My hens have not been producing much lately. Egg production can go down in winter, and I think that may be what is going on, but it’s really down. I’ve kept track of the eggs we receive from them since we first started getting eggs. Last December (2014) we got 195 eggs, this December we got 170. We have more hens this year than last year – last year we had 9 at this time, and right now we have 15. I know one hen for sure isn’t laying, our “escape artist” hen – she lays white eggs, and is the only one that does. She’s one of our newer hens from this year. We have not gotten a white egg in at least 3 weeks. The chickens all seem healthy, and I have a heat lamp on them, but maybe the heat lamp isn’t enough to keep them producing with the cold. We’re down by 70 eggs from November – In November we got 239. Our temperatures are down from November, but not as cold as last winter, luckily. We’ve only gotten down into the teens at the coldest, maybe 17 degrees Fahrenheit. I think last year I may have had a white heat lamp in the coop, this year it’s red. Either way, it’s kind of depressing. I’ll just keep an eye on them, I guess, and hope for spring.
Some of the freeloaders. They don’t come out into the snow much. We open the coop door for them in the daytime.
We had a couple inches of snow from last week, and then yesterday we got about 6-8 inches. The dogs had a lot of fun playing in it – Even Downey – he hates water and being wet, and won’t go out in the rain. But he loves snow.
The dogs playing in the snowMore snow – Nova almost blends in to the snow compared to the other twoDowney and AtatOur garage and cedar treeThe yard covered in snow
I got my Christmas present early from my husband, he was worried that the gift may not live if it had to wait another week or so. He got me an air plant jellyfish kit!
One of my air plant jellyfish.
Air plants are also called Tillandsia. They don’t need any soil – in nature they grow on rocks and trees, and grab moisture from the air. There are many different kinds. I’m not sure what kind these are. They came in a kit of three – three air plants, some sea urchin skeletons (for the jellyfish “caps” ) and some hemp twine to hang them. Oh, and some air plant food. If you want to get one, you can get it at makerskit.com
Here are my jellyfish, hanging with my other windowsill plants and hanging things at my kitchen window:
My whimsical windowsill.
I used to have several different types of air plants, but they died when we moved up the U.P. (they froze during our journey). I’m happy to have some of them again, they’re really cool.
We had an escapee today. Yesterday I moved the babies into their new home, which is on one side of the extra hutch. This morning I was heading out to feed the rabbits and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a little fuzzy blur running away. There was a loose spot where the door meets the floor of their cage, and I think he squeezed through there. We spent most of the day trying to catch him. We set up a cage on the ground with a water bottle and food, hoping he’d go in on his own when he got thirsty.
The runaway bunny
We don’t have any snow right now, so he was happy munching on grass. The food in the cage was not as enticing as the grass.
His favorite spot to hide was under the truck. I think he actually climbed up on the axles at one point. I was afraid he’d climb into the engine, but I don’t know if he’s agile enough to do that.Here he is running back under the truck on one of our many attempts throughout the day to catch him.
Our cat Wizard snuck out this morning and seemed like he was attempting to help me catch the bunny. But he’d get up to the bunny and swat at it, so I think he just wanted to play with it. Luckily he didn’t seem too intent on attacking it, which was what I thought he’d do. He wasn’t very helpful though, so we made him go back inside, and were hoping the rabbit would go into the cage if the cat wasn’t there. That didn’t work very well though. In the end we had to chase him into the cage. He did not want to be caught, but we got him. He’s now back with his brothers and sisters.
Here are the babies in their new home.
I’ve fixed the loose spot in the hutch, so hopefully we won’t have a repeat of today. Oh, and I found out when moving them that we have 7 babies.
We’ve been very busy this month. In my last post, I said I would get some pictures of snow… well, then it melted. But on Thanksgiving, which was a couple days ago, we got about 4-5 inches. So we have snow again.
Here is Nova. We got her about a month ago, from our coworker. Nova was her son’s dog, when he was in the Air force in Georgia. Now he moved back to town and is going to college, and couldn’t keep her, and my coworker felt bad that Nova was home alone during the day. So we took her in. She gets along great with our other dogs and she is a sweetheart.
Our NovaThe three dogs on the back porch. Nova likes to eat snow.Another picture of Nova
The chickens aren’t minding the snow so much. I have heat lamps in the two rooms of their coop, so they can go in and warm up their feet if they get cold. Our batch last year (which we still have the hens from) didn’t like to go out in the snow. I’m not sure why they don’t mind this year, but they don’t.
The chickens don’t seem to mind the snow at all.Snow chickens. The dirt spot here is where we took away their old roost that was out there. We had to steal the sawhorses that held it up, for the rabbit hutch, which you will see below.Yesterday they found the dirt spot, and they were taking dirt baths in it. The ground is not frozen yet, luckily.
Last weekend we went up to my cousin’s to get the original hutch that I got with the rabbits. We have set it up near our other rabbit hutch, so it’s now Rabbit Row:
Rabbit row. On the left are the rabbits in the hutch we built, and on the right is the one that came with the bunnies. We’re getting it set up for the baby bunnies when they get bigger. The garbage bags in the picture are straw and hay – I have them outside, but covered for easy access.Here is the hutch that came with the rabbits. It had a roof which we removed in order to get it in the back of the truck. We are just planning on using one side for the winter, so we have closed that side in with wood.The inside of the new (old) hutch. It has a wire bottom, but I will cover it with straw to try to keep the babies’ feet more comfortable. I need to look it up, but I believe it will be a couple more weeks before they go in there. Hopefully we’ll get the snow out of there before then. We brushed what we could out, but it may melt a little too.
And here are the little baby bunnies:
They are starting to munch on food – this one is eating hay.Here they are – they are all brown. But some are darker brown, and one has a little lighter fur. I’m assuming they change color as they get older, but I could be wrong. I’m still new at this. The mom is black and the dad is gray, so I don’t know how the brown comes in.They like to pile up on top of each other, outside of the nest box. I think there are 8 of them. I’ve tried to count without taking them all out, and they jump around too much so I have not gotten a good count. I will be able to get an accurate count soon when I need to move them.
The rabbits have been doing ok with the cold so far. We’re going to add a tarp to the front of the hutches to block wind from the inside. That’s one reason I positioned the hutches into “Rabbit Row.” – I figure it will help block wind somewhat. I’m already planning on a new setup once spring comes – more of a rabbit shed, I think. I’d like to add a run of some sort so they can hang out in the grass also.
We’ve also decided on names for the adults. They are Earth, Wind, and Fire. (my husband came up with it) – The gray buck is Earth (since he’s on the left), the white doe is Wind, and the black doe is Fire.
My husband built nest boxes for the other two rabbits, and they are lined with straw, so they can stay out of the wind when it gets very cold. They like to sit on top of them sometimes, as you can see Wind do here.
The farm is pretty much ready for winter. It’s a nice time to just cozy up inside – we don’t have a lot of projects we can do outside in winter, except reinforcing animal housing and doing normal feeding chores each morning and night. I like that it’s kind of a relaxation time. Of course I’m already planning in my head what we’ll do when spring comes.
I’m a little late with this post. This November has been a little strange, with warmer temps than normal… that is, until a few days ago. I took some pictures last week, before we got snow, when we were in the 50s temperature wise. The snow started a couple days ago. We only have about an inch on the ground right now. We’ve had some flurries here and there, and now our temperatures are in the 20s. Brrr… Here are some pictures of our pre-snow November.
I was out on our porch, and saw what I thought was a white rose on our already-done, pink rosebush…On closer inspection, I realized it’s a white clematis. We have purple clematis growing here, but not nearly this tall – this is up about 8 to 9 feet in the rosebush. And it’s bloomed in November.I haven’t pulled the plants out of the garden yet, and noticed my artichoke plants still looked alive after hard frosts and one day with a dusting of snow. (I have not seen them since we got our current snow).My Brussels sprouts. Update on these – since this picture, we dropped into the 20s. These plants were dead as of yesterday, and the sprouts never got bigger than about dime sized. The plants were completely frozen. I gave them to the chickens, they seemed to like them even though they were frozen.Our yard – all the trees have lost their leaves.The chicken coop with the leafless forest behind it.The chickens enjoying the sunshine on one of our last nice warmish days.The chickens in the sunAnother pic of the chickens.
I’ll get some new pics soon to show you what our snow looks like. I’ll also update on the baby bunnies – they have grown a lot in 2 weeks.
A few days ago, I noticed that my pregnant doe was starting to pull fur from her neck for her nest. She has a nest box, and I gave her a bunch of straw to put in it, but she moved the straw to just outside the nest box, and mixed her fur into that “nest.”
The next morning, I was feeding the rabbits and heard a squeak. I then saw that the straw in the nest was moving; she had her babies! I have been reluctant to check on them, because I was nervous that I may make the mother freak out and kill them; then today I read that you should check on them right away in case there are any dead babies. After reading that, I went out and checked. I believe they are all alive – we have 6-8 babies. They were pretty squirmy and hairless, but all moving around. They are all about 3 days old today. It was a bit hard to get a picture because they are so squirmy, but here is one:
You can see a little face peeking out here.
Here’s mama – she didn’t seem to be too upset that I checked out her babies.
The mother bunny.
Here’s the father rabbit:
Here’s the dad.
Here is our other doe:
Our white doe.
We gave the other doe and the buck each a nest box as well, just because we thought it may help them keep warm as our weather gets colder. It has been cooling down lately. Yesterday it was very windy and we actually had some snow come down, but the snow melted as it hit the ground. We’re also planning on putting some tarps up around the hutch to block the wind. I think I may wait to mate the rabbits anymore till spring. I don’t think the white doe is pregnant – she was with both the buck and the other doe on the way home, when I was bringing them to my house, but I think they were all too scared to get down to business. I will wait and see though.
We started building a hutch last week, and finally finished up this morning. We moved it into its new home, inside our empty wood shed. We’ll find it a better home in the spring, but we thought this would be the best place for it for the winter.
We built it with scrap wood and things we found around the house. Here are some pictures of the hutch:
Here is our completed Hutch. It is on top of some old fish tank stands my dad made.We have three compartments so each of our rabbits has their own space. They are divided by hardware cloth.The floors for each compartment are some bread trays (trays that bread came to our store on, when I was a kid). These were still hanging out in a storage building we own. They slide out for cleaning. They have holes so that the rabbits’ pee and poo can escape out, but it’s more of a flat floor so it should be more comfortable for their feet than fencing or hardware cloth would be.Here is one of the fish tank stands we have the hutch on. There are shelves underneath, in case we need to put something there. We chose them because they were already built, they were tall enough, and very strong.Here is the view from our side door – we can just look out and make sure everything is ok at night. We have a dimmed light on all the time, and a motion sensor in case predators come in the yard to check them out. Plus our dogs would bark at anything out there.
Here the bunnies are enjoying their new abode. Please forgive the fuzziness of the pictures, I thought they would turn out better but the bunnies move a lot.
My buck in his new home.Here is our white doe in her new spot.Here is our black, already pregnant doe, hopefully getting her nest box ready for the babies (due in the next few days). Last time I gave her a nest box she used it as a litter box. We will see how she does with it.
So far it’s going well. We are going to make some wooden nest boxes for all three of the rabbits, so that they have somewhere to go to get more warm. The metal nest box I gave to my doe is ok for now, but I worry that it would be too cold in winter. I have the hutch facing the house so that they won’t get as much wind in their cages, but I plan on putting tarp up or something when we get really windy cold days in the winter.
I had originally planned on getting rabbits this summer for my farm. Over the last few months, with all the projects and things we had going on, I had given up on it for this year. I figured next year we’d build a hutch and look for rabbits then. I occasionally browse the Farm & Garden section of our local Craigslist just to see what is out there, and I hadn’t seen what we were looking for anyway. My plan was to get 2 females (does) and a male (buck). Most ads I’ve seen have been for one rabbit, or one rabbit that was only for use as a pet (or like a floppy eared bunny that wasn’t really a meat rabbit anyway). Last Thursday, I saw an ad for exactly what we wanted: 2 does, a buck, and a hutch, for $30. It was in Marquette which is a couple hours away. I immediately called, and told the guy I’d take them if he could wait till Saturday for me to come get them. He agreed.
As soon as I got off the phone, I realized I had no way to get the rabbit hutch, since our truck is currently not working. I called the guy back and asked for the dimensions of the hutch. My car is a station wagon (Toyota Matrix) and the seats fold completely flat. I can fit large things in my car, IF I can get them in the door. From the dimensions, it sounded like I could fit the hutch. I called my cousin who actually lives near the craiglist guy, and he said he could help with his truck, at least to get the hutch, and then we could try to get the hutch into my car at his house.
I drove 2 hours in the pouring rain, to my cousin’s house. From there, we went to get the rabbits. We got the rabbits in the truck, and the hutch in the bed of the truck. We got back to my cousin’s house, and there was no way we could get the hutch in my car – the opening is not large enough – it was only a couple inches too small, but with the pouring rain, we weren’t going to try to mess with it. So my cousin is holding the hutch for me, for when my truck is fixed.
I stopped at Tractor Supply on the way home, to get the rabbits food and see if they had something I could house them in temporarily, while we build a hutch – the truck will take a little longer, but we can build a hutch this week. I found 2 cages, and that is where the rabbits are for now; of course they are inside, because the cages are too flimsy to be out in the weather, with predators about.
Now for the bunnies:
Here are the rabbits in their temporary cages, in my art/livestock room.
There is a black female (I guess she is a Rex), a white female, and a big grey buck. The guy I got them from had the black female together with the male. He said she’s due to have a litter soon (within 2 weeks). We were going to get them settled in before breeding them; so this puts a bit more of a rush on things.
We started building a hutch for them yesterday, it will have 3 compartments so they all have their own cage, and it’s wood on 3 sides, with cage material front doors. There will be hardware cloth/cage material in between each compartment so they will still be able to see each other. We are using wood on 3 sides to help keep wind and blowing snow/rain off of them. For the floor, we are using some “bread trays” that I found. When I was a kid, the downstairs of our house was a store, and the bread came to the store on these large plastic trays. My parents used those as the floors of rabbit hutches when I was a kid, because you can slide them out for easier cleaning. I like that the floor has openings, but it’s smoother than using hardware cloth or cage-material flooring, so it should be nicer for the rabbits to sit/stand/lay on than cage material would be. We just need to make/attach the doors, and make some legs, and add the roof. We are using some metal shelving I found for the roof, so they will have a sloped metal roof – the snow will slide off the back of the hutch. I will do another post with pictures of the hutch soon.
Back to the rabbits… We have not really named them yet, but since they are our breeding stock we actually are going to allow ourselves to name them. My son has picked a couple of names for the buck, who is his favorite; He keeps changing his mind on the name though.
Here is the buck:
The big gray buck. He is the size of our (large) cat.
Here’s another one of the buck:
Another big grey pic
Here are the ladies:
Here is our black Rex doe. She has a big scar on her head, with actual teeth marks. She looks like she got in some kind of rabbit fight at some point. It’s healed up but it looks like possibly a permanent scar. She has extremely soft fur, and I read that Rex rabbits are usually bred for their fur. She feels like a squirmy fur coat when you hold her.Here is our white doe, she has pink eyes, but she has splashes of grey on her nose and ears.
Here they are just relaxing in their cages:
Just chillin…
So, in the end, I now have rabbits for my farm. I did what I didn’t want to do, and got animals with nowhere to really put them – I do have temporary housing, but that was so not my plan. It will work out, the hutch will be good, and should be ready in the next few days. I have a nest box that I gave to the ladies, for the black doe to start nesting in, but she used it as a litter box. Maybe in her permanent home (or closer to her due date) she’ll start pulling her fur out to line the box instead of pooping in it. We are going to put the rabbit hutch in our chicken pen (the rabbits were near a lot of chickens and ducks at their last home), for ease of access this winter.
Fall is definitely here. We’ve had lower temps – 50s and 60s. We got a touch of frost – I saw some on the grass one morning. But I think my house is in a bit of a microclimate – in our town there was a hard frost at the end of September, where you had to scrape frost off your windows. We didn’t get that here – I’m only about 12 miles outside of town, but the way our property is situated we sometimes are spared from the frost. I was worried things would die, so when we got the hard-frost warnings, I harvested everything in the gardens that was anywhere near being ready. I didn’t worry about things that can deal with frost, like Kale. And then nothing happened, my plants that were left out there are all still doing fine. Here’s a photo tour of how things are looking lately.
Here’s what my garden looks like – a tangled mess with not much left for picking.
I’m debating on whether to pick everything out, and cover it all with compost now, or wait and do that all in the spring. Either way, the soil will have a layer of plants between it and the snow; I’ve read that is better for any mycelium networks (which are very helpful for your plants) – if you leave bare soil any beneficial mycelium that may be there can die, and you are depleting your soil. That is why people plant cover crops – I don’t really want to do that because we really don’t have time. Last year, we got snow at the beginning of November. I don’t think a cover crop would have time to sprout and grow. So I may just use my already-there crops as “cover crops”; then in spring, I’ll pile on compost, and till it all in. (I’ll still have to pull big stems out, like the old corn and sunflowers).
Our trees are very colorful – they had just started changing last week and then suddenly everything’s orange, red, and yellow (with a touch of green).
Here are some of the trees in our yard.Another picture of those trees.Here are the maple trees that we get sap from in the spring.
Most of my plants in the garden are on their way out for the winter. Most of my sunflowers are spent, and have seeds that the chickadees have been enjoying. I found this one that is a late bloomer. It’s really tall but it fell over so it’s laying on the ground:
My maybe-last sunflower for the year.
My marigolds are still going strong. They are so pretty, I love the orange color of these:
My marigolds.
Our apple trees are doing well. The biggest problem is that most of the good looking apples are way up on the tree. I’m planning on picking a bunch more this weekend. I picked a few several weeks ago and made apple butter. I’m planning on making some more (since it’s delicious) and also drying some apples for snacks.
One of the apple trees.A closer view of those yummy apples.
One thing I planted this year, just to try, was Amaranth. I found out you can cook the seeds up kind of like rice. I would like to try it but they are not ready yet. The “flowers” are supposed to drop their seeds – you can test it by running the flowers in your hands, and if the seeds drop into your hand they are ready to pick. Mine are not there yet. But they look like they are on their way:
Here’s one of my Amaranth, it is a good 8-9 feet tall.Here is the same plant, I leaned it over so I could get a detail of the flower.
I got my hens some “chicken aprons” – they can wear them and it’s supposed to protect their backs from the roosters’ shenanigans. I had the roosters separated but it’s getting colder, and I was worried that if the roosters are separate, they can’t actually do their job of protecting the hens. So they are all together now. Most of my barer backed ladies are now wearing these aprons:
Here is one of my australorp hens wearing her apron. It doesn’t help her wing “elbows”, as you can see here, but her back is protected.
I also thought the aprons would help keep the hens a little warmer this winter. Some of my hens still have completely bare backs, and I was worried about winter because with no feathers there, they would be too exposed to the cold. They work pretty well, I do have a few hens that these seem a bit too big for. I ordered some standard size aprons from someone on Amazon. They do have some smaller ones, I may have to get some of those. Mine are all “standard” breeds but some are on the smallish side. I have a barred rock hen that these didn’t fit – it’s like the middle bit of the apron is too wide to fit between her shoulders, so she just kept getting tangled up in it. I only tried it on her for an hour or two, and then I had to take it off.
My escape artist chicken decided to pose today for me, I got some really nice pictures of her:
Here she is.Here’s another picture.
She doesn’t have a name except “Escape artist” because if anyone gets out, it is usually her. And she gets out almost every other day. She must fly out, but then she can’t fly back in for some reason so I have to catch her and put her back in the run. She sleeps in the rafters of the coop now, and she’s actually gotten one of her friends (my Cornish hen) to sleep up there with her.
Thanks for checking out my Fall farm pics. I do like fall, but it always leads to winter, which I’m not really looking forward to.
My tiny u.p. farm 