Icky Farm Work
Everything is beautiful on the farm. We have wonderful scenery, amazing views, gorgeous and fun animals, lots of room to run…and stupid chickens.
Let me set the stage for you. Things are as they should be at the farm. Clothes on the line (though typically not dragging on the ground), smoke from the wonderful wood stove pouring out of the chimney, a quad for taking rides and even someday doing some work with, Jenna doing her morning chores and…what’s that there? What is that on the ground? Oh, dead birds. Of course!!
We went out to do the animal chores and found 2 broilers drown in the small stock tank. You see, broilers are not only ungraceful but they are stupid. So when the waterers in the barn froze they ventured out to find a drink in the paddock. There they found this great water source in a stock tank full of water. Broilers are clumsy and inevitably they fall off of anything they perch on. Stock tanks included. They also are dumb enough to think "It won’t happen to me." and even if they see their friend flailing about uncontrollably in freezing (quite literally) water they still jump up on the edge and fall in as well. Unfortunately, broilers don’t swim. And they aren’t so good at getting out of stock tanks either. In truth, the only thing they do well is eat.
Since we have now had …what? Five broiler drowning deaths we decided it was time to do something. All other measures we had taken before were fruitless.
Jenna will now demonstrate how to empty a stock tank and help ensure the survival of your stupid birds. First, you’ll need a bucket.
And you’ll need a stock tank. Preferably a stock tank full of water or you’ll look pretty silly performing the next step.
Out with the water. Isn’t Jenna the epitome of coolness in her camouflage jacket? <insert funny joke here about hardly being able to see Jenna> Thanks G-ma and G-pa B!!
Once you have a significant amount of water bucketed out of the tank you need to move it away from the fence a bit so you can squeeze back there. I think it was 20 degrees out when I took this picture. Where is Jenna’s hat?
And then whoosh!! Over it goes!
Whew!! Now the world is safe for all idiot fowl.
Strike a funny pose to amuse the Internet world.
Thanks for doing my dirty work, Jenna.
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Jenna is like the coolest, I mean second coolest, 13yo ever!! Great post.
Where did Jenna get her sense of humor? She’s hilarious! Is that one of those things that skips a generation?
Do those chickens know you talk so demeaningly about them? It’s not very nice. Chickens have feelings ya know?
Jenna is my hero. Coolest 13 year old….ever.
That is funny:) I haven’t had any of our chickens try that yet, and our stock tank is much bigger so I’ll just use the drain in the bottom to get the water out, lol.
We did have a cat that was sitting on the ice in our stock tank one day. My dh shooed the cat away and broke the ice. When he came back he heard the cat trying to get out of the stock tank. The cat had come back to sit on the ice after dh had broken it and just fell in. The cat did get out, but I’m sure it was really cold:) hehehe Chickens aren’t the only stupid animals, lol!!!
Jenna, you are DA GURL!!! *Ü*
We did broiler chickens once.
Once was enough.
We lost more broilers to genetic issues and stupidity that there weren’t that many to butcher in the end.
Besides, they were GROSS birds!
Yeah. We did broiler’s once.
Once was enough. :-)
Couldn’t you just put a piece of chicken wire over the top of the thing every day/night so that they wouldn’t fall in? I’ve never had chickens so I don’t know but it just popped into my mind.