New chicks pictures

I'm behind on posting pictures of the new chicks...so here they are!

The females are the orangey colored ones and the males are the black ones.  Although I'm not sure which is which, the orange ones consist of 15 Gold Stars and 10 Production Reds.  Gold Stars are one of my favorite kinds because they lay so well, they're reddish in color (I have a weakness for red or blue colored chickens for some reason...) and they are such a friendly easy-going bird.  The Production Reds are also a great bird, slightly larger in size, lay relatively well too, and of course, are red. :-)
The black males are Black Australorps.  I chose these because they are one of the larger breeds and hopefully I can get a lot of meat off of the 24 of them in about 4-5 months.  They will be all  black in color and have a large red comb and red waddles if left to grow to maximum size (I probably will butcher them before they get too big.)  They're so cute now, it's hard to imagine them in the freezer in a few months, but such is life on the farm!  Fresh chicken is oodles better than the store bought stuff!!






I had just refilled their food trays before I took the picture - can you tell? :-)





If raised in under a light (and following a mother hen around) these chicks will start out their lives with a tub temperature of about 90 degrees.  Each of the following weeks, ideally the temperature is lowered 5 degrees.  This is what all the "raising chickens" type books will say, however, as time progresses, the temp could probably be lowered.  It depends on the temperature of the outside world and how many chicks are together and the type of tub they're in.  I had some last year in early spring and they had a difficult time keeping warm in mid-April and these little guys started out with a heatlamp only on their first day (it was rainy and freezing cold here) and now they're under a 90 watt lightbulb and doing just fine.  I just have to be a tending mother hen and adjust things so that they're comfortable.  Usually a lot of loud peeping and having them all huddled under the light is a sure sign of being too cold.  Quiet and spread out means they're feeling great.

New roosters

The other day completely out of the blue, my nice big Blue Laced Red Wyandotte rooster fell over, never to crow again.  It was a sad day - he was such a nice fellow for a rooster and had a great personality. :-(  The next morning I put an ad on Craigslist looking for anyone in the area who had a BLRW rooster to sell because I eventually would like to mate him with the two BLRW hens I have here (and some other breeds as well) and keep the neat colored chickens a-coming.    I received a reply from someone who happened to have bought his BLRW chickens from the same person I did (a local person).  Fantastic!  We went to visit with him and came home with two BLRW roosters and a Black Australorp rooster.  Great!!  I was pretty thrilled.  Until this evening I had them separated from the others in the summer coop in the vineyard and they appear to be doing quite nicely.  Sometimes roosters will fight (sometimes to the death...) but these guys appear to get along well, probably since they've grown up together.  Tonight I moved the BA rooster into the truck with the hens and tomorrow I hope to move the two BLRW hens along with the Rhode Island Red/Production Red hens into the run with the two blue roosters to hopefully get some fertile eggs!  The reaction when I put the BA rooster into the truck tonight was just hilarious.  Like a kid in a candy shop - 36 hens all to himself!! :-)  Sometimes when a new chicken is introduced to a flock (hen or rooster) there is a lot of pecking and squaucking until the pecking order is established, but tonight these hens were being very nice to him.  Let's hope that continues!  Maybe they miss the male influence they've been without for the last few days.  This guy seems to have a similar personality to my passed on Blue - docile and just lovable and easy-going.  (If you don't believe me that a chicken can be lovable, stop by sometime and I'll introduce you to him. :-) )  

New chicks!

I got my new day old chicks today!  15 Gold Stars, 10 Production Reds and 25 Black Australorp roosters.  Pictures coming soon... :-)

Cool picture of one of my chickens... :-)

I've been trying for some time to get a good unique picture of one of my chickens and yesterday I got one! :-)

Nesting box!

Old tarp from the local elevator - free
Unused commercial nesting box - free + a couple dozen eggs :-)
A fantastic, non-heavy, nicely covered, four hole nesting box for my summer coop - PRICELESS!! :-)




The summer coop really needed more nesting boxes, but I was low on time and materials to build another one.  (I built a 3 hole box last summer, but 3 nests to 36 hens is a little on the "not enough" side...)  A friend's dad hooked me up with some older, commercial nesting boxes that were no longer being used and instead taking up barn space.  Since my chickens are free-range, I didn't need these cages for what they are originally designed for, however, cage-type material is quite versatile so I think they will all be used for something!  (Soon I will post pictures of my first project I made with some of them...stay tuned...)  My chickens like laying eggs in darker areas so I figured that they wouldn't be too keen on using the cages as they were originally designed, so I cut up pieces of tarp leftover from covering corn at the local elevator (also quite versatile stuff...) and used fishing line to sew these pieces in the cage to make it darker.  I hope to also put another piece across the lower front, but at the moment, I'm out of fishing line...  Tomorrow I hope to hook it up on the summer coop and fill it with straw and see who's the first to give it a try!  These boxes will be fantastic for keeping the coop light and easy to move too - this box only weighs about 5 lbs I think!
Yes, I know this is a long paragraph about a nesting box...but how awesome is this?!?! :-) :-)

Sun or Moon - is there a difference??

I woke up this morning at 3:40 and happened to hear the rooster crowing away out in the coop.  If the hens could talk, I think wouldn't be saying anything very nice to him about then.  I also happened to notice that there was an almost full moon out...perhaps someone should tell him that the sun and moon are two different things...one of which you don't crow at at 3:40am...
:-)

Hardboiling fresh eggs...

Did you know...?
If you want to hard-boil freshly laid eggs, don't. They probably won't peel worth anything. However, set them out on the counter for a day or two or wait a couple weeks in the fridge and then try it. Works like a charm. :-) Also, the greatest way to hardboil eggs is found near the end of this article... http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/issues/3/3-2/incredible-edible-egg.html