Archive for the ‘Animals - Chickens’ Category
January 13, 2010 – Chickens in Nest Box
This year, I thought I’d try to occasionally post some everyday farm scenes that have become routine to us, but probably not for everyone. Today it is to the chicken coop.
Here’s a laying hen (as opposed to a broiler, which is raised for meat). Generally in the first few hours of the morning, the hens ...Read more.
November 21, 2009 – Morning Wake-Up
The last few mornings have been foggy. Haven’t had many days when we’ve had to chop ice off the turkey water yet and Thanksgiving is almost here! The weather chat on the Weather Underground is that following the coldest October on record, November has been warmer than October – and that has never happened. ...Read more.
November 6, 2009 – New Layers
We were alerted to someone who had brooded more heavy breed layers than they could accommodate, so we bought 20 pullets just about ready to lay. We’ll put some of our older hens in the freezer for stewing.
The girls bringing the pullets into the chicken coop.
One of the more interesting pullets is this Speckled Sussex ...Read more.
September 29, 2009 – Mother Hen
Mother hen found a new cavity in the hay – yesterday I picked up 50 bales of hay and haphazardly piled a few misshapen bales near the door and came back to properly stack them and found the mother hen and her seven chicks had adopted it as their home for the time being.
In this ...Read more.
September 20, 2009 – Inaugural Chicken Butchering
Today was the day we’ve been anticipating for quite some time. Two years ago the closest locker that butchered chickens (about 25 miles away) stopped processing chickens. Last year, the next closest locker (about 80 miles away) stopped doing chickens. Rather than drive even further – twice – once to drop off and ...Read more.
September 2, 2009 – Rogue Chicks
This hen is a repeat offender in hatching a clutch of eggs away from the hen house. This is her second brood of the summer, this time eight delightful chicks.
About half of them are black and the rest variations of brown. You can see all eight of them here if you count the leg of ...Read more.
August 26, 2009 – Chicken Tractors
It’s going to be a lean chicken year at high hopes this year. Uncertainty about lockers closing down and deliberations about buying a chicken plucker pushed our decision to get chicks out to our second batch time, and the skunk killing about 65 of our chicks leaves us with about 35 left, probably about enough ...Read more.
August 1, 2009 – Skunk in the Brooding House; 35 Lost
Martin came running in the house this morning at chore time, yelling in an excitable voice about a skunk in with the chicks. Even though we have a cat named skunk, the intensity of his voice told us it was not a cat skunk, but a skunk skunk.
We went out to see what was ...Read more.
June 17, 2009 – More “Wild Chicks”
Martin had been keeping his eyes on a clutch of eggs in the barn. When we were working on the door, Martin found the eggs were all cracked.
I told him to look for the chicks, because maybe they had hatched (or eaten by a critter).
It didn’t take him long to find the mother and the ...Read more.
June 10, 2009 – Road Hay
Is it free? Is it easy? Do kids like to help? Sign me up – it’s “road hay” season again. The county sickle-bar mowers have cut the long grass along the sides of the roads and it seems a waste to just let it sit there.
We can always use organic material, whether for bedding, composting, ...Read more.
June 9, 2009 – Barred Rock Chicks
A few weeks ago a barred rock hen squirreled away a clutch of eggs outside of the hen house (so we couldn’t grab them) and hatched a brood of six chicks. She’s a good mom and has kept all six alive for a couple of weeks.
They are starting to forage further and further away ...Read more.
January 23, 2009 – Laying Hen Update
The layers we ordered in early December were finally given free reign of the coop this week.
They are growing up nicely and all of them survived the brooding in temperatures down to -25.
Getting in and out of the coop has been a challenge, with the continual drifting, water dripping off the roof and filling waterers. ...Read more.
December 7, 2008 – Off Season Brooding
We have experienced reduced production in the laying hens, in part because we did not replace our two and three year old hens last summer. So, to get back on track next spring, we ordered 35 more last week.
You may remember the entry about trying to ready the new brooder. With the cold weather, we ...Read more.
June 27, 2008 – Chickens Need Rethinking
The loss of our local chicken locker threw us for a loop this year. Instead of driving 20 minutes away and taking the chickens with us when we left, the closest other locker is an hour and 20 minutes away and we needed to take two trips, once to drop them off, then another to ...Read more.
