Winter Happenings and Spring Awakening

This winter was long, cold and snowy.  I am so relieved to be at the other end enjoying Spring and all of Spring's possibilities.  The growing season, the building season, the play outside, eat outside season.  This season fills me with hope and happiness.

This winter was hard on the surrounding wildlife.  Towards the end, we saw deer in our backyard every evening.  Some nights we would count up to ten deer.  At first it was neat, but then they started to eat our freshly planted trees, and rip up the yard.  They must have been getting very hungry and desperate.  Overall, it was very neat, and now we have huge cages around the trees.  There were so many deer, that when you visit our backyard, you must be careful where you step.

A few weeks ago, I started my tomato seeds and brussel sprouts.  I was very excited to see how the tomato seeds germinated, since these were the seed I'd saved previously (Saving tomato seeds).

They did very well.  They germinated better than the store bought seeds.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any grow lights set up, so my tomatoes are limping along right now, but suspect I'll have nice amount of started tomato plants for myself, just not enough to share like I usually do.

I also started stevia and mint.  I know mint is quite a prolific plant once it is started, but it is a bit of a challenge to start it.  Both of these seed are very fine, and need to only go on the surface of moist soil.  The germination rate seems to be low, but I am very excited to have my very own stevia plant.

At the end of March I planted my cold weather vegetables.  I  have peas, carrots, beets, spinach and onions all in the ground.  The spinach is starting to show some green leaves. In a few weeks, I will no longer be paying $6 for a pound of organic spinach at the grocery store.

My chickens are doing well (most of them).  They are all laying.  We are now getting brown, blue and small white eggs.  And we are getting enough to give some away!  It's all very eggs-citing.  (Geez! sorry about that one, I couldn't help myself!)

As I alluded to earlier, Most of my chickens are doing well.  One is no longer with us.  Beatrice, our White Sultan, was killed.  We aren't sure what happened to her.  I think she may have been attacked by the other chickens.  While it is sad, this is what happens when you have any animals.

So slowly but surely, our piece of land is coming alive.  The grass is greener and the chickens are happier.  All is well.

Christmas chickens

We are all decorated for Christmas!! The most important part was decorating the coop of course!

I guess all the festivities caused one of the Easter Eggers to lay eggs out of joy!  We got our first blue egg, the one on the left is from a Silver Laced Wyandotte.

With all this festivities, we took Jaxson to see Santa for the first time.  What a festive time!

Our First Eggs

Yay!! Our old girls (two asides: 1 - by old I mean 6 months old, 2 - probably just one, right now) laid her first egg!! It was a long time coming.  I have read that they should start laying around 4 months.  Again, these girls are illiterate.  Or they just don't read the things I am reading.  Either way, I got my first egg on Sunday, December 1.

We can tell that the egg is not from the Easter Eggers.  They are supposed to lay colorful eggs.  Blue or Pink or somewhere in between.  This is a brown egg.  So it was either from Betty ( my old Jersey Giant, my favorite) or Psycho (Silver Laced Wyandotte)

In the picture below, the egg on the left is from one of our beloved chickens, the one on the right was bought from our Egg Lady.  You can see the size difference.  As the chicken grows and matures, the eggs she produces will get bigger as well.

Chris and I have not enjoyed our homegrown eggs, but Jaxson has.  He enjoyed our first egg as a bedtime snack.  And he seemed pretty happy about it. Chris and I look forward to eating our chickens' eggs as they come.  The picture is grainy, so my apologies, but the little man in it is so adorable.  That more than makes up for it. 

Intro to the Older Chickens

I have talked a lot about my baby chicks.  Mostly because they are so cute and they are growing up in my office, so I see them a lot.  I have been remiss not to mention my other laying ladies.  I have five girls who are over five months old.  From what I've read and a farmer I've talked to, they should be laying eggs for us right now.  Unfortunately, they did not talk to that farmer and did not read those things.  We have no eggs.  I will be sure to let you know when we do.

Let me introduce you to my older bunch.

They are enjoying the warmth of their coop.  When this picture was taken, it was quite cold outside.  You can see the roosts.  The black one on the left is Betty.  She is the sweetest and most bold.  The two brown ones in the middle and the one on the far right are Easter Eggers.  They should lay blue tinted eggs (when they start laying!).  The black and white girl is a silver laced Wyandotte.  We have named her Psycho for all of her antics while in the brooder.  She has calmed down quite a bit, but has not lost her name.

Chicken Coop

I have some older chickens that live outside right now.  My husband built their coop for them.

My husband, Chris, is a genius.  Most of our materials we got for free, and my husband was able to put it all together to make this rustic coop.  The siding is cedar which he found on Craigslist.  The 4x4 posts which provide the stability were from a fencing company.  When the company tears down an old fence, they just burn it.  We got to reuse it!! Yippee!

The framing is made out of old wooden squares that are used a local soda company.  Here is one of the rectangles:

Chris has oodles of them.  We have used them to raise some beds in the garden and we have cut them up and burned them in our wood stove.  

So those are the frame and the gate.  You can see the gate propped open by the 2x4 on the right side of the coop.  

Chris had to buy the roof and the hardware.  That was it!  Let's take a look on the inside.  The nesting boxes are made out of old shelves in the basement of our house.  Chris made the roof with a slope so that the chickens could not roost (and therefore poop) on top of them.  We also put old golf balls inside of the boxes so that the girls would have an idea where to lay.  I'm not sure if this works, as our girls haven't started laying yet.

One the right, you can see the roosts Chris installed.  This is just old dried out bamboo that we also got for free!!! Darn, we are doing good.  Thank goodness for my husband's handiness.  You can see below the roosts there is bunches of poop.  We do a deep bedding method.  So I simply put more fresh straw on it every few days.  Over the winter, the decomposition will heat the coop, and when it starts to get warmer we will clean out the coop and put the bedding in our gardens and around our trees.  

We bought the waterer and food dispenser, though.  We hung them from the ceiling so that there would be limited dirt and scratchings in the food and water. 

Overall, this entire project was Chris's baby and he did an excellent job.  He has a vision,  and skill and always amazes me.

Jaxson also gave the set-up an inspection and he approved.

Our Visitor and Baby Chicken update

We have had some cold nights over the past weeks.  We have also had some pretty warm days.  But this is the pattern the fringes of the season seem to go.

I found a visitor on our front door this morning:

What a gorgeous bug.  This guy is pretty hardcore, too.  It's like the Great White Shark of bugs.  

I also wanted to share the progress that my little girls are making.  They are still warm in my office, but now they are making a great mess.  There is dust everywhere.  As you can see in the picture below, we have added a fence around the wading pool.  They are small enough to fit through the fence, so this is rather ineffective at keeping them in.  

All of the girls got together to pose for the picture below.  From left to right, we have the Dominique, a Fayoumi, behind her is the White Sultan named Beatrice (I love the White Sultan's spike feather look).  In front of the White Sultan  is a Jersey Giant, who is kind of hiding the other Fayoumi, and lastly, we have another Jersey Giant.  I plan on naming the other Jersey Giants, as they are my favorites, but I have to wait to see more of their personalities.  These birds tend to name themselves.

You can see a really great picture of the Fayoumi below.  Fayoumi's are very tall and thin.  It is so exciting to watch them grow.  As you can see, we also added a roost for them to perch on.  The only one who is really enjoying the roost right now is the Dominique.  

They are all doing really well. In a few weeks, I plan to remove the heat lamp.  Once they get used to that, I will be moving them out to the garage to get used to the cold before their final move outside.  They should begin their lives outside by January.

Day Old Chicks

Right now, we have 5 chickens that were born in the beginning of June.  So they are just under 5 months old.  we have three Easter Eggers, a Silver Laced Wyandotte and a Jersey Giant.  The Jersey Giant is my favorite, so I named her Betty.  The others remain nameless in case we have to eat them.

They are still not producing eggs, but when they do we probably will not be getting enough eggs.  So we decided to beef up our stock.  We received them two days ago.  We ordered 2 Dominiques, 2 Jersey Giants, 2 Fayoumis and one White Sultan.  The White Sultan is really good at nothing except for looking pretty.  So that is our chicken that is strictly a pet.

The first thing we did was set up their brooder. This is the place they are going to live for the next 5 weeks or more, depending on weather.  The brooder is an old wading pool I found in the garbage.  The wading pool is especially good because is has no corners for them to get piled up in.  We hung a heat lamp from the ceiling.  My husband used to have many snakes (yuck - we still have one), this is one of his left over heat lamps. And a feeder and a waterer we bought from Tractor Supply.  I had everything left over from the last time I set up the brooder.

I picked the girls up from the Post Office, and brought them straight home.  Upon opening the box they came in, we saw one of our chicks has died.  These things happen when you have living things, but it is never fun.  We think it was one of the Dominiques.

I took them out of the box, one by one, dipped their beak in their water, and let them enjoy their new surroundings.  At first they all huddled under the heat lamp to warm up from their cool flight.

Then they start to spread out, get something to eat and started to explore. The Dominque is eating while one of the Fayoumi's looks on from the right, and the Jersey Giant hangs out on her left.

We added some water to their food.  At this point in their lives, remaining hydrated is very important.  I'm going to have to clean the whole food dispenser out in a few days to prevent any mold growth.

The Fayoumi is a little camera shy.  You can see that they have brown fluff with leopard spots.

My Dominique is quite the camera hog.  Or maybe just curious.  Whenever I put my camera down to take their picture she came running up front and center.  

The White Sultan which I have yet to name, was camera shy.  I picked her up so I could show her off.  I read they were originally in gardens as an ornamental touch.  So she is my walking flower.  You can see the feathers on her feet already!

This morning, Jaxy came downstairs to hang out with the babies.  He loves them!  Also, you can see in the lower right corner, I added some grit, just some small gravel in the top of an old lid.