We Woke up the Chickens...

With apologies to C.W. McCall,


Sleepy hens and tired chicks.

Chickens & Sheep & Nice Lambs

The dinner chickens actually arrived 9 June but I didn't get any pictures until today. We lost more than usual in the first few days but they seem to be ok now.




We've got sheep on both sides of the center divider fence and a dog in each group. Winnie is closest to me and Kimball is across the fence line.


Some of the ewes, lambs and yearlings.


This is a particularly nice yearling ewe.


These 2 lambs were born 10 May and are twins sired by Wye Heights Latham and out of Desert Weyr Gwendolyn. I think they are growing exceptionally well.

Summer Chickens

The laying chickens are having a lot of fun running around outside and getting all the bugs they can catch.

Baby Dinner Chickens

The new batch of dinner chickens is growing really well. They are very robust and healthy. Should be tasty when they grow up.

Getting Ready to Open the Shop and Fun for Chickens

We are starting to get more customers. We are not officially open with regular hours until the end of May but I do open up if people call first. Here is the wool and meat shop. Lots of lovely rovings in stock and a lot of new yarns as well. Plus we still have our lovely Black Welsh socks and meat.


Wall of Wool


Socks, yarn and some combed tops

Chickens are now going out most every day. I tried to get some good pictures but ended up chasing chickens for almost an hour!


This is a Gold Campine hen. The bad thing about predator savvy chickens is they are very wary and so very hard to take pictures of.


The Russian Orloff did finally allow me to get fairly close.

Happy Chickens

With the snow mostly gone we can let the chickens out to scratch and get bugs and grass. They sure enjoy being out of jail.

Winter Solstice

Farms mark the year by the solar calendar.

The solstice, the traditional mid winter festival when the sun starts to return. For us too the solstice is turn-around time. The days when the sun seems to stand still are our time to do a yearly reflection on the past year. We evaluate the goals accomplished and plans for next year.

Chores are delivering food and water to the critters. I spend my mornings watching fluffy sheep get fat and play in the snow. They make sheep nests in the bedding pack for warmth. I watch the breeding ram to be sure he is doing his job. The current one in with my control group of ewes may be a candidate for baatwurst. He seems to be butting the ewes more than he is breeding them. The ewes will get another ram in January so they should get pregnant. We'll know when they lamb who the daddy is and if Kai failed to breed ewes he's sausage.

Chickens are all hunkered down, snug in the coop but in jail and they are not happy so I take hay and chicken treats to them and talk to them when I gather the eggs. Chickens are actually quite social and like to be talked to so I cluck at them and pet a few friendly ones.

The dogs also make their own nests in the hay and the old dog snuggles in between warm sheep when it gets cold. The horses frisk in the snow in the warm sun but stand huddled neighing for breakfast when it's cold. I have a lot more time in winter so I am doing some hobby things that never get worked on in summer: knitting, spinning, doing a puzzle, reading. Winter is a time of reflection, more thinking and planning than doing on a farm. It's a good balance.

I hope you all have an enjoyable winter solstice.

The Laying Hens

Here are the new laying hens.

A Silver Grey Dorking.

A Welsummer.

Culinary Students, Ram Sorting and Chicken Processing

The Culinary School students came back today for more farm work.

Today we evaluated all the adult rams, trimmed toes and gave dewormer as needed. Then we took a field trip to Karla's to pick up our chickens that were butchered yesterday. The students got to see a bit of the butchering process and then came back to our house and helped us turn our chickens for the year into piece parts for our freezer. We got 24 chickens dismembered in 1 hour. It was sure nice to have additional knife skilled workers to help deal with the chickens.



Here are the students from left to right, Erica, Kade, Leah and Garrett.

Thanks folks, we had a great time and really appreciated the help.

Edited to correct spelling of names, Sorry!

Dogs and Chickens

Becky & Harri with the rams.

Today is chicken bath day. We are showing them on Tuesday at the Delta County Fair so they need to be bathed and cleaned now.


Stephanie with one of the Gold Campines.


Unhappy wet chickens.

Chickens

Here are the future laying hens.Front row from left to right Welsummer (pink feet), Ancona (black and yellow), Gold Campine (blue feet), Russian Orloff (yellow feet) and a Silver Grey Dorking (pink feet with an extra toe).

We'll see if I am right when they finally feather out.



I haven't decided whether I'll be showing at the county fair yet. I have to get the entry in soon so I'll have to make my decision before I even know if I've got birds that meet the standards. That's the down side to getting chicks later in the year.

Chicks Arrived

All the chicks arrived this morning. This batch is the 100 red broilers. We raise one batch a year. We keep half for us and sell the rest.


We also got 25 pullets for egg laying. The egg breeds we are trying this year are Russian Orloff, Dorking, Ancona and Welsummer. We also got some Gold Campines since we've had them before and liked them. I hope the chicken sexers did a good job. I hate having to get rid of roosters.

All the chicks arrived alive and so far they are all doing well.

Chicken Decisions

Well I decided on the chickens. One full box of 100 red broilers for meat. One quarter box of 25 pullets for eggs. 11 Gold Campines, 4 Spangled Russian Orloffs, 4 Silver Grey Dorkings, 3 Anconas and 3 Welsummers. I've requested them for the last week in May. They should be hatched 27 May and arrive here on the 28th or 29th. That's after primary lambing and also after the weather is nice. We'll separate the 2 groups and brood them in different pens. We've found the broilers grow too fast and cause problems for the much smaller egg chickens.

Chicken Dreams

Gardeners wait for the seed catalogs to come in the middle of the winter but for me the first sign of spring is the arrival of the chicken catalogs.

Full of promise, breeds that are rare, common, colorful, plain the chicken catalogs hint at the summer to come. The poultry world at your fingertips. All the chickens of the world are now available via mail order from somewhere. Or nearly all. Certainly there are hundreds of breeds and varieties that you can purchase.

I love looking at the catalogs, some come via e-mail and refer me to a web site. Others are full color paper catalogs and a few are just plain typed sheets with breed or variety and price. I pour over the lists, refer to my notes about what types have worked for us and which have not. I always like to try at least one new variety each year and deciding which will be the test chicken is always hard.

I have eliminated the long tailed, feather footed and Polish breeds because of the additional care they require to keep in good condition. I have also eliminated all bantams, I want full size birds. Bantams are great as a cage bird but on our farm even standard chickens are at risk of aerial predators so I want the full size versions. I have also eliminated all white birds, they might as well be targets or carry around "chicken dinner" signs in our environment.

That still leaves a lot to choose from. I know that I'll get a batch of Red Broilers as dinner chickens. The egg laying chickens are the fun ones. We've had great success with Gold Campines so I will get some of those for sure. But what new variety (or varieties) to try?

The Dorkings look fun, I really liked seeing them in Wales but I can't find red ones like I saw in Wales except from the speciality breeders and until I know they work I am reluctant to buy expensive chicks. I've always like the looks of Ancona's but the extra large combs may be an issue in winter. I love Buff Orpington's but they haven't been very durable here so I'm not sure I want to try them again. Welsummer's might be fun, I've never had really dark eggs and the Barnevelders also look interesting. Minorca's have been nice in summer but don't tolerate our winter very well so even though I like them I am not sure they are a good choice. The Brabanters we had were decent layers but only lasted one season. Russian Orloffs have the same cute ruff and might be a good replacement.

I now only buy pullets for my laying chickens. The extra cost is worth it to avoid having cocks.

Got a favorite breed? Let me know in the comments.

Flat Stanley has a Busy Day

Today was a busy day here at the farm. Stuff didn't really get started until the afternoon but we had a lot to do.


Our first problem was the septic tank. We've had some sewer gas backing up into the house when we do laundry. The plumber came yesterday and we found a trap that was dry but as a precaution he suggested we get the septic tank pumped. It was last pumped in 2000 so we are a bit overdue. Flat Stanley got to help Ken use the backhoe to uncover the tank.


Cheerful Cesspool Service came out and did the actual job. They were great to work with and came the same day I called.


I took Stanley to look for eggs.


Unfortunately our chickens are old and we haven't gotten any eggs for weeks. If they don't start laying, now that their molting is over, they will go to be butchered by the end of the year.


My next job is to go get the mail. Our mailbox is out on the main road.


We filled hay feeders this morning so there wasn't anything to do for the sheep. Desert Weyr Gwenda came over to sniff Stanley though.


Wye Hieghts Fychan AKA Wye Heights C-3 is by himself in a pen. He is scheduled for slaughter this week so is separated from the rest of the rams.


Last stop was to check out the main ram pen. Our guard dog Winifred aka Winnie is fascinated by Flat Stanley.

Chickens

The first batch of dinner chickens are ready to butcher. These guys are a bit smaller than last year burt are 2 weeks younger. The difference in food costs may offset the smaller size. Anyway, we've been out of chicken for a while so it will be good to get them done. We do our 100 chickens in roughly three batches as that's how many fit into the crates.

Chicken Show

Tuesday was the Delta County Fair Open and 4H Poultry Show. The Helleckson's and I show chickens in the open class. Here we are in the judging lineup with our old Gold Penciled Hamburg hens who were molting and looked pretty scruffy. Stephanie took first, Jacob second and I had a barely not disqualified third. My birds' tail feathers are not properly marked clear to the end but that was ok. I had fun getting them ready and showing them anyway.

Chicks are Growing

The baby chicks are growing well and feathering out nicely. We already turned off the big heater and now only have a couple of heat lamps for them at night. Soon we'll be able to turn those off too.

Sheep and Chickens

The spare sheep has settled right in. He hardly even moves now when we go outside. He is eating the hay for the horses and donkey and we've had to move sheep away from where he is. I sure wish he'd head on out to somewhere else.
The new batch of chickens is growing well too. They are now off the main newspaper litter and on pine shavings. We still put the food and water on paper. Four have died but the rest are doing well.
Meanwhile it's time to put the adult rams and the ram lambs together into one big ram bunch. We sorted out one old ram who will go to slaughter at the end of this month and 2 who are sold and will travel together to their new place in a couple of weeks. The rest of the rams, all 27 of them, are now crammed in together in the mixing pen. We start out with a bunch of hay bales in the pen and the feeders full. It's small enough that if they all lay down at once they cover the floor with sheep. The idea is not to let them get a big enough space to be able to run and bash each other too much. By the time the hay bales are gone they are getting better. We slowly open up the pen giving them more and more space until in a couple of weeks they are now one big ram bunch. It takes a while to get them to sort out who's boss but this has worked for us for several years and seems to be the best way to integrate the youngsters with the old boys.
The ewes, lambs and replacement ewes are now all in one bunch grazing. Pastures are doing well and the lambs are growing well. We should be getting 30 days weights this week and we'll see how they are doing then but just looking at them most are looking very good.

Snow on Mt. Lamborn & Chicken Arrival Day

6 June and there was fresh snow on Mt. Lamborn this morning. At least this time I got a picture. Over the last day we've gotten almost half an inch of rain and the Grand Mesa got 4 inches of fresh snow. The rains will be really good for establishing our pastures.



Today was also chicken arrival day. We raise some chicks each year. Usually we get both meat broilers and some laying hens but this year we decided to just raise one batch of meat birds. Our hens from last years chicks are doing well and should last through another winter. We buy our chicks from Ideal Hatchery in Texas. The baby chicks are packaged and sent via the post office. We get a call from them early in the morning as soon as the truck arrives with the mail.

We went to town, knock at the post office back door and get our box of chicks. Then home to the already prepared brooder. I now dip each chicks beak in the water as I take them out and count them. We ordered 100 and Ideal shipped 104. That's to cover any early losses. The chicks are looking bright and alert and doing well. I think waiting until later in the year is a good idea.

I know that all hatcheries say not to use newspaper for baby chicks because it can cause problems with their legs. But their suggestion, burlap, is not available locally. We used to be able to get some feed in burlap sacks but now it's all in paper bags. So I use newspaper and try to get them off and on to shavings as soon as I am sure they are eating well and know what the food is.

The red broilers we get grow a bit more slowly than commercial white broilers but they are much more active foragers. Their color also makes them less of a target for the hawks and eagles. We expect these birds to be at slaughter size the end of August.