The Broody Breaker

The chicken Blondie turned out to be a wonderful incubator. She sat on her eggs dutifully, clucking angrily whenever anyone approached her nesting box. However, it turns out, she was a horrible mother. Horrible, as in: she literally pecked her chicks to death. Bill and I were heartbroken when we found the first dead chick, pecked and mangled, lying outside the box. I frantically researched options and ultimately, I stole five of the remaining seven eggs out from under mama Blondie, and attempted to set up an artificial incubator. Some of the eggs rocked and "peeped", so I knew the time was close. I carefully set them in a box with wood chips, and angled the heating lamp accordingly to keep a temp at 100 degrees. I dabbed them once in a while with a moist paper towel. That night I sat by the box for an hour and watched. Then I slept for an hour, rechecked. Solid 100 degrees. Then, 2 hours later, the temp was still holding strong. Then I made the mistake of falling asleep for four straight hours. I woke up in a start, ran to the box, and to my utter horror, saw the thermometer reading 137 degrees.

It took me exactly one week to stop feeling so terrible that I could write about the results. No question, Blondie was bad, but so was I. I had cooked the chicks.

I did bring myself to check the eggs and calculate fertility rates. Blondie started with 11 eggs. Of these, only four (36%) had developed almost fully. The two eggs I left under Mama Blondie turned out to be unfertilized.

From beginning (acquiring the rooster and introducing him to the flock), to end, this hopeful-turned-horrible project took about 7 weeks.

Just to be clear, I am not giving up. And, true to my streak of impatience, I went straight away to Murdoch's ranching store and, against Bill's better judgement, bought the solo egg incubator they had on the shelf. I was determined to hatch some baby chicks even if Blondie wouldn't cooperate.

The incubator I brought home is made by Little Giant, model 9200, which is a still air (no circulation) variety. I added some accessories: an automatic egg turner and a fan, to increase probability of survival. (Eggs need to be turned 2 to 3 times a day to prevent the yolk from sticking to the shell and screwing up chick development. Also, a fan keeps the temp more uniform.) When I pulled the contraption out of the box, I was staring at, basically, nothing more complicated than a Styrofoam container, two pieces fitted together, with two plastic windows on top to watch the incubation progress, and a place for eggs and a heating element inside. Very efficient, but nothing fancy.  

I knew energy would be an issue, but the heating element itself runs about equivalent to a 40 watt bulb. This is do-able when we have decent sun days, like we're having now. So I was ready to dive in again and gather up some more eggs. Bill semi-grudgingly let me scheme and dream along, all the while gently reminding me the energy requirement for this endeavor might be too high. It wasn't until he pointed out that beyond the 21 days of incubation, we'd require probably another 6 weeks of a heating element for the growing baby chicks. That would put us running an inefficient heating lamp into November and December...months when we just don't have that kind of solar energy.

I finally came back to reality, abandoned my immediate plan to start again, and temporarily packed up the incubator. It can wait a few more months to hatch some chicks. And so can I.

Lessons Learned:

• It is extremely hard to try and simulate the conditions underneath a broody hen (I failed miserably). She keeps it 99.5 degrees and 80% humidity. She also turns the eggs several times daily, until the last week of their development, when they do best to stay in the same position to prep for hatching. 
• Not all hens make good mothers. 
• "Time and tide [and sun] wait for no man". But sometimes you do have to wait for it.

Adventures in batteries!

Well, the time for new batteries has finally come.  Our original batteries have been dropping off one-by-one and although they've been more than adequate throughout the summer (when the days are long and the clouds are few and far between), they have little chance of making it through the winter.  Our current batteries have lasted up to 6 years. I only say "up to" because some have lasted longer than others and some were purchased earlier than others.  I don't know all the details because I didn't do the purchasing. Had the batteries been taken good care of, we may have gotten 10 years out of them...but they weren't.  The previous owners did a number of no-no's associated with the batteries.

• No-no #1: They didn't really have a good idea how much energy they were going to use when they purchased the batteries. It turns out running grow lights uses a LOT of energy and their batteries weren't really sized to handle the demand. 
• No-no #2: When they discovered the battery bank wasn't big enough, they added more batteries in series instead of starting from scratch. Mixing old batteries with new batteries is always a bad idea.  Even if the batteries are of the same type, as batteries age the lead plates get thinner and thinner.  Even when the batteries are resting current flow from the new batteries to the old ones. The old batteries work harder than they should even when they should be resting and the new batteries get dragged down to the level of the old ones. 
• No-no #3: When they added the new batteries, they created 5 parallel strings.  The fewer string the better.  Five is a lot!  With five strings, an equalize cycle is required frequently to keep the batteries at similar state of charge (SOC).  
• No-no #4: They didn't know how to run an equalize cycle!  I asked the previous owners how often they equalized the batteries. I don't remember what they said, but I know the take home message was, "we don't".  

Given all of the no-no's, I guess 6 years isn't so bad.  At last not until you considered they spent about $7000 on batteries.  Ouch.  Lucky for us, we were able to learn from some of their mistakes.

So how did we go about deciding what to get for a new battery bank?  There are a ton of choices out there.  First, we needed to know how much power we use. This varies a bit, but on big days we are at about 3500wh/day.  The general rule of thumb these days is to get a battery that has about 4 times the amount of your daily requirement. This gives you about 2 days of autonomy if you keep your batteries above 50% SOC.  Traditionally, people planned for much more that 2 days of autonomy.  There has been a shift to smaller batteries as of late.  The logic for this has a lot to do with the price of renewable energy supplies.  The price of batteries has remained pretty stable over the years.  The price of solar, however has been going down everyday.  Since batteries don't last very long if they are undercharged, it just doesn't make sense to get a battery that is oversized for a charging system.  Batteries are rated in amp-hours (ah) -- at 24V (our system voltage), 3500wh/24V = 145AH. We use about 145AH per day from a 24V battery bank.  145AH x 4 = 590AH.  So, we were looking for a capacity of about 600AH.

I looked at a number of different options with the following in mind:

• 600 - 800AH capacity
• Lead Acid - I like being able to equalize and monitor the specific gravity of individual cells, so I decided against sealed batteries. 
• No more than 2 strings - preferably one.
• Long life
• Affordability

I finally decided on a forklift from Giant Battery I ended up getting a model 12-85-13.  Fork lift batteries are big and heavy, but can last up to 20 years with proper care.  The model I got weighed about 1100lbs.  Since it weighed so much, putting it in the crawl space was not an option.  Instead, we will built a small (2'x4') extension off the back of the house so we could move it into place with my neighbors backhoe.  The additional bonus of having it up and out of the crawl space is temperature.  Batteries perform there best at around 70F.  We were losing a fair amount of capacity by storing our batteries in the 45F crawl space.

The forklift battery at home in our new mini-extension. 

The new battery has been in place few a few days now. The installation went off without a hitch.  We'll see how it does this winter.  Time will tell!

The Pressure's On: August Updates

After two years of water bath canning, we dug in and bought a pressure canner today. Nothing against all the vinegary sweets we've created via water bath...pickled beets and dilly beans are still on our 2012 agenda. We were just ready to start putting away more of our garden. And with only 8 cubic feet of storage in our solar powered freezer, canning is the obvious way to go. Right now I'm babysitting a batch of stew that's merrily steaming along in the canner. It makes this really nice, steamy metronome sound as the weight rocks on top, and it's peaceful just to sit by and listen. So, as that cooks, here are some updates:

Straw Potatoes

 The garden went nuts this year. We've had a long growing season, and frost is not in the forecast for the next couple of weeks. A couple people asked about straw potatoes, so here is a more in depth look at the process. Our ground, as mentioned in prior posts, is hard, rocky, and low in organic content. A friend told me about growing tubers in straw. This is my second year, with good results so far. Also, this year, I can really see the straw composting and adding to our garden soil. Here's how:

1. Put potatoes on ground and cover in 12-14" of straw.

2. Water

3. Watch them grow.

4. Harvest by pulling back the straw.

The Pig Debate: Grain vs. Grass

Our hogs went to slaughter last week. Hanging, they weighed 150, 159 and 159. We were pleased, and are looked forward to the maple-brined, smoked hams and bacon. Buying grain, however, is something we didn't enjoy...especially with the price hike this year. Bill and I have been looking into options of grazing, and might be branching out into heirloom varieties of pigs who can sustain themselves on grass. Large Blacks or Red Wattlers are the ones we're particularly interested in....so next year, look for pastured pork in place of pink Yorkshires on Blue Cloud. The grazers won't put on 200 lbs in 3 months like our pinkies did...but we won't be buying grain every week either.

Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!
	We added a new addition to the farm. Our rooster, a gift from a neighbor up the road, is scrawny and his crow is giggle-worthy, but he is successfully fertilizing eggs! (And, he doesn't crow until about 9 AM!) We'll see if broody Blondie (at it again, and determined as ever) can hatch any chicks in about 20 days.

The Gobblers It's about that time of year again. The turkeys are getting big and about ready to be put into the freezer. Bill really improved his gobble this year and has become quite the turkey farmer. See it for yourself. (video coming soon)

Pesky Sheep

A recent speed-bump in our progress came when our neighbor's twenty head of sheep escaped their pasture....and roamed on our land for several days. Our orchard and windbreak got munched on, and, though the damage could have been worse, seeing those nibbled-down, broken, leafless branches, I was immediately deflated...and then enraged. I debated putting lamb chops into our freezer. But Bill, as always, calmed me down. And we put up an electric fence. And crossed our fingers that our neighbors will take care of their pesky roaming fluff-balls.