My tiny u.p. farm

Chick time is coming early

March 26, 2016March 26, 2016Jen Powell1 Comment

I got an incubator this year, so that I can hatch some new chickens. I wanted one that I could hatch 50 eggs in. I originally was planning on buying a Brinsea – they have a nice 50-egg model, but it’s like $500-$600. That ended up being out of my budget. I went on the Backyard Chickens forums, and some people were recommending the Hova-bator Genesis 1588. It ended up being a little over $200 – I bought an automatic egg turner with it. It’s got digital settings for heat and it’s easy to set the humidity. With the egg turner we can just set it and not mess with it very often.

Here’s the egg turner. You can get different ones for different kinds of birds. This was the one for chicken eggs.

My plan was to start hatching in mid-April, so that we would have warm enough outside temps by the time the chicks come that they wouldn’t be brooding in the house very long. I opened up the incubator box last week to make sure the thing works, and to set it up. The incubator comes preset to the correct temperatures, and for humidity you just put water into certain water channels inside it, depending on what humidity level you need. It came with very clear instructions. While reading, I found that they recommend you do a test hatch first, with a small number of eggs, to make sure you don’t need to tweak anything before you try hatching a bunch of eggs, or expensive eggs. It turns out that we have time to do a test hatch.

I grabbed 8 eggs this week and they are sitting in the incubator. They should hatch April 12th. Here they are in the incubator:

incubator with eggs — My test hatch – there are 7 varying shades of brown eggs, and one white egg from Escape Artist (my hen who likes to escape all the time).

So far the temp has been hovering in the 99.5-99.8 degree range, which I believe is a good level. We will see if we need to tweak it depending on how this hatch goes. If all goes well I will do my large hatch after April 12th. I will be hatching eggs from our chickens, and I also found someone near here that has Black Copper Maran (chocolate shelled eggs) and Olive Egger eggs for sale – I spoke with them and they said they should have some in mid April that I can buy. We also have a friend who has Easter Eggers (blue eggs), and he’s going to save some eggs for me for that week as well. I’m excited to possibly get some hens that lay other colors of eggs.

I feel like we are a baby bird factory. With the ducks we are brooding, and now chicks in the incubator, and another (larger) batch of chicks later, we are very busy.

Our ducks are growing very fast. We’ve had them a week as of today. I believe they have doubled in size. I have changed their brooder box 4 times – the first two times because they needed more room, and the last two because they are slobs. We’ve been using cardboard boxes, two taped together, with plastic garbage bags taped around the bottom (to keep the floor dry). Ducks love to play in their water. A lot. I was using a chick waterer at first, and then I devised a waterer using a disposable tupperware container – I cut holes in the lid so they can get their bills in, but not step in the water. The waterer is sitting on a plastic tray in the brooder box. The ducks still manage to get everything soaked. They get water out with their bill, and then dibble it all over each other, and the plastic tray, and then they splash in the plastic tray. So then their bedding (we’re using paper towels) gets soaked. And they poop a lot just like chickens. So we are changing bedding a few times a day. I think I will enjoy the chicks more this time because they are not as messy as the ducks. Chicks poop a lot but they don’t play in their water nearly as much.

Here are some newer pictures of the ducks, I think they were upset I was taking pictures here, I woke them up from a nap and they were freaking out a little.

Ducks!

March 19, 2016Jen Powell2 Comments

We were at Tractor Supply today picking up animal food, and saw that they had chicks and ducklings in. We are hatching our own chicks this year, but we saw the ducks and decided to get some. My husband has talked about wanting ducks for a couple years, and I thought it would be fun to add some ducks to our farm. We got 12 Pekin ducks. Pekins are supposed to be really good for both eggs and meat, but I’ve heard they are very tame and can follow you around the yard like a little cloud of dogs. I like the idea of that. Ducklings peep a lot just like chicks, and brooding them is very similar to brooding chicks. They also eat chick starter, and can be fed and housed with chickens. We’ll probably give them their own space, but time will tell. Below are some pictures of our new little fuzzy flock:

ducks 2

ducks 3

sleeping but upset i disturbed them — They soaked their first brooder box (a cardboard box) with their water drinking, so they got a new plastic bin brooder box tonight. They seem happier, although they weren’t so happy when I came to take a picture. You can see a couple with open beaks complaining here.

St. Patty’s Day Pummelling

March 17, 2016March 18, 2016Jen PowellLeave a comment

All of our snow was gone… I knew that we could still get snow, since it’s only March. We got pummeled with snow last night. This morning we woke up to a huge mess. The weather people said that we were expecting 8-10 inches. Today when I went out to feed the rabbits and chickens (who are NOT happy about this turn of events), the snow came over my boots. So I took a stick and measured it. At 8 am we had received 13.5 inches of snow. And it was still coming down. Luckily I don’t think we got much more.

In the night we knew we were getting some snow – we have a metal roof, and while we were in bed we kept waking up to strange noises. We realized that it was snow falling off the roof – snow that had piled up on the roof was falling off of the roof in little avalanches, since it wasn’t very cold outside. We didn’t realize just how much snow we had gotten till we got up this morning.

Because there was so much snow, the trees were weighed down – which means that we lost power for most of today. It’s back on now (which is why I can finally post this). We dug the cars out and parked them across the street so my husband could plow the driveway. The problem is that under this snow, we had mud since it had been so warm. Our truck is currently stuck in the mud at the back of the driveway. So that’s another thing we have to do in the next few days – get someone to come pull the truck out of the mud. Here are some photos of our big St. Patty’s day snow.

buried cars — Here you can see our cars buried. Yes, there are cars under that.

out front — Here is our street view this morning.

buried car — A view of our driveway from the front porch. The red bit is my car buried by snow.

fence — Our backyard dog run. It looks like the snow we got on Christmas, but I don’t think we got this much then.

snowy woods — Our driveway (and the rabbit hutches/wood shed) after our plowing attempt.

snow — Snow in the dog run. This comes up to my largest dog, Atat’s, belly. So the other dogs are buried when they go out in this.

cedar 2 — Our garage and our spruce trees. You can see how the snow is weighing everything down. The rose bush in the middle is very saggy.

I hope it goes away soon. I was so excited by the spring weather we had.

Update – we got our truck unstuck. We just had to wait for the mud to freeze, and it was easy to get out.

March Melt

March 12, 2016Jen Powell2 Comments

We have had a warmup lately, and most of our snow is now gone. We still have some swaths of it in the yard, and the snowbanks are still there, but it’s mostly melted. It is only March, so we could still get a huge snowstorm, but it feels like Spring. Temps have been at least in the 30s during the day for the last week, and today it’s currently 63 degrees and sunny. Today was a good day to clean out animal housing. I cleaned out the rabbit cages and the chicken coop. Here are some pictures of our melty, muddy yard, and of the chickens enjoying the warm weather.

yard 1 — Our side yard. It’s hard to tell here but it’s very wet. It will turn to mud for awhile as the ground thaws and we start getting rain.

yard 2 — Some of our remaining snowbanks.

The chickens out scratching in the yard.

scratching in the old dirt — Here they are scratching through their old bedding that I put out in the yard. They have to check out any piles to make sure they didn’t miss anything yummy.

Here they are taking a dust bath in the old bedding pile. They were taking a dust bath in it when it was inside as well, before I could shovel it outside.

enjoying outside — I had most of their coop stuff outside here, while I was cleaning inside. The big stick is a perch, and the sawhorse is another one that is usually inside the coop. They are enjoying hanging around outside.

splash 3 — The rooster right in front here is Splash, my Splash Maran.

splash — Here is Splash crowing at me for taking pictures.

Here is Dorko, my Dorking rooster. (You can tell I’m not the best at coming up with names for them). He is now larger than the other two roosters. Very handsome.

I don’t know if this warm weather will stick around for good yet, but I’m going to enjoy it while it’s here.

Indoor Winter Gardening

February 27, 2016Jen PowellLeave a comment

In winter I would go bananas if I didn’t have green things growing, so I have a lot of houseplants. I have a few sunny windows in my house, most get partial sun. I have two windows in my bedroom that are south facing. Unfortunately, my cat Wizard likes to lay in one. He would eat any plants I have there, so I only get to use the other window, near my dresser, for plants. But when I start garden seeds inside in spring, he gets temporarily banished from his window. Here are some pictures of my indoor garden:

onions 1 — Here is a pot of green onions. I grew them from old green onions that I had bought at the store. I just left the roots on the bottom base, popped them in some dirt, and they are growing well.

onions 2 — Here’s my other pot of green onions. It’s overshadowed by my Christmas Cactus which is now blooming.

cactus — Here is my fully opened Christmas Cactus flower. I had one years ago that had red flowers. I got this one from my boss a month or so ago, and it’s now blooming. I didn’t know they could get this pale of flowers. They are very pretty.

sink plants — Here is my kitchen sink garden, which includes the onions and the cactus above. It’s a west facing window, so it gets sun in the later part of the day. I need to get some hanging baskets for the spider plants in this picture.

Here is my art room garden. The window is a north facing window, but the sun does seem to come in in the early and later part of the day. There is also an east facing window off to the right, not pictured, so they get some light from that side as well. These plants have seemed to do well in here.

Here is my dresser garden, in the south facing window. I usually keep this dresser full so the cat doesn’t jump up and eat the plants. The spider plant on the right had a long offshoot for awhile, it was hanging almost to the floor. The cat thought it was a toy and wrecked the baby on the end. So now I make sure the offshoots aren’t hanging off the dresser.

tall plants — This super tall plant is a Mother of Thousands. It was not nearly this tall when I got it, about a year ago. It has grown quite tall. It will need a new pot soon, and maybe a way to put it lower so it isn’t touching the ceiling.

mother of thousands — Here is the top of the Mother of Thousands. It is touching the ceiling of my bedroom.

tomatos — These are some House Tomato seedlings – they are supposed to do well and actually set fruit in the house, in a pot in a sunny window. They are about ready to go into their gallon pots.

Snowy Farm in February

February 14, 2016Jen Powell2 Comments

Today it’s cold – about 4 degrees F. It is supposed to get up into the 20s though today. I thought it was a nice sunny day for some pictures of our snow. It looks pretty but I can’t wait for it to melt away. Our side door is under a spot where our metal roof drops snow. From plowing that and the rest of the snow away from the door, our driveway is packed down enough where we have to go down to the door. If you’re standing in the driveway you are a few inches above where you would be if you were inside the house, if that makes sense. I hope you enjoy my photo tour.

snowy side yard — Our snowbanks in the back as you’re heading to the chicken coop.

snowy coop — The snowbank in front of the chicken coop. We have a trail to the actual door so we can get in. Our chicken yard gate is not closing very well right now, but the chickens don’t really come out – they don’t seem to want to walk in the snow. The building through the woods is our neighbor’s house.

rabbit hutches — Our rabbit hutch in the woodshed. We have a blanket that usually covers the rabbits when it’s very cold, but there was no wind today so I let them have some fresh air. They should get some sunshine too once the sun rises more.

snowbanks — Our snowbank on the side of the house near the woods.

squirrel tracks — Squirrel tracks! They come to eat the seeds the birds knock out of our bird feeder.

snowy street — A view of the road. The old building in this picture is our old hall, across the street.

snow by door — The side of our house. The snow gets really deep around the house because of our metal roof – the snow drops off in little avalanches when the temps warm up. Sometimes there are chunks of ice in it – you don’t want to be standing there when it falls.

birds under cedar — A view of our yard under the cedar tree. You can see a couple of birds on the ground. They are waiting for me to move so they can come back to the feeder.

yard under snow — Our side yard, under a foot or so of snow. In the distance under our apple trees you can see deer tracks – the disturbed snow – they come to try to find apples under the snow. We’ve had them try to shake the trees before also. There are still some apples up at the top.

Mid winter chickens

January 31, 2016January 31, 2016Jen Powell7 Comments

025 — The chickens venturing outside, waiting for me to come in and feed them.

We’ve had a couple of decently warm days. Yesterday they were calling for a high of 37 degrees Fahrenheit, but we got to 48. Today we were at least in the high 30s most of the day. The days have been getting longer, and my chickens have been laying more eggs. Their production had dropped way down in December, but it’s gone up now. We were getting 3-5 eggs daily earlier this month, it’s now up to about 7-9 a day.

The chickens decided to venture out today a little. We also cleaned out the coop – it was easier with the warm temperatures. I had tried a couple weeks ago with highs in the 20s and their poop was frozen to the floor, so I just had to add bedding. Today I was able to actually scrape everything out before adding new bedding. Getting the old stuff over to the compost bin wasn’t happening though; we have a huge snowbank in the way, from plowing our driveway. I have the old coop mess over to the side in a bin, and will move it once I can get over there.

I wash eggs on Sundays -we collect through the week and put them in the fridge until we can wash them up all at once. I have noticed my “Escape Artist” chicken is laying again, we’ve had quite a few white eggs this past week. She’s the only white-egg layer.

I’m glad the days are getting longer. I can’t wait for spring.

Thoughts on Rabbit Harvesting

January 30, 2016January 30, 2016Jen Powell2 Comments

We raise our rabbits for meat. We have three adults, and I got them this past fall so that we can have meat for our family. One small step towards our greater goal of being food independent. Although I would have preferred to wait until spring to breed our rabbits, one of the does was pregnant when I got them in late October. That left us with 7 kits ready for harvest at the beginning of January.

The second week of January, I harvested four of the kits. They were 9 weeks old at that point. I had been looking into what the most humane way of killing them would be – my parents raised rabbits when I was a kid, and my mom told me that they had always used a .22 pistol – it’s fast, easy on the rabbit since they feel nothing – it’s over in an instant. That’s what we ended up doing. A shot in the back of the head, and it’s over. It was a lot easier than I thought. It’s never easy to take an animal’s life, but I feel we did it in the most humane way. I also thanked them each for their sacrifice to us before taking them.

The first four took me a couple of hours from start to finish – from culling to having meat ready. I’m not going to go into detail here, but they are pretty easy to process – especially compared to chickens. It is still quite a bit of work, and it was cold out that day, so I decided to wait to take the other three at a later date. For the first four, we got about 6.5 lbs of meat – I weighed one beforehand, and it was about 4 lbs live weight. I got 1.5 to 1.75 lbs of meat from each kit.

A couple weeks later I culled the other three. I again got about 6 lbs of meat – they had grown a little more – one produced about 2 lbs of meat and the other two were just shy of 2 lbs each. I’d heard that you want to harvest them from 8-10 weeks old, because beyond that you are losing out on efficiency in terms of a meat harvested to food spent ratio. Also older rabbits tend to have a tougher meat texture. The first four we did at 9 weeks, the other three were 11 weeks.

One thing that made this whole thing easier was that we had not handled the babies a lot – they weren’t very friendly. They saw us as food and water providers. We try to pet the adults, our breeding stock, when we go out to feed them. But our plans are not to cull them – someday when they aren’t good breeding stock we may have to rethink that. I think in the summer the babies would get more handling, since it will be nice out and I’m sure my son will want to play with some. It may get a little harder then. But it’s kind of the same with our chickens. I’ve culled roosters that I really liked – I had reasons that they needed to be culled though – some were aggressive, or aggressive to hens. It’s all part of farming, and processing your own food. My son was interested in watching the harvest a bit, but did not participate at all. I always try to impart this lesson to him – “This is where our food comes from. If you buy a chicken or other meat at the store, it had a life once, and someone else killed it. At least we know our animals had the best life we could give them when they were alive.”

We are going to wait to breed the adults again until spring. We aren’t planning on having any rabbit kits during the winter anymore. Winter makes it harder to take care of everyone – water freezing, and me being worried they are cold – I don’t feel it’s fair to the does to make them have litters in the winter. I’ve planned out a breeding schedule for summer, so we should be able to get about 3 litters from each of the two does throughout the warmer months. I have an uncle that keeps saying we should get more. I think that the adults we have are plenty for now.

A tiny nest

January 24, 2016January 24, 2016Jen 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.

Disgruntled Rabbits

January 6, 2016Jen PowellLeave a comment

I went out to feed the rabbits the other afternoon, and the door of my white bunny’s hutch fell off when I opened it. I had to quickly figure out where to put her while I figured out her door. We have a cage outside that we usually put them in while we clean their hutches, but it is currently covered in snow. I was in a rush, so I thought, “oh, I’ll put her in with the black female, since they lived together before.” That was a huge mistake.

They immediately started fighting – the black rabbit (her name is Fire) was not happy about the other one (Wind) being put in HER cage. She attacked and I heard crazy squealing, and I quickly grabbed Wind out of there. Phew. There was rabbit fur everywhere. Fire even bit me as I was pulling Wind out of her cage. Luckily nobody was hurt, but they did not seem very happy.

Here are the fighting rabbits:

fire the black rabbit — Fire, the angry bunny

wind the white bunny — Wind, the happy-to-be-out-of-Fire’s-cage bunny

I brought Wind into the house, and put her in a cat carrier while I went to look for the cordless drill to fix her door. The piece of the door that the hinges were attached to had split at that spot from the weight of the door. Poor rabbit – the dogs were trying to see what I was carrying around the house with me. I was able to keep them away most of the time, but I’m sure she was not happy. I found the drill, and then brought her outside with me to figure out her door.

I then realized that we have an empty hutch that I could have put her in in the first place. The hutch that the babies are in is 2-sided. We enclosed the side that they are in, to block the cold winds and snow, but the other side is still there, just not enclosed. I wouldn’t want to house her in there for very long, but it works in a pinch. So if this ever happens again, I have that option.

At that point my husband heard me dealing with the mess, and came out to help me with the door. We got it back on with a new larger hinge, and Wind is safely back in her hutch now.

I told my coworker about the rabbit fight. She sent me the below video – I’ll have to get my chickens involved in crowd control in the future: