Rooster Hill Farm

Living the slow easy life

2010-10-27T13:11:00.000-07:00

So today is day 31 of bunny gestation period and Flopsy was sitting in her nest. She is arranging the straw and appears to be pulling out her fut to make a nest. She is very lazy today we can only hope she is in labor and we will soon have baby bunnies. However, we shall see what happens next.

Yesterday we did some clean up and planted a couple of Buford Hollies around the house.I'm really focusing on simplifying so anything we do not use is going to the dump or to Goodwill. So we've been filling up the

back of Wayne's truck.

I am procrasting on the garden but we have to get this thing under control. Since the twins got here we have not been in the garden. I was surprised to walk out there and find onions, okra & banana peppers were still surviving and producing. I really need to mow between rows and weed the back corner where we grow things in rows and weed out boxes. Sometimes I wonder if life will get back to normal around here?

We have 50 chicks arriving on Wednesday, So Parks will be busy preparing the pool with bedding, food & water and the lights this weekend. We even have a few things to do for our bees too. We still have some more planting to do today, a Camellia and more Hollies (which were on sale!). The garden is over run the bunnies are not producing and my mind keeps drifting to a milk cow or goat. Maybe if we get a goat they can eat all the grass in the garden? Hmmmmm.....

It seems there is always a little something to do around here.Which is good because idle hands are the devils workshop!

Rooster Hill!

Rabbit Update

2010-09-25T22:40:00.000-07:00

So we have had bunnies since about April when Jess & Pearson decided to take them on as a new farm project.We have, however, been unable to breed them successfully to to this point. Flopsy has had litters that have all died.

Breeding attempt 1 Flopsy - The rabbits were born on the wire, fell through the wire (several times) and we put them back in with the rabbit. We put Vicks on the Mama's nose but she never took any interest her kittens. So they all died in less then 8 hours.

Breeding attempt 1 Cottontail - Did not fertilize.

Breeding attempt 2 Flopsy - Flopsy had 1 baby on time and then she had about 6 more babies 2 days later. Rabbits have two uterus so we managed to get both uteri fertilized. This time Flopsy took care of the bunnies for a few days before she abandoned them. Thus, all of these bunnies died within a few days.

Breeding attempt 2 Cottontail - Did not fertilize.

Tonight was breeding attempt 3 Flopsy.

There will not be a 3rd breeding attempt with Cottontail as we sexed the bunnies and determined she was actually a he. So we have tried to breed two males together and we can now confirm this does not work! Oh and by the way Cottontails new name is Bob. Additionally, Bob is for sale on Craigslist so if you need a male rabbit please give us a call!

We've missed you all!

2010-09-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry we've been absent for so long. But as some of you may know we have been trying to foster/adopt for a while and we had a placement of twins. Frankly, life is still not quite back to normal but it is getting more manageable. Despite all of this activity we have some exciting stuff going on around here including Wayne's new Habanero Peach Hot Sauce, which sold out in less then a week.

I'll try to get everything updated as soon as possible!

RH Farm

Our First Farmer's Market

2010-07-18T11:32:00.000-07:00

We had our debut at the Navasota Farmer's Market this week. Boy howdy did we really learn a lot. Since we had to get up really early in the morning and I had not planned well I did not have my trademark list. That was a mistake so I now have list to remember the little things like Chairs!!!! Because, if you plan on being somewhere from 8-1pm you may want to sit down occasionally! I also wrote a very long list of things to do for our table itself to improve the presentation. Another issues is we were late because all of our things were not well organized the night before. Our location on the strip as a result was not very good because many folks did not even make it down to us! I also noted that I lingered at tables that were cute so the 'cutisfication' of the Roosterhill table is also going to be under way. Finally we need to have everything well and cutely labeled for our customers.

We have some plain jams that need to catch folks eyes and we need to highlight our special Candy Jam. So in the next few weeks I will reveal my Farmer's Market lists, new labels and our new look. We are blessed that Charlie Apel created a really cool logo for us and now I just have to use it. Right now we are planning on going bi-weekly to the market, however, we are going two weeks in a row so we can be at market at the same time as our dear Stephanie.

This week we should also have habanero jam as well as habanero hot sauce! But remember you do not have to go all the way to Navasota to enjoy our products we do have in town delivery to BCS available on Tuesdays.

Building the Chicken Nursery/Rabbitry

2010-07-11T10:49:00.000-07:00

Though I've not been good at posting we have been busy around here. One of our recent additions is a chicken nursery/Rabbitry which is attached to the shed. This project was built completely with farm funds. We decided that we wanted to add rabbit meat when we seriously slowed our consumption of pork. (Not for religious reasons but because I read a little too much about commercial pig processing and got grossed out by how they are grown. We cannot afford grass fed pork so less pork it was!) We needed a chick house so we could have a system of 3 houses to hold our chickens at different ages and stages because these birds do not get along well together.

Even though Wayne kept saying things like stuff about things need to be level and square I eventually got it built. So over the next few weeks will show you the nursery construction & update you on what's been happening around here. So here is what our shed used to look like before it became a multipurpose building. This was an interesting project like all projects we had a few snags but overall I would say it was a success. We have had about 3 rounds of chicks move through the nursery successfully.

Thanks for coming along on the adventure.

The Buzz around the farm! Bee's & Raw Honey

2010-05-27T06:14:00.000-07:00

Yes, ladies and gentlemen Wayne finally got his bee hives. We will be selling raw honey. It will be filtered because most folks don't like bees and stuff floating in their honey! But other then running it through a sieve that's it folks. So if you are interested in laying your hands on some raw honey please drop us an e-mail or give us a call. Real Honey is harvested only twice year. We will start accepting pre-orders for summer pick-up.

Seed saving

2010-04-25T19:26:00.000-07:00

As I am trying to become self -reliant I am picking up the new skills, one of which is seed saving. So while I was at Homestead Heritage I picked up a little book on growing seeds called "Growing Garden Seeds" it was $2.40. The people at Homestead are serious about self reliance and the gentlemen behind the counter informed me he has been using it for years and still hasn't had to buy another book on seed saving.

So with the help of this book I was able to save my own cream peas and okra. One important thing about saving seeds is that you have to make sure that you do not purchase GMO seeds because they are unable to pollinate...in other words you will not be able to grow anything! I am buying more of my non GMO seed from Homestead Heritage so I can start to save more of my seeds and perhaps even sell some.

So if you are interested in seed saving this is the first book I would buy. It has been very helpful and think you might like it too.

Planting Tomatoes

2010-04-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

It takes a lot of work to plant 40+ tomatoes and it took us into the night. I learned a lesson about tomatoes last year, which was it is hard to can 20-50# of tomatoes at a time. So I planted Early Girls for the early season, Roma's & Carnival for the mid season harvest and Brandywine and Beefsteak for the late harvest. I also planted Roma's specifically so I could make paste out of them for spaghetti sauce. My goal this year to have enough spaghetti sauce, diced tomatoes and paste. I am also going to try to save my tomato seeds so I can start my own tomatoes next year. I hope you enjoy your tomatoes this year.

Farmers must fight...

2010-04-11T11:26:00.000-07:00

"There was no time to lose, no time to waste in rest or play. The life of the earth comes up with a rush in the springtime. All the wild seeds of weed and thistle, the sprouts of vine and bush and tree are trying to take the fields. Farmers must fight them with harrow and plow and hoe; they must plant good seeds quickly.

Almanzo was a little soilder in this great battle . " pa 124 Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Sometimes homeschool and homelife blend together perfectly.

The Tale of the Poor Chicken, Crazy Duck & 1 mad Rooster

2010-04-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

So during homeschool I stood up and noticed the medium sized chicks had escaped their enclosure. So, I got the chicken wrangler (Parker) and her side kick (Sugar-Pie) and went out there to get them back into their jimmy-rigged coop area. After they were rounded up we looked up and saw what can only be called an abomination.

The ducks were chasing the pullets around their yard and then trying to mount them. So feathers were truly flying throughout the pen. What else is a farmer to do, we stood there and watched the show.

The kids kept saying "Look Mama their playing!" "

Mama just said "Uh-huh"...they know animals mate but there is no way to explain this mess.

Finally a duck caught a chicken and mounted it. The chicken was squacking like crazy. Then the beautiful Buff Orpington rooster got mad (how dare you touch one of my women!) and he comes running across the pen and jumps on top of the duck. So, now I am standing there looking at a duck on top of a chicken with a rooster on top of it! What I truly regret is that my camera was not set to 'sport' and I was unable to get a picture of this mess.

The ducks were an early farm experiment, in the future we do plan on offering duck eggs. But these two remaining ducks are both males and we had just been slow in getting rid of them. Well, after this incident I posted these fellas on Craigslist with a 'nice low' price and they were gone within 3 hours. Like I said on my facebook, its a good thing my Dad's a psychologist because now I need counseling.

Ex-Californians get Californians

2010-04-02T22:24:00.000-07:00

The bunnies are here, sadly they lost the battle of cuteness against my sweet little Sugar Pie.

These are Californian bunnies they are for show and meat. We will build a range coop for them and they will be housed in the chick house. Chickens can act as sanitizers for rabbits. The first of many moves as we slowly move toward a more "whole farm" model.

Does anyone know anything about lamb?

New Animals on the Farm

2010-03-22T05:47:00.000-07:00

Well, as we are slowing moving forward with our farm venture. The first of the two animals and I use the term loosely is....red wiggler composting worms. These worms are going to serve many purposes on the farm. First, these are composting not fishing worms. Second these worms can compost manure. We plan to use them to compost both the chicken and the new 'mystery' animals manure. We will be purchasing a pound a month for a 4-5 months so we have enough worms process the manure produced by the animals and the kitchen scraps. So, hopefully by the Fall we will start selling composting worm and worm castings, i.e. worm compost. Once the worms process the manure we have a compost that we will be selling by the gallon.

We are also adding a mystery animal in the next two weeks. We are currently preparing a place for them. This is an unexpected venture that we hope will do well in the near future. Farmer Jess will post more information on the mystery animal soon!

2010-03-15T19:10:00.000-07:00

When people find out you like to garden they start to bring you things. With the hope that you will be able to make it grow! I know it doesn't look like it but these are blueberry bushes. These blueberries are going to be a project because they hate our soil so I have to make special planters for them. Which will be filled with mostly peat moss. They also do not want too much salt in their water. But it looks like our water is okay. Two of the plants I purchased prior to receiving this generous gift are already budding. The man at producers said I should clip off the buds and encourage a much bigger crop for next year. Silly man....we are talking about blueberries here! I can already taste the blueberry pie, pancakes, muffins yummmmmmmy!

Something to crow about: Eggs $2.25

2010-03-15T05:30:00.000-07:00

As the quarter is coming to an end we have re-evaluated our egg costs and our prices are going down. A dozen eggs now costs $2.25. Right now we have openings for 2 dozen eggs. We can drop them off in town or bring them to church with us.

Growing Carrots

2010-03-06T14:23:00.000-08:00

This is the first year we have grown carrots successfully. Now we have grown a lot of super sweet garden carrots. It is difficult to grow carrots in clay soil. So most people around here grow fat short carrots. But by introducing our square foot boxes we have grown 6"-12" long carrots. I also learned a lot about growing carrots. I know it seems like in the gardening books they are constantly pestering us to thin out the plants. The more I garden the more essential I see that the plants have enough space. Now spacing will differ according to how you garden from traditional row garden, french intensive or square foot but make sure you pay attention to the plant spacing and thin them!

Planting Potatoes

2010-02-27T12:08:00.000-08:00

Pearson & Ms. Stephanie are planting potatoes in our new square foot gardening boxes. We are planting red & yellow potatoes. We will have 3 boxes square foot boxes full of potatoes when we are done.

Chickens for sale

2010-02-20T15:48:00.000-08:00

We have loads of news to post and we are looking forward to updating you on the happenings around the farm. But for now we just wanted to let everyone know we finally, have chickens for sale. We currently have 12 week old (28) and 4 week old(50) pullets for sale.

Black Austrolorp $11

Buff Orpington's $11

We also have Rhode Island Red's for $10.50. We do not ship we offer farm pick up. Please do not forget to bring a container (dog crate or something similar) to transport your new chickens home.

Thanks for looking!

Wednesday Drop off option! ..Pullets for sale!

2009-10-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

New ...Wednesday drop off option!
Many of our veggies are going to be ready for delivery starting in November.

**A limited amount of 8 week old Pullets
Ready for pick up week of January 11th to reserve your chickens contact us now. You must place a 50% deposit with your reservation. (Buff Orpingtons, Black Austrolorps).

See below regarding the cloudy skies and our poor Internet reception! There is a lot of exciting stuff going on at the Hill so hopefully we will have reliable Internet access ready soon!

Online Ordering

2009-10-21T18:56:00.000-07:00

Hello friends!

Due to the rainy and cloudy weather, the internet at Rooster Hill Farms is patchy at best. So what does that mean for you? Well the veggies are growing like crazy, but we can't get online orders!! So...if you send us an online order, please call us to make sure we received it!

Thanks,
Rooster Hill Farms

Customer Update: What is in the ground

2009-09-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

We are currently taking orders for our October & November deliveries. You must prepay by either handing or sending me a check and you can pick your desired delivery location & time. Deliveries will be fulfilled on a first come, first serve basis. To place an order simply fill out the order form on the side bar and mail us a check. Your order is considered complete upon receipt of the check.

We always have a couple dozen extra free range yard eggs.

So what's in the ground ...........

Estimated for mid October delivery:

Okra
Pumpkins
Lettuce (leaf varieties)
Turnips
eggs 3.35 dozen (no antibiotics, free range)

Estimated for November Delivery

Tomato cherry & salad size
Carrots
Radish
Kale
Lettuce (variety) estimated for mid October delivery
eggs 3.35 dozen (no antibiotics, free range)

After November

Brussel Sprouts
eggs 3.35 dozen (no antibiotics, free range)

Look for some posts on our new gardening method and monitor the results!

See you soon!
The RH Garden Girls + a boy

Our Garden...

2009-09-09T15:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I have to admit I love the garden so I guess I am a garden girl. The only thing about the garden is it's a lot of work. We are currently experimenting with square foot gardening. As we have been shamed by the Dervaes at Path to Freedom , as we have 5 acres in comparison to their. These people are some vegetable growing & energy saving fools! You know we are all about it...they are growing their veggies in raised boxes and harvesting 1,000's of pounds more then we are in about 2X the space. So more boxes are going in this weekend with turnips, chards, carrots & lettuce. We will add a box a month until we have filled the area this is kind of mammoth undertaking because our garden is 2500 square feet.

But as I have gone crazy anyway...I smush bugs with my fingers. I look up organic treatments (don't tell my friends!) for stuff because we eat the food straight out of the garden. And I have been permanently scared by "Fastfood Nation".

So here are some pictures from the garden. Right now we are still getting plenty of food from the summer garden. In fact we are over run with butternut squash & okra (1/2-1# a day) so we are selling the extra to help pay for the fall garden. Hey, we might turn a profit just yet!

We also have a few pumpkin vines. Which seemed harmless when we planted them but now we are going to have a lot of pumpkins. I did make a mistake with the pumpkins I let them climb up the fence because the blooms look so pretty from our room. Well now some are growing on the fence and they are trying to break the fence. Regardless of the fencing situation we should have PLENTY pumpkins for sale in October - November. These few pumpkins are sort of a training ground for growing a lot of pumpkins and watermelons for next year. Both vegetables are known for being a little bit tricky to grow. But isn't this baby pumpkin just beautiful? I just hope that she and her cousins don't break my fence!

RH Farm

Slap Your Mama Butternut Squash Soup

2009-08-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

This soup was so good I ate so much that I gained a pound, I am not kidding who knew vegetables could have so many calories! If you have butternut squash you MUST make this soup...NOW! Thus the name, "Slap your Mama...in my house you had to be crazy to try to slap your mama and that is how good this soup is...let me know what you think. And of course we have butternut squash for sale right now to make this soup...but please do not really try to slap your Mama that would be sin and if your Mama is like my Mama it is also not a good idea!

(Make you want to ...) Slap your Mama Butternut Squash Soup

INGREDIENTS
1 large onion chopped

4 tablespoons margarine
6 cups steamed butternut squash (when you steam it you can add it peel and all!)
3 cups water
4 cubes chicken bouillon
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese

1 cup of milk

DIRECTIONS
In a large saucepan, saute onions in margarine until tender. Add squash, water, bouillon, marjoram, black pepper and cayenne pepper. Bring to boil; cook 20 minutes, or until squash is tender.

Puree squash, milk and cream cheese in a blender or food processor in batches until smooth. Return to saucepan, and heat through. Do not allow to boil.

This is mildly modified version of a recipe I found on AllRecipes.com Butternut Squash Soup

Customer Update: Order Form, Delivery Calendar, Butternut Squash

2009-08-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

As we get ready to order chickens and gear up for a new and exciting year here at Rooster Hill Farm we have added two new items to our blog that we hope will enable us to serve our customers better:

An on-line order form

An on-line delivery calendar

We hope that both of these items will streamline the order process for the Rooster Hill Family. Please look for more exciting changes and products. We currently have farm fresh butternut squash available for sale.

We will also add an order form to purchase our layers as soon as some become available.

Thank you!

Rooster Hill

Now offering jam...

2009-07-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

We are now selling GrapeMyrtle Jam! Made from locally grown organic wild grapes. There is a limited supply of jam, as I am only one woman. We hope to add more jams, butters and loads of other products this year.

Black Australorps

2009-06-11T16:26:00.000-07:00

These little gals are Black Australorps we are raising them for another family with a lonely rooster. It's a great chance to help someone out and to raise some heritage chickens with which we are not very familiar. However, according to my research they are friendly family birds much like our buffs and we plan to keep a few for our flock!

Hatching Eggs

2009-03-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

This Month we started on a new adventure of hatching eggs. We purchased an incubator and egg turner (which you cannot use with duck eggs) from Producer's co-op and we put 14 eggs into the incubator. Wayne of course read all the directions and we were off to the races. We wrote down the dates to candle the eggs and we waited. 21 days later we ended up with 9 chicks to add to the flock of layers. We have decided to buy some pure bread Rhode Island Reds & Arucanas (green egg layers) and we will hatch the following birds: Buff Orpington's, Rhode Island Reds, Arucanas and perhaps Barred Rocks. Now we are just waiting on the white duck eggs to hatch.

Happy Homesteading!

Orchard Update

2009-02-04T07:55:00.000-08:00

Well, starting a small farm is nothing if it's not time consuming and crazy making! Well, Texas A&M had a plant sale and we decided to double the size of our orchard. Our orchard will eventually have about 30 trees in it. Orchards are long term projects because they do not produce for 2-7 years and like our Apple tree, there are no guarantees. We however, feel that it's an investment in our personal grocery budget as well as in future farm income. We plan to look into organic fruit tree management and our friend Stephanie will be coming along side of us (with her expertise) to help us with our orchard and garden. Anyway, we currently have: Cherry, Apple (that may be dead), Plum, Peach, fig & Satsuma orange. The fig, Peach & Apple are not in the orchard as we planted the later two without much consideration to the creation of a formal orchard when we first moved onto the land. We have now purchased:

2 Blackberry Kiowa
Pear: Ayers 1
Plum: Bruce Semi dwarf
Plum Methley
Molly Delicious Apple
Fuji Apple

We will be unable to plant these tree until we make a formal grid of the property and figure out the spacing. Wayne will be doing this Thursday & Friday night. This will be useful in all of farm endeavours and we should have already completed such a plan. Yes, once these start to set abundant fruit we will add these lovelies to our offerings here at Rooster Hill.

Chickens are finally on the range

2009-01-28T13:27:00.000-08:00

Okay, we have been SLOWLY working on this range coop for a while. We want to move it around the property a couple days a week but as you can see the coop is still not done. We still need to add the roof. But we ran out of money this month! Oh well, we'll finish it next month when we get a new infusion of Farm cash from our general budget. But we just had to let them out to eat the bugs and grass and to see the world. These are our broilers. They are white Cornish Rocks and they are huge. This is the only time we are going to grow these particular birds we are ordering the dark Cornish for the spring and we will try to maintain a flock of them as meat birds. They do not require assistance with reproduction like the white Cornish do. So let it be known any bird that is relying on me to come by with a turkey baster will be going extinct, because it ain't gonna happen! Once we finish the thing I will post the directions. After this we will be building a coop half as tall and converting this one into a duck house! We made it too tall because I did not look closely at Farmer Jason's! Our goal is to have two of these range houses and moving them around the yard. We should be able to produce about 40 broilers every 10 weeks. Right now we are building a turkey house & pig pen. So like George Jefferson said "we're moving on up!" just not to a penthouse to a pig pen!

Simple Answers for New Chicken Owners Issue 2

2009-01-21T13:30:00.000-08:00

Simple Answers for the New Chicken Owner:

What is a straight run?
When you order both hens & roosters at the same time. This is usually cheaper but if all you want is laying hens what are you going to do with the roosters?

I order a straight run for broilers/roasters and I am specific when I am ordering for our laying flock. Normally, I just want hens. Too many roosters can be a big problem for the hens!

What is a pullet?
A young female hen.

How do you worm a chicken?

Commercial producers & others use Wazine. We bought some and then I read the label and it scared me to death. So I have an unused bottle if you need one!

Rooster Hill: We use 1 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar to 1 gallon of water. This is done 1X/month as a preventatine.

We have also heard of folks using diatomaceous earth , but I have not researched it. The vinegar works like a charm they get it about every three months or if I see any kind of worm like creature in their manure.

This has been another edition of simple answers for new chicken owners. I hope this saves you lots of time I spent researching this stuff in the beginning.

Turkeys arrive in February!

2009-01-14T10:55:00.000-08:00

Broad Breasted Bronze Turkey!
I am really interested in Heritage and endangered animals. Recently, the Benavides & McVay families joined forces to purchase Broad Breasted Bronze Turkey. We will be mating them and growing our own flock of these birds.
The Bronze variety is stately and imposing in appearance. The standard weight for young toms is 25 pounds and for young hens is 16 pounds. Since, however, the Standard Bronze has not been selected for production attributes, including weight gain, for years, many birds may be smaller than the standard. Careful selection for good health, ability to mate naturally, and production attributes will return this variety to its former stature. Broad Breasted Bronze turkeys are also in need of conservation. Only a few hatcheries maintain breeding flocks, and many of these are reducing their number. Marketing strategies need to be developed for each type that does not undermine the other. from the American Livestock Breed Conservancy
Our homestead will even have a few to sell to start your own flock or for Thanksgiving Dinners!

How to save green & green clean your chicken coop ....

2009-01-07T12:53:00.000-08:00

It took me about 3 hours to complete this task. As we have recently changed our feed from to a combination of scratch & feed I hope that the strong ammonia smell will be less during the next cleaning. The Encyclopedia of Country living said we should clean the chicken coop once a year. I am not going to be following this guideline and we will try to clean it every 4 months. Hopefully, this will cut down the amount of time it took me to clean this house out.
We really shy away from the use of strong chemicals with our animals. We worm our chickens with vinegar instead of wazine which had a million warnings that scared me to death! So when I went to clean the coop I wanted a nice clean coop and my goal is to kill any nasty parasites living in the manure.

Shovel out the house and get as much manure out as possible.
Rake the house and get out more.
Shovel it again and focus on 'stuck to the floor manure'
hose it down
sweep it out with a chicken coop specific broom. You do not want to sweep your porch with this thing after it's been in the coop!
Mop it (We use a retired mop for this job again you do not want to clean your kitchen floor with the same broom you use in the kitchen house.) I mop with a water & vinegar solution to kill germs in the least toxic way possible. Additionally, if the chickens drink some of the solution nothing bad happens to them they just get wormed!

Vinegar Solution: 3/4 cup of vinegar + 1 gallon of water

I also realize we need a scrapper and a forked scooper to help make this task easier. This is a future expense that we will do without until absolutely necessary. In the future we are going to go to dirt floors it will be much easier for us to maintain. We will use our current house for broilers as we will both have fewer and house them for less time.

Simple Answers for New Chicken Owners Issue 1

2008-12-31T10:44:00.000-08:00

How old is a chicken when it first starts laying eggs or how long does it take for a chicken to start laying eggs?

16-22 weeks

Do I need a rooster for my hens to lay eggs?

No hens lay with or without a rooster.

When does a rooster begin to fertilize eggs?

at 4-5 months old

How many roosters do you need per hen to have fertile eggs and so your rooster doesn't keel over from exhaustion?

2 birds per 12 hens

What kind of chickens are very broody?

Buff Orpington's and Banty's now I am sure there are other's but this is where my research ended.

This has been our first edition of simple answers for the new chicken owner. We decided to do this because I spent countless hours searching for these simple answers on the Internet. I hope this saved you some time.

Finally, isn't our rooster beautiful!

Cornish Hen, Buff Orpington & Farm Growth

2008-12-24T08:42:00.000-08:00

We picked up our broilers on the 17th from Ideal Poultry along with 3 Buff Orpingtons or the buffy's as we call them. We have already lost 1 chick to our 3 year old, in fact this is the second chick she has accidentally killed (she sat on the other one) this year. So we will order a couple extra in the future keeping this in mind. We got 15 White Cornish in a straight run, next we will get the Dark Cornish so we can have a self perpetuating flock. As the Dark Cornish are good layers, setters and have not been constantly breed to make their breasts larger.

We hope to market and sell our birds to the Asian Market for their consumption. As they will purchase a live bird and do all of the processing themselves which will save us time & money.

The Buffy's job is to 'set' (sit) on our eggs. There are a couple of kinds of birds that are good at setting on eggs and the Buff Orpington is one of them. It is also a sweet sociable chicken and since they are going to be around for a long time we wanted something cute! The other kind of chicken that likes to set is the Banty (I am not sure if it is all banty's or a certain kind, since we decided to go with the Buff Orpington's I did not research all the different bantys).

In January we are going to order 9-10 more chickens (Arucana's & Layorcas) to round out our flock to 32 until our large purchase of 100 chicks in May. We are going to specialize in a multi- color dozen of eggs. We are aiming at participating in the Farmer's Market in 2010 or starting a CSA with (broilers & eggs) either way we have a lot of work ahead of us!

We may also buy an incubator depending on how many birds we are trying to hatch at a time. The total cost of an incubator will be around $60 and I forgot to check to see how many birds we can hatch with it. We really want to be able to grow our own flock and be more self reliant.

Merry Christmas & Happy Homesteading!

from RH

Winter in Texas?

2008-12-10T08:52:00.001-08:00

It's hard to believe that we have snow here in Texas but sure enough we have snow at the farm. Well, at least the kids & the chickens seem happy! They made a snowman and had a snowball fight. Sadly we lost 2 chickens to the cold weather we think. This was a new aspect to farming for us. Wayne had to spend a couple of hours winterizing the coop all because we had failed to keep our eye on the weather. I am going to have him add a weather bar to the computer task bar so we do not get surprised again. Since we do not watch TV both because of moral convictions and time constraints we often have no idea what's going on unless it's mentioned on a talk radio station. We did not know it was snowing until Donna (baby Micah's Mom we watch him during the day) got here and informed us her kids had been up since 6 am playing in the snow! It was beautiful out here I am not sure I was fully able to capture the beautiful country simplicity of it!

Dream of a White Christmas,

Broiler's On the Way

2008-11-29T08:53:00.001-08:00

We have ordered 15 Cornish Rock Broilers from Ideal Poultry scheduled for pick up on December 17th. We have only butchered one chicken so far but we are very excited about the addition of these birds to the farm and learning a new skill (plucking & skinning of chickens). We are planning on keeping 3 of these birds (2 hens & 1 Rooster) to provide an ongoing source of eggs to produce our own broilers. These are not the genetically adapted Cornish X, this is just the regular Cornish. Our next batch of roasters will be the dark Cornish (pictured above) and we plan to grow a flock of these birds. In the future we hope to offer both free range Cornish Roasters & the little tasty Cornish hen. A new year a new product...Roasters.

2008-11-12T08:46:00.000-08:00

Well, we have been talking about putting in water by the chicken coop for a while. We have a two prong attack for chicken water.

We are putting in a spigot over in the animal area so we do not have to carry very heavy 3 & 5 gallon water jugs to the birds.

We are putting gutters on the chicken house to catch the rain and use that to water the animals. I think we spend about $10-15 month on water for them and about $10-15 to water the garden (Our garden however is about to ten-touple). Gutter the chicken house should cost about $20 & the shed about $80. We hope to save about $20-30 a month off of our water bill. Thus, increasing the farm profits.

We are also building a broiler house. We are building it so we can move it around the property. Especially, as we learn more natural ways to raise chickens. Our chickens must be confined at night or we might as well step out side ring a dinner bell and let the racoons, foxes, coyotes & puma know that dinner is served! But during the day we want them to roam about freely.

The Orchard

2008-10-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

We are in the process of slowly building an orchard. Last year we purchased a Feleciano peach, plum & apple tree. At mid year we purchased a fig we found for $4.48 and a Satsuma orange a few months after that. This week we bought a Montgomery cherry & Bartlett Pear. Sadly we found out that the apple tree is dead and we will have to buy another tree this year.

We buy our trees from Producers Co-op and we try to get 2-3 trees a year. Producer's only buys trees that grow in this area which makes our selection process much easier. The trees at producers co-op are 2-3 years old so most will start producing in 2-4 years.

This time we learned that if you pluck the fruit from a young tree it will grow stronger and faster more quickly. That while it is fruiting it is not growing all the energy is going toward making fruit. Our goal is to have enough trees to sell our fruit at farmers market or in a buyers co-operative. This is a long term goal as it we will not be able to do so for a couple of years. However, once the trees start to produce we will be over run with fruit.

Where to eat local in the Brazos Valley

2008-10-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

We plant a garden and eat as much of our own food as possible. This is not possible for all families due to neighborhood restrictions, health and desire/ability. Our garden both saves us loads of money but it also allows us to eat nutrient dense home grown veggies. For those of you that can not garden the next best option is to eat local.

We are trying to comple a list of places to eat local in the Brazos Valley. If you know of any place please let us know so we can add it to the list. Eating local supports local family farm and is better for your family. Eating the foods with the pollens from the local area can reduce allergies and locally produced foods are fresher. I hope you all look into local foods in your area!

See the sidebar on the left hand side with our current list of local offerings.

RH

Eating off the land

2008-10-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

Okay we have crossed another plateau in our homesteading journey. This weekend Wayne butchered our first chicken. We of course consulted our local country living expert (cowboy) Brian who assisted with the butcher & skinning. Yes, you can skin a chicken instead of plucking him if you do not need the skin for cooking. This chicken was an 'egg eater' and she was about 2 years old she is going to be a casserole thus no skin required.

Additionally, our garden is doing really well. Right now our garden is only about 18x18 ish so our rows are about 15' long. But the Lord is providing abundantly through the garden. Our friends the Benavides introduced us to turnips. And we have been growing them the past few months in fact I planted some more to replace the ones we've already harvested. 5 quarts of turnip greens which since I saute them they will provide ample food for a large side or a 1/2 main. I am going to look up how to freeze greens because we will probably end up with 10-12 quarts of greens. The 2 quarts of turnips that will also provide 2 large sides or two 1/2 mains I expect to end up with about a total of 5-6 quarts of turnips. We are also harvesting: green beans, okra, Swiss chard, maybe squash & black eye peas. We are getting ready to plant Spinach, lettuce, beets, carrots, radish. We are slowly starting to work on the site for the new garden which will be about 75X125 and should be large enough to supply our family with all the veggies we will need and maybe even some extras!

Also, most of our young birds are now laying. We are getting about 11 eggs a day again! The birds really seem to like their new feed and the egg production has been pretty consistent. We expect to get 13 eggs a day by the end of this month and about 17 eggs in November. I am not sure how the hens will lay as the days become shorter but we are hoping for the best. So right now I have 3-18 counts ready to be sold plus 18 in the fridge for us!

We'll let you know how the bird tasted as soon as we have some casserole!

Living Simply

Changing to Semi Homemade Chicken Feed

2008-10-08T20:42:00.001-07:00

We are currently experimenting with our chicken feed, here at Rooster Hill. We are using a mix and working off the Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens and using their Homemade mix suggestions. Right now we are using:

3 parts commercial feed(1part) & scratch(2 parts) (corn, milo, wheat according to Producers Co-op)
1 part -cottonseed meal
1# oyster shells (amount recommended for our feeder)
Suggestions are welcome!

I really wish I could find something that told me they need this much protein, carbs & vitamins but I did not find anything. Also we are not organic folks, we are more grow your own stuff folks, accordingly we would like to simplify their diets. Currently some of our chickens escape and spend their day free ranging going in and out of the yard. We hope to put up a fence soon so they can have the run of the place during the day. So for the next few weeks I will monitor their egg production and overall health of the bird and taste of the egg.

Additionally, I have received complaints that this site was not being kept up and I will again work to keep this site updated with all the country happenings. I have been a little discouraged as the progress out here is so much slower then I am accustomed to. But as the Lord says there is a time for everything!

Rooster Hill visits Millburger's Pig Farm

2008-08-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

When we switched from shavings to hay for our chicken's nest we had a chance to go and see a pig farm. The farmer was so generous he also gave us two antique chicken feeders one for chicks and one for grown birds. They have both been bleached and the one for the chicks is already in use.You have to be really careful when you bring anything from someone elses place to make sure you do not infect your animals with any parasites or bacteria that are present at the other farm.

But let me tell you those little piglets will steal your heart and the thought of fresh hams and bacon will steal your tummy! Maybe we'll get a couple of Southern heritage pigs in the next couple of years! After, we get a good fence up & ban the kids from watching Charlotte's web!

Work Around the Farm

2008-08-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

Well, we've knocked out another project around the farm. The shed is finally painted, I purchased some $7 shutters (at our local junk store) and they are painted and hanging! We need to fix the light and I am going to be looking for a cute little country weather vein for the top of the roof. Wayne can make one of those little boxes they sit on. We have lilies to plant in front of the shed. We also want to add trim to the doors and we'd love to put on those old black country hinges on to it. Now all the things we need to do to the exterior are just cosmetic.

We also painted the chicken coop yellow. We still need to start building a larger coop and clearing the area behind the small coop. We also need to build a portable house for the broilers so they can graze to grow. Everything takes much longer then I think it will take and there is always something to do on the homestead.

Right now we are building a duck house. Then back to the chickens. Followed by fencing the yard for the dogs & small kids!

Rejoicing in simplicity,

Advice for New Chicken Owners

2008-08-11T08:08:00.000-07:00

If you are going to micro farm/homestead with chickens buy the largest equipment you can afford! Do not waste your money on the little plastic one gallon waterers they work for chicks for a while but they quickly out grow them. Plus you will really want to get their food and water off the floor because chickens are disgusting and will pee and poop in their food and water if they are able to roost on it!

You will need the following:

waterer (a couple if you have more then 10 birds and you live in hot climate like we do!)
feeder
chicken feed (homemade or from the feed store)
Oyster Shells (something to harden their shells! You can even grind up their egg shells and serve it back to them but make sure they are unrecognizable or they will start eating their own eggs.
Chicken House
Chicken yard (unless you plan on having 100% free range chickens which is our goal!)

Pictures of Chicken growth:

Amerucana (brown patch on his head) is 2 weeks old. Note they are starting to get feathered. They are able to get to their roosts that are about 1' and then 2' off the ground.

Production Red (yellow) is 2 weeks old. Note they are starting to get feathered. They are able to get to their roosts that are about 1' and then 2' off the ground.

Large Production red is 18 weeks old. Fully feathered and nearly the same size as the laying hens. Noticeable difference is their comb and wattles are not red or fully developed.

The kiddo is my chicken wrangler, she's been catching chickens since she was 4! Okay, she's still 4 but it'll be a great story when she's telling her kids!

Egg Recipe of the Month: August 2008

2008-08-04T08:42:00.000-07:00

Kelly Conrad's Breakfast Quiche

2 homemade (or frozen) pie crusts
1 1/2 cups sour cream
4 cups shredded Swiss cheese (I usually use about 2 cups)
1 # of ham (bacon, sausage etc...)
6 farm fresh Rooster Hill eggs
onion to taste (I usually use 1/4 to 1/2 cup finely chopped)

Combine all the ingredients except for the pie crust and the cheese and pour into the pie crust. Top it off with the cheese and bake at 350* for 1 hour. This recipe freezes well (but you must cook it first, you can also make it a day ahead.)
Tasty bites,
RH

Egg list closed

2008-07-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

We are proud and sad to announce that we currently have a waiting list for our super tasty eggs!

The wait should not be too long as we have 9 birds that will start laying soon.

From my estimates we should have roughly 3 dozen more eggs available in September or October (I know Dina you want two dozen more!)and 3 dozen more available sometime starting in October or November. If we buy some chicks from a nearby producers these numbers will increase in November. Our numbers jump by nearly 10 dozen in January and hopefuly every 3 months thereafter. We are also looking into buying some battery operated poultry lighting to increase the amount of daylight they receive. I am not sure how well this will work as our birds are not simply confined to a house but we shall see.

Well, that all from Rooster Hill don't forget to check us out next week for our "Egg-tastic" recipe of the month!

2008-07-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

Last week we sat down with Jessica Bolding, CPA and I went over the farms finances! She was such a big help!! It became very clear that there were a lot of things we were missing out on such as:

mileage for farm related activities
% of electricity, water
Not to use the Accrual System

Each year the IRS comes out with an IRS Farm Reporting Book that details the farming requirements.

It also became very clear that there are things that I care about that the IRS does not care about. I have to keep track of my egg production so I know how we are doing however the IRS does not care. They do care about my purchases and if they are going to be depreciated over time or if we will be taking the whole item in one year.

Finally, it became clear that although I keep all of our receipts I was not organized enough. So, I am organizing all of my expense & income receipts by month and paper clipping them together hopefully this will simplify the tax reporting. Finally, I will be saving 15% of my income if I make it over my expenses to pay taxes.

Learning at RH

Midweek Frugal Farming Posts

2008-07-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

This specific coffee container is the best scoop. I mentioned cutting milk jugs well I retract that statement. Milk jugs are hard to handle once they are cut they are way to flexible. But these things are great! I can fill baby chick feeders with ease and I measure my oyster shells in this thing and off we go with feed bag and oyster shells. If you farm you have got to drink coffee to get up as early as we do so buy some Maxwell House coffee ($5.99 with coffee at our local Wal-Mart) containers and kill two birds with one stone.

Please let me know how you re-use/repurpose things around your farm!

Rising Feed Costs

2008-07-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed our prices went up this month. We will hold steady at this price as long as we can. Feed costs went up again this month and it is expected that they will continue to rise.

This is a portion of an article from the AP (Associated Press) regarding this issue...

Pilgrim's Pride posts loss, blames rising feed costs

Monday May 5, 5:25 pm ET By David Koenig, AP Business Writer

"Pilgrim's Pride also said its U.S. business would probably lose money in the current quarter, and it might be summer 2009 before the company returns to normal operating profit margins....Chief Executive Clint Rivers placed blame for the industry's trouble on the federal government's "deeply flawed" policy of paying subsidies for using corn to produce ethanol for fuel, which he said would cause food prices to rise further.
"American consumers are only just beginning to feel the impact of sharply higher food prices," as food producers pass along more of their higher costs, Rivers said...."

Both corn and soy beans are on the rise and we are feeling the pinch here at Rooster Hill. We have however decided to try to hold our new prices for the next few months. Our feed costs have gone up nearly 20% in the last 3 months.

So what are we going to do?

Build more roosts in our modest Hen House

Buy more fencing and create a much larger yard and move toward pastured/free range chickens as soon as possible.

We are checking into making our own feed!

The most important thing I am finding in farming is watching my bottom dollar. Figuring out how to spend the least amount of money for maximum results. Just like any new business we are going to spend more then we make the first year but we cannot continue on this trend indefinitely. We have 9 months until we reach 1 year... We hope to be making a profit by then.

Counting our coins at RH

Egg Recipe of the Month: July 2008

2008-07-07T09:21:00.000-07:00

Simple Huevos Rancheros

Cast of Characters (term from the Pioneer Woman)
eggs
corn tortillas
salsa
Cheddar cheese (opitional)
sour cream (optional)
refritos (canned or better yet homemade!)

1. Heat Tortillas in oven or over flame
2. Poach or fry an egg
3. Heat salsa and in a separate pot heat your refritos
4. Place warmed tortilla on plate. Put a scoop of refried beans on the Tortilla. Put egg on top of the refritos on the tortilla and pour some salsa on top of both. Add sour cream and sprinkle with cheddar cheese if you like.

Serve with refritos!

Now while I was looking for a picture (since my camera is not working) I found a lot of really complicated recipes. Huevos Ranchers can be as complicated or as simple as you like. You could certainly make this with pico de gallo and add avocado! You can even make Emeril recipe with about 15 ingredients! I just hope you add Huevos Rancheros to your meal plan because it's an unusual inexpensive and tasty breakfast.

This is a link to another blog with a bunch of Egg recipes that I will probably work my way through and post the ones we come to love!

New on the Hill

2008-06-30T06:01:00.000-07:00

New at the homestead are these two White Pekins. We have another on the way. These ducks lay some mammoth eggs about 2X the size of a chicken egg. We are going to try to get about 30 ducks total and sell their eggs, also. Right now we are just enjoying these mammoth eggs for baking and Wayne's fried or poached eggs.

Another new addition to the homestead are 15 day old baby chicks. 11 Production Reds, 3 Amerucana (blue eggs) 1 Production Red rooster.

On 6/26 we moved the rooster and the 3 baby hens into the hen house. We move our chicks into the hen house when they are between 8-12 weeks old. We prefer to move them when they are older and bigger so the other hens don't peck them to death (literally!).

This weekend we will finish painting the shed & future broiler house (current hen house)start clearing some land next to the hen house to build our bigger hen house. We will move the ducks into the little house and add a small broiler house to the area to our homestead. The broilers are for our personal consumption but we have some friends that are going to be raising organic broilers if anyone is interested let me know and I'll pass it along to them.

Thanks for visiting the Hill!

Planning your Homestead

2008-06-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

Here at Rooster Hill we have come to the conclusion that it is time to "slow our roll". First we are going to finish the 3-4 1/2 done projects we have started and not yet completed. Concurrently, we will be taking a step back to plan the use of our property. To maybe avoid some of the mistakes I've been reading about.

Things we know we need to do are build a larger "barn/shed" area for animals. We also need to start fencing our property.

We know we are focusing on eggs (chickens & ducks), herbs and milk goat products for sale. We also want turkeys, an orchard and a large garden to provide our own fruit and vegatable needs. We want to maintain a small pasture for the goats and an acre or more for a wood lot.

We have considered pigs and and a couple(1 mom & calf) of cows for our own beef.We are talking about adding a woodheating furnace and solar panels in the long run.

So now we are going to be putting pen to pad so we can figure out the how what, when & where.

It just all seems so much more urgent with the rise in gas & food prices. We really want to be self sufficient. Like my friend Kim Benavides said we may be called on to provide food for the poor who knows what God has in store for our 5 acres!

Books we are considering: "The Have More Plan" by Ed & Carolyn Robinson, Five Acres and Independence by Kains, The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live It by Seymour &Handy Farm Devices: And How to Make Them by Rolfe Cobleigh

This Month's Featured Egg Recipe

2008-06-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

Okay we have some chickens and we eat some eggs so I think it's fun and appropriate to feature our favorite egg recipes. Junes Hot on the Hill Recipe is from The Pioneer Woman Eggs Benedict. I have simplified her directions and have one warning...do not over use the lemon juice! I would add some water to the mixture if it is too think instead of more lemon to avoid the tang.

The Pioneer Woman’s Egg Benedict’s

The Cast of Characters:
3-12 Eggs
2 sticks Butter
Apx 1/8 cup Lemon Juice
1/8 t Cayenne Pepper
1 for each ½ of an English Muffin Canadian Bacon
English Muffins.

First, bring a pot of water to a boil.
While the water’s boiling, place a few English muffin halves and an equal number of Canadian Bacon slices on a cookie sheet. Lightly butter the English muffins and place them under the broiler for just a few minutes, or until the English muffins are very lightly golden. Be careful not to dry out the Canadian Bacon.
Poach eggs
Melt 2 sticks of butter
Separate 3 eggs: yolk from white & place the yolks in the blender
Now, pay attention, darlings! Turn the blender on low to allow the yolks to combine, then begin pouring the very hot butter in a thin stream into the blender. The blender should remain on the whole time, and you should be careful to pour in the butter very slowly.
Keep pouring butter until it’s all gone, then immediately begin squeezing lemon juice into the blender. You should use the juice of one lemon. And check the blender to make sure the sauce is still liquid and moving easily through the blades. If it’s not, add a little more juice and give it a stir, then blend again
Add ½ teaspoon of ground red pepper (more for more heat!)
Then layer on the plate: English muffin, meat, egg, sauce

We serve this with fruit and lots of Louisiana hot sauce!

The Farm Report: What is a production Red and more....

2008-06-09T09:21:00.001-07:00

What is a Production Red Chicken

A prodocuction Red is a cross of a Rhode Island Red, New Hamshire Red & a Leghorn. However, some sites say it's just a cross between the RIR and the NHR. Regardless, they lay darker brown eggs than a Barred rock who lays a peachy or light brown egg.The Prodcution Red is touted as the best brown egg layer.

Chickens are suppose to start laying between 4-6 months (16-24 weeks).

We just added our Rhode Island Reds to the flock. It appears that our baby chickens are starting to lay already, they are only 15 weeks old. We had one tiny egg in the hen house. So either some hen out there owes me another 2/3's of an egg or our little hens are laying. Just in case, I did have a discussion with the hens and informed them that, that egg size was unacceptable. I think they understood.

We have inherited what I think are two leghorns so we will be adding a couple of white eggs to each order when they start laying in July. Unless, we have some customers that prefer brown & blue only. Leghorns are the earliest layers and start to lay at about 3 1/2 months and these gals will be 3 1/2 months old in 2 weeks!

Tiny (RIR baby Rooster)is in with the Leghorns (Because my Hens tried to eat/kill him!) but when the new babies get here in on the 25th both the small hens and Tiny are going into the hen house!

Living and learning at Rooster Hill.

Rooster Hill

Great Chicken Transfer

2008-06-02T09:21:00.001-07:00

This last week we transfered the medium size chickens (11 weeks) into the coop with the laying hens. This was interesting to say the least. We checked the progress of the intergration of the flock and well it was not going well for the rooster! The hens (a bunch of feminists I think) tried to peck him to death! So we removed the rooster put him in isolation for a week and have now moved him back into the chicken nursery. As far as the other 6 little hens they are doing okay they keep away from the other chickens and mostly stay on top of the roosts.

What I have learned:

I would rather not add chickens to a flock if possible. Those birds are mean while they are determining the pecking order. Since it costs about $8 to raise a bird that's an investment I don't want some mean old bird pecking to death.
I will not put a small rooster in the house again! Not until he is at least the same size or bigger!

So my advice is you can inocorporate new chicks into your flock at about 8 weeks old but if you can wait until 12 weeks that is better. Don't be suprised when there's a whole lot of clucking going on!

Frugal Farming: Milk Jugs on the farm

2008-05-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

Recently, we had to isolate hens to see who was laying because we purchased some hens and I am questioning if they are old or just egg eaters! Anyway, we needed some feeders for the hens in captivity and I am to cheap to spend money when we are only making $31-46 per month on these hens in the first place!

I had been saving milk & OJ jugs because I just felt like they me have another purpose and I've found 4 so far!

1. A feed scoop cut off the top and dip. It has a built in handle!

2. An indivdual chicken feeder for chickens that are isolated for one reason or another.

3 To mix fish emulsion & Neem oil when I only need a small amount. I can label them and store them thus eliminating any waste!

4. Chicken poop compost tea ....this is going to be an experiment. A gallon of water and some chicken poop and I'll let them sit in the sun for a month and we'll see what kind of fertilizer it is!

I hope this helps someone other poor begining farmer out!

The Farm & Ranch Report

2008-05-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

Anderson....we've got a problem.....

We either have OLD HENS or some chicken is eating them! So we are taking evasive action. We have been collecting eggs this week and I barely have a dozen & 1/2 eggs. I should have 3 dozen eggs by now. We may have to make some Chicken Pot Pie, King Ranch Chicken etc....These hens have 2 days or their "goose is cooked"!

These are pictures of the farms official Chicken catchers: Parkie the unstoppable & Peyton the why do these things keep running away from me! (Parker did catch one for Peyton so she got to hold him. She caught the chicken we call scaredy because if you get close to it it freezes, shakes and poops.

The Growth of the Flock.....

On the fun & growing side of the farm biz.... We ordered 11 Production Red's, 1 production red rooster & 3 Amerucana's (they lay blue eggs). We will pick them up from Ideal Poultry on June 25th so we have just over 6 weeks to expand the chicken nursery. So the the Medium size chickens will have up to two weeks before they are added to the hen house, they will be 12 weeks old. The small chicks ( 1 barred rock & 2 leghorns) will go into the nursery for about 5 weeks and they will be added to the flock when they are about 14 weeks old. In fact those two leghorns will probably start laying right about that time! We are now going to put a small band around the chickens legs so we can age the birds.

So here's the cliff notes: Types of chickens: Leghorn (2), Barred rock (11), Rhode Island Red (7), Production Red (8) & Chicks ordered: Production Red (11), Amerucana (3)

What does this mean we'll be building a bigger chicken house! Again our goal is to have about 100 laying birds.

Tuesday Micro Farm Report

2008-05-06T07:56:00.000-07:00

This has been a pretty slow week for us here.

The Garden:

We did get some planting done. We planted Swiss chard, cantaloupe & Watermelon (which by the way were breaking through the ground today!)Today I think I'm going to get the pumpkins planted. Parker would really like to plant some sunflowers and I think it would be nice to see them as we drive up to the house.

Chickens

The new chickens have been somewhat disappointing as layers. The new 10 chickens give us only about 4 extra eggs a day. So we will be sticking with our production reds & adding some amerucanas (blue/green egg layers) as we prepare for next year.

The picture with my Parker & Pearson holding a chicken are pictures of the baby chickens we purchased in March! They will be 9 weeks this week, including our rooster Tiny! We will be ordering 15 chicks (10 layers & 5 meat birds) for June delivery.They should begin laying in December. A week before they arrive we will move Tiny and the gang to the big chicken house. They should be about 14-15 weeks old by then. Every 3 months there after we will be order 10-15 chicks or ducks until we reach our goal flock sizes.

Today we had to apply "black salve" (chicken medication) to the barred rocks bottoms to discourage the other chickens from pecking their bare spots. Parker caught the chickens and handed them to me at which time I applied their medication. It wasn't as difficult as I thought, Parker is an incredible chicken catching machine.

Now on to the chicken yard. First the chicken yard finally has a real gate, we are really coming up in the world! Second, we will be expanding their yard this month and hopefully soon we will be able to let them go free range.

Ducks

Ducks are being raised at the Bricker Homestead and we will take a trip out to see our little quackers! We will be ordering Khaki Campbell's sometime next year for their eggs which are suppose to be large and tasty!

Around the farm....We have so many projects around the farm right now. The sad thing is most of it is finishing things we started but did not finish. So as we finish stuff up and get this joint looking and working well we'll keep you posted!

Micro Farm Report...More animals are on the way!

2008-04-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

Well, we are thinking about adding Blue Slate Turkeys to the farm. This would be a slow process of growing a flock of these beautiful birds. They will start fenced but then will roam free on the property once our fence goes up.We hope to raise and sell these birds for Thanksgiving Dinners.

We are also going to be receiving 3 chicks on Thursday from the Kinnard and the Williams (Patrick & Kelli) familes. They will start out in the house and then move to the new chicken nursery as soon as they are feathered in a few weeks!

Okay, we found out we are receiving Cauga ducks and White Pekins ducks. I don't think I had seen these black and green ducks before. We are still deciding if we are going to put these ducks in the front pond or not. We are worried about predators. As well as Phoenix chickens which are ornamental Japenese Chickens. We have not ordered our next batch of chicks from Ideal yet because I am a little concerned about have too many different age chicks together in the nursery. I am not sure when our Rhode Island Reds will be ready to move to the Hen House! I am however eagar to get some more Production Reds or Red/Black Sex Link (means you can tell what sex they are at birth) chicks. We are leaning toward the Sex link chicks because they are a smaller bird and will consume less food. Regardless We need more chicks in here by May!

Final additional animal is coming by way of Yonderway Farm, Rooster Hill is finally getting its rooster or two!

Last week we made our first farm order from http://www.eggcartons.com/. It arrived Tuesday Morning it was so exciting to see the misprinted egg cartons and to know, wow we really are doing this.

Next, week its off to the feed co-op(of which we are finally members) to stock up on food for next month!

A big part of being successful in this I think is time management, gas management etc... So we really are trying to buy enough feed for one month for all of the animals. So this month on the 25th while we are already in town for music & co-op we will purchase....

Chicken Layer Feed 100#

Turkey Starter 50#

Duck Starter 50#

chick feeder (since its unlikely Wayne will have time to construct one!)

water can

Nesting Materials for chicks, ducklings, turkeys, chickens 6cu feet. My Mini van is going to look like a low rider!

In the next post I can show you my homemade chicken feed scoops!

The Micro Farm Report

2008-04-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

Buildings

We now have a "Chick nursery" next to the shed. I made the basics and Wayne came in and finished if off. Although the pictures do not show it they have a roost and their heat light. I can't be happier to have those smelly little beasties out of the house!

Grand total: $0.97

Cost Breakdown

Chicken wire was already on the place

doors were dropped off by someone who thought we might need them.

hinges came from the door jams of the old door

latch .97

Equipment Purchases

1 Gallon chick waterer
1 Gallon base
Grand total of $4.24

The big news....we sold our first eggs this week. So now we are making a "profit"...okay not a profit but at least some money is going in instead of just going flowing out!

Garden

What just went in....:Black eyed peas,Green beans bush& pole,okra, tomatoes, acorn squash

What is coming out....Onions, Spinach

What stays...Romaine Lettuce,

Herbs for Sale: Organe Mint & Apple Mint

What will be different next time:

I'm going to start growing heirloom variety of seeds and I want to put a mini green house in the shed so I don't have to spend $30 on plants!!!!

I'll pay close attention to each upcoming planting season so the next one doesn't sneak up on me like this one.

We are going to start clearing for our big garden!

Why do small farms fail?

I think because it is so hard keeping track of the actual cost of the item you are producing. I just recently realized that I have to keep up with the amount of water the birds are getting to help determine my actual cost.

Making sure you buy the right breed of animal for the job you want done!

Making sure you get the best deal on the items you need.

Making sure you do not buy more then what is needed in size or quantity.

Learning how to manage the animals & crops well and cheaply.

Adding/Moving to quickly forward with plans.

Now that's just what I've thought about after 1 month of farming!

Weekly Micro-Farm Report

2008-04-07T06:36:00.000-07:00

Chickens:

The chickens fence is mostly up now. All Wayne has to do is add a gate and it will be complete. In the meantime we have jimmy rigged a gate so they can get out and hunt and peck away. Our goal with the chickens is that they will be free range but first we have to fence the property. That is about 1500 feet of fence. So it may take us a while to get that done not to mention to save the money to complete the project. So for now they have a yard!

Our baby chickens are coming along nicely, however, as I previously mentioned my lack of forethought has created a problem they are too big for their current home and they stink! Their current home is a box in our extra bedroom. Well, they can now hop out! So tonight even though we are having our College girls over for dinner we will be construction a new box in the shed. For our baby chickens. These 8 little Rhode Island Reds should be laying eggs by July!

Growing our flock: We are trying to buy 4-5 more chickens a month. To grow our flock, our current Hen house can accommodate 32 birds but we hope to have around 100 by year end.

Garden:

We will be planting our organic basil. This is the first of our farm crops we will be selling. I've been growing basil for a couple of years and love to have it on hand! Once the basil is ready I'll let everyone know and I'll give away my recipe for Tomato Basil Soup with any purchase! Yummy!

We are getting ready to plant our family garden this week as we enter the next growing season. We are also trying to determine where to put the big garden so I can take over the small garden to exclusively grow our organic herbs.

Ducks:

The ducks are arriving April 29th, Oh my!

If you are interested in getting farm fresh eggs and being added to our monthly egg list or if you'd just like to order a dozen please comment on this post. I will be in town on Friday & Sunday! You can always come out here.

Hurt Chicken & Starter Plants

2008-03-31T14:19:00.000-07:00

On a field trip we think Pearson broke this poor little chickens leg! I'm kind of at a loss as to what to do with him. He is doing okay I don't know if we should just let him heal, if he's gonna die anyway, should we splint him?? He's too small to eat. Additionally, they are out growing their housing and we have to prepare to move them to the shed.

The garlic worked on the chickens they are worm free. I guess I'll just keep feeding it to them.

It's weird being tied to the seasons. I nearly missed the planting time for a couple of things because I wasn't thinking like a farmer. I was just going on about my business. Anyway here are the starter plants for our Spring/Summer garden. We are going to grow Okra, black eyed peas, tomatoes, green peppers, hot peppers in the small garden. Right next to the house we are going to grow watermelon & cantaloupe. Last year Brian Maass said I grew personal sized watermelons! I'm trying for the 'real deal Holifield' this year!

Happy Farming!

Baby Chicks

2008-03-28T13:37:00.001-07:00

In learning about baby chicks I found out they need to go outside periodically to learn to hunt and peck! So off to the garden we went. It's currently the only safe place for the babies to be. They were not so successful at identifying bugs maybe they will do better on their next journey outdoors! We have also determined they need to be moved to a bigger place within the next week because they are too big for their box. This is also something I wish I would of realized when I purchased these chickens.

My final comment is that these are the last Rhode Island Reds we will probably get. Since Wayne wants us to concentrate on the Production Reds. We are averaging 7 eggs a day from 9 chickens. We expect to get 49-56 eggs a week from these birds so we will be ordering some more Production Red chicks from Ideal soon unless we can purchase some more pullets. We are still trying to decide if we want "farm fresh" eggs or "organic eggs". For us it is going to come down to a numbers game. We hope to have about 100-150 chickens total. Which will produce roughly 77-115 ish eggs a day or 539-805 eggs a week. We consume about 3 dozen a week so this leave a few eggs to sell. So we are going to compute the costs of organic vs non-organic eggs and the profit margin, if we can sell about 50 dozen eggs a week. Right now we are selling our extra eggs for $3 a dozen! We should have 1-2 dozen extra week until our chicks start laying or unless we buy some more pullets! Right now we have 2 dozen eggs available reply to the post if your interested and I'll bring them to church, co-op, bells or come on by the Hill!

Happy farming!

Treating chickens with worms

2008-03-25T14:21:00.001-07:00

Well the lovely chickens we have purchased seem to have worms. It does not appear to be an invasive problem where I think we got ripped off or anything. But they are there. I've seen one worm and I've diagnosed it as roundworm.

The commercial solution is apparently piperazine. So I had Wayne purchase some at Tractor Supply on his way home. I got the bottle and it said on the back "Do not use in chickens producing eggs for human consumption." So after looking around and noticing our house is chock full of humans who consume eggs I guess well have to use something else. Every time I run across something like this it pushes my production more towards organic! Anyho...

That doesn't really make me want to use it on our chickens. So I've been researching 'natural cures' to worms and I've found the following:

Garlic You feed them garlic and you can routinely add it to their water. Chopped Garlic is 3.46 for 2# at wal-mart.
Diatomaceous earth - You add 2-3T per pound to 1# or 2 cups for 50# of feed. You can purchase it from Amazon.com for $10.50 for
Worm Guard plus with flax from McMurray Hatchery 2# for 19.95

I have garlic so I'm gonna go throw some of that out to them. I'll add some to their water but I am still in a quandary about the Diatomaceous earth or the Worm guard.I am unsure if I should just go on and buy the Organic Worm Guard or if I should try to battle this on my own.

I'll let everyone know how it goes I'm off to give the chickens some garlic and I'll let you know how it goes.

Officially a farm

2008-03-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

At last the coop is ready for chickens. I am so excited to get the chickens we will have to get them in two visits since our dog kennel will only hold about 6 birds! I purchased the waterer, 30# feeder (Next time we (as in Wayne) will make our own feeder) though I think.& chicken lay pellets moments before getting the chickens. Although I thought I was ready, I was not completely ready: I still had to add the nesting material, water, food. The poor birds had to wait in the kennel for a good hour before they were let loose.

So we purchased 9 chickens from Joe's "Egg Business", he's selling half of his flock (50 birds) due to some health issues he is having. The chickens we purchased are Production Red's that were born last June. A Production Red is a cross of a Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire Red & Longhorn.