I had to move them out of the shop, THEY STUNK!!! All meat birds do is eat/sleep/poop (and not in that order!!!) Yesterday was the longest I could take them in the shop! They had to go! I put them out in the tractor (and added a heat lamp so they’ll have some extra heat for a week or so) and they seemed to enjoy getting on the grass.
I then cleaned out their brooder, and it was a mess! They had made a HUGE mess in just 2 weeks. I guess 52 chickens can do that pretty easily!
This morning I went out to check on them, and it looks like something tried to get in to their tractor, but didn’t. BUT, we did lose one. It looks like it got too close to the back wall, and whatever was trying to get in grabbed it and injured it. The rest were doing great this morning. I’ll add pictures later today!
Once again, Life On a Souther Farm blog is having another Chicken Nest Box giveaway! I sure hope I win this time. These nest boxes are beautiful!! Wish me luck!!
Ok, it’s been a little while (a week) since I gave an update, and it’s been even longer since I gave an update on the chickens so I thought it was time to give an overall farm update!
I’ll start with the 2009 Farm Goals: = COMPLETED = Started but not completed =No work done yet.
Put in a Garden – The garden has been tilled. When Julia was in Orlando for a TSFL conference, I had a local farmer come over with his small tractor and till up the garden. It would have taken me ALL DAY to do it with a walk behind kind, it took him just a few minutes. No pictures at this time but I’m sure you know what dirt looks like!!!
Build Layer Chicken Coop - The layer coop is mostly done. It has walls, windows, doors, roosts, nest boxes, lights, and chickens. All that needs to be done to really finish it off is to put access doors on the back of the nest boxes so we won’t have to go in to the coop to collect eggs. Here are some pictures:
This first one is of the simple roosts that I built out of 2×4’s. I also had some leftover metal shelving that I hooked some large limbs to. The chickens really like the limbs.
Here are the nest boxes I built. Right now I have the 4 upper ones. On the middle shelf I am going to have a community nest box. There will be an opening at each end, and the chickens will be able to go in and lay eggs where they want.
Here are a couple of pictures of the chickens enjoying (except for me taking pictures of them) the limbs in the coop.
Build Chicken Tractors
Attend/Enter 3 Alpaca Shows – Just found out that the Alpaca show in Eugene is canceled this year. So we’ll have to find some more to go to!
Visit 3 Fiber Mills
Neonatal Class – We did attend the neonatal class at Northwest Alpacas. It was a good day and we did learn a lot. We now feel a little bit more prepared for our 4 cria this summer.
Get a Tractor – Yeah right! LOL
Build a Whizbang Garden Cart & Plucker – I’ve started collecting the wood I’ll need for this. Next thing I need to do is start getting the hardware.
Build Road to Back Pasture
Run Water To Barn
Make Compost Bins – We have a location and a lot of stuff to compost. Now we just need to put it all together.
Farm Days – We have dates!!! The first one is going to be June 27. This is just our Farm Day. The National Alpaca Farm day is going to be September 26th. We’re looking forward to these days!
Build a Fire Pit
Build a Skirting Table
Start a Monthly Movie Night- January & February Movie Nights went great. This has been harder than I thought it was going to be. We did have movie nights in March, April & May, but not all the kids were present at all nights, and we didn’t have friends at all nights but we did watch movies!!
CHICKEN UPDATE:
Well, at one point we had A LOT of chickens here on property. At one point we had 3 RIR, 3 Barred Rocks, 3 Welsummers, 3 Speckled Sussex, 3 Silver Laced Wyandottes, 1 Golden Laced Wyandotte, 6 Buff Orpingtons, 1 Cuckoo Maran, 1 Dominique, 1 Lemon Blue Game Bantam, 1 Barnyard Mutt. 26 chickens & 4 turkeys! I finally realized that we had too many. So I either gave away or sold a good number of chickens. At this point we have: 1 Barred Rock, 1 Speckled Sussex, 1 GLW, 1 SLW, 1 Welsummer, 1 Dominque & the Barnyard mutt. We also still have all the Buff Orps and the Cuckoo Maran & the 4 turkeys. Also in the incubator we have 15 eggs, so there is still a chance we’ll have TOO MANY chickens!!
We have named most of our chickens (except for the BO’s).
Goldie is our Golden Laced Wyandotte
Millie is our Dominique
Whitey is our barnyard mutt
Uncle Sam is the Barred Rock in back and Madge is the Speckled Sussex in front.
Wellie is our Welsummer
And Dott is our Silver Laced Wyandotte.
Like I said, we also have 6 Buff Orpingtons (no names yet) and one Cuckoo Maran. They are about 2 weeks old right now and are doing pretty good.
We also have 15 eggs in the incubator. 7 of them are Black Australorps. These will grow up to be beautiful irredescent black (large) chickens.
Image from Meyer Hatchery
The other 8 are Ameraucanas. I’m not sure what color they are going to be (there are multiple colors) but they will lay beautiful blue eggs. Here are some pictures from today!
We’re on day 18 with these, so no turning, and only a couple days left until they hatch!!
ALPACA UPDATE
All in all the alpacas have been doing great. No real issues with them. They are growing up wonderfully and getting along like they should. Like my last post said, we were getting ready for shearing day. It went great!!! We all had our jobs and we did them well, and we got them all sheared!
I was out getting ready for the day aroun 7:30. Kim (Brownie’s owner) showed up at 8:00 and started helping us get ready. We layed out plywood where we would be shearing and got the barn as clean as you can get a barn.
Eddie showed up right at 9:00 and started setting up his equipment (ropes & clippers). To shear the alpacas, we bring them in and lay them down on their side and then tie their feet and stretch them out so they can’t hurt themselves or us! All in all they are probably down for no more then 4-5 minutes. Most of them didn’t make much of a fuss.
Here is a picture of what it looked like just before we started. You can see the ropes stretched out ready to go. In the picture is Eddie the shearer, Kim, and Julia’s dad Terry filming.
So our jobs were as follows: Rebecca and I had the job of bringing in the alpacas, laying them down and tying them down. Georgia was in charge of sweeping between the alpacas and helping Bec and I separate the alpacas out and keep the others where they needed to go (she was a GREAT help!!!). Kim was in charge of helping Eddie with shearing and keeping the head where it needed to be during shearing. Robbin from Bailey Hill Alpacas was helping bag up the fiber. She was in charge of 2nds (fiber from the chest, belly, legs & neck). Julia was bagging up the blanket and clipping toenails while we had them down. Pattie was in charge of keeping all the bags and lables in order so we would know whos fiber was whos when we finished. Lilian was in charge of watching the kids in the house so we could all be out in the barn. She was also a great help! Without Georgia & Lilian, we could have never done this day so quickly!!
Here is a picture mid-shear! Over on the far side you can see them shearing Nola. Julia had just collected the blanket and Kim is holding the head while Eddie finishes up. Here close to the camera you can see Bec and I tying down Helena while Georgia brings us the ropes. (This was the only picture I got during shearing. I thought I had my camera to take one picture every 30 seconds, but it was really set to take one picture every 60 minutes. Next year I’ll get it set right!! Stupid camera!!)
This is the aftermath of shearing.
All in all it only took us about 75 minutes to shear all 16 alpacas. Pretty good for first timers! Julia and her mom had made a great lunch for all of us and we all went in and enjoyed a fun lunch, getting to know Eddie better and laughing about getting spit on or kicked (only Bec and I got kicked, so not too bad). I think we all had some sort of spit on us!
Here is what we are left with, 32 bags of beautiful fiber (only 30 bags are shown, Kim took Brownies fiber with her). I love all the different colors. One bag has their blanket and another bag with 2nds. We also collected a small sample to send off to get histograms (this will tell us the thickness of the fiber, the length, and all the fun stuff we want to know).
Terry was able to get some video. It didn’t upload that well, but here you can see I think Feline getting sheared.
We all had a great day. We’re looking forward to next year.
So, all in all we are having a great time on the farm! Keep watching for the update on the eggs that are getting ready to hatch!!
Today I had time to work on getting the chicken coop built. I have decided to put the coop in the shop. This will allow me to watch them closely, have them in a safe enclosed area that is close to the pastures, and wouldn’t take too much work to build.
This is what we had to start with, 3 wall, uncovered windows, and a wood floor.
It took a little cleaning and moving around of some items, but I was able to get everything moved around. What I needed to do was to build a wall with a door in it to close off the area. This wall will also have the nests in it. With the nests on this wall, we’ll be able to collect the eggs without going in the coop, and that should make it a little easier to collect the eggs. Last summer we took down part of the fence and replaced it with a woven wire fence. Here you can see where we replaced the fence, and you can see the type of wood that the fence was:
It was made of 2×4’s. I save the old fence, and took it apart this week and set it inside to dry. I was able to use this wood to make the wall as well as a 2×4 we had left over from making the barn in the back pasture. Also, there was an old coop that was just in a bad place but it had a nice door on it that I was able to salvage and use as the door. It moved over perfectly. So all in all, the wall has cost us nothing so far to make!! I like that cost!!
I put down a footer and a header. Framed in the door. I will be using old 5 gallon buckets for next boxes (all free so far!!) and I was also able to build the framework for the nest boxes as well. As you can see below, I am not completely finished, but it is coming along.
Door in and framed:
Where the nest boxes will go.
I also built one more shelf above this row of nests for a 2nd row. I’m planning on around 8 nest boxes.
I was also able to take the lights from our garage in Eugene and use one in with the chickens. It has just been sitting in our garage here for a while, so it will be nice to use. I will put this light on a timer once the chickens start to lay to give them constant light year round. Hopefully this will help them to lay better in the winter. If I can give them 14 or so hours of light a day, they might do better.
UPDATE ON CHICKS!!
A quick update on the chicks, they are doing great and getting BIG!!! They seem to be enjoying being out in the larger brooder. It will be nice to move them over in to the coop in a couple of weeks and then to let them out in to the yard for the first time.
They are enjoying the roost a lot as well. I turned the rungs on the roost so the larger side are now flat. They seem to be enjoying this more now. They can now sit on it without needing to balance much.
Also, this might be my last post on the Chicken Blog! I think I’ve decided that it is too much to have 2 blogs. I’m going to move all my chicken blogs back over the the Silk Creek Alpacas Blog. All my next blogs, chicken/alpaca/farm/family/etc. related, will be on the Silk Creek Alpacas Blog.
Today I had some time after dropping the girls off at the church to start work on the coop. The first thing I needed to get done was build the brooder. Our older chicks were getting too big for the brooder we had in the laundry room, so it was time to get them out. Like I showed you yesterday, there was already a small area that had been used for probably baby pigs or sheep. It had hay in it when we moved in, and was just a small area about 3.5′ x 5′. This would be a good size for older chicks.
The first thing I had to do was to enclose it. You don’t want any drafts on young chickens. I added 1/4″ plywood to the bottom of the gate and side wall. This would keep the drafts out. I then finished it out by adding hardware cloth to the top so the chicks couldn’t fly up and roost on higher rungs. I then decided that they would need a roost so I found some wood that would work well and have a 2 rung roost. I screwed/nailed it to the wall so they couldn’t move it around.
We had to run to Eugene today to pick-up some stuff so we stopped off at Wilco and I picked up a larger feeder and larger water that we will use. This will help so I don’t have to fill their feed daily! Water I’ll still clean daily, but it should last longer if needed. I got a 3 gallon waterer and a 12 lb feeder. I hung the feeder from the ceiling and the waterer I just set down on some wood.
I think took out the chicks heat lamp, and hung it from the ceiling as well from a chain. I have it a little closer to the ground than I did inside, but this will give them a nice warm area if needed. So here’s some pictures once I got the chicks in there.
I put some wood on top of the feeder because I didn’t want them to jump up inside there. I’ll probably cut it down some more once I move my skill saw out to the shop.
They sure like the roosts. None of them have jumped up on the top on yet, it might be a little too high right now, but the’ll get there.
Just got back in from checking them out, and they were all laying around the roost and enjoying the heat from the lamp. So I think they like all the extra area!!
= COMPLETED
= Started but not completed
=No work done yet.
The first one is going to be June 27. This is just our Farm Day. The National Alpaca Farm day is going to be September 26th. We’re looking forward to these days!
Next year I’ll get it set right!! Stupid camera!!)
