Wow - it's been awhile since I've been on here! Exciting times in the springtime with my poultry! We have moved since last year. We now live one place to the west of the place we lived before. It's a pretty place with lots of nice grass and space for my chickens! We also recently picked up 3 lonely looking turkey poults and 3 bantam chicks. We've never had turkeys or banties before, so we'll see what happens! The peafowl are now moved over here too and so we can keep an eye on them. The male seems to feel spring-like towards the female and is starting to show his plumage (even though there's not a lot there yet being that he hasn't hit the mature age of 3) but the female seems confused. Kind of funny...not much like high school hormones!! :-D
My young hens I bought last spring (plus the older ones as well) are laying up a storm and I have oodles of eggs. Eggs for sale!! About all you can have/want for $2/doz! Come by and pick them up and tell your friends! Sale for the months of May is buy 4 doz, get one free! Since they are fresh, they will last awhile, so even if you're slow on eggs, come get your 5 doz for the price of 4!! :-)
This is a website dedicated to showing off my grass eating, pasture raised poultry and the delicious and nutritious eggs they lay! Take a few minutes and browse through the plethora of cool things here. You can view pictures of my chickens, find out what makes my chickens' eggs better than most, and how to contact me to buy or trade to have a few eggs of your own! Thanks for visiting - please visit again soon!
.:~~Chicken Scratchings Blog~~:.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Day 2 of painting the truck!
We had a church anniversary here and so I didn't get very far, but you can see a little difference!
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Yummy dandelions!
Right now the 2 peafowl, the 3 Americanas and the 3 Blue Laced Red Wyandottes are in the vineyard run, while the laying hens are in the truck coop and get let out to roam the yard everyday. Yesterday, I moved the run in the vineyard to new grass and it's hilarious to watch them devour the new grass. Well, especially dandelions. The way they all attack them, it makes me want to try dandelion leaves myself and see if I think they are as delicious as they seem to think they are! :-)
Thursday, June 10, 2010
New recipe!
I see I haven't posted on here in ages!! Busy summer days at the farm!
Anyway, to make up for it, I just posted an awesome homemade mayo recipe under the "Cooking with Farm Fresh Eggs" section. Check it out! http://cookingwithfarmfresheggs.blogspot.com/2010/06/blender-mayonnaise.html
Anyway, to make up for it, I just posted an awesome homemade mayo recipe under the "Cooking with Farm Fresh Eggs" section. Check it out! http://cookingwithfarmfresheggs.blogspot.com/2010/06/blender-mayonnaise.html
Sunday, May 16, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, May 14, 2010
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. :-) )
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