Eden's First Visit to Zephyr Hill Farm

Eden came to visit for the very first time this past weekend.  Her Daddy was on a belated birthday camping trip, so Mommy came with Charis, Kol and Eden.

Didi was her Number One go-to person when she felt fussy.  While he sang, Eden would look around calmly, fussing forgotten.

Note that Zephyr is under the table, staying as close to Eden as she can get.  All of the dogs were very interested to meet her, but Zephyr was her special shadow.

Eden and Didi also had long talks.  Just what every man loves:  a captive audience of a female who hangs on his every word and has absolutely NOTHING to say!

Eden was clearly impressed by her farm tour!

She didn't ride Julie, but she did join in for a photo now that the Pony Club has grown to three members!

She slept through the visit to the brooder house where Charis and Kol had a "meet and greet" with their Thanksgiving dinner.

As you can see, it's going to be a long wait!

Monique took this cute shot of Eden modeling her outfit from Didi and Mimi.  It looked adorable in the store, but now we think it's completely outshone by the model!

We're so thrilled that Eden has joined the family, and we look forward to many more precious hours with her here on Zephyr Hill Farm.

Talking Turkey

Our keets and turkey poults are getting in some practice flights in the brooder house.  Only the keets showed off today (mainly because they're more timid and want to stay away from me), but the turkeys fly all over when they want to.

The keets like to sit on top of the brooder box--warm toes, I guess.

When I get too close, one takes off . . .

Airborne!

Misty waited outside the brooder house for me to finish feeding.  She's a very patient dog and goes through life in a very zen way, strolling majestically,  gently biting Zephyr on the scruff of the neck to stop her when she's barking, never hurrying when she's called.
 

Misty followed me down to the mailbox to get the morning paper and waited with me while I admired the view.

Something caught her attention, and she began strolling toward the fence between the orchard and the pasture.

Suddenly the zen-like attitude disappeared as Misty broke into a run and a pair of wild turkeys burst into flight.

Misty did her best . . .

. . . but they escaped unscathed.  Now if she'll only do like that with the hawk I've seen hanging around.  She knows who belongs here and who doesn't!

The wild turkeys duly vanquished and the newspaper in hand, Misty and I headed back up to the house, all nice and zen again.

How Many Lives Does a Turkey Have?

I think one of our turkey poults heard that (tom) cats have nine lives and decided he does, as well, since he's a Tom, too!

When Herb got up Friday morning, he went to check on the babies, and one had flown out of the box and was sitting on the dryer.  When he saw Herb, he tried to get away and fell down behind the dryer.  So when I got up we had to pull out the dryer and rescue the adventurous bird.  Eight lives left!

We had swept the brooder house and sprayed it with a bleach solution Thursday evening and left it to air overnight.  It's tightly screened with hardware mesh to keep predators out, and it has a latch and a hook to secure the door so no handy raccoons can get in.

On Friday morning, we replaced the tarp that we use to cover the floor and weighted it down with pieces of 2x4 lumber to keep it from moving.

In one corner is the brooder box which is very useful while the birds are young.  It's much easier to heat the inside of a small box than a large, screened room!

Zooming in closer you can see that the top of the brooder box is a handy metal piece which we found laying in the hay barn after we moved in.  It's got a hole that's perfect for dropping in a heat lamp without it touching anything flammable.  It can be raised or lowered according to the amount of heat needed for the birds.  The bungie strap is adjustable and supports the weight of the lamp so it's not hanging by its cord.

Peeking through the hole, you can see the birds below, basking in the warmth of the heat lamp.  It was just our luck that the night we moved them into the brooder house, the temperature dropped into the 30's!  Turkey poults and keets are both fragile and need to be kept very warm, so obviously something more was needed.

First I covered most of the hole on top with a few pieces of spare lumber to help hold the heat in.  Next I got a thrift store throw that we usually use to protect plants in the garden, and I folded it over the opening of the brooder box, weighting it on top to hold it in place.

The birds had already huddled in the far corner to stay warm.  I set their waterer up on a block of wood to keep it out of the shavings and moved it close to the heat lamp so the water would stay warm enough for the turkeys.  I also moved a feeding tray full of chick starter in where the birds could reach it.

The final thing I did was to hang the brooder thermometer under the heat lamp so I could monitor the temperature.  Then I dropped the blanket back in place and left.

When Herb went out to shut up the hens and put Misty in with her charges for the night, he came back and told me it had gotten really cold outside.  "I think I better just go check on the babies," I said.  On a whim I grabbed two more garden throws from the garage, got a flashlight, and headed out to the brooder house.

I added an extra throw in front of the opening, and then I noticed red light escaping from the back of the brooder box.  I took the second throw and went back to cover up the gaps that were letting heat escape.  As I tucked the throw in well so it would stay, I happened to look down between the side of the box and the side of the brooder room.  In the dim flashlight glow I saw a dark lump that I hadn't seen when I laid the 2x4's down to hold the tarp.

Sure enough, it was a turkey!  He had gotten out from under the blanket and gone exploring, then couldn't find his way back, and there he sat in a huddled heap.  I scooped him up, and he didn't even struggle, but as soon as I set him back under the heat, he got up and moved to join his buddies.  I was so thankful I had gone out to check because he would certainly have died from the cold.  Before I left, I grabbed another piece of 2x4 and weighted both blankets down in front of the brooder box so no one else could escape.  Seven lives left!

Saturday night I decided to make another bedtime check on the birds to be sure they were warm enough.  My system was working well, and despite the cold the thermometer was staying at a toasty 85°--but there was another problem.

Since some of the keets seemed to have a hard time with the concept of sticking their heads inside the holes of the red plastic feeder, I had replaced it with a more open metal feeder.  The strip of metal down the middle, which I call a "vane" is made to rotate if the birds try to perch on it.  It spins and tips them off so they can't roost there pooping in their food!

Somehow, this suicidal turkey (I'm assuming it's the same one, although they could be taking turns) had gotten himself UNDER the metal vane.  Only one wing was free, and he was laying on his side with his legs splayed out.  He was wedged in there so tightly that I had to pry the ends of the feeder apart and remove the vane before I could get him out.  He hopped right up and ran off, but I doubt he would have made it all night.  Six lives left!

I've heard people say turkeys are hard to raise.  I'm beginning to see why the hatcheries make you buy 15--they want to be sure you have one left by Thanksgiving!  I'm also beginning to think that, as curious and friendly as they are compared to the keets, turkeys must be pretty stupid!  After all, you've never heard of a Thanksgiving chicken, have you?   

A Sad Chicken Tale

Back in March, we got a new batch of chicks from a breeder in Tennessee.  This seemed like a good idea for several reasons:

• The chicks would only have to travel for an hour or so instead of 2 days.
• We could buy fewer than the 25 required by most hatcheries.
• We could avoid dealing with hatcheries that kill most of the male hatchlings.
• We would be supporting a local business.

As Eva (let's call the breeder that) and I discussed which breeds of chicks to purchase, I was clear that my main goal was to try some new breeds of laying hens and that I wanted 6-8 of them.  I wanted dual purpose chickens as we would butcher the roosters for meat.  On Eva's advice, I ordered 4 each of Welsumers, Black Australorps, Light Brahmas and Ameraucanas.

One of each (from left to right):  Light Brahma, Black Australorp, Ameraucana, Welsumer

Unfortunately, there were a few problems from the moment I arrived to pick up the chicks.

• I found that the breeders live in a crowded residential neighborhood with no room for parking and no way to turn around.
• They put the box of chicks in my hands without letting me in the door (despite the clorox-soaked mat at the door) and without a chance to ask questions.
• They informed me that there were only 3 Welsumers, so they had given me an extra Ameraucana.  
• They said I should use only newspaper sheets the entire time the chicks were in the brooder house as they would eat shavings and die.  I found that strange since I had successfully raised a total of 63 chicks on shavings, but I followed their advice.  One of the Light Brahmas died anyway within the first week.

On May 1 we moved the 15 chicks into the chicken tractor in the Home Pasture.  

They settled in happily, cheeping and foraging.

At the end of June, Herb had to be out of town for a week, so I took over feeding the young chickens and moving the tractor daily.  I took the above photo on June 29.  Notice the three Light Brahmas (one hiding behind the waterer).  A few days later, to my shock, there were only two Light Brahmas!  One of the two cockerels was missing.  How on earth could a chicken completely disappear?  It was a mystery.

A short time later, Herb solved the mystery.  One morning when he went out to move the chicken tractor, he found my favorite Ameraucana pullet, Margaret Hatcher, lying on the ground.  The other chickens were pecking at the tiny bit of her that remained.  It appeared that Margaret had been cannibalized.  After an Ameraucana cockerel got pecked and bloodied (although it survived), we could only assume that cannibalism explained the mystery of the disappearing Light Brahma.

We knew the chickens weren't over-crowded.  We had raised 26 Freedom Ranger chickens in the very same chicken tractor.  They spent their entire lives in there without ever harming one of themselves.

As I observed the chickens closely, several more things became clear:

• All three of the Welsumers were cockerels.   I had learned through my research that Welsumers can be easily sexed at birth because the males are marked differently; that means Eva knew she was giving me three males.  So much for those wonderful dark brown eggs she had told me about!
• Eva had pooh-poohed what I told her about hatchery Ameraucanas being "mutts" or "Easter eggers" rather than true Ameraucanas.  She assured me that hers are true Ameraucanas.  Well, they're not!  Hers are mutts, too.  The two Ameraucana cockerels in the photo above don't look like any of the colors specified in the Ameraucana breeders' standard.  Most importantly, they don not have "muffs" like standard Ameraucanas.  This lady is just breeding "Easter egger" hatchery chickens and calling herself a breeder.

One other concern about these chickens was that they did not seem to be growing well.  They had plenty of fresh grass daily along with a daily ration of chicken scratch.  Our previous batches of chickens had thrived on this regime, with our Freedom Rangers being ready to butcher before 18 weeks of age.  The roosters had already reached sexual maturity and were beginning to get "roosterish" with each other.  These chicks were hatched on March 17,  and by 25 weeks old were still not full grown and had not reached sexual maturity.  Herb hefted several and said they hardly weighed anything.

At that point, I consulted fellow chicken-raisers on the Farm Dreams website.  The consensus seemed to be that they must have come from inferior breeding stock, the only thing that could explain the cannibalism and lack of growth since we knew from previous experience that it was not over-crowding or hunger.

During the night of Sept. 14, we moved the chicken tractor into the barnyard.  The next day we opened it up and set the chickens at liberty in the barnyard.  We figured they would gradually integrate into the existing flock, and Misty could guard both coop and tractor at night.  That first day, one of the silly Ameraucana roosters flew over the fence back into the Home Pasture.  Before the day was over, he disappeared--but this time only a hawk could be blamed.  So now with the dead chick, two cannibalized chickens and the silly rooster gone, we were down to 12 chickens.

Here the Light Brahma rooster tries out his wings.  It's a good thing he did it then, because we clipped all their wings that night!  No more escapees!  Sadly, only four of the 12 are pullets.  We have two Black Australorps named Whoopi Goldbird and Oprah Wingfry, one Ameraucana named Amelia Egghart (though her early adventuresome spirit has turned to timidity), and one Light Brahma named Temple Grayhen.

Also sadly, for my sake, we have one very aggressive Welsumer rooster, running after me in this photo.  I had to use that piece of rebar I'm holding to discourage his aggression!  Welsumers are beautiful, the quintessential Kellogg's rooster, but I intend to dredge these in Corn Flakes and oven fry them!

Crow about THAT, Mr. Kellogg!

I'm a sucker for punishment, I guess, but after reading peoples' rave reviews of Black Australorp roosters, I've decided to spare one of them from the guillotine--probably this hefty guy.  He needs a name, but I'll wait till I see how he behaves.  The Light Brahma rooster is also going to get a reprieve, because they are supposed to be very gentle, too.  If he ends up being (as I have read may happen) so big that he hurts the chickens, he can always make a nice Chicken Biryani.

Fortunately, this mostly sad story has a somewhat happy ending.  One of the young hens just laid her first egg yesterday.  I know because it's smaller than the older girls', is a darker color, and has a couple spots of blood on it as is common with a young hen's first eggs.  I have no idea whose this is, but I'll be watching to see.  THAT's the kind of mystery I like!

I can't say "They all lived happily ever after," because as far as six of the roosters are concerned, that would be a lie.  But some of the chickens will live happily for a long time, and we will sure be happy when we start getting some more eggs!

Looking Back: Things We've Done Right

Things we’ve done right in our three years here:

1)  Getting chickens.  That includes having our own layers and learning to butcher our own meat chickens.

2)  Getting Dexters.  While Sara is not the best representative of the breed, she has given us a marvelous heifer, and Siobhan has convinced us that we love cows, particularly Dexters.  The very helpful and friendly Dexter breeders we’ve met have also contributed to our enthusiasm.

3)  Getting pigs.  Herb getting to meet the Large Blacks at Nature’s Harmony Farm changed his perspective on pigs, and he caved in to my pleading for a pig when I found some on craigslist.  Now we’re both pig fans!

4)  Getting Muscovy ducks to eat flies in the barnyard.  Besides doing exactly what we raised them to do, they are beautiful and fun to watch.

5)  Finding Jeff McBryar, our butcher, and Jim Gifford, the breeder of our Berkshire crosses.  It’s so helpful to have local contacts that we can trust for their expertise in their particular area.

6)  Getting a smoker and vacuum sealer.  We are hooked after smoking our own bacon and ham, and Herb will probably smoke anything that lies still, including fresh salmon at Christmas.  The vacuum sealer will prevent freezer burn in our meat and produce.   It has even been useful in packaging bubble-wrapped bottles of homemade liqueur for air travel.

7)  Reading blogs.  I have learned so much from reading blogs, particularly Farming in France, Hope Refuge Farm, Sugar Mountain Farm, and Throwback at Trapper Creek.  I used to follow Nature Harmony’s Farm blog when they still had one, and this led us to their summer Farm School which was a tremendous help in giving us insight and direction—and leading us to pigs!

8)  Getting a generator.  It could have been a serious mistake not to get one sooner, but Herb managed to find one in time to save our meat last time the power went out.

9)  Making improvements over the past three years.  These include:

• Getting our Kubota L-series tractor, one of the best decisions we've ever made.
• Fencing our 20 x 30’ garden.
• Fencing the barnyard.
• Fencing the Home Pasture with no-climb horse fence so our tiny Dexter calves can be safe.
• Hiring a crew to link all our fences and give us the large new pasture we call Kara’s Pasture.  They came with ideas that saved hundreds of feet of fencing, made our pastures more functional, and got the job done in a fraction of the time that Herb could have done it alone.
• Converting half of a surplus shed into a brooder house.
• Building a large chicken coop and moving it to the safety of the barnyard with water and electricity handy.
• Piping water to the barnyard—it has saved us carrying countless buckets in freezing weather.
• Running electricity to the barn—enabling us to have motion-detector security lights, unfrozen water in the winter, and a barn ceiling fan for hot weather.  A future project is to connect it up to the brooder house so we won’t need to run multiple extension cords.
• Getting a head gate set up with a chute, small round pen and simple sweep gate.

10)  Doing this!  We love what we are doing for ourselves, for our children and grandchildren, for our animals, for this bit of creation God has given us to steward, and for friends and acquaintances we can share these blessings with.