Wednesday, February 18, 2009

New Life

My unstoppable wife has now added 100 rock cornish chickens to her nurturing agenda. These are meatbirds. Our neighbor is raising laying hens. In a few months, we will trade her some meatbirds for some laying hens. Colleen still bottle-feeds two of the six baby goats, and they are thriving. It is so much fun to see the frisky little goats darting around, jumping and running full speed ahead.

Most of the chicks snuggle together under the heat lamp all night.

9 comments:

robinstarfish said...

Meatbirds! Do they know that? ;-)

Trinka said...

Oh - LOVE baby chicks!!! Love them!

(and not in the "meat bird" way, either) ... though eventually that's nice too. :)

mushroom said...

They are cute.

Here's a baby chick story for you. Back when I was in high school we did science fair projects. One of my girl cousins and a couple of her friends decided to do the thing where you inject hen chicks with testosterone and get them to develop the rooster combs and crowing. So, they get three or four chicks, a cage, and all the equipment and set it up in the science lab. My cousin gets ready to give the first injection using a syringe with about an 18-gauge needle. She picks up the cute little baby chick, and, instead of slipping it carefully under the skin for a subcutaneous injection, she pokes it dead center through the tiny bird's body cavity. The chick flops a couple of times and dies. My cousin is standing there with the dead bird in her hand absolutely dumbfounded that testosterone was fatal to this creature.

No, she was not blonde.

As a follow-up, a year or so later, I was in the hospital with a gunshot wound to the chest. They had patched me up but I had a bunch of fluid in my chest cavity they needed to draw off. They came into the hospital room with a big old needle that looked like it was six inches long and had me sit up and lean over the table. They warned me it might hurt a little, and that I shouldn't move. I felt the needle slide into my back and as I was sitting there, this picture of that chick flopping on the end of the needle came to mind. I started laughing.

Terri Wagner said...

Oh gosh what a story Mushroom. You tell it very vividly. I can just see it.

Bob's Blog said...

Hey mushroom: can you tell us more about the gunshot wound?

Bob's Blog said...

robin,
We have not yet figured out a way to tell them.

mushroom said...

There's not much to tell. It was an extremely freakish accident, unfortunately for me, at very close range. The bullet fragmented and one fragment tore a fist-sized (so described by the surgeon -- I didn't see it) hole in my liver. I bled a lot.

One part might be interesting. After some hours of surgery, they sewed me up, but I was still bleeding. The surgeons said if the bleeding didn't stop soon they'd have to go back in. This was almost forty years ago, so things were a little less sophisticated. I've written before about our family friend, an old-time Baptist preacher. Someone called him, and he began to pray for me. Certain of the old hillbillies were reputed to have a gift of stopping blood. He was one of those.

My mother sat by my bed that night as blood continued to run out of the drain they had placed in my side. Then it stopped. The old preacher called later that morning and told her the time when he knew the bleeding stopped. She confirmed that was the case. He had stayed up praying until then. At that point he knew I was all right so he went to sleep.

Bob's Blog said...

mushroom.
That is an incredible story, just incredible. Thank you for sharing it.

When Obama was here Tuesday to sign the world-record spending bill, I was watching the sky over Denver. We had wind clouds like I have never seen before. I thought there might be a tornado. In fact, on one of Obama's visits here last summer, we did have a string of tornadoes. I wonder, I wonder. What was happening? I don't know, but I am pretty sure God was not telling us to put up more wind turbines.

Bob's Blog said...

mushroom.
That is an incredible story, just incredible. Thank you for sharing it.

When Obama was here Tuesday to sign the world-record spending bill, I was watching the sky over Denver. We had wind clouds like I have never seen before. I thought there might be a tornado. In fact, on one of Obama's visits here last summer, we did have a string of tornadoes. I wonder, I wonder. What was happening? I don't know, but I am pretty sure God was not telling us to put up more wind turbines.