Mom's Cat House, Dad's Pig House, & Mom's Hen House

My mom always had a lot of half-way stray cats. A few would let us pet them or come to the milking barn for a fresh teat treat.

She had this special cat house at the edge of the grove. The cats would get fed out there and at our back door.

None ever got shots or the like. They seemed to be pretty tough though, most lived to run off or get killed by a wild animal or the neighboring Toms.

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At one time this pig shed of Dad's was in the corral. Now the corral is cultivated to become an excellent corn field.

The small door on the left got mainly used by the pigs, but Dad and I went in many a time to help a pig out of some trouble, or to mark their ears so we could tell them from the neighbors if they got mingled.

Dad usually raised about 120 hogs from pigs. He would pick ten to fourteen to become mother pigs and another cycle would begin.

Those others went to the slaughter house. We generally butchered a couple for family eating. Remember, the Jim Bunch eats good.

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Mom raised the laying hens and handled the egg marketing. Again we raised from babies, chicks this time. She always got unsexed chicks. Most of the roosters would get sold for fryers, we would eat about sixty. That is one for each Sunday and a few more for company or the threshing crew.

She would wash every egg with vinegar. Like me, she was a night owl and would start this task around midnight. A lot of times Lois and Dad would have had several hours of sleep before Mom and I went to bed. Farm Cathouse Pigs Cat+House Family Cat Pigs Life travel+and+places Travel Food+and+Drink Photos Food

Notes:

1. On our farm, the cattle, cows, hogs, and chickens ate the grain and hay grown on the farm. The oat straw was used for bedding. Most times there would be more profit, not counting family labor, from raising and marketing the animals, eggs, and cream.

2. All of the farm buildings were kept in good paint. The cat house and hen house were red, the hog house was black. There is still some of that paint showing after twenty-five years of non-use.

3. Unsexed chickens meant buying a mixture of male and female chicks. The mixture generally was around fifty-fifty. It figures.