birds

A new group of friends for the farm

Jen PowellLeave a comment

We got new chickens! If you are a longtime follower of the blog, or have read my old posts, you know that I had chickens for about 5 years, until spring of 2020. We really enjoyed them, but it had gotten too much to take care of them in the wintertime, and was very expensive at the time with all our birds. I think we had 20 chickens or so, plus some ducks when we gave our birds to the neighbor. It’s been a few years now and I missed having them. Then this spring with the price of eggs and everything going on I decided to get some, but only a few. I ordered 6 female chicks. They arrived at the beginning of June. They are just over 2 weeks old now. Here are some pictures of my hens.

We ordered 6 from a mail-order place: 2 easter eggers, 2 fibro-easter eggers (full black chickens), and 2 black/blue splash chickens. When they arrived, one had died in transit, and then one died the next day. The chicken company refunded me for those two, and I went and picked up 2 more hens at Tractor supply, some Buff Orpingtons. I wanted to make sure everyone was the same age, and not have to introduce anyone later. I’m not sure what kind of chicken everyone above is, except the 2 yellow ones are my Buff Orpingtons. We’ll have to wait and see how everyone feathers out to know what is what.

My old coop from before was a converted old sauna building, that is now kind of falling apart and is mostly just used for storage. I decided not to use that and ordered a small coop for my hens. It came as prefabricated parts that we then assembled. I think it will be nice for my hens once they are ready to go outside. The coop came with a small run, and it’s light enough that we plan to move it to our front porch for winter time. That will make it easier for us to take care of them in the winter, and keep them out of some of the snow. Here is our coop:

I also have some predator proofing stuff to add to the bottom to keep creatures from digging underneath – we haven’t added that yet. We just set it up and added some waterproofing. I used to let my chickens free range all over our property, but that got annoying – I had to fence in all my plants everywhere because the chickens used flower beds as dust baths. If I feel that they need more room to roam I may add some temporary movable fencing around the coop and run, so I can give them a little more foraging space.

I’m excited for our new little flock. They are all healthy and doing well. I have another month or so before they are ready for the outdoor coop, but I think they will really like it.

A tiny nest

Jen Powell2 Comments

My husband was out feeding the rabbits and saw this tiny nest up in a tree.  I got some pictures of it. We’re not sure what kind of nest it is.  It’s empty at the moment, of course.  I said we should see if anyone comes to re-use it this year.

nest 1
It’s kind of hard to see here – the nest is about 12 feet up into the tree, maybe about 3 inches wide, and it seems to be tied on to the branch by a few strings/bits of grass.

 

CAM02031
Here’s a closer view, this seems to be the back.  When I went to the other side, it looks like there’s a tiny hole at the top 1/4 of the nest for the birds to get in and out.

I’ve never seen a nest hanging like this. I’m excited to see if anyone claims it in the spring.

Birds at the feeder! (And we got snow – meh.)

Jen Powell1 Comment

It’s been nice and spring-like, and most of our snow melted.  But then it started snowing last night – we’ve gotten a couple inches so far, and they are predicting 3-9″ by tomorrow night.  Hopefully our warmer temps will mean it won’t stick around long.   I suppose, it is only late March, and this is the U.P.   The birds at our front porch feeder have not been stopped by the snow, they are very active today.  I got some cool shots out our front window.  I wish the colors of some of these would show up in my pics – I think it’s mostly chickadees and finches (I think), but there are a couple of red birds that I found out are common redpolls.  This is their southern winter range, in the summer they go up near the arctic.

Here are some of the cool pictures I got today:

Birds at the feeder
Birds at the feeder

Birds at the feeder - 2
Birds at the feeder – 2

Birds at the feeder - 3
Birds at the feeder – 3

Birds at the feeder - 4
Birds at the feeder – 4

Birds at the feeder - 5
Birds at the feeder – 5

We get daily visits by squirrels and chipmunks too, but they were not here while I was taking pictures.  They like to scavenge on the ground for the sunflower seeds that the birds drop. We actually had some deer visit the porch one day in the winter, they were eating sunflower seeds as well.