An Old Farm and Someone's Chickens

I had to run to Garnett to get Nathan this afternoon, and stopped on my way back through the countryside to take picture of an old farm I often see when going that way.  I always wondered how many families lived there... the kids who played in the yard... the animals who lived in the barns.  The land is still farmed, but no one lives in the old home place.  Behind the white barn are three big machine sheds, empty.  There is a nice old red barn to the left of the white barn, and both are not in too bad of shape yet. 

 

I suspect the farmer who owns it is cutting part of the yard so he can get in and out of the fields, because it is not totally wild.

 

I love to slow down if no one is coming up behind me, to look at the farm and yard. 

 

While on the way home, I stopped at a place I had also seen often... open only from 3-7 PM daily... they are a family that sells vegetables and eggs.  The place is neatly kept.  A man came down from the garden to talk to me... he had a lot of tomatos for sale, but they were very small, NOT San Marzanos.  They were in good shape, and he said he had made three plantings and watered, and I looked up to his garden and it was VERY impressive.

 

I asked if I could see his chickens.

My pictures of the inside of the coop did not come out, but here is the outside, I thought it was cleverly done.

 

 

He actually has 4 coops, and here, as you see, adapted a machine shed as his fourth coop... it is divided in the middle.  The hens are White Rocks, and there is a Rhode Island Red rooster in with them (there are a couple of Rhody hens).  These breed sex link chicks, and he just hatched out a batch.

 

 

He took a big wooden box from work, and converted it into a brooder to start his chicks off.  Someone was supposed to come buy the white chicks you see here... his hatch was almost 50-50, pullets and cockerels.  I asked what he did with his cockerels, and he grimaced.  He told me this time he was throwing them over the fence into the woods if the guy didn't come buy them tomorrow.  He said he wasn't going to feed them when he couldn't get rid of them.  Hard-hearted, I know.  He was at least embarassed about it. 

 

He moves them from this box into another, bigger box to grow them on, then has a special yard and hut to put them into.  He had the same trouble with an owl that we did.

 

 

The bigger box they go into next... I think this is a great system.

 

I am trying to break the juvenile replacement layers of sleeping in their outside 4 x 4 pen, so have closed it tonight to get them to go inside the big henhouse, where they commonly go during the day.  I'm going to run out there now and see what's going on!  Keith is going to load into the haybarn the twelve bales we had delivered today, decent horse hay and heavy square bales!