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.

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!!