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.

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!

Metal Roof & Fall Turkeys

Bill's back to finish the porch roof.


Here he's bending the metal for the various edges.


Getting ready to cut another piece.


Later that evening we went up to the neighbors for dinner. One of the local flocks of turkeys came strolling by. A large group of chicks and several hens and a tom. I only got a few pictures of them but there were a lot more than in this shot.

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.

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.

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.

Chickens and Geese

The geese are out in the small pen beside the barn during the day and we've gotten our first goose eggs. We're pulling the eggs from the geese for sale as eating eggs until we decide whether to let them raise goslings. We still don't have a slaughter facility that can handle the plucking process. We can process geese if we skin them. I'm not sure whether any buyers will buy skinned geese since crispy goose skin is so good. We've got a few more weeks to decide as we need to keep the first few eggs from each goose anyway. Hatching rates are usually better for later eggs.

The chickens are also now out most days. It depends a bit on what construction is going on whether I can let them out. We don't need chickens helping the workers build the shop. They sure love it and are starting to lay more eggs. The Hamburgs are still not doing well, this is their last year. I've tried several varieties from several places and none have ever done well so they are off the list as egg laying chickens. The stars are still the Golden Campines. Tough chickens and they are laying well now and have been all winter. The Brown Leghorns are also doing fairly well as are the Brabanters. It's nice to see the chickens enjoying the first grass and bugs outside after such a long hard winter.

Happy Chickens

With the combination of construction and the snow all the chickens are being kept in their house for the winter. To keep them happy we take lots of treats, scraps of food, stale bread, vegetable pieces like carrot ends or bits of lettuce and stuff. Here the chickens are happily scratching for their latest goody.

We have several breeds of laying hens, Rose Comb Brown Leghorns, Gold Penciled Hamburgs, Cream Brabanters and Gold Campines. In spite of the cold they are all laying very well. Normally they would be out scratching around but it doesn't make sense to have them loose in winter. We don't crowd them in a small house so they do fine when locked up.

The geese are also often locked in their winter quarters. They will tolerate more cold than the chickens and so on sunny days they get to go outside. We have a fenced pen for them so they can't get into trouble helping the construction crew.