Happy Holidays!

Fun Friday Video: Cluck of the Bells

19 Degree Weather is for the Birds

Last Sunday the Replacements were feeling adventurous and came out to the barnyard while I was cleaning out the wood boiler. I was shocked to see them out and about as the temperature was 19 degrees.

As a breed, the Golden Buffs seem to be the most curious and least fearful.

Their outing was cut short when the local bald eagle started circling. They high-tailed it back into the barn. (Unfortunately I didn't get a pick of the eagle).

Combining

Last weekend I got a chance to drive the neighbor's combine. It was very challenging driving a big, roaring (and somewhat cumbersome) machine through the rows of corn. I don't think I'll be doing it again any time soon, but am glad I gave it a try!

On the Woodpile

Charlie's Dinner Guest

Freedom

As of Monday, our little flock of chickens has been free-ranging in the yard and pastures around the barn. I was a little very nervous letting them out into the open expanses in which hawks' cries are heard every day, possums patrol, and the occasional fox trots past.

But, when I pulled up in the driveway on Wednesday and saw them enthusiastically pecking and scratching through the grass looking for food, I knew they were going to be fine. There are lots of bushes and tall grass for them to hide in if a predator threatens, and letting them find their own food will save on feed costs.

My biggest fear was they would not find their way back to their coop at dusk. That fear has proven to be ungrounded as all 10 have been present for bed check every night this week.

This is Kobe's first close encounter with the chickens. He has seen them every day, but always with a fence in between. He was well behaved and very curious about these new critters roaming about his yard.

Everybody Out

The Replacements have been in the big coop with the Originals since September. However, they only began venturing outside of the coop in October. They seem to enjoy the outdoors and are spending more and more time breathing in the fresh air.

The Originals? Now we have to share with those youngsters?

Broody Bloomer

Last week, Bloomer started acting... funny. She hunkered down in the corner of the coop, didn't get up for two days, and didn't fly up to the roost at night. She seemed depressed. At first I thought she was sick, was she too weak to get up on the roost? Then I realized she wasn't depressed, she was broody!

Bloomer on her nest of imaginary eggs. She would puff up and growl when I moved her off the nest.

A hen becomes broody when she wants to hatch a clutch of eggs. Many laying hens have this trait bred out of them, and will never go broody. Bloomer is a Cochin, a breed known for broodiness. When a hen or a pullet gets struck with the urge for motherhood, they sit on their nest to hatch out their eggs. Only in Bloomer's case she had several things working against her:

1. We don't have a rooster, so there are no fertile eggs.
2. Fall weather is cold. Not ideal conditions for raising chicks even if there are broody eggs.
3. She's suppose to be earning her keep by laying eggs (and broody chickens don't lay eggs).

Having read four books about chickens last year before purchasing the current flock, and consulting websites like BackyardChickens.com and The Chicken Chick, I knew what I had to do...

Bloomer was going into solitary for a couple of days.

Every article about broody chickens I read had the same theme: the best way to break a broody is to isolate the offender in a wire bottom cage with access to food and water. The goal is to make the chicken uncomfortable so she will snap out of broodiness.

We didn't have a wire-bottom cage that would work for Bloomer, but I did have my garden cart that is constructed out of a metal mesh-like frame and has a plastic liner which is removable (it is a great tool to have around the yard). The plastic liner can also be flipped over and used as a roof for the cart, making it the perfect make-shift chicken cage.

Bloomer spent two nights in solitary in an unused horse stall next to the coop. She was returned to the flock last Tuesday night and is back to being a chicken who's happy not to be tied down with children chicks.  However, many hens will continue to go through phases of broodiness, which may be a good excuse for me to add a few more chickens to the flock. Perhaps an order of hatching eggs or finding a rooster will be on the docket for next spring...

And We're Off!

Cows

Charlie's Very Bad Hair Day

Last Friday, Charlie decided to eat breakfast next to a burdock plant.

He ended up getting his mane tangled in HUNDREDS of burdock burrs. Pasture-mate, Jubilee, was not impressed with this new look.

Charlie was so embarrassed to have all those burrs in his mane.

 Lucky for Charlie, his owner took pity on him and channeled all of her girly energy and talents into making him handsome again.

Using a step stool, a comb, and 40 minutes of her time, the owner got the boy looking presentable for Jubilee (although some burrs remain).

A much more confident horse!

GIANT EGG

Last Sunday I reached into the nesting box and discovered that Brownie has laid this HUGE egg.

Brownie's (the ISA Brown) jumbo egg in comparison to the eggs from the Dominique and Wyandotte).

The jumbo egg in comparison to Brownie's regular eggs.

This sucker weighed in at 103 grams (she usually lays eggs between 65-70 grams). It can be dangerous for a chicken to lay really large eggs because she could get egg-bound (which is a nice way of saying that the egg gets stuck in the chicken. Not fun, not fun at all).

I felt bad for the girl-- that couldn't have been easy laying that egg. I vowed to not waste her effort and fried up the egg for breakfast the next day. It was delicious!

The egg turned out to be a double yolker.

Beautiful Fall Day

Tiffany's New Career

As you may recall, in July 2012 I became the proud owner of Tiffany, a gorgeous mare with an attitude to match. Unfortunately, the two of us were never really on the same page due to a personality conflict and I had to make the difficult decision to sell her. She was put up for sale in late winter 2013, and I'm happy to report that Tiffy has found a new home and career in Indiana.

After several YouTube videos, advertising on three different horse-selling websites, one visit, and a three-hour vet check, Tiffany is destined to be a vaulting horse for a young girl. I really hope she loves her new home and owner.

Tiffany left Big Rapids in style with a professional horse transporter on a Friday evening in September, and arrived safely in Indiana the following day.

 

As soon as Tiffany left the parking lot, I pulled out my check book and wrote a check for Charlie. Glad this sweet guy is sticking around!

 

An Eagle's POV

Let's hope he's not on the lookout for chickens...

They're Loose

Recently I started opening one of the panels on the electronic poultry fence so the chickens would have an opportunity to scratch around in the barnyard. So far, only Brownie and Dominque have taken advantage of the outings, while Bloomer and Lacey stay in their comfort zone.

Another Praying Mantis!

This time it's a big one!

Not Living Up to His Title

Farm dog Kobe isn't that much of a farm dog. Here he lounges on his bed on a perfectly beautiful afternoon.

Chicken Coop Tour

It may be zip-tied together, constructed from old lattice and a cast-off beer pong table, but I think the chicken coop is sort of quaint, who-care-what-it-looks-like-as-long-as-it-works kind of way.

The coop is a converted horse stall that has been reinforced with hardware cloth to thwart any predators who are looking for a chicken dinner. It's currently divided in half to keep the Replacements away from the Originals until they're closer in size.

One of my favorite features is the ADOR1 Automatic Chicken door. The door is battery powered and opens and closes automatically and dusk and dawn each day. That means we can be out late at night and we don't have to worry about nighttime predators getting into the coop.

Amenities in the Originals side of the coop include a hanging feeder, a waterer on a mason block, a bowl of oyster shell, a colorful set of nest boxes, a cat litter pan used for dust baths, and an automatic door.

The Originals' roost (and a stick just for kicks).

The Replacements have a lower roost, a hanging feeder, and a waterer.

The Originals may have the automatic door, but the Replacements have a very stylish Gucci door!

Dead Tree

Last week we had a strong storm blow in, and this dead tree was leaning over the road. This was very dangerous as we live on a major two-lane highway. As I surveyed the situation, I figured the tractor could probably pull it down, but given my lack of experience with felling trees with tractors, I called in a neighbor who supervised the tree pulling.

Fencing Project

One of the big projects on the farm this summer has been to get the former riding arena in shape to be another paddock for the horses to graze. The process started about three weeks ago when I sprayed the arena and west pasture for weeds.

Weeds be gone in the West pasture!

  The spraying worked as most of the weeds have become dried brown twigs.Once you spray a pasture, you have to keep the horses off of it for 30 days to let the treatment take effect and become safe for them to graze.

Now that the arena will be ready to let the horses loose, there are some potential hazards that need to be taken care of. The first of these is the area formerly occupied by a mechanical hot walker. Though the walker is gone, a concrete pad and electric wire (which isn't hot) still remain. Just to be safe, I wanted to move the fence panels that separated the paddock behind the barn from the west pasture to keep the horses away from the wire.

So, last Thursday night I got in the mood to take down six fence panels and replace them with two strings of electric rope. You can see the barrier of panels in this old photo below:

By the time I got finished stringing up the new rope, it was close to 8 p.m. and I still needed to eat dinner, so I called it a night.

The next morning I cranked up the tractor and moved the fence panels. (Tractor? What tractor? Yeah, I bought an old John Deere compact tractor a few months ago and still haven't featured it on the blog. I'll get to that one of these days). Four of them went up to the arena and the remaining two remained by the loafing shed, as they will be used to keep the horses away from the hay that will be stored there for the winter.

The barnyard looks much more open without all those panels, no?

Evidence that the mysterious tractor exists-- the tire tracks prove it.

Filing Out

Snake!

Flower Garden Update

It's been awhile since I posted an update on the flower garden. HOURS of time have been spent weeding all of the crabgrass, dandelions, thistle, and other wild plants in the tiered beds outside of the front door.

The front row is virtually weed free, except for some very persistent ditch lilies that refuse to die, and consists of a large butterfly bush, Black-Eyed Susans, Dutch Iris, Coral Bells, Columbine, and petunias. A large portion of the space was occupied by zinnias, but I dug those up on Monday and replaced them with an assortment of dwarf coneflowers.

The butterfly bush may end up moving to the end of the second tier. It's too big to have smack dab in the middle.

I also planted a Pow Wow Wildberry Coneflower on the left side of the bed, along with three blanket flowers, and a Coreopsis.


The second tiered bed is still quite a work in progress. There is either a)one very large colony of ants or b) many colonies of ants in that bed, so the weeding usually stops once the little buggers are disturbed. I'm confident it will get weeded eventually. So far, about eight feet of the bed is weed free. I transplanted the pink Dianthus plants that were growing in front of the house to this bed. I wanted something with color, but I didn't want anything too tall so the rocks behind the flowers would still be visible.

I also succumbed to temptation at Lowes earlier this week and bought a couple Coreopsis. There was a void in the front garden bed left by an ornamental grass that never thrived, so the new addition was planted in with the day lilies and the Hot Papaya coneflowers.

LOVE soaker hoses. I don't love the brick red mulch, but the local store was out of the mulch.

One of the few inconveniences of transplanting (especially during a drought in August) is water. I have cut down on the amount of time I need to physically be outside watering by utilizing soaker hoses in the vegetable garden. I had an extra hose lying around, and decided to use it in the flower beds with the new plants, and it works wonderfully! I also found that mulching plants really helps cut down on the amount of supplemental water they need.

Replacements Update

The Replacements haven't gotten much attention on the blog recently, so here are a few updated photos. They have entered their "awkward" phase and are rambunctious and like to spread their wings. They also enjoy fighting for a spot in their dust bath-- a shallow plastic tray filled with dirt. They'll only spend another week or two in their brooder before they're released into their half of the coop.