Take a quick Quiz, and enter to WIN a chick hatching experience!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/QB2FDGX

Contest winner must reside within 50 miles of 76556, or pay $1/mile delivery outside of 50 miles traveling. Rental period is five weeks. Winner has three delivery days from which to choose upon announcement for teh five week rental. If the first winner (chosen at random from the correctly answered surveys) is not able to receive the Hatch the Chick rental, another winner will be chosen. No emails or phone numbers are stored from this survey. Contestant information is solely used to notify winners. Feel free to share this contest with anyone within 50 miles of Milano, Texas. (76556) Winner will need to sign a standard rental agreement. For any further questions, refer to the website: http://www.hatchthechicken.com

This contest is good only for the Central Texas Affiliates with Rent The Chicken and Hatch The Chicken.

When you get our beloved laying hens (yes, already laying) for 6 months, you get this adorable chicken tractor too. Its original design and build by Homestead Brad is perfect for two hens and makes almost any back yard work for chickens. On wheels, you can lift and move it daily, as the hanging feeder and waterer moves with the coop. Easy access to eggs, and a removable top for super simple cleaning. You can purchase them outright, and plans are even going to be available if you don’t live near enough to central Texas for delivery.

We love helping people get this one food source closer to their table, and enjoy “chicken therapy” as I call it, to boot!

It can be moved with the easy reach handle in the front, all doors open with side or top hinges, and have spots for your own locks to truly make it critter proof. A 6 month rental, with the two hens, all feed, supplies, and coop is only $400. At the end of the rental, we come pick it up! No commitment worries!

If you’ve been jealous of my chicken craze, guess what! You, too, can join in! But without commitment. 😉 Kind of perfect, huh?

My amazing mechanical designer hubby, Homestead Brad, has designed and is building the most beautiful, sturdy mobile coops. Our chickens WILL be happy – not cramped, not hot, not cold. Juuusssssst right.

We bring you (free delivery!) two laying chickens – no waiting for eggs – a coop, the standard feed, the water dish, a book all about Fresh Eggs (Fresh Eggs Daily), and a guide on chickens, and you can even upgrade to a chicken harness, a organic feed, or a hatching program. You get them for up to 6 months. If it doesn’t work out, we come and pick it all up, and are happy for your experience. If you discover your OWN chicken fetish, you can decide to purchase it all, and we simply leave it there!

Check it out! It’s a thing!   http://www.rentthechicken.com

 

 

We are STOKED, here at Gose Platz about a lot of stuff – New baby goats (yes, yes I know they’re called kids. But that’s confusing when you have five of the human kind), four new pullets about 10 weeks old, then we’ve got the 21 six-week old chicks, and then the 38 chicks I hatched of various breeds.

Starting a new batch of chicks in the incubator this evening, using the egg turner (last time the egg turner had 0% hatch rate. Bleah.)  So. Fingers crossed!

And…. we’re looking at a great new job for Brad. Stay tuned for more info on that. (You’re going to love it!)

 

 

 

 

 

“You’re not going to tell them now?! That’s cheeeeep.”

I’ve been trying to trap a coon.

We see the adorable little paw prints, and the adorable way they decapitate my chickens (granted, only the stupid ones that refuse to coop up at night, so not a huge loss, but still, a headless chicken at dawn is just icky) and we’ve set the trap, and we’ve gone back in the morning.

Trap tumped over, food gone.

More adorable paw prints.

So, if you’d like to offer up your solutions to getting a coon (it hasn’t always been this hard – we’ve trapped them before.. plenty!) which doesn’t involve me or my family shooting a gun in the cold darkness, I’m all ears!

I’m looking at the fun “fluffy headed” breeds of chickens – but most of them don’t lay well and aren’t good meat birds… So. Any other chicken lovers out there have any suggestions? I would love two have maybe two or three ornamentals, but I don’t know if my uber-practical side will allow it. Shall I take a vote?

I’ve been keeping everyone abreast (hardy har!) of my chicken loves on my FB My Chicken Fetish page… But, I didn’t feel like this was for public consumption… the decision to ax a rooster.

Why? Well, this sweet guy, “Red,” loved to crow at 4am. Not 5am, which is completely tolerable by a chicken lover… at 4am! And he was LOUD! So of the three, (Patriot, Casey, and Red) he had to go. It was sad. I’ve axed enough roosters to know it’s not pretty. So I checked out “killing cones” and fashioned my own:  I asked Gertie to model it. Her interpretation is as the Statue of Liberty. I laughed and laughed. Then my eldest said: Maybe the “Satire of Liberty!” I’ve got cool kids, y’all.

This is two of those cheap pliable plastic cutting boards, well used. I put them together with a regular boring office stapler. Nothing fancy.

I used a hammer and some big staple type things I found in my hubby’s work bench, and hammered, unceremoniously (kind of hard to do, and I looked like a dyslexic flamingo while trying) to the stump in the back yard, making sure I couldn’t see it from my back door.

Then comes the gutting part. (Hardy har again!) We had to catch Red, and slit his jugular in the most humane killing, since we loved him so much. It was awful.

The opening at the bottom was just a teensy bit snug, for such a large roo, but it worked.

(Praise the Lord for sons!)

Jake held his beak steady, and did the honors.

And that was that. Sigh.

Way easier than the hacking of an axe, and the flailing around of a headless chicken, not to mention the blood spray. So, I recommend it. Just check your measurements. Red was very happy and comfy, right before the last picture. I will say this – cut where there’s no feathers, and be VERY sure your knife is super sharp. Sharpen it anyway.

RIP, Big Red.

I remember it well….I was sitting out in the chicken yard, watching the little chicks/chickens grow up and peck each other, and listening to all the entertaining noises they make, and I saw a little brown wooden egg at the base of the cedar tree. “What kid left their little egg out here?!” I was pretty frustrated. They leave stuff EVERYwhere. Act like children, all five of them!

So I move over to pick it up and begin preparing their punishment, “Death by lecture,” in my head. Points 1-3 included, “It could rot from rainfall, someone could slip on it, the mower could send it through a window,” etc etc etc. I picked it up and realized, wait a second. THIS IS A REAL EGG! In my yard! It happened!! So I check the nesting boxes… YES. There’s a SECOND one! I was on cloud nine. Here are the pics from that WONDERful day. Happy happy memory.

Yes, yes we did blow one out, (you use a sewing needle, insert two teensy holes, one in each end, blow through the egg until you have an aneurysm, or the insides come out, whichever comes first. Then put water in there and blow it out too. Then obsess on whether or not it’s dry.) and we polyurethaned it, and put it under a dome. Yes it stayed there for months. No, it’s not still there. The novelty has indeed worn off.

This is the text I received from my mom today, on my 38th Birthday:

“Happy birthday. Never dreamed that when I first gazed into your little face and held you in my arms… ” (at this point my heart is quickening, because my mom is NEVER emotional or tender with her words with me. She’s loving, but not… mushy. And I LOVE mushy.) …”that you would grow up to have a chicken fetish and actually tell people about it.”

My reply? “You’re making me all teary-eyed over here….Can I put this on the blog?.”

(I was pretty excited she already knew the name of my blog.

And that’s why I have a Chicken Blog now. It’s my birthday present to me! 😉 I think I’ll post more of the story today. Maybe I’ll even get to the day my hubby built me a coop. Maybe!

This is my baby, Liesel/Libby on my birthday last year:

When we first got our “brood,” we named each chick that we could identify. The Americuanas were/are Flip Flop (from FlipFlopSpanish.com) Cinnamon, Sugar, Pumpkin (the runt) and Morph. The Barred Rocks were ALL “Buddy.” We enjoyed having a Buddy with us each evening. Here’s my Buddy one evening after dinner during Spring Break 2013.