Chickens…

Posted on by July 2, 2012

This beautiful son of Bucka Roo came home to us a bit ago. His name is Raven and he is a Maran and Americana cross. Isn’t he stunning? I’m not sure the picture does him justice. He has the most beautiful red feathering in his mantle, and a dark coloring below, still a juvenile rooster, but stunning already. Can’t wait to see how he matures.

He’s out in the little coop with all the pullets and roosters! Haha… we have like 10 roosters at the moment. We are slowly becoming a rooster sanctuary. Not that I mind at all, I love roosters. Problem is, it’s hard to house too many roosters. We keep making new coops and arrangements for the birds. A few have returned to us from city placements of chicks and the offer to take back any roosters that might come about. It’s hard to know exactly who is a roo and who is not! I have pretty good luck with matching up pairs of roosters for each flock. And now we have roughly five flocks of birds.

There is the free range flock in which Bucka Roo is the boss and his son Copper is his understudy.

The poultry barn has Argent and Guido. Guido is a nice timid blue Jersy Giant roo. He came to us from the neighbors down the road.

The bantys have Parsley and Sage… and then the little coop is a little overloaded at the moment. Silver, Copper’s brother and Bucka’s son, he rules the roost. But he has Pierre, my goofy $30 fancy New Orleans Black Copper Maran roo chick that was the only one to hatch out of a fancy batch of eggs I ordered online. (Hence the $30 cost… he is cool though… very tame.) But also in the lil’ coop is now Raven, as well as a banty roo named Josh 2, and we just discovered that the remaining barred rock pullet is not a pullet but a rooster… So Martini is now Martin. Haha…

We also have Nickle… or Nick as we call him. He was a very very laid back rooster that some friends brought to us, and his name used to be Penny. Back when he was a girl. Haha…. so now we call him Nickle, having upgraded his name. He wanders about the farm, sort of part of the free range flock, but so timid an laid back that most the time he hangs with the meat chickens. There is a nugget rooster in the bunch, that we call Stir Fry. He hid when we were selecting roosters last week for freezer camp! Jessy said he squeezed through the courtyard gate while we were picking out the big birds and just quickly walked away to hide under the bushes. She watched from the kitchen window! There always has to be one fellow who doesn’t trust what is going on, isn’t there?

And then here is the OTHER Penny Rooster… a lovely barred rock that our friends Jared and Carla raised from a chick from our farm and has turned out to be another rooster, like Martin. Their little girl was sad to have to give their Penny up, but he was so proud of his rooster-ness and was crowing every 15 minutes!!! Not good for a urban chicken. So he had to come back. So their little girl thought he should be renamed Sheldon. I believe the connection is from a tv show! Sheldon is living in a new flock group that we made just for him. He is going to be paired up with Martin, his brother and we will be getting some new laying hens for the two to serve. It’s going to be out by the sheep shack, where Sheldon’s crowing will not annoy us too much! He is a little noisy for sure! I hope once he has a flock of ladies, he might chill out a bit. He’ll have too much to do!

So I guess that really means we have a baker’s dozen of roosters here at the farm. Imagine that.

Oh well… and we have another pair coming to live with us as well! Chicks hatched out by our friend’s broody hen, Lucy! She’s a beautiful salmon Faverelle, that is just broody crazy! She is actually sitting on another eight eggs at the moment! I’m hoping that she can hatch out a bunch of girls!!!! We sure need girl chickens with all these roosters!!!!

This is Mildred. She’s named after my dad’s mother. And just like my grandma, our Mildred is a feisty independent gal who has taken to roosting outside at night, up in the trees! She’s a beautiful cross breed… we think perhaps a white leghorn and maybe a red laced Wyandotte. Something. I think she’s stunning. She’s one of my favorite ladies here at the farm.

Just couldn’t talk about chickens without mentioning Gideon, our ram and his flock of chickens. I think he adores chickens. He always has at least four or five ladies in his paddock, taking care of any room service he needs. And they all sit with him, and walk right under his legs and around him like he’s a big dog or something. He lets them eat out of his grain dish and they sit on him when he’s laying down and chewing his cud. He’s never alone. He watches them with great fascination. I just think he likes chickens. He seems content with their presence. The hens avoid the other sheep and Cody pony. But not Gideon. They seem really relaxed and hang with him all day long. It’s a cute relationship for sure…

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Little Swallows…

Posted on by July 2, 2012

The sheep barn was host to a family of barn swallows for awhile… they were so cute. They were getting bigger and bigger, their parents were working so hard to feed these cute little fellows. Everytime you would walk in the barn, if you stayed quiet and to the side, you could watch the parents swoop in and bring all manner of little bugs and such to the babies. And the babies were getting braver and braver. They would all perch on the side of the little mud nest and wait to see who might snatch the best treat from their fly by meal delivery service.

Jessy and I watched the babies on their solo flights, out by the big barn. It was a sight to see. They were flying all over in little random patterns, swooping and diving for fun in the sunshine. They were all over the place, yet staying in a tight little pattern. Some nearly hit poles and bushes, you could tell they were just learning. And finally, they wore themselves out, and just lit on the middle yard fence, looking around and chatting with each other.

Now, they’re gone. I wouldn’t be surprised if the parents make another clutch of eggs in a few weeks, and raise another little family under the old wood eaves. And that’s just fine with us. They are beautiful little creatures for sure.

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Last week, Monday…

Posted on by July 2, 2012

After the swap, I was feeling much better and it was time to do something about our meat chickens that were hanging out in the garage. So we made an appointment and 11 of the birds were sent off to freezer camp. They were so calm and relaxed that our new processor, a delightful young man, declared that they were the nicest, calmest meat chickens he had ever seen. Healthy, clean and just well adjusted. I really like that. I know our nuggets had a lovely nice chicken life. They came back from camp all dressed and ready for the freezer. Or several of our friends, whom most of this first batch belonged to.

The remaining 10 birds were the more well, smaller and slightly scrawny birds and could benefit from a week or two without competition! But, they needed a more secure home and as much as we would have loved to have them tractoring about the garden, it was apparent that they needed tighter security. At least at night.

So… I noticed that they were doing fantastic in the courtyard, during the day, mingling with the free range flock, and yet at night, they knew that the garage was their home. And just a little feed in a bucket and they would rush in and wait for their bedtime snack. That got me thinking… why don’t we make the tractor a more permanent coop, and let them free range in the garden for a while.

So we went and got three pieces of 7/16” OSB (oriented strand board) a sort of scrap wood plywood, but sturdy… and we moved that bad boy over to a lumpy corner of the garden that had no plans. There is a big shady maple that has some roots that just make the corner not a super place for much in the way of gardening, but an awesome use of an awkward spot! It was perfect!
The nice thing is that it’s tucked in a corner right next to the dog yard and very close to the house. So we can see it from the kitchen window. That will help to make it safer. And we decided to raise it up on some of our wire spools, which we have been told makes it very hard to preditors to get in and grab a bird. They have to climb and hang on and it’s just awkward. We nailed that OSB onto the bottom so that nothing can get up into the coop. And then we flipped her back over, up on the spools, back in that nice little corner. It’s even close to the poultry barn where we keep feed and supplies.

We’ll build a little ramp so that the nuggets can come and go as they please in the aternoons and early evening, but at night, they will have a safe place to roost, protected much more than in the ground tractor.

As I see it, we will keep the meat chicks in the house for the first week or so, when they arrive. Then they will go out to the poultry barn brooder for a few weeks. Probably 3 or 4 weeks. It’s a huge 4 foot by 8 foot brooder and in fact, we have two of them. So they may start in one, and then after a fortnight, they will be separated and we will use both brooders to give them lots of space. And then at about 4 or 5 weeks, they will move outside to the garden coop. For another two weeks, they will live in the coop, which is nice and big, 12 feet by 8 feet in size. By living there, they can get accustomed to being outside more, and learn where they live and such. When they are big enough, they can then start to free range in the garden. At first, just in the later evening, under supervision. But then as they become good sized, they will come out earlier in the day, until the last week or two they get to be outside, grazing all day long. It might sound like a lot of work, but in reality, I think it will be easy, and they will get the benefit of protection, yet the freedom to graze and have lovely chicken lives. And our garage stays a little cleaner!

I’m happy to report that after a week of trying it out, we haven’t lost any birds and nothing has tried to get in to them. They are doing great with their afternoons of grazing and come right home at bedtime. They seem to enjoy it, and they are not bright enough to bother my raised beds, I really think they don’t understand UP… they are doing a great job of hunting all the little buggies in between the beds and boxes and that is just fine to me! They have even figured out how to squeeze through the garden gate and come wandering about in the middle yard when they want to. They like to visit their old courtyard and garage haunts often. And they like to follow Maggie around on her chores. All in all, a good ‘save’ for our chicken tractor. Not everything works well like you see in the magazines or online. But I love when you can repurpose something and it saves the day! Yeah!!!

When we were working on this, our big farm neighbor came with all his heavy equipment and harvested the wheat field to the east of our garden area. It was so cool to watch it happen. My gosh do they get a TON of wheat off these fields!!! My gosh… several semi trucks FULL!

After we finished up the garden coop… I asked so sweetly for the girls to help me get our old nest box out of the big barn. The hens don’t like it for some reason, probably too big… but I have a plan for it! It’s going to become a little Banty Shanty palace for my four little sweet banties from Kelly and Chris!!! Can’t wait to get more done… I spent a good while cleaning it out super well, and will be painting it and adding a new roof and wire fencing and such. It’s going to look so cute!!!!

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