Today on Tuesday

I am glad it is Tuesday and that we got so much work accomplished.
I was reading up on malady's that chickens can get. After a summer
of my chickens going down hill. My hens faces were getting pale.
I know that sounds weird but chickens do get really pale faces and
their combs change color and the hens feathers were breaking off.
I was giving them extra fruits and vegetables and nothing seemed
to work. So I picked one up and noticed that it had mites.



I read all kinds of blogs that told me what to do so I cleaned and cleaned
the coops and then my husband sprayed the thing down with Seven.
We left it to sit for a whole day. The mites live in the wood so you have to really
spray the wood. Then yesterday, we powdered them in Diatomaceous Earth.
We filled a cloth bag with the stuff which looks a lot like cement and about as fine.
Then I would go into the chicken coop and catch one hen at a time. I would hold
their feet and slide them in while Ron would hold them by the head and then
we would shake them all around. We would hold them down and rub the earth under
the wings and then let them go. They would walk across the yard with dust like smoke
blowing with every step.

Catching chickens who don't want to be caught is quite a work out. I had sweat running
down my face mixing with the gray of the Diatomaceous Earth. I was covered.
Then we finally got finished and then we put the rest in the nest boxes and all over
the coop. The Diatoms are very small fossils that dry out the skin of the mite and any
other bug. Pretty amazing stuff as it is all natural.

We will repeat this next weekend. But last night when I went to check on them, they
were looking around with a happier look and there was no scratching and this weird head
shaking they would do all of the time.



Onto other things I wanted to show you a picture of my husband's first row of trees
that he got planted yesterday. These are some pine trees that he grew from seeds that
he collected. He got his water line in and then these guys in the ground. We are having
our typical heat wave for September so it got too hot to do much more. He has some crab
apples he is going to plant and some maples. All of them he has grown from seed.


I hope you had a very nice weekend. I didn't get
much visiting around to your blogs this weekend.
I will be trying to visit today.
I hope you have a very nice week.

~Kim~