch. I'm gonna take Lucky now and just spread it all over. Thank you, Wren. Wren's picking up my sandbags. Let's see if that's enough. Kids are out listening to an audiobook. We're eating lunch. Look at this, he's too big for this waddle. Little feet always hanging out. Your little feet always hanging out. How's the leftover Indian? It's delicious. The leftover carne is awesome. I just wrapped up another hard day of the office. Another day closer to Abundance Plus, our own streaming network. We went through some of the process to get it like in the app stores, what that's going to look like. Wasn't able to finish. It's quite a bit, guys. Probably gonna have to do that tomorrow. Jonah has— looks like Jonah has taken over my computer.

Yeah.

Is this in your future?

Yeah.

Is this a Nerf gun?

You can't add it to the cart.

Oh, well, you got to find a different one then, man. It's probably like an international thing or something. Anyway, he wants to show us his course, so let's go see your course, and then you guys are going to come back and help me cook, right? Yeah, steak fajitas tonight. Can everybody say steak fajitas?

Steak fajitas! And you're gonna cook it in your clean kitchen.

Yeah, no, look, you came in and cleaned. What got into you?

Nerf guns.

Oh, you want Nerf guns too? Yeah, that's gonna be your Nerf gun court.

Yep.

All right, looks good. You think this is gonna be a good Nerf gun battlefield? See, I don't know, I just want to suck my arm because looks like there's some breast milk on it. Wow, you guys did good. This is also going to make a good pig forest too, right? Yeah, yeah.

I'll start cleaning the steak.

I have to wash your hands.

Yes, I did.

I really like how everybody helped me out so nicely. These turned out absolutely beautiful. They did. Is it Tahita Thursday? I don't think we'll make it a thing because we have Taco Tuesday, but I think we're having Taco Tuesday 2 days late. Yeah. You guys like it? You put a lot of work into it. What do you think? You'll be joining us in no time. Oh yeah.