Nuggets
It’s been a week now since the nuggets appeared in the coop. For the first day or two I kept them in a brooder in the coop to make sure Broody Hen was going to stick with them. Since she did a fine job, I put them outside in a small enclosure for a day.
After that I set them free, no fences or anything to keep them safe. Broody hen is doing a fantastic job of keeping them all in line and safe from predators and the guineas, other chickens and she even fought off a wild turkey hen that was trying to sneak into the coop for a free meal. She’s a champ.
There is a greater risk of something happening to one of the chicks if I let them run freely, but I’m OK with that. They will be healthier and better chickens if I let their mom show them what it means to be a chicken. They will also be much happier for it!
I love that she’s doing such a great job, brooding little birds is one of my least favorite things to do. Since I like to have them outside on grass as soon as possible, it gets tedious carrying them out and bringing them in again in the evenings. I’m happy knowing there’s a great hen doing what she was born to do!
Have you spotted any babies in your garden yet?
Share this:
Loaves and Fishes (or Guineas and Ducks)
I’ve been keeping a keen eye on the guinea fowl trying to figure out where they’re laying their eggs. They don’t like to lay in the coop, preferring to find a secluded spot in the brush somewhere, generally somewhere completely inconvenient and perfect for predators to get them.
I had a chicken that was laying eggs in a pile of pine boughs that came down during the big ice storm this past winter. Two days ago I found 2 guinea eggs in the nest. The next day there were 9 guinea eggs in the nest, yesterday there were 18 eggs in the nest. We also had a hen that hatched out 15 keets that we brooded ourselves, these are members of our current flock. With 7-9 guinea hens laying eggs, this nest will fill up very quickly. I’ll collect some of the eggs but leave most of them hoping to have them sit on this nest which I can keep an eye on. Guinea eggs are delicious, the yolks are very big so I’ll probable use them to make custard or ice cream.
Last fall we had a guinea hatch out a few keets, though none of them made it. Guineas are notoriously bad mothers. I’m planning on letting nature take it’s course with these, though I have lots of people interested in purchasing keets so I might try to steal some to sell. I also have four muscovy hens sitting on nests right now. These birds are multiplying to Biblical proportions – never a dull moment around here!
What’s the craziest kind of egg you have eaten?
Share this:
Safety
Yesterday we were gone all day long. I had to shoot some product photos and Brian was working for a client. We then had dinner with friends in the evening and didn’t get home until very late. Generally, days like today meant that we left the animals all cooped up during the day, locked up tightly against predators, but now we have Tara.
She’s our Anatolian Shepherd Dog (ASD for short) that watches over our flock. It’s amazing to watch her work, her natural instincts are to protect the flock and she acts much differently than Lucy, our older lab mix dog. You can tell that everything she does is to keep predators away. She leaves her scent around the property and is on constant lookout for things that are out of the normal. You’ll see her sniffing the air frequently, trying to catch the scent of someone out of place.
As a result, we returned home to all the feathered members safely in their open door coops. We counted everyone and closed all the doors and headed in to bed ourselves. We’re certainly happy that she is here helping us. It’s so much more efficient to use animals and their natural instincts to do jobs around the house and gardens. There’s no way we could be watching all the time, thankfully Tara does that for us.
Do you know of any local farms using dogs to protect their animals?
Share this:
New Life
Miss Broody finally has a few babies. Last Friday morning I noticed a little chick in the nesting box when I checked on her. Sadly, there was one that hadn’t made it through the hatching process as well.
I checked on her on Saturday morning and there were a few more chicks and a couple more in the process of hatching out. Monday morning I moved them from the tiny nesting box into a small brooder in the chicken coop with food, water and a small heat lamp.
It will be interesting to watch these little ones grow up to see what they look like. Some of them should be Wyandottes, some of the will be barnyard mixes, no doubt they’ll all be just as great as their parents!
Miss Broody went right to work showing her babies how to scratch around in the litter, drink from their water bowl and eat the food I provided for them. I wanted to put them outside but it was very cold and rather windy. If they could easily navigate in and out of the coop I would have let her simply take them wherever she wanted, but our coop is not accessible to little birdies, that’s something we’re hoping to work on. There are also lots of layers of chicken wire installed by the previous owner and it is kind of a land mine for little ones.
In the future we hope to have a new coop with a dedicated brooding area for mama birds to hatch out their young and it will have a dedicate run area attached to it for safe outdoor fun for little babies. Until then, we’ll make do with what we have, which probably means carrying them outside into a fenced in area and then carrying them back in at night. It will be well worth the effort in the health benefits it will provide for the little ones.
Any wonderful things happening in your house/garden/coop?
Share this:
Celebrating Our Pigs
Yesterday we celebrated Easter with our neighbors and their family. Both of our families are a long ways away in Ohio, so we are thankful to be included in their celebration. This year, we provided the ham, which came from one of our pigs.
Since we slaughtered them ourselves here on the farm, I was in charge of curing the hams myself, which was a little scary to say the last. I used the Cider Cured Ham recipe from the The River Cottage Meat Book. Our hams all weighed in at 25lbs or higher (our scale only went to 25 lbs and some topped it off).
It’s been hanging on our back porch since I took it out of the brine back in January (one went into the freezer for later). We took it out and boiled it on Saturday night for a few hours to reduce the saltiness, then we coated it with brown sugar and cider reduction and hot smoked it for 4 hours with apple and cherry wood. Needless to say, it was AMAZING. If you’re lucky enough to raise and slaughter your own pigs, I highly recommend this recipe, it’s not cheap, but it’s FANTASTIC and so easy.
We were super nervous as we took the ham to it’s final destination. I had never cured a ham before, we had never smoked a ham before, we had no idea what it would taste like. The yearly Easter meal isn’t really one you want to mess up with a bad ham. We had faith in the recipe, but were still nervous. That was until Mr Chiots tried the first bite when they were carving it. Needless to say, it was a hit and I’ll definitely be using this recipe for future hams. We’re scheduled to pick up piglets in about a month.
Do you celebrate Easter? What foods do you use to celebrate?
