Lots of Little Ones

While we have had more loss here than we would have liked, we have also had a lot of birth. Delilah had her babies. She birthed seven babies on the 4th. All seven have survived and she is proving to be a good mother! 

Lots of chicks. Just lots. 

Our Muscovy, Helga, successfully hatched 3 chicks. She laid close to 20 eggs so three hatching is not a good turn out, but as these are the first fowl ever successfully hatched on Mediocre Acres were are excited! And as a side note, our four breeding Muscovy are named Helga, Rowena, Godrick and Salazar. (Any Harry Potter fans out there?!)

She was not a fan of me getting close to take pictures! 

Since we messed up in breed selection for Julia's poultry 4-H project we have tried to salvage the project by buying her a Silkie chick. They are bantam chickens so they will be a more manageable size for her. She is very excited. She has also decided she would like to take on a dairy goat project. We are so proud of her increased interest of what is going on here. 

When Silkie (ya, that's what she named it) grows up s/he will look like this:

They are such goofy chickens!

Chickens, Do My Work!

We have lots of poultry right now. Like LOTS. We have 39 Cornish Cross meat chickens, 9 broad breasted white turkeys, 11 broad breasted bronze turkeys, 6 barred rock chickens (these were supposed to be Julia's 4-H project until we realized that a barred rock is entirely too big for her to show at only 8 years old.) 1 silkie chick (we got it for free and it is a far better breed for Julia to show) and 23 assorted layer chicks. This is in addition to the 4 Moscovy ducks, and 1 Peking duck. We have acquired all of these birds in the past 3 months. We have a current laying chicken stock of 10 hens and 2 roosters. That is over 100 birds on the property!!! 

Raising these animals humanely is the top priority for us. It is important that our birds are able to eat greens and bugs in in addition to the feed and water they get. Protecting them from the dogs and the raptors that fly around is also important. Our answer for our meat birds is chicken tractors!! They are 3x5x2 cages with no bottom and a hinged top. I do all the building here because spacial relations are not Leigh's strong suit. But I do use him for the heavy lifting. 

Look! It's a picture of Leigh! 

The added benefit of the chicken tractors are mobility. Coincidentally (well, it's not really a coincidence) the tractors fit into our garden beds. Every two days we move the tractor 5 feet down the bed and this gives the birds fresh greens and bugs. The birds also drop delightfully free fertilizer onto the beds. Their scratching tills the fertilizer into the soil and then we can go through with a hand tiller and dig it a little deeper.   

These Cornish crosses are 5 weeks old. Harvest age is 6-8 weeks. We will harvest closer to 8 weeks as we break ours down into breasts and leg quarters. We have found that this makes the meat go farthest when feeding a family of 7. 

These are some of the younger chicks. The darkest birds are the bronze turkeys, the whitish fluff balls are more Cornish crosses, and the light brown birds are layers. We splurged on our brooder this year. We bought a galvanized tank for $135 at the feed store. It was one of our better extravagant farm purchases! We like that the birds don't have to live on cage floor for any portion of their life. It is easy to clean and disinfect in between batches of birds and I'm not worried about my shoddy workmanship biting me in the butt. If you can purchase one of these with cash I highly recommend one! 

We are very proud of the growth of our poultry program this year. We plan on running another round of 50 Cornish crosses and another round of 40 bronze turkeys. Now, if we could just get our goat milk to be as productive!!