Turkeys

2009 Goals (or “How did we do?”)

Posted on December 31, 2009 at 9:40 pm

It is December 31, 2009, time to look at our 2009 Farm Goals.  We did complete some and didn’t

I’ll start with the 2009 Farm Goals:
check-mark-red= COMPLETED
checkmark= Started but not completed
check_mark_no=No work done yet.

check-mark-redPut in a Garden – We had a great garden this year.  The corn was delicious, the tomatoes did great, we had TOOOO much squash, we loved it.  We have a lot of it canned in the pantry, and had some great veggies this summer.  We have already started planning next years garden!

check-mark-redBuild Layer Chicken Coop – We’re getting about 8 eggs a day now.  LOVE IT!!!

check-mark-redBuild Chicken Tractors – We built 2 chicken tractors and did almost 50 Cornish X on pasture and 4 turkeys.  We have about 20 chickens still in the freezer and we canned a lot of the turkey and have many meals ready to go!

check_mark_no Attend/Enter 3 Alpaca Shows – Well, we didn’t go to any.

check_mark_no Visit 3 Fiber Mills – We didn’t go to any, maybe next year.  

check-mark-redNeonatal Class

check_mark_no Get a Tractor – Yeah right! LOL

checkmark Build a Whizbang Garden Cart & Plucker – Well, we have the wood for the garden cart.  I have started with some very handy friends getting what we need for the plucker.  I’m sure with the help of Dan we’ll get this done soon!

check_mark_no Build Road to Back Pasture - Well, nope!

check_mark_no Run Water To Barn – Maybe this next year!!

checkmark Make Compost Bins –

check-mark-red Farm Days – Our farm day in September was wonderful.  We had a lot of people stop by and had a great time.  The news stopped by and we even made the 6:00 and 11:00 news!

check_mark_no Build a Fire Pit

check_mark_noBuild a Skirting Table

check-mark-redcheck-mark-redcheck-mark-redcheck-mark-redcheck-mark-redcheck-mark-redcheck-mark-redcheck-mark-redcheck-mark-redcheck-mark-redcheck-mark-redcheck-mark-red Start a Monthly Movie Night- We’ve done pretty well with having a family movie night each month.  It helped when we started getting Netflix!

CHICKEN & QUAIL UPDATE:

Our chickens are doing great.  We have 8 laying hens & 3 three month olds out with Millie our rooster.  We have 10 two month old chickens that we hatched out and 7 more chickens that just hatched out yesterday and today.  So that gives us 29 chickens at this point.

We also started on quail this year.  We have 6 laying hens with 2 male quail.  We also have 13 three week old quail that are just about to start laying here in 2-3 weeks.  That gives us 21 quail.  We hope to start breeding and raising quail for meet.

ALPACA UPDATE:

We have 23 alpaca on property.  2 of them are being agisted here for our good friend Kim.  We are so happy to have Brownie & Atom here with us.  We also have 2 that will be leaving this week for their new home, Rogue and Zach.  They were purchased by a great couple from Eugene a couple of months ago.

The rest of the alpacas are doing great.  We had 5 babies this summer and we are looking forward to another great year.  Thank you to all of our friends for the support they have given us this year.  Look for our 2010 goals in just a few days!

scasignatureimage

Care to leave a comment?

Turkey!!!

Posted on November 26, 2009 at 8:36 pm

Turkey before cooking.

IMG_0992

Breast on a full size cookie sheet.

IMG_0994

Dark meat cooking on Kamado.

IMG_0996

scasignatureimage

Care to leave a comment?

Cria #4 is Here!

Posted on July 24, 2009 at 10:22 pm

Announcing Silk Creek’s Oberon (maybe ;) )

IMG_0406

IMG_0408

IMG_0404

Here’s the Story.  Julia, Lilian & Aislyn are out of town camping with Julia’s family.  Georgia stayed home with me so she can go to a party on Saturday at her best friends house who is moving soon.  With Julia gone, that put Georgia in charge of the animals while I have been at work this week.  Georgia called me yesterday morning around 10:00 am asking if I had fed the dogs that morning.  I asked her if she had checked the alpacas yet and she hadn’t.  I was feeling that it was going to be yesterday since I had seen Milkyway rolling in the dirt early in the morning.  This is normal for some of our alpacas, but not that normal for Milkyway.  So I knew she was feeling uncomfortable.  Georgia hung up and said she would go check on them.

About 90 seconds later, Georgia called back and frantically said that the baby was on the ground.  She seemed a little stressed.  I told her I would be right home and to go out and see if she could help the baby.  It takes me about 35 min to get home from the time I leave my office.  By the time I was home the baby was up walking around and nursing.  All great signs.  Georgia had dried him off and took good notes on times.  We took his temperature and dipped his naval, and all was well.  He was running around the pasture in no time.

I noticed that one of his front legs was slightly twisted out.  Made a note to have the Vet look at it.  Kept an eye on baby and mom the rest of the day.  All went well.  The other cria’s wanted him to play, and as long as he was close to his mom, he liked to play.  He is a big one, 24 pounds.  That is great!

Our Vet came today this afternoon to check him out.  He is doing great except for the leg.  He has very tight tendons in one of his front legs.  Now Milkyway did NOT like that we were trying to put a splint on his leg.  I was holding Oberon’s legs, and Milky freaked out.  She started trying to bite my head, and the started spitting on us.  Mainly got me right in the face.  That is when we decided to take Oberon out of the barn near the hay to put the splint on.  Gave him a couple of shots and drew some blood.  We’ll get his IGg next week.  I’m going to guess it’s good, but we’ll see.

Yesterday I also took a walk around the farm and took some other pictures that I thought I’d share.












scasignatureimage

1 Comment

Pastured Turkeys

Posted on May 25, 2009 at 10:08 pm

Our turkeys are now about 6 weeks old, and they are getting big.  They are ready to be out on the pasture eating fresh grass and bugs everyday (but I think they are still to young for the pasture yet, but don’t tell them!).  I needed to get their turkey tractor done this weekend so it would be ready to go when it was time to put them out on pasture in about 2 weeks.  There are 2 different types of turkey/chicken tractors.  There is the Salatin style that is about 10′ x 8′ and about 2′ high.  This is good for broilers but not good for turkeys.  The other style I guess you would call the Palmondon style of chicken tractor and their hoop coops.

Well, the Palmondon style suites turkeys much better.  It uses cattle panels to make a 6′ tall area that is about 9′x8′.  This should be more than big enough for our four turkeys.  We had the cattle panels and old chicken wire around, all I needed was some wood and some screws.  So early Saturday morning I headed in to town to pick up some wood and some screws (by the way I got some new style of screw that has a special head, LOVED IT!!! I’ll never go back to phillips head screws!!!)

Some of Julia’s family were here so I didn’t get to working on it until later in the afternoon, but everybody decided to run in to town and I started work on putting it together.  Terry came out and started helping and we were able to get the base built and angle supports on and the hoops on in no time.  By the time everybody got back we had it all together.  We called it a day.

Today Julia and the girls ran up to a picknic, but I needed to finish these so I stayed home and built the front and back walls of the tractor.  I really had only seen pictures of the hoop tractors so I really didn’t have any plans so I just started building.  I built a door and then the back wall.  Then the door jam and then covered the rest of the tractor with chicken wire and I think it turned out pretty good.

525091525092

The first picture is the front with the door and the 2nd picture is the back wall.  The horizontal board that looks like it goes across the back wall actually is about 3 feet ahead of the back and is for the turkeys to roost on.

I towed it with our new mower to the pasture behind the shop and thought I would see how the turkeys like it.  I brought them out and they seemed to enjoy it.  They started scratching and pecking the plants and bugs right away.  They had a good time exploring!

525093525094

525095525097

525098525099

The other animals were not quite sure what these funny looking funny sounding animals were.  They were all entranced by them.

525091352509145250915

I am now going to cover it with a tarp (not a blue one, probably green) so the turkeys will have shade and be covered if it rains.  That is all I need to do at this point.  I am also going to build one for the 50 broilers we are getting in a few weeks.  They will be in the brooder for about 2 weeks, then they will go out on the pasture for about 6 weeks.

scasignatureimage

Top