Gotta Keep Clucking Going: Treat the Treats

Starting and keeping a small business running is definitely NOT for the faint of heart. I remember when I first launched the dog treats in September 2017 and was so excited that the brewery from which the spent grains came from and my friends were clamoring for the treats in those first few weeks.

I began to get confident and think that this was the way that I was going to cover the expenses that come from running a small farm and having rescue animals.

Then, came the lull and not just any lull – the BIG lull. I applied for a permit to sell at the Columbus Winter Farmer’s Market weeks before the Christmas season and started to dream up images of success as I imagined bags flying off shelves and me in a rush to keep up with demand. I ordered a whole slew of labels for the packaging and stocked up on ribbon and bags. I was READY!

I sat, week after week, watching as potential customers walked by my well placed table with bright shiny bows, pristine labels and the tantalizing smell of peanut butter hovering over my table. I smiled at each customer and wished them a “Good Morning” as they walked by, stopped, commented and walked on. It was so disheartening. I went home every week that I was at the market – thinking that this would be my last one and that I was going to give up the treat business.

But, each week I was there, I would pull my small table from the car get my treats situated and try once more to sell just enough to pay for gas that week and the expenses of making the treats. Some weeks I made it, most I did not.

When summer rolled around, I figured I would try once more to get these treats to take off and applied for a permit to sell at the Seymour Farmer’s Market a few weeks. Once again, I would see people walk up – say hello and walk on. Once again, some weeks I made enough to cover the cost of making the treats and others – just enough to cover breakfast at the taco truck.

Fast forward to this fall – it has been incredibly slow this holiday season and I’m trying to stay hopeful. A very small part of me wants to just throw in the towel and call it quits. It is so hard to keep trying to sell something that you know is good and that dogs love, but just can’t seem to get it to take off the ground.

I’m still hanging on to the fact that I’m inches away from getting a registered trademark on the treats and I keep thinking that I can’t quit. I've come too far, put too much time in and am too determined to let that stop me. I don't want to be one of those small businesses that stop after 18 months. 

The treats are a year old and I hope that they make it to their 2nd birthday. I just have to keep hoping, keep trying. 

Sometimes a Sensitive Mama Clucker

I’ve had my first experience with trapping over the last week or so. I always wondered why the farming stores had so many live traps and, in my city mindset, had this romantic ideal that farming folks trapped the critters just so they could take them to refuges or some other such oasis and let them live their lives out.  

I couldn’t have had thoughts further from the actual truth – at least, most of the time.

Following the slaughter’fest that happened with the small breed chickens, I wanted to find the culprit predator that caused such a major loss. I wanted to rebuild and didn’t want to put birds back into a situation that would result in the same outcome.

I did what any city girl would do and enlisted the help of a neighbor who has been in farming for generations who immediately suggested we set up traps to catch the offender and, he noted, get rid of it.

It didn’t take me two rooster crows to figure out what he was talking about. He was talking about getting RID of it. Like, dead; deceased, to the big forest in the sky, all the prey they want, dead. The city gal in me wanted to scream “Oh hell no,” but the budding country voice (which isn’t always the loudest) whispered “you know he’s right.”

This neighbor was right. Predators don’t belong around barns and having all-you-can-eat buffets of chicken and whatever else is picking around the yard. Predators have a place in the woods and far from civilization.

Now, before you start calling judgement and saying that predators have been pushed out of their wooded homes by other residential developments and therefore belong on my property to pretty much take whatever they wish, I have to respectfully disagree though I do agree that there has been a surge in development recently and this is disheartening.

Most of the time, I live in harmony with the nature that surrounds me. I have moles that are doing some serious damage to the yard and will need to be taken care of sooner or later, but for the most part the critters stay away and I get to put my chickens out to enjoy the day and then lay super tasty eggs.

Things had changed though, since the predator attack and something needed to be done.

So, the neighbor graciously traveled over with his ATV and dropped 4 live traps at various places around the property. He told me that raw meet would attract the most action and unwrapped four frozen slabs of ribs that he said were too old (2016).

I remember laughing just a bit that this was considered “old” for meat. I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten frozen meat that is somewhere in the 5-10 year range. Again, difference in city-gal and country folk. I’ll get there.

The first morning I went out to open the coop door and check the traps and found a very young opossum looking at me cautiously from the confines of the metal wire cage. I knew what the neighbor had said, “that we would get rid of them”, but this one was young, small and far away from the barns. I knew that this wasn’t one of the culprits to damage done around the barn and worked to free the critter – remembering to keep my fingers free from any teeth.

The second morning found another opossum in the same wire trap, though this one was bigger, and a skunk in the trap located in the barn itself where the small breed chickens used to be.

Again, the opossum got to roam free and I returned to the trap in the barn – knowing what the fate was going to be for this creature.

I accept that some folk will relish in the fact that they get to kill a creature, but that’s just not who I am. I knew that there was no way that I could release this fellow and something had to be done.

Under a hazy moonlit night a few hours later, the neighbor came over with his .22 rifle to dispatch the creature humanely. It was a lot quicker than I thought it would be. Only the “snap” of the gun and a small turning of the critter and it was gone.

I remember remarking how much more peaceful that was than to watch a chicken in its final seconds.

Death is never easy and should never be taken lightly. In a sense I see it as power and perhaps that’s what makes me struggle with it. I oftentimes see it as me saying that I am more powerful than whatever I am needing to kill and why should I get to live and the creature at hand has to die?

This being said though, the neighbor reminded me that I needed to think of the other things that need to live on the farm to make it work and that this one skunk could very well wipe that out.

Again, he was right.

That soft country voice is growing louder as I spend more time on this farm and every experience I have, whether good or bad, is a step in the path to becoming a full-fledged farmer. I don’t know that I will ever be comfortable with killing and death and perhaps I don’t want to be.

I have to think that there are others out there just like me. 

A Somber Coop with a Glimmer of Hope

The past week or so has been very trying on this small farm. First, the barn cat that I have had since moving here about two years ago, Sassy, died. The decision was solely mine to have her put humanely to sleep so that she would not have to survive another brutal winter as she did last year. She also was around 16 years old and constantly missing the litter box - putting loose feces not only on the floor, but on tables, tools, and lumber in the barn and also messing in her sleeping spot.
She was not well and was putting up a brave front, but I knew that the kindest thing to do was ease her out of this world while she was still able to mostly get around, still eat and had not gotten to the state where euthanasia would need to be an emergency.
Then, just a few short days later, I arrived home after work on a Friday evening to the pole barn where my small breed chickens, a cross between silkie and cochin breeds, were housed to find not a trace of the little birds left. I continued to call them, cluck to them to get them to come out of their hiding places, but was met with silence.
As the brutal realization set in that there were no birds to be found, I walked out of the barn in a daze to find small piles of feathers in random spots in the yard where the birds were killed and then carried off. My head was absolutely whirling, I thought I was in a dream. I started to repeat the word "no" and with each word, it became louder as the horror of what had happened set in.
I had let these birds free range during the day all summer and had not had a problem with predators as the birds had always managed to get back to cover if they were threatened while out of their coop.
This day, there was a problem.
Nine birds total were killed that day as they roamed around the grassy area that they were allowed to move about in. The entire flock. Two hens, named Blue and Top Hat, who had hatched three clutches of eggs this year and one beautiful rooster, who was extremely protective of his flock, named Jaxby and the 6 chicks that had hatched from the last clutch were all gone.
As I walked around the barn that evening, hoping, praying, yet knowing the answer, I strained to hear a peep, any peep from the flock but was met with only the whisper of the pine trees that stand on the west side of the farm. My flock of small birds, my whole flock of small birds, were gone in one 8 hour period at work.
I grew angry quickly and smacked my hand against one of the support posts in the pole barn, bruising my hand pretty good, and kicked a sawed in half 55 gallon barrel that was also in the barn. The tears began to flow quickly as I realized that there would be no survivors from this attack, no second chance. My hope for these birds to be a money maker for the farm was gone.
I immediately took to Facebook and penned a post that was filled with anger, disbelief, grief and hopelessness. I had heard of friends who had flocks that had been attacked but at least a couple birds survived. Not in this case.
The hens and the rooster were so protective of their babies that I'm sure their end was a brutal one as they tried to keep whatever was attacking the chicks away. I could tell from the feathers remaining where each of the adult birds had met their end and picked up a small pile from the ground as I sobbed at the loss of my flock. This grief was mine, not shared with anyone, not understood by anyone.
In the days that have followed this loss, I've found it hard to go back to the small coop where the hens raised their families and Jaxby would announce morning with a trill in his crow. I listened so hard the first two days after the attack for any sound of survivors but again, only met with silence. Even the sound of the barn swallows and sparrows caused me to stop as I tried to listen for any sign of the small chickens.
Well meaning folks have said, after finding out that I still had birds remaining, that at least not all of the chickens were attacked and yes, I am truly thankful for that. That being said, the grief that I've felt was not only from an emotional investment that I'd had with these birds (remember that I had been there for each of their hatchings, and watching them grow), but it also equaled a financial investment. The chicks that had hatched from this last clutch could have brought around $60-$70 and the adult birds around $50 or so. It was a huge loss that day.
I will need to begin again with this endeavor and try to get where I was before, but I know that there will be no more Blue, no more Top Hat, and no more Jaxby (who had a great little rooster attitude). I can only hope that the next time I try with small breed birds I get hens as attentive and broody as these gals were. I cannot express the joy that I felt when they would hatch chicks and I got to see brand new lives begin right in front of my eyes.
I pray that I will get to feel that joy again some day.
In the meantime, I prepare the farm for winter. Working out strategies to protect my average size birds from an attack from a revisiting predator and working out how I'll get water down to them when the temperature turns to freezing. This is the way of farming,
I write about these things not to depress my readers (thank you for reading my ramblings by the way), but to maybe tell those who are in the farming world and might be brand new that this is the raw truth. Yes, you will lose animals and it will hurt. I have to think that those farmers who maintain a stoic stance, sneak away when everyone is gone to the dark corners of the barn to mourn, to cry and to wonder "what next".
A wise classmate told me that as farmers we are constantly figuring out how to rise from tragedy and rebuild when things happen and she could not be more right. As the winter chill sets in, I'm already planning on a better run, and a more protected run so that maybe I won't have to go through this again. Farming is ranked high for depression and I can absolutely see why.
The trick is, though, how we respond to that depression and rise from the ashes.