Have I said lately how much I love my little town?  We have a chain type farm supply store but we also have a little farm supply store that, from what I understand, used to be owned by a couple but they sold it to a small chain but they still manage it.  They are so helpful!  They’re friendly and everyone who goes in there is treated like a friend.  I suppose everyone who goes in there might be their friends . . except for us since we are kinda new and aren’t really farmers at all.

Know what I learned in there yesterday?  Remember how little my baby chicks were when I first got them?  These are chickens for laying.  My chicks are about 9 or 10 weeks old now.  They’re still kinda small compared to a chicken you’d buy in the store to eat.  (I’m not eating mine!)  But if you get the tiny little chickens, same size as mine were when we first got them, and you get the kind that are for eating (meat birds), it only takes 6 weeks from hatching to butchering!  I think that’s amazing.

And, I learned that you can load up the live chickens, take them about 40 miles into Kansas and there’s a place there, with a USDA meat inspector always on site.  They do all the dirty work.  You go back the next day and get your chickens, wrapped, and frozen . . ready for the freezer.  I might could do that!  Not with the current birds.  They’re my friends!  But, just something to think about.

And, I learned all about this!  Please click to enlarge the picture.

This was on the side of a truck parked at the feed store.  Bull testing?  I wanted to know what it was but since it was a man, I was afraid a lady shouldn’t ask so I had Vince ask.  How interesting!  He takes bulls from all over the country and keeps them for a certain amount of time, feeds them a certain type feed . . kind of a test feed I guess, and weighs them and sees how they progress.  Bulls that grow nice and big are supposed to produce babies that do the same so if your bull scores high on the “bull test”, you can get more money for your baby cows!

And, the guy who does it was driving this nice, big, fancy smancy Dodge Ram pickup that he WON through Purina.  He kept meticulous records of how the bulls did eating all the Purina feed he fed them, sent the data in to Purina and won a new truck.  The people at the feed store were saying that in the past, Purina has always given a new truck to the bull tester AND a new truck to the feed store where he bought his feed.  Wouldn’t you know it . . this year they only gave a truck to the bull tester and not to the feed store!  Oh well . .

Anyway . . you might want to hang out at your local feed store.  See how much you can learn there?  <G>