Sunday, Nov. 2nd… Today…A new day on the Cluckin’ “A”……

This Post is late because AOL was down from 6:30 this morning when I wrote it until now..... at 1:40 PM. I guess that's why we pay the big bucks to AOL.... you know....for such fine service.

What a beautiful 28 degree, clear, crisp, fall morning!! There is a white coating of frost on everything… the roosters are crowing and the day is promised to be a delightfully, warm afternoon. At nine O’clock this morning, a guy is supposed to show up to pick up the last six roosters we wanted to cull from the flock, thus allowing the hens to be free, with only two roosters among them. They don’t want to leave the confines of the hen house with eight roosters, because they can’t relax to feed and peck without the roosters jumping them constantly. Therefore, we are reducing the number of roosters present in the flock. We would get rid of all but Rooster Cogburn, but when a group of hens are in the woods, he goes along to protect them and any hens remaining in the yard are alone and unprotected if a hawk should appear. In light of this problem, we decided to keep one of the Rhode Island Red roosters because he will remain in the yard with the rest of the hens. It seems that each rooster takes a portion of the flock to preside over, but eight roosters were far too many for the number of hens in the flock in the little hen house.
Once Tony picks up the roosters and leaves, we will continue to move dirt to cover over the open ditch, which only amounts to about thirty feet or so now, and then drain the summer water lines to the duck house, camper area and garden pond. We drain them every fall and blow compressed air through them to drain the hoses and lines so they won’t freeze. Now that we have the hydrants in place and functioning, we can have water readily available all winter long and with heated buckets, the animals will be in great shape.
We are going to grab a length of conduit, if I don’t already have it in the Wilson House, to go under the drive way, which we will run the power line through for the barn. Once that is in and the vinyl placed on the outside of the chicken/duck house and new barn, we are done for the winter and can relax to enjoy life with all our work completed until next spring when we will again start with the construction of the Hospice House.