Spring Follows the Ups and Downs of Our Little World...

Last year, we incubated and hatched lots of eggs, and kept or sold a fir number of chicks.  Somewhere in it all, we ended up with one single (hopefully) pullet in this age range. Not one of our better planning moments, but I had mandated that we turn off the incubator during the holidays, so there weren't any younger ones coming along to keep it company.

The little one, on the left in the photo below, was living in the house, mostly in the tough brooder.  As the only one, her interaction was with us, as well as with Shadow. As she had grown, she would get out of the brooder, go for a walk around the house, hang out with Shadow while watching Wyatt practice piano, and chat with me while I put on my shoes in the morning.

She has not been a tidy roommate, as you can imagine, but I just couldn't seem to come up with anyone for her to hang out with. Then, I found some black sexlinks, fully feathered, and near to her size at a nearby feed store. While I am normally not big on hatchery chicks, I needed someone to teach the little pullet that she was, in fact, a chicken, and help her transition to her pen. So Saturday afternoon, on my way home from work, I brought her friends and Wyatt got them all set up in the first step of the grow out pen. So far, so good...

While I was at it, Friday night, Wyatt helped me dig a hole for the lower section of this pond insert that Grandma didn't want anymore. He even helped me situate the bricks for steps.

The geese are truly loving their new pool!

The geese are also laying. Wyatt is concerned about the fact that some of the hatching didn't go so well last year, and because the first egg that Mother Goose laid was pecked by Miss Friendly. The clutch was at three eggs at last count, though it got dark quickly this evening when we got home and we didn't get to check. What would you do? Incubate or let them try to raise the little ones?

You saw the project Wyatt helped me with, but on Monday, as the boys headed off to pick up the feed store and Bailey and I were heading home from town after the gym, we knew this was to be our big project!

We started by pulling EVERYTHING out of the tack shed.

The only thing that remained was the shelf unit, which was pulled well forward and wiped down. The walls and floors were cleaned, and we organized and cleaned as things went back in.

It was dark when we finished, but so worth it to get things cleaned and ready for Spring, and especially to do it before the feed order went in.

And this was the end result! What do you think?

Well, with Sunday night closing out, and a new week beginning, more big projects await and more always being added to the list, it is time for rest and recharge before the coming week.

What is on your list for this week?

What Have We Been Up To?

And the farm animals take over the blog! Clearly, the humans have been too busy to blog lately, with their homeschooling and church and cleaning pens and stuff, so we thought we animals would share a few words on what we have been up to around here!

We finally got some rain around here, and the "goosies on the loosies" as that house mama calls us like rain better than any of the other animals! Why? To play in, of course! But also, because weeds mean that we eat fresh greens that the other animals don't reach. Mama says that means we are brats telling everyone else about it, but we are the guard geese after all, so we should get some perks!

House mama, also known as the feed lady, she tried to pull some weeds down by her garden recently. We told her this was unacceptable, as they were the salad bar we hadn't gotten to yet. Finally, we got her to leave the piles for a couple days so that we could munch a bit before she did more work.

She still has more to prep for our eating. We are done with the other piles, so she had best get busy!

Just because the geese roam all the time doesn't mean they are the only ones with good treats! Despite getting our own salad bar in our pen that Wyatt keeps stocked and growing for us, we still get baskets of sprouts!

It is like a party when the red baskets come out in the middle of the day!

We even share with the guineas! (Well, most of the time, anyway!)

Breakfast time is the best time in our pen! Okay, well, we think we get the best dinner, too! We have the house mama and our Bailey trained to bring us bottles twice a day, and then Daddy Powerstroke lets us have the feeder . This is our look that says, "We are cute!" We know you agree, and the Brahmas that share a fence with us in the grow out pen sing along with us.

The house mama is always excited to see melons doing well. What we like about melons, is that the chickens get lots of melon and then they are in better moods!  They complain less about us singing at night when they are in good moods, and I think I heard this kind of melon called a honeydew...

Just in case you were missing out on some of my cuteness, I am Freedom's Prayer!  I am pretty sure the world is here to cuddle me!

Did we mention we are masters as coexistence? The goats might say we complain about them singing, but we keep our rooster in line, and also have a pet snake in our pen. If you look closely, you will see his tail over by the old feeder we like to stand on.

This guy doesn't bother us hens, and our nesting boxes and new feeder are up off the ground. The desert comes with mice, so we let this guy wander around so the mice don't bother our nests, and in turn we nest up high and only try to sit on eggs up in the loft where Wyatt keeps our straw. The added bonus- the bigger our Wyatt gets, the funnier it is when he tries to get eggs from us up there! Then we all stand around in the door to our hen house and watch him... Did I mention bonus points for anyone who can get him stuck up there so he has to call for help?

Why yes, the chickens tried to take over! But guess what! We are just too cute to ignore!

My brother was being silly and trying to wrestle with our Dad, so I decided to play peekaboo from my favorite house. Dad also likes to pose. Don'e tell the house mama, but he leaves a pile of poop near where he poses on purpose. She says he wasn't well socialized before our Bailey brought him home, but Bailey says that means he will do just fine in our family of homeschool goofballs. Not sure what that means, but she always scratches our ears and brings us food. And, if we cry really loud, she will come out over and over to check on us!

Well, that is the world according to the bucks, the geese and the Big Pen. We dare the does and the others to outdo us!

Up-cycled Projects for Sustainable Farming

This dresser was yellow was it came to Arizona before our daughter was born. It had lived through my family, having been well constructed, though over the years it began to have troubles. We reassembled the drawers, reattached the bottoms, reattached the faces and back corners, over and over and over again. That is,  until this Spring, when I just couldn't get it to go back together again.

I thought hard about how to re-purpose it, rather than give up on something that seemed to still have life in it. I considered adding board for shelves, but realistically, I could see that causing a TON of dusting, without really adding much convenience. I considered the shelves and using the drawer faces like flip up doors, but when I got into the actual design on that idea, it really didn't work. Nothing would fit right.

I poured over Pinterest. That's what I tell the 4H-ers to do.

So it sat on the back porch, waiting for my crazy over attached to tradition self until I finally just realized- the greatest need around here was the organic and sustainability projects. So a plan was hatched- this dresser would be phase one- of the livestock salad bars.

Salad bard for livestock. you ask? Why yes. By creating planters where the sprouts continue to grow, proving more greenery to the chickens and goats, we hope to supplement their organic nutrition with things more naturally eaten in the wild. Besides, what we grow ourselves, when know where it comes from, and it is more economical for feeding organic.

So we took this old dresser, and the kids and I got to work.

The main frame of the dresser went to the doe pen. Sorry, it was getting a bit dark.

Wyatt took the first of the drawers with no base out to the Big Pen.

He picked a spot where the chickens keep digging hols for him to fill (two birds, so to speak.) Not far from the waters, though. We won't water it with chicken water, but we do want to make watering pretty easy!

They filled them mostly full with garden soil from my re-potting pile. They left a bit of room at the top, so the animals would not have enough leverage or grasp to pull the plants out from the root. Then came chicken wire.

I had originally thought to use hardware cloth to keep the from pulling too much, and had been following the progress of a few similar projects. It turns out, at least one person was having trouble with hens getting stuck walking on the hardware cloth and losing toes. Who! I hadn't even though of that! Glad for someone else's honesty and experience. Hope those hens are getting around okay!

This one is outside the doe barn. Once we catch the water harvesting system up, we plan to have one there, too, and stationed this so that there was just enough room by the roof, but against the wall, for a water harvesting barrel, and this could easily be watered from it. She added plenty of seeds that had been soaking for a couple days.

Then she got to watering them two to three times each day.

This is what is coming up. I have some more for her to reseed later tonight.

This is the chicken one in the Big Pen. Too bad I didn't get a photo of this one earlier, since they are REALLY digging on their sprouts! Wyatt will be adding more seeds, but just because they weren't as established as we had thought they would be when the ladies began eating them. They like to work together to get the best grasp on the sprouted grains while one stands on the wire, the other puts her head through to munch!

It is doing quite well, but we will continue to work with it!

Next up, after reseeding? The Bucks and the A Pen! The more natural the food is, the better!!!

New Feeders! Always Trying to Improve!

For those of you who follow the blog, you are likely aware of the stages we have gone through with feeders. The chickens like to dump their food on the ground, and we also have issues with summer monsoons bringing water nearly parallel to the ground, wind gusts and micro-bursts, and also with wild animals. It is the wild animals that bring us the greatest concern, since they not only eat a lot of food, but also can bring disease, so we have been through several versions of feeders to try to come up with the best solution for our animals, who rather enjoy their treats along with their soy-free, corn-free, non-gmo organic feed!

Wyatt recently found these feeders he was hoping to try. So we purchased one and brought it home, hoping to see of it would help with all of the competing needs. The Silkie pen was first for this new feeder. 

Being that there was already a hook in the pen, and they don't have as much rain reaching the area where that would put hte feed, it was a good first choice. I added a scoop of feed, which would usually last 2-3 days with them. I didn't figure that would require filling it all the way, which would also mean that I didn't have to fret so much about losing a lot of feed if this idea was a bust with them!

I raided Bailey's stash of bailing twine, and tied the feeder to hang high enough that the Silkies stand properly as they eat, nothing can jump in it, but that the geriatric White Faced Black Spanish hens that are in retirement in the Silkies' pen can still eat just fine. This was very early last week, and it took them much of the week to go through the scoop I put in there. I regularly saw all of the different chickens that reside in there munching away, so I decided it was worth trying a wider spread application of the new feeder.

We cannot afford to purchase new feeders for all of the poultry at one time, but I did go ahead and buy two more last Saturday, and Wyatt and I stood and decided the next to pens for roll out were the main laying pens, the A pen and the Big pen. These pens usually go through about a scoop per day in this weather. So we started in the Big pen, where this 4x4 is angled near the doorway of their barn, helping re-frame it after a micro-burst several years ago. I ran in a longer, thicker cup hook. It wouldn't angled or hang properly if I left it on the hook, so  we put it high enough that the feeder would swing freely and not have any pests feeding on it from the support beam, but still have it centered in and back far enough from the opening of the barn.

As soon as Wyatt poured the scoop in, we were surrounded by hens who felt the need to push us out of the way so they could be among the first to enjoy their new feeder.

The A pen was a little more challenging. There is a metal support for the roof, which was pretty easy to tie the feeder to, since the corners are favorite roosting spots and we didn't want accidental poop in the feeder or rain from the monsoons. The blue in the edge of the photo is a plastic tabletop that we use for nesting boxes to sit on, and that arrangement may have to be revisited if they fuss over the feeder or knock into when they fuss over next boxes (don't all hens want to use the same box at the same time at your house, too?)

So far, all of the new feeders are working beautifully. Feed economy might be slightly improved, although Wyatt is having a hard time with filling the feeders which are slightly smaller than the feed scoop. I will have to help him find a better solution for that this week. We also found a couple white buckets that still have the handles on them, which we plan to try to rig as temporary hanging feeders in the grow out pen and a couple of the breeding pens, I will try to take photos when we work on those so you can try it too, just as soon as we get the buckets unstuck!

What all have you all tried? Where do you put the fodder feed for your chickens for those of you who also use fodder? Please share your photos and solutions with us, and let me know who to credit so that I can share them with others trying to learn! 

Have a great day!

National Egg Day 2014

Today is National Egg Day! So what does that mean? Oh, I don't know exactly, except that we seem to have a day for everything in the declaration of some group somewhere! But as I thought over the course of the day about what I could post- a photo of a colorful egg basket, some of our different sizes of eggs, or double yolk-ers, etc, I came across the following meme on Facebook:

Honestly, they have a point. 

For some reason, we want the commodities to remain the same, while we are willing to pay more for luxury goods and convenience items, giving less importance to how things are raised or produced.

You often see me say things like "Vote with your dollars." This merely means that by the choices you make in your shopping, you are voting for specific ways of raising animals and growing food.

This applies to gmos, pesticides, hothouse foods, seasonal foods, and the feed used with livestock. It looks at buying local, and noticing how animals are raised and treated, as well as demanding the feed to be in accordance with your values. If you are looking for organic, non gmo veggies, are you looking for non-gmo feed for the livestock? 

Or maybe that doesn't matter, but when you look at the cost of eggs over time, and the inflation against the cost of other commodities across time, and consider how many of those commodities have extra things added now to keep the prices artificially low, we must think hard about whether we like those prices more than the original product, and whether the cost of those prices in terms of long term health care costs are worth it.

Also, when choosing to pay more for an item, like pastured eggs, or organic or cage free, understand the meaning of the term. While there are many folks who provide local fresh eggs to the markets, there are a few different price points, and also some are kept in different environments or fed different feeds. Then decide for yourself what is right for you and your family. Not sure what they are? Check out the meanings in this blog post here:

http://ourpatriotsdream.blogspot.com/2010/05/little-about-our-flock-management.html

And, for your reference, here is a commodity retail price sheet. Have fun, and I welcome your comments and thoughts!

Retail Prices of Selected Foods in U.S. Cities, 1890–2011

Prices below are in dollars or cents.

Year	Flour (5 lbs)	Bread (lb)	Round steak (lb)	Bacon (lb)	Butter (lb)	Eggs (doz.)	Milk (1/2 gal.)	Oranges (doz.)	Potatoes (10 lbs)	Coffee (lb)	Sugar (5 lbs)
2011	$2.75	$1.48	$4.69	$4.82	$3.67	$1.95	$1.86	$6.00	$7.35	$5.65	$3.51
2010	$2.36	$1.41	$4.41	$4.77	$3.63	$1.47	$1.66	$6.00	$5.79	$4.16	$3.11
1970	58.9¢	24.3¢	$1.30	94.9¢	86.6¢	61.4¢	65.9¢	86.4¢	89.7¢	91.1¢	64.8¢
1965	58.1	20.9	$1.08	81.3	75.4	52.7	52.6	77.8	93.7	83.3	59.0
1960	55.4	20.3	$1.05	65.5	74.9	57.3	52.0	74.8	71.8	75.3	58.2
1955	53.8	17.7	90.3	65.9	70.9	60.6	46.2	52.8	56.4	93.0	52.1
1950	49.1	14.3	93.6	63.7	72.9	60.4	41.2	49.3	46.1	79.4	48.7
1945	32.1	8.8	40.6	41.1	50.7	58.1	31.2	48.5	49.3	30.5	33.4
1940	21.5	8.0	36.4	27.3	36.0	33.1	25.6	29.1	23.9	21.2	26.0
1935	25.3	8.3	36.0	41.3	36.0	37.6	23.4	22.0	19.1	25.7	28.2
1930	23.0	8.6	42.6	42.5	46.4	44.5	28.2	57.1	36.0	39.5	30.5
1925	30.5	9.3	36.2	47.1	55.2	55.4	27.8	57.1	36.0	50.4	35.0
1920	40.5	11.5	39.5	52.3	70.1	68.1	33.4	63.2	63.0	47.0	97.0
1915	21.0	7.0	23.0	26.9	35.8	34.1	17.6	n.a.	15.0	30.0	33.0
1910	18.0	n.a.	17.4	25.5	35.9	33.7	16.8	n.a.	17.0	n.a.	30.0
1905	16.0	n.a.	14.0	18.1	29.0	27.2	14.4	n.a.	17.0	n.a.	30.0
1900	12.5	n.a.	13.2	14.3	26.1	20.7	13.6	n.a.	14.0	n.a.	30.5
1895	12.0	n.a.	12.3	13.0	24.9	20.6	13.6	n.a.	14.0	n.a.	26.5
1890	14.5	n.a.	12.3	12.5	25.5	20.8	13.6	n.a.	16.0	n.a.	34.5

NOTE: n.a. = not available.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Part 2., Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011

Read more: Retail Prices of Selected Foods in U.S. Cities, 1890–2011 | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873707.html#ixzz33dzDqbxO

Poultry Available

The chickens around here are used to being spoiled, or in the words of chief poultry man, Wyatt, "well-cared-for".  We often have chickens available, from day-old to adult, in a variety of breeds. We do our best to keep this page up to date, but if you are inquiring about certain ages, breeds or birds, please feel welcome to email or call us.

This is Trooper, a blue ribbon partridge Silkie hen. She is still a wonderful mama hen, who keeps things in line around the Silkie area. When a couple young roosters moved in recently, they thought they would tell everyone who is in charge.  Trooper used the back of her head and backed the two young roosters up to the edge of the coop, then gave them quite a talking to. Their behavior changed radically, and there has been peace in the coop since, with the hens settling back in and eventually returning to sharing nests and setting on eggs as a team.

This is a group of younger chickens in the grow out pen. The Buckeye in the foreground is a blue ribbon, best of breed rooster now, and we only have one young Buckeye available at present.  The light Brahma behind him is among the blue ribbon hens (one of whom has recorded best of breed) that is the mama hen to the current grouping of young Light Brahmas. We have these available from day-old up to adults. These have been champion heritage meat birds, as well as breed winners in their own right.

Some of the Brahmas we hatched last year. We no longer breed the Buff Brahmas, but do have a few left from last year's hatch. They have such a wonderful disposition!

This Buff Brahma was determined to hatch little ones from her favorite rooster! Funny thing about the Brahma roosters, the ladies prefer them so much, they stand and talk to them at the fence, with their own roosters getting rather frustrated!

More of last year's Light Brahmas in the grow out area.  We have one trio of these available right now, who are about 2.5 to 3 months of age. The standard bred heritage day old chicks are $5 up until the age of one month, then $8, then after two months $10, and up from there to cover the cost of the soy-free, corn-free organic feed we use. We have calculated that by the time they reach four months of age, they cost us on average $15, with $20 by 5 months and $25-$30 by point of lay.

These are the babies in the brooder as of the middle of March. Two more little light Brahmas were hatched last night, and are not in the photos below. The little barnyard mixes we also have are a mix of Ameraucana, Phoenix, Brahma and Buckeye. They should be fun! As these are not purebred, they are available for $2 each as young chicks.

The little ones in the brooder get along so well, and even young roosters care for the younger ones as they come along.

Still the young chicks can also be found cuddling up to stuffed animals for a nap when the others are playing.

Present Availability:

day old chicks:

2 Light Brahmas

one week and up:

4 Light Brahmas

2 Partridge Silkies

7 Barnyard Mixes

2.5 months and up:

3 Light Brahmas

1 Buckeye

1 Partridge Silkie

Point of Lay (7 months to 8 months):

not available until after county fair at the end of April

2 Light Brahmas

6 Partridge Cochins

While there are still several eggs in the incubator, after these hatch, we will not set any more until after County Fair, and those will be very limited. Discounts are available to 4-H youth.  Custom hatches are available, with a deposit to set the eggs.

Please feel free to call, email and message with any questions you have!