Chicken varieties we hatched

"Pinning" this so I can recall what the 17 chicks Will hatched out are!  :-)


The rooster in that pen is a Wheaten Ameraucana. The green eggs came from Frizzled Easter Eggers or my black Ameraucana hen. The white eggs were from my White Leghorns. The dark eggs came from my Welsummer. The light brown eggs came from frizzled EE hens. All the females that come from the standard sized eggs *should* lay green, blue or olive eggs because of the rooster being a true Ameraucana - but you never know. The bantam eggs are from Black Breasted Red Old English Game bantams.

What we've been so busy with lately...

Rain brings the flowers and fruits... and MUD, garden is planted and doing well, more baby goats born, building a new chicken house and expanding a flock (a little too much and having to pare it down now), fresh milk every morning, hatching out new baby chicks (see, too many chickens!).  The joys of new life are abundant and precious.  :-)

Lily de Valle 

Jack Sparrow

Americauna "Easter Egger" chicks are released!

These lovelies are running around with the other chickens now that they have grown big enough.  They are so pretty and cute flocking together around the yard.  I love their "tufted" cheeks!  They will be laying pink/green/blue pastel "easter egg" colored eggs by the spring.

Another chicken embryo

Heather cracked her egg for breakfast and we were dismayed to find this little guy.  This is why it's so important to mark eggs and keep tabs on a broody hen's nest.  When a hen goes broody, she stops laying but other hens will come add to her nest and so there is no telling how long eggs have been there if you don't keep track.  When I got around to checking her nest and deciding on marking eggs, she had 20+ in there and I decided to leave her with 12 of them.  We knew there was a possibility of this, so had made sure to put the questionable eggs that I had gathered from her nest into cartons marked "OURS" (so they are not sold) where any stained, dirty, questionable eggs go.  We are always careful to crack our eggs into a bowl individually instead of into a batter or pan.

This one is probably about 7 days along.

I think next time I go to remove eggs from a nest, I will candle them before deciding which ones to leave and take.  :-(  See how to candle an egg here.

Developing Egg

We have a broody hen who we have been allowing to set on 12 eggs.  She is in a corner of the hay shed and very protective of her eggs.  We marked the 12 eggs that we would allow to stay and just gather any extras from the nest once a day.  Today when I went to collect, I found that one of the marked eggs had rolled out of the nest and was stone cold.  I brought it in, knowing that the chick couldn't survive being that cold.  We opened it up for a little science lesson (being homeschoolers, we grab every opportunity).  It was less developed than I thought.  The yolk was completely runny (yolk is absorbed by chick for nourishment) and there was a bit of blood.  The kids didn't think there was anything there, but at closer inspection I found the baby chick, we could see it's eye and little heart slowly beating and then becoming still.  Wow!  From this website, it appears that the chick was about 2-5 days developed.  Amazing little life!  How sad.  Let's hope the next 11 survive.  I put some extra padding around the nest to prevent any others from rolling out, hopefully that will work.

Here are a couple pictures:

More learning and info, including some worksheets for kids is located here.

Here is a YouTube video showing all 3 weeks of development.

About the farm today...

 Will took this picture of mom milking.

 Daisy getting milked.

 Our milking stand (Curious is cleaning up the spills).

 Samson chilling in the shade.

 New "easter eggers" are getting big!

Luke and Beau in the new pasture.

A great article on broody hens

http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Broody-Hens-1.html

Trying to figure out how to get these broodies to actually hatch out some chicks!  :-)

A walk through the woods

Disaster to the flock - and new hens

A couple weeks ago, we lost around 20 hens and a rooster to what we assume is neighbor dogs or possibly coyotes (thus the new LGD pup!). We were devastated! We love our healthy, free-range birds and really enjoyed the variety that we had and all the eggs we were finally getting and selling. We are now working on trying to re-build our happy flock.

We picked up 12 hens from a local farmer today. We found once we were catching them that they were not very healthy, crowded conditions and being fed only cracked corn. We got them anyway and now I am playing vet. We have them house separately from our healthy flock and are feeding them medicated layer feed mixed with Diatamaceous Earth (for worms) and I gave them all .25cc Ivomectin orally also. We have to feed their eggs to the dogs for the next few weeks due to the Ivomectin, but hopefully by that time they will be much happier and healthier and we will be getting more eggs from them.

We are also picking up a few roosters (Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner) and a couple hens from freecycle.

In May, we are getting 5 Americauna chicks ("easter eggers") for fun. This should round out our flock well.

Free range chickens

We love having our chickens free-range.  We enjoy watching them flock about the yard and they do a good job of keeping bugs and weeds under control.  We have had these free-ranging for several months now and the only complaint I have is that they like to lay their eggs all about the yard!  The dogs have realized that they are yummy - so it is a race to beat them to the newest hiding spot and gather them.  I have started paying the kids 10 cents an egg.  It is frustrating to me because I want the chickens to serve their purpose but I don't like having to pen them up all the time.  We are experimenting now with capturing them all (27 of them now) and putting them in the houses at night and then letting them out after a few hours of daylight and hopefully they will get in the habit of laying their eggs before then.  We are going to try 11am and see what happens from there.  I don't really want to feed them all winter if they aren't going to produce at least enough for our family, so they better get the message or they will be in the freezer!  :-)

More pictures of the animals

 Beau

 Beau and Rose

 Beau

 Luke

 Surprise baby bunnies!

 Chicks continue to grow - I love the variety we got this time.

Goats on their runs and the small a-frame shelter for shade.

Farm additions

May was a busy month here on our little farm.  We added 27 new chicks and were able to move them outdoors and then we built an addition and additional run and got them all settled in with the 12 older chickens.

We also got a new bunny "Susan" who actually is Ruby and Max's offspring but the family we had given it to were moving, so we took it back.  "Susan" ends up being a boy!

We are very excited to add a couple of goats to our farm!  Beau and Luke are mixed breed wethers who will be used mainly for brush control.  They are brothers and very sweet.  They are young, so we are bottle feeding them for a bit to ensure they are handled lots.