The Torpid Season

Every year when June rolls around our annual North Florida dry spell draws to a close as our rainy season (usually) begins and we enter what I have come to call the Torpid Season. The work needing to be done goes on as it always does, but my get up and go gets up and goes to some place cooler and drier. My desire to work outside slowly declines until more pleasant weather returns typically sometime in October. This year has been no different other than the erratic rainfall we've been experiencing.

But life goes on whether it's hotter than blue blazes and sticky humid or not. I haven't put a blog update up since June so I cannot any longer put it off. Maybe by the time I've run through the accumulated photos the weather will have abated enough that I'll feel like doing something outside so I can take some new ones!

When last we met I had just papered the henyard with bags and bags of shredded office paper. Three months later and you'd have to search hard to find any trace of it. A few rains, copious quantities of chicken flickin's and that paper composts right away to nothing. In another couple of weeks I'll shovel out the henyard and the roost house then spread it all on the fall garden. The new flock has been hard at work debugging the area for me so it's ready to turn up now.

Speaking of the new flock they started laying about a month or so ago. Here's a photo of the nest boxes with three of the hens doing what comes natural so that we now collect about a dozen or so eggs a day. I expect that number will rise for a while yet until we're gathering about a dozen and a half a day. Most of the hen fruit are still pullet sized (small), but they're gradually growing larger. I expect they will eventually come in around size large.


Here's an outside shot of the original Mk. I Poultry Schooner. Thus far I'm pretty happy with the design but for the excessive weight the tin contributes and the cross-members of the frame being a trifle low to the ground so that they sometimes catch high spots. Both problems I am rectifying in the Mk. II schooner which is now about three quarters complete in the workshop.


I have plans to build a total of five schooners - three for laying hens, one for turkeys (and maybe geese) with the last being for my daughter's 4H birds that we'll probably start researching this Fall. At the moment she's thinking Silkies. They're a silly looking bird but I have to admit after a while they do grow on one. I want to keep them separated from our other birds for biosecurity reasons. The permanent hen yard will become the permanent bachelor pad allowing me to eliminate the temporary one I put up last month which I'll discuss below.

Here's a shot of the new flock out scratching for their breakfast. They're in the corn patch side of the garden. Along about the beginning of October I'll move them into the orchard and pasture so I can till the corn patch preparatory to seeding it to winter rye. Some time in December when the other forage has been frost killed I'll move them back in so they'll have green feed for the cool season. Along about the end of March I'll move them out again so I can prep the ground for the year's corn crop after they've fertilized as well as cleaning up a fair part of the insects and weed seed to be found.


There are two new birds in that flock that I haven't mentioned before as they came on the scene since the last time I updated the blog. One of my egg customers asked me if I could take in a couple of birds that belonged to a friend. To my surprise she lives in one of the oldest subdivisions in Gainesville very nearly a stone's throw from the University president's house. She's kept hens for years but finally ended up with a neighbor who complained so felt compelled to find them a new home. I am now become the repository for unwanted chickens it seems.

So, this is Stella the Speckled Sussex. She's the first Sussex I've ever had and now that I've seen her I wish I'd gotten some years ago as she's right pretty. A good big bird too.


And this is her companion Buffy the Buff Orpington who is a still bigger bird. In fact I think she'd give Cogburn a run for his money in the weight department. She's the biggest bird in the new flock, but gentle soul that she is she's near the bottom of the pecking order I'm afraid. It took a day or so for that to get hashed out so they now pretty much coexist peacefully though she doesn't cotton too much to the boss bird getting fresh with her!


Speaking of the Boss Bird here he is. He's not full grown yet but is showing signs that he's going to develop into a pretty boy. He's as randy as you'd expect of a young rooster, but isn't too hard on the hens so I left him with the flock. I haven't decided on a name for him yet, but being the Boss Bird he should have one. I'm sure something will suggest itself presently.


And what became of the other boys in the flock? Well, when you have a bunch of teenage boys with too much time on their hands and nothing much to do with it they quickly made themselves a nuisance to all concerned. Matters got to the point that half the hens didn't want to come off the roost during the day which is no way to run a poultry operation so the time came for them to get a place of their own. They're now all in the Bachelor Pad.


It's a dumpy looking place, but that's because I was about to take it apart for salvageable materials when I decided I needed to move the boys out so it was pressed into service again this one last time. They're not too happy with the situation, but most have resigned themselves to it. When I first moved them one of them would fly over the fence each day trying to get back to the ladies. They had enough smarts to fly over one fence, but not enough smarts to figure out they had to fly over the second fence to get back to their old flock so they'd spend all day getting no love and no water until sundown when I'd chase them back to where they belonged. Except for the Maran from the old flock the rest elected not to give it a second go.

I moved the extra roosters from the old flock into the Bachelor Pad as well as they were running the hens there ragged just like the young ones were doing. There's just Cogburn and the little Silkie cock Shadow in there now and the hens seem happier for it. I tried to move the Cuckoo Maran birds one night only to have a misadventure which ended up with me losing both of them in the dark. Their barred feather pattern blends in very well with the brush at night! I was able to recover one the next morning, but his brother got himself eaten, probably by a coon judging from the feathers I found strewn all over the orchard. I have developed a strong dislike for coons over the years. The one remaining Maran still tries to get back to his old flock from time to time (those Frenchies!), but being a chicken he's pretty easy to catch by simply waiting for the sun to go down. He'll get the message one of these days I suppose. Or finally annoy me enough to receive a dinner invite!

In the next couple of days I'll try to get something up about the fruits of the harvest this year.

.....Alan.