Predators

   Day before yesterday I went out to feed and check on our animals like I do every morning,as I got to the ckicks in the grow out pen I noticed one little banty not moving and I realized that something had grabbed her sometime during the night and killed her.I found out two others were missing,one of them being my smallest silkie.I was so mad! I thought they were safe in this pen,that nothing could get into it,never thought of something could pull them out.I suspect a opossum but it could have been a skunk. This was the first time we have had to deal with a predator here on our farm and I am looking for ways to stop them from getting my birds again.

 In our area the main predators are dogs,cats,opossums,raccoons,skunks,hawks,snakes,fox,coyotes, and the occasional wolf or bobcat.I found some great information on predators on Fresh Eggs Daily,she has great articles on chickens and ducks.http://fresh-eggs-daily.blogspot.com/search/label/predators.
 At the moment I have our chicks,baby turkeys and ducklings in the little shed we are turning into a hen house.I will move them to the old hen house when we are done with this one as they are not quite big enough to go in with the big girls.I think I need to be done with babies for awhile! Hopefully by next spring when we get more I will have better brooder boxes and grow out pens for them.
  Losing animals is part of farm life but it is a little harder when you thought you had done everything you could to keep them safe and something still gets to them,:(



  Blessed Be,

Spring has sprung and Babies abound!

   Well things are trucking along here on the farm. We have had chicks and bunnies born here in the last month! Two sister hens were setting at the same time on about 20 eggs.It was funny to watch them take eggs from each others nests and switch nests often. The problem was they would also take eggs the other hens had laid and add them to the nests. Out of all those eggs they only hatched 2 a piece before walking off the nests.I didn't have an incubator to put the rest in so we lost them all. I made the suggestion to the girls and their friend that they should autopsy the remaining eggs,to my surprise they did! Several were duds,several were not far enough along to hatch anytime soon,and about 4(including 2 duck eggs) had just needed a few more days. The two hens tried to coparent the chicks that had hatched but kept fussing at each other,we found one dead one morning so we took the remaining chicks and put them in a brooder cage.I felt bad for the hens but I really wanted these chicks to survive.Lesson learned is that as soon as you are sure a hen is broody get her in a separate place from the other hens so there will be no other eggs added to the nests.

Our baby bunnies were born around the end of April and Dovie is a really good momma. She had 5,4 black and 1 brown,they sure are fat little bunnies! Zoe thinks we either have 2 girls and 3 boys or the other way around,need to wait a couple of more weeks to be sure.We plan on borrowing a friends Jersey Woolly male to breed Dovie to next,We will then have Jersey Woolly Lops,lol

 The big chicks are doing fine. We took the 6 biggest ones last night and slipped them into the flock,they seem to be doing fine so far. We are down to 3 1/2 silkies. 1 died I think because it was just to small,and one was sat on by Angel who is twice as big as the other chicks her age.The 1/2 comes from one that was supposed to be purebred but is a mix of some kind.

Mixed Silkie,looks like a raven with a Top hat!

Hi!

Blue Splash Silkie

White Silkie

With the addition of all the chicks we will have outgrown our hen house so I plan on remodeling a shed for a bigger hen house.Friends are coming over next week to help with that.I can't wait to get everyone into their new home with an easier feeding and watering system.




Blessed Be!

Life on the farm....

  The last couple of months have been a little busy around here. What with having hardly any winter(2 days of lt. snow) and quite a few warm days we have been able to get more things done outside. We now have 2 rabbits,the Lion head(Ninja) and a Holland Dwarf(Dovie) and a Painted Desert ramling(Boomerang). What with the chickens,ducks,rabbits,lamb,dogs and cats around here we are starting to look like a real farm.A new shed had been put up so we can make the old one into a bigger hen house,the old hen house will be cleaned up for the lamb who now sleeps in a dog house.Does that make sense? LOL
 We have been planting flowers and clearing areas for more garden beds. Last year's garden didn't do very well due to bugs,poor soil and the heat,I hope this years will be better. Fayetteville had a Dig In Festival earlier this month. There were classes on beekeeping,seedsaving,gardening,chickens,cooking,bugs in your garden,and several others. Local organic eateries brought in wonderful treats for us and there were movies playing several times during the day. All in all it was a great learning experience and I am thankful to have the opportunity to learn from others.
 Piper and Zoe had their birthdays this month,they are now 11 and 13. I asked them if they wanted a trampoline or animals for their birthdays,they chose animals. Zoe wanted a lamb and rabbits,Piper wanted chicks.We will be getting bantams for her this week. We have 8 laying hens at the moment and 6 new hen chicks but 11 roosters(poor hens),nine of the roos we have now separated into a different pen to be sold or maybe for the freezer.Because of the light winter we had everyone is worried about the bug population exploding,especially the ticks. My sister keeps telling me we need guineas, I don't like guineas,they are loud and obnoxious but I will probably get some because I dislike ticks even more!

Dovie

Oreo

Boomarang

Shadow Ninja

Elie and Plato

Raver

New chicks

So what's hatching,quacking,baaing,crowing or running around your farm?



Blessed Be!

Chantecler and his Rock-a-doodle hens

Nervous Nellie's!

Hershey and Lexie



Beau is checking out the chicks.

  We have finally finished our chicken yard and have 8 hens and 2 roosters living happily in bug heaven. It didn't end up where we started as there was no shade for them. My neighbor put the hen house on skids and moved it under the trees for me. Zoe and I built a gate for the yard and with my friend Celeste help we put up the fence. I do like this location better and plan on adding more fence to make pens for whatever animals we end up with.

Busy little bees,

  After all the rain we have had here everything has turned a vibrant green, summer has arrived! We have been trying to get as much done outside as we can and I have pictures of a few of the projects we finished.

 I was given some blue barrels to use around here by my sister. I am not sure about using them for rain barrels as they had a disinfectant in them used for cleaning at my sisters place of work. I think we will just use them for animal shelters or something. One project we did with the first one is a little shelter for the hens to get out of the sun in the pasture. We cut the ends off and cut it down the middle, I then laid it out for a couple of days in the sun to help along the spreading process. We built a simple frame and attached the split barrel to it. It made a nice little sunshade for the hens, I have seen these used for miniature pigs also.

I made a worm tote yesterday, hoping to get several going soon. I just used an empty tote I had around but I'm not sure if it will work well as it is a little see thru instead of the solid totes I have seen used for worm beds. Eventually I want to have them in a greenhouse and several other places around here.

We have six cherry egger chicks that have been in a brooder in our den. They are  a little over a month old and I am ready for them to go outside! During the day we put them out on a pen in the shade, they seem to like it. The girls carry them around a lot which is fine as I want the chicks to be very friendly. They each picked out a favorite to keep, I cautioned them about naming the chicks yet as any that are roosters will go

in the freezer later.

 

                                                          

They are kind of cute and we are pretty sure two of them are roosters.

What's in your Homestead Library?

I was given my favorite gift from my awesome husband, an Amazon gift card.I decided to use it to add to our homestead library. There are so many great books out there that it is usually way to hard to decide. Here is what I came up with this time.

         In her book, Natural Goat Care, Pat Colby takes us on her journey of caring for her goats. She tells us of preventative ways to keep livestock healthy, without the medicines

Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, 3rd Edition
“Everything you need to know about chickens, all in one easy-to-understand volume: Breed selection, health issues, care and maintenace, incubating, hatching, feed and shelter, egg and meat production, and more.


Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats: Breeds, Care, Dairying


The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing, and Sausage Making: How to Harvest Your Livestock & Wild Game

Build a Smokehouse: Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-81

How to Build Animal Housing: 60 Plans for Coops, Hutches, Barns, Sheds, Pens, Nestboxes, Feeders, Stanchions, and Much More

Fences for Pasture & Garden

Gail Damerow

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)

Barbara Kingsolver,

 These were already in our library,

The Encyclopedia of Country Living: An Old Fashioned Recipe Book by Carla Emery

Country Women: A Handbook for the New Farmer by Jeanne Tetrault and Sherry Thomas

The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!

        Small-Scale Livestock Farming: A Grass-Based Approach for Health, Sustainability, and Profit

          How to Raise Goats by Carol A. Amundson

 These are just a few of the books that I think every homsteader should have in their library.This list doesn't include the gardening and herbal medicine books in our library. I plan on getting all the Storey's Guides that we will need.What are your favorite books you think should be in a homesteaders library?

Homeschool Conversations

 Yesterday our homeschool group met up for park day as we do on most Fridays. There were about 9 moms with 1-4 kids each so we had a good group. The kids had fun playing in the creek and generally chasing around. As I was leaving I wondered what moms in a big city homeschool group would talk about.  
 Our conversation yesterday centered around our gardens and the animals we hoped to raise this year. We talked about the best chickens to raise for meat and eggs , the best way to butcher them, how many a family would need in a year and how we could help each other out with that big chore. We considered what breed of rabbits to raise and volunteered to help one mom to make a better chicken tractor as she didn't like hers.
 We talked about the gardens and I hoped it wasn't to late to put in potatoes. Composting came up which then lead to a conversation about humanure. Most had read The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins and I told of a new one out called Holy Shit by Gene Logsdon. One family had already tried this and said the soil that was produced after 2 years was the richest she had ever seen. I thought that was quite interesting.r
 In between these conversations we kept an eye on kids, passed out snacks, passed around babies and generally made sure no one roamed to far away. With all the families there about half lived in town with the rest living any where from just outside to about 30-45 min away. I think we all consider ourselves homesteaders, urban and country. All in all it was a great play day for the kids and me!

Little O' Hen House

 We finally finished our hen house and now hopefully will be getting the chickens moved in soon. These will be pasture chickens until we get some fencing up. I plan on getting a couple of turkeys also. Everyone keeps telling me that we need guineas because we have such a tick problem. I don't really like guineas, they are really loud and obnoxious but I might end up with a few, we'll see. At first I was going to stay with one or two breeds of chickens but, 1. there are so many I like and 2. I really like seeing the colorful variety of the flocks I have seen visiting local farms. So there is a good chance I will end up with a big variety for our own flock.

 

 

Blessed Be!