Building the Chicken Nursery/Rabbitry

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

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.

Chickens for sale

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!

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!

Black Australorps

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

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!

RH

Chickens are finally on the range

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

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.

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

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.

1. Shovel out the house and get as much manure out as possible.
2. Rake the house and get out more.
3. Shovel it again and focus on 'stuck to the floor manure'
4. hose it down
5. 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!
6. 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

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

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

Eating off the land

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

RH

Changing to Semi Homemade Chicken Feed

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!

RH

Advice for New Chicken Owners

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 list closed

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!

New on the Hill

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!

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

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

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!

RH

The Micro Farm Report

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!

Baby Chicks

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!