Farm Picture of the Day: Chicken Yard

Farm Picture of the Day:

A year ago, we had our first hatching.

Picture of the Day: Mr. Sneaky

One day this quail just showed up and started hanging out with our chickens. At the request of a friend, we named him Mr. Sneaky.

Farm Picture of the Day: Eggs

The results of today's egg gathering.

Farm Picture of the Day: Herding and Chickens

Two pictures today.

Beavis crowing

The rut that Brogan has made around the chicken coop from his "herding."

Chick Pictures

The chicks are now 2 weeks old. They grow really fast and don't stay in the cute fluffy chick stage for long.

The chicks are scared because I took the top off their box to change their water.

You can really see the feathers starting to come in on the chicks. The one in the front has a comb growing in and starting to turn red. I think this one may be a roo but time will tell.

The "roo" playing it up for the camera.

-Krystal

Garden and Chicken Pictures

Watermelon growing on a trellis

Jalapeños!

Yellow Squash


Tomatoes


Something is going on with our tomato plants and they seem to be dying.


Purple-hull Peas


Okra


The chicks are one week old today (well, five of them today and five yesterday)


We're starting to see a lot of wing and tailfeathers growing in, now.


Chicks
-Krystal
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The adventures of a sick chicken

About three weeks ago, shortly after I posted about how healthy all the chickens were, I found a hen all but dead on the coop floor when I went out to water them. We were going out of town that day so I really didn't have much time to do anything with her. Just as damage control, I put her in the big brooder pen I have in the workshop. If she had something contagious, I didn't want to give her more time to infect the rest of the flock. I also didn't want the other chickens picking on her in her weakened state. She looked so bad, I probably would have put her out of her misery had we not been traveling that day.

When we got back that night, she looked a little better, which was encouraging so, we left her alone in the brooder for a while seeing if she would continue to get better. In time, she slowly improved. It is amazing how healing intense rest can be. I began taking her out each morning and putting her in a temporary pen during the day to let her get some fresh air, sun, and grass. At night we would put her back in the brooder for protection. I was hoping she would put on some weight since she was amazingly thin when we moved her out of the normal chicken run.

After a couple weeks of that routine she was strong enough to go back in with the other chickens...or so I thought. As soon as I put her back in the big pen, she was immediately attacked by the alpha hen and her cronies. They were vicious, the lead hen, Henrietta (no, not a very original name), would grab her by her comb and drag her all around the pen. The other hens picked on her so bad that she couldn't move, she would just go and stick her head out of the pen so that the hens couldn't peck at it. I thought that was quite dangerous because I could imagine some neighborhood dog (or other critter) coming by and chomping off this head sticking about 3 inches out of the fence so, I grabbed her and put her back in the brooder until I could figure out a next step.

I searched on the 'net for information regarding reintroducing a hen to a flock and, from the plethora of available advice, it seemed to be a common problem. The simplest solution was to remove the alpha hen, Henrietta, and put the sick hen back with the flock. There was a bit of tussling once we did that from the other hens close to the top of the pecking order but no where near as violent a beating as the sick hen was getting before. After a bit of pecking and the reintroduced hen running away, everything seemed to have been worked out.

I was putting Henrietta in the big brooder box during the night and in the temporary pen during the day. The only problem was that she was flying out of the five foot fencing of the temporary pen and trying to get back in the chicken run. I left her in the brooder box for a couple days since I wasn't ready to put her back with the other chickens.

Her attacks on the sick chicken wasn't the only reason I wanted to separate her. Why she has a name when the other hens do not is that she is easily identifiable by her huge comb, as big as the roosters. I was reading Storey's Guide to Raising Ducks by Dave Holderrad and he mentioned that large female ducks that showed some drake characteristics were usually androgynous. I began to wonder if that was the case with her and I was wasting food on a non-laying hen. She never laid in the brooder box, but I could chalk that up to a combination of stress and lack of light. The sick chick never laid an egg either, but they typically do not when sick.

Yesterday, we moved the mother hen back in with the rest of the flock and moved Henrietta to the small pen she was in. Henrietta has a week to lay an egg or else I think she will have to go to freezer camp.

Interestingly enough there was a bit of fighting when we put the mother hen back in with the flock but she did a good job of standing up for herself. Once again things seemed to have been smoothed over.

Speaking of naming chickens, I finally gave the sick hen a name, Penny. I was calling her henny, but changed it to Penny because of already having a Henrietta. I had dealt with her so much I can recognize her comb, but it also helps that when I go in the run she is constantly underfoot trying to get me to pick her up. She is the only chicken that lets me pick her up.

I intially gave the name of Big Mama to Henrietta, but Krystal vetoed it and went with Henrietta. Our roosters have also been named, as has been shown in pictures in a previous post. The white rooster is named Butthead since he likes to attack people. The darker rooster is named Beavis to go along with Butthead.

I am planning to replace Butthead in the near future. I am thinking about getting a different breed in hopes of having a bit of hybrid vigor in the offspring since we plan to continue hatching eggs from our own flock for meat birds. Right now I can't decide between getting a Buff Orpington, Cuckoo Maran, or a Colored Broiler from JM Hatchery. I would like to find a mature but young BO or Maran rooster so I don't have to wait for a chick to mature before I replaced Butthead. The Colored Broiler is a possibility because I would like to order a batch from JM to see how growth rate and feed conversion compare to our BR chickens. The problem is that I would prefer to order just 25, but that makes them $2.00 a piece. There are price drops when you order 50+ or 100+. It breaks down to where 25 chicks is $60, but for $30 I can double my order, and for another $30 I can get 100 chicks! That is a pretty good deal, but I would able but pressed to find room for 50 chicks, but no way have room for 100. So if someone in the Jacksonville area wants 50 colored broilers I would love to split an order. >.>

Since I really don't have any pictures to go along with the post, here are some random doggy/chick pics.


The laziest border collie in the world.


Another chick pic, notice the addition of shavings.


Brogan watching the chicks...again.


One of the chicks in Brogan's bowl.


Brogan seeing how close he can get to the chick before he gets yelled at.

-Matthew

Chick update

We had another 5 chicks hatch on Monday, bringing the total to 11. Unfortunately, we had one not make it, which is sad but also something you have to expect.

As for bedding in the brooder, I had a lot of conflicting information. One book said newspaper for the first few days. Another book said to never use newspaper because it is too slippery and causes splayed legs. That book suggested wire. Another book said never use wire and offered a number of suggesting, saying they used fine pine shavings (Never cedar shavings since they can be poisonous). Of course one of the other books said to never use shavings because the chicks can eat it and get stopped up. All very confusing.


Since I am a pessimist, I didn't think the eggs would hatch. It seemed to me she wasn't moving them around very much. I also didn't want to believe anything would be as simple as grabbing eggs, shoving them under a broody hen, and waiting 21 days. I was therefore unprepared when Krystal went out and checked on the hen on Sunday and yelled across the yard, "We have chicks!" I first filled the brooder box with wheat straw since that is what I had on hand. It was not a good choice, but I didn't have many other alternatives. The only wood shavings we had were dumped into the big brooder box once I moved the sick chicken into it (more on the sick chicken tomorrow), so it wouldn't really be a good idea to scrape 'em back out of there to use for the chicks. The Sunday bunch seemed to move about fine in the straw, but there were two from Monday that were too weak to stand up very well. One actually kept flipping over on its back and having trouble getting back upright. So the straw had to go.

We had some newspapers that we got from Krystal's grandmother to cover the table while I was lettering the egg sign.

We still had a bit left over, so I layered the bottom of the box a couple sheets thick of newspaper and covered that with two layers of paper towel. The newspaper is to absorb the mess, the paper towel is to give them traction. I just add paper towels once the ones in the brooder get too messy.

I plan to switch to shavings in a couple days, or maybe I will just chop the straw up and save myself a trip out. I am going to switch because they seem pretty bored on the paper towel. The can't scratch in it, and they ones that could handle it seemed to have more fun climbing over and in the straw. Also with the paper towels the droppings show up so I have a problem with the chicks pecking at them. I assume one of the chickens that had trouble walking is the one that passed away. The other, the one that kept flipping over, is getting around much better now that it has the stable surface of the papertowels as support. Once that chick is up and running around I will switch out the newspaper and papertowels for something more interesting.

Now to change the subject, and to show that Krystal isn't the only one that knows how to cook from scratch, here is what I had for lunch today:

Pepperoni and Mushroom pizza on homemade dough

We also finished off the batch of pita she made on Sunday so I made another batch so we could have our last bit of greek leftovers tonight.


Making pita is definitely a PiTA, but hummus and pita chips are such an awesome solution to the 3pm blahs that I put myself through it. I will most likely have to make another batch tomorrow since we ate half of today's batch for dinner.

-Matthew

Chicks!

Three weeks ago today, we put our broody hen on a nest of 11 green eggs and 3 brown eggs. Today, six of the eggs hatched (5 green and one brown). One brown egg shattered earlier this week. And, there are still 6 green and 1 brown eggs under the hen.

The six chicks all look like the little barred rock chicks we got in October.




We brought them inside and set them up in the kitchen under the heat lamp where they seem to be snoozing and doing well.

Brogan, of course, has resumed his old post from when we had the chicks in the house before.


-Krystal

Garden and Chicken Pictures

Some recent pics of the chickens.

Our roosters, Beavis & Butthead.

The broody hen sitting on 11 green eggs and 3 brown eggs.

The chickens waiting for something to eat.

From all the rain we've had recently, the garden is growing really well.

Swiss Chard

Tomatoes

Carrots

Pak Choi

--Krystal

Weekend Update

Just a quick update, Sundays are always hectic here because we find out just how much we didn't get done over the weekend that we should have.

The first 4 feet of the fence around the brooder pen is up. It has been raining so much recently that it is hard to get anything done outside. I have to run to Lowes to get the other 3 foot of fencing and to get some 1x3s and hinges for the gate. As it stands now I haven't cut the gate wire off the rest we are using for the pen and just have it bungee'd to the chicken yard as a temporary gate. I moved the 1 hen coop out to the brooder pen and moved the setting hen into it. She was none too happy when I grabbed her, but settled right down when I put her on the nest in the 1 hen coop.

We had saved 11 green eggs and 3 brown ones for her to incubate. My plan was to just move the eggs she had been setting on the last couple days in with the ones we had saved. I had a surprise when I finally got her out of the nest box, somehow she was setting on 8 eggs.

This past week is I had been checking the nest boxes frequently. When I noticed the broody hen was off the nest, I would grab the eggs. She would then set on whatever nest had the most eggs. On Friday and Saturday I had not been able to check on her very often, so I never caught her off the nest. Obviously other hens did, since she was setting in the most popular box, and quickly popped in there to deposit their eggs. Then, she would come back and find a few more eggs to keep warm. I had assumed she was only setting on 1 or 2 and was quite suprised to find 8 underneath her.

Now she is shut up in the little coop with no one to bother her; everything she needs is in that little 2ft x 2ft box. During the day, I will open the coop door to let her have access to the yard if she wants to stretch her legs but, I don't expect to see her out much.

In about 7 days we will candle the eggs and look for signs of life. Now I just have to find out how the build a candler.

Matthew

Broody Hen

A few weeks ago we had our first hen start to set. We were not prepared for it and the opportunity passed before I figured out the best way to separate her from the rest of the flock. I had plans to make a small coop and add a small pen on the end of the chicken run as a place to keep broody hens. I could also use it to isolate hens for various reasons, as additional justification for the incurred cost of new fencing and coop.

Of course, once she stopped setting, the whole project got pushed to the back burner until earlier this week when I started to notice one of the nest boxes in the coop always had a Barred Rock hen in it. Unfortunately with 14 BR hens, it is hard to tell them apart so I just had to keep checking the nest boxes at odd hours to see if there was still a hen on the nest. After a couple days of one nest box always being occupied I felt sure we had a hen that wanted to hatch. On Wednesday I started working on a one-chicken-sized coop for the brooder pen.

What started out as





ended up as





The plans I had made used 1/4 inch plywood siding supported by 2x3s but we had a sheet of 1/2 inch plywood siding left by previous occupants of the house. The good news is that it was thick enough to not require extra support so I could save my 2x3s for another project and was free. The bad news was that the sheet was only 45 inches wide, not 48, so it required a couple of adjustments on the fly. That's the fun of woodworking.

The dimensions of the coop are roughly 22 inches long and wide, and 24 inches high in the back, 18 inches in the front. That leaves just enough room for an open nest box and a feeder. I will the chicken's water out side the coop to keep things dry. Below is a picture of the coop in progress.

I hinged the roof just under 3 inches from the back edge and will use shingle scraps to cover it over the gap to stop leaks. In retrospect it would have been better to just hinge at the back and just pick up the whole roof for access to the coop. That would solve the problem of having a gap in the roof. I still plan to build a chicken tractor and will use what I learned in this project to design the tractor.


The next step is to put up the fencing for the small seclusion pen. I will post more pics once everything is complete. So far I have saved 9 easter-egger eggs, and 3 BR eggs. I don't plan to collect any more, I will let her set on those plus whatever she currently has under her in the main coop. I expect that she is only setting on a couple eggs.

From what we have read, the blue egg gene is dominant so any green eggs we can get to hatch as hens should lay green eggs. I am interested to see how the barred rock genes present themselves in the new chicks. The easter-eggers are already a mutt breed, so there is really no telling what the offspring will look like. I hope at least the rooster are a little larger than our current green egg layers since they are noticeable smaller than most of the barred rock hens.

Letting the hen set is really just a learning experience, it is something we haven't done before. There is always something new happening on our little mini-farm.

So it has been some time...

since my last post, and a lot has happened. I will try to update more regularly since we are actually doing some 'homesteady' things now.

Last June we both lost our jobs within a week of each other. We saw that as an opportunity to move from the Raleigh area to where Krystal grew up (and I mean the exact house she grew up in). It didn't take her long to find a job, but I am having no such luck, I have been unemployed for about a year now. The bad news is that our income has been greatly reduced, the good news is that I have time to get a lot of things done around our new mini-farm.

Speaking of the mini-farm, we currently have:

Two crazy border-collies. I imagine I talk about them so much I might as well add in a pic when I can. I also would guess they will turn up in most pics of any outside endeavours; they usually aren't very far away from us when we are working outside. Brogan is on the left and Angus is on the right.


This picture was taken a couple seconds later. Already Brogan has decided he has been still long enough and must go back to herding the chicken pen.

A chicken coop and run with 17 hens, and 2 roosters. The bare spots surrounding the pen is the path Brogan has worn into the ground.

A small garden consisting of two beds, each measuring 4ft by 20ft. We have harvested a couple things, mostly greens and radishes for salads.

We are also adding a bed around the pear tree, mostly for strawberries. Krystal really wants some and we had a nice patch of wild strawberries already growing underneath the pear tree so I thought that would be a good place to put them. It also saves me from having to cut the grass around the tree.


The limb pictured below is out to get me, it is the exact height when sitting on my mower as to be out of my range of vision when looking at the ground to make sure I don't hit the tree with the mowing deck but low enough to slam the top of my head if I don't duck. Very shortly after making this discovery, I was seeing stars and had to bring the mower to a stop until the world stopped spinning. So not having to cut around the tree seemed like a good idea to me.


The plant in the picture above is a baby watermelon. I wanted to try growing vine plants in hanging baskets. If I ever get around to planting the cucumbers , zucchini, and eggplant I will most likely plant some of each in hanging baskets to keep the watermelon company, in addition to what I plant in the actual garden.

Now for a bit more detail.

On Halloween last year, we got our first chickens. We ordered 20 Barred Rock chicks straight run, and 5 Easter-egger pullets from Whelp hatchery. I had wanted fewer Barred Rocks in lieu of some Cornish Rock broilers, but was told the broilers ship from another facility and, as such, I could increase my order to 25 broilers and 25 other chicks, or they could keep my current order and add in 'packing peanut chicks'.(Most hatcheries have a box they ship chicks in that holds about 25 peepers. If you order less than 25, they add in extra chicks they have a surplus of so that the body heat from the chicks keep them warm enough during shipment). Either way, I would be getting 50 chicks instead of 25 and I just didn't have room for that many, so the order was changed to the above selection.

I don't want to give the impression that I was unhappy with the turn of events, far from it. The customer service person at Whelp was very helpful and the whole transaction was purely positive. They actually ended up shipping 26 Barred Rocks and 5 Easter-eggers. One little BR didn't make it, one had spraddle leg which we were able to correct, and the other 29 were amazingly healthy. I have had no problem at all raising the chicks, all survived and thrived except for the one noted before. It has been a surprisingly easy and rewarding experience so far.

We currently have 14 Barred Rock hens, 2 Barred Rock roosters, and 3 Easter-egger hens. I have pics of the peepers when they arrived that I plan to use in another update post to cover what we have already done. The posts about what we have done will be good for days when I am not currently 'doing' anything interesting. We are getting a lot more eggs than we can use, but so far I haven't had any luck selling them. I posted on Craigslist and a local site, though I admit I could have done a much better job selling them on the posts than I did. I still need to do a sign for the front yard, but as with any kind of homestead, the list of to-dos far exceeds the amount of time I have to do them.

As for the garden, this is my second try at a decent garden. Tried it once in Clayton but, with us working such long days, I really didn't have the drive or energy to do a good job of it. As I said before, we now have two beds, mostly of greens. We only have the two small beds because I made them by hand with shovel and hoe, and well established centipede sod is a bear to break up. The root system easily reaches 8 inches down and creates a thick mat both above and below ground.

For the first bed I used a shovel to just turn chunks of sod upside down, assuming that a shovel deep clump of dirt would smother the grass. I was wrong, the stuff still grew upside down. The next bed I just cut up with a hoe, breaking 3 hoes in the process and giving me some nice blisters and sore shoulders. Then I let the smaller chunks of sod dry for a day or two. After that came the exhausting part of picking each dried sod chunk up and shaking out the dirt, leaving a mass of dead grass and roots, which were then given to the chickens.

Krystal's grandmother has a small garden which had a number of tomato plants eaten by deer one night. That tells me I need to fence in my garden to keep the deer out, not to mention dogs and chickens. Once I fence in what I plan to be the garden area, I may just rent a tiller and not bother with the raised beds. The ground is fertile enough, though I need to mix some compost when I till it.

The advantages to not doing raised beds are that I don't have to spend the money on boards for the bed and I can more easily keep grass out of the garden since I can plow the walkways. It will also give me more flexibility as to how I plant stuff. With the raised beds, I have no choice but to work with 4 foot blocks. With just a plowed area for a garden, I can just plant a single row of something if I think that is the best way to do it, which would most likely be the case for tomatoes and other large plants. I am re-reading The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward Smith before I make my final decision regarding raised beds since he is a strong believer in them.

Once the garden is fenced in, I then plan to fence in the majority of the back yard, leaving at least a 3 foot gap between that fence and the garden one so that the chickens have access to the full perimeter of the garden. That will greatly cut down on the number of bugs in my garden. We had a heavy infestation of junebugs for a couple days. I say only a couple days because I let a few chickens out in the evenings while I was outside working and they were very vigilant about running all across the yard chasing the bugs on wing. The junebugs didn't have a chance, and I got tons of chuckles from watching it.

I am also reading Storey's Guide to Raising Ducks. Those will most likely be the next animals added to our place. The plan is to raise the ducks for roasters and use the chickens as fryers. So if anyone has any beginner advice on raising ducks, just let me know.

Now off to work on a small pen on the end of the chicken run to place a broody hen.

Matthew