So looking back, I've only posted on Sundays for the past 5 weeks now! I can't believe that...how unacceptable. I promise I will try much harder to post twice a week, however, 3rd trimester exhaustion is kicking in and some days I can't muster the creative juices. It is only going to get worse too as Baby Shawhan has just a month and a handful of days left to cook and Dan is officially in the field leaving pregnant wifey-poo to hold down the Shawhan farm solo.
In order to prep for springtime, and the fact the chickens were completely out of food, Dan made up a batch of chicken feed and brought it home. Except when he got home I realized this wasn't an ordinary feed delivery. All of this is chicken food!
Normally he shows up with two or three bags, not half a truck load. And rumor has it, this isn't even all of it! Part of the batch ended up at Ray and Nicole's and there is still some stashed away at the farm. I think it's safe to say we have enough food to last about 6 months.
Dan admitted to his goof and said he did a whole batch (1 ton OR (1,500 pounds of corn, 400 pounds of soy bean meal and 100 pounds of mineral mix)) when usually he only mixes a batch using half of those ingredients.
The chickens were excited to see the shipment. They all lined up to watch the beautiful golden morsels arrive.
We normally dump a good bit into the empty feeder then store the rest in a plastic garbage can. Thanks to the rats, we had to get rid of our first chicken feed storage container, but thanks to my dad, he gave us a bigger and better one...or a nicer garbage can. This particular shipment of feed required a patched up garbage can Dan found at the farm...so now my barn has several garbage cans, including Jimmy and Charlie's feed storage and several 5 gallon buckets stacked on top of each other filled with chicken feed.
Jimmy and Charlie's hay to stored right next door to our hoard of chicken food. I thought it was ironic that on this day, this was all that was left of it...and Jimmy and Charlie are the breadwinners of the Shawhan farm, by far!
There are positive aspects of having so much chicken feed on hand. For starters I won't have to worry about running out while Dan is in the field. It will be one less thing to deal with when the baby arrives. If the economy continues to plummet we can get some fancy bags with plagiarized labels and sell it to the ever growing backyard chicken enthusiast market.
The best thing about it is that now the chicks have been totally converted to this layer ration. Our rule of thumb is to feed the chicks at least two bags of chick starter feed, then integrate them to the big girl ration. As with anything you are changing feed to, we like to mix it slowly into their old feed first before being completely converted.
So now that everyone knows of our "gold mine", please don't come and steal our chicken feed! I know some people actually have to pay for their chicken food, and if that were the case I would be owning chickens. because let's face it, that feed is expensive! Especially if you have more than 4 or 5 birds.
I told Dan now that we have so much feed we need even MORE chickens! One day...it will happen!
...cluck... cluck.... cluck...
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