Been 2 weeks already?

Seriously, where did the time go! It is hard to believe that it is already 2 weeks since our 8 little bundles of fluff came into this world. Each has it's own markings so we are able to tell them apart, sort of. The verdict is still out on whether or not who is male and who is female. Care to take a guess? Put your answers in the comments.

8 Easter Egger chicks at 2 weeks old.

Normally for a brooder we use whatever bedding material we have on hand, however this time we decided to go with sand. I personally still do not understand the difference between play sand and all the other types out there. We went with a commercial grade sand that was washed. The kids loved the fact that the chicks were getting a beach to play in. Using sand is definitely less dustier than other bedding material. The sand is also easy to keep clean as well, just scooping out all the tiny poop as needed.

I will be digging out our big coop and having sand brought in to fill it. We have a drainage problem, plus all the poop it just isn't very pleasant. We get a lot of rain here which does not help at all either. Having the sand should help plus the "girls" will be keeping their feet nice and clean. It will have to be sifted out which shouldn't be to hard to do. 

In other news, I finally mowed the yard for the 1st time this year. It looks so much better and I got a nice work out in the process. Our lawn tractor was having issues, which lead me to use our gas powered push mower. Took about 4 hours to get it all done, but all in all was worth it. Even got the strawberry patch half weeded. Never did get any mulch in, but it has been raining all week so we may not get it until we get some sun. That's all for now. Not sure what project we are gonna tackle next but as always, will keep you posted! 

17ft x 23ft Strawberry patch

Signs of life

 

  It's been a busy week with new chicks to take care of. They are such cute little balls of fluff and after a week already have feathers coming in. We still cannot tell which ones are boys and girls, but sometimes that is the fun of hatching eggs. I think it also makes it harder when we did different breeds. For instance, we did 2 Golden-laced Wyandotte eggs that were fertilized by our Ameraucana rooster, 1 of the chicks has dark legs and the other has light colored legs, other than that they are quite similar. Personally I think we have 3 girls and 5 boys or vice versa.

      We even started another clutch of eggs to hatch. These little ones will be Rhode Island Reds and Black Sexlinks.We were only able to put 15 in this time as 1 we found was cracked. We also moved the incubator into a different room since we had problems the last hatch with humidity. This room does not get much foot traffic and is on the opposite side of the house, so the room temperature is much different. The 18th day, which is the day we stop turning the eggs, is June 1st.

I also was able to take some pictures of some of the fruit trees and plants we are growing. We have many more plants and trees out there, but these were the ones I had taken recently. Already having fungus issues with our nectarine tree. We have never sprayed our trees until now. Hoping this fixes the problem and we do not have any issues with the other trees we have. I cannot believe out of all the kiwi starts we have at least 1 potential female plant that is rooting and possible 2 males, which are actually self-fertile plants but can be used in place of male kiwi plants to pollinate female kiwi plants. Our blueberries are doing wonderful! It's nice to see so many berries out there. This is our first year doing raspberry plants. We purchased the from a lady off of Craigslist and they will bear fruit this year, making it even more worth it! My new variety of strawberry plants have had flowers on them since April, but have finally fallen off and berries are starting to form on them. We have lots of plums in the making. However, the wild elderberry I tried to transplant did not make it. I should have left it until after it was done berrying and then transplanted it, but I was too inpatient. Hopefully it may come back next year, but if not there is still another one that I did not dig up that I might try moving making it easier accessible. Our pomegranates are still very tiny trees. We also have lots of jerusalem artichokes. I had thought I pulled all the rhizomes out and separated them evenly throughout all the buckets, but I found extras growing plus a few in the blueberry plants. We had decided not to do a garden this year with all the projects going on in the yard, however we ended up with some rogue potato plants coming up that we must have missed last fall and I will be doing some October beans. After our vacation this summer I may plant a few things that can tolerate the cold, but time will tell if that happens.

    I tried to do some weeding in the strawberry patch but haven't really had time, but I best get on it as I have 40 yards of mulch coming to help keep the weeds at bay. I wanted to weed as much as I could to make it easier to lay newspaper down before we lay the mulch over it. Yeah, I probably should have done this months ago.

     Eventually we will be cleaning up the area that will be our garden, laying cardboard down, compost, fertilizer, and mulch. Granted I won't need it all over the garden but plan to do the whole thing like that just to keep the weeds down so I can put in raised beds, trellises, and an area for plants that will get direct seeding. I still have yet to fence it off, but now that the brush is finally burned that will be happening soon I hope. As you can see the blackberry bushes are starting to grow back, plus I have some wild foxglove that I also need to move.





     I think that is all for now. After all the burning yesterday I am still exhausted. As always, will keep you posted with chick updates, incubating updates, and of course our yard updates. Feel free to subscribe and/or comment. Have a wonderful day!

Oh boy our eggs are hatching!

   

While incubating our 16 eggs we had a few bumps in the road. The Humidity we could not get right and water kept spilling everywhere, even getting some of the eggs wet. We finally manage to get things under control but got another hiccup when it came time to stop turning the eggs and increase humidity. We do not live in an area where we have a lot of humidity so increasing it is a huge problem. At a last ditch effort to save the hatch we plugged in a humidifier. I am not too concerned since the day after we stopped turning the eggs, we had 3 hatch out and another 5 on day 20. We did lose 1 that couldn't finish pecking its way out, she pulled her yolk sac out trying to peck her way out. As it turns out those last 7 never hatched. 4 didn't make it past a few days, 1 stopped midway through the incubation process, and the other 2 looked almost fully developed but for some reason did not make it.

    These little balls of fluff are so cute! We have 1 from Roo, 1 from Muffy, 2 from our golden laced Wyandotte, 1 from an Ancona, and 3 from our brown Leghorns. The one we lost was one of Muffy's and from the look of the comb it was a hen. So far by looking at combs, we have at least 3 roosters out of the 8 that hatched. Telling by combs is not a normal way to determine sex, however a few years back when we hatched out 14 chicks we could tell by the combs. I do not recommend this as an alternative to vent sexing or feather sexing.
     Hatching eggs is such an exciting thing. I was careful when collecting the eggs, making sure to mark with a pencil the date I picked it up and who laid it if I knew. I picked up eggs for 7 days and all eggs were unwashed and refrigerated until 24 hours before placing them in the incubator. I have heard that you should not do it this way, however it has worked for us. I recommend doing what is best for you and your situation. Most say to keep out at room temperature until ready to put in the incubator. My husband did the incubator part. He made sure it was cleaned, plugged in for a couple of days and ready to go for hatching these chicks. He also made sure to check temp and humidity throughout the time the eggs were in the incubator.
     I like this incubator we have, as we can do duck, turkey, chicken, and even quail eggs. That being said, I would like one that would hold more eggs so we don't have to do so many batches. For now I will have to settle for what we have until I can get some funds together. I would have already had it had I not spent it on an upgrade for the chicken coop. Decided that the nesting buckets we currently have are too much of a nuisance and wanted some external ones and build roosts for the chickens to sit on instead of sleeping in their nests.

     


 I had no idea how we were going to add external boxes onto our existing coop so I took to searching the Internet for help. I came across this one  http://www.thegardencoop.com/blog/2011/03/10/external-nest-box-plans/ , however I had to make some alterations due to the fact that I have a much bigger setup. We made it longer and added a 2nd tier to it. If I had to go back and redo it I would definitely make some changes. As it was I had to dig out some of the run in order to finish attaching the hinges for the bottom nesting box door. I also would probably make the whole back piece 1 piece and cut out the doors. Everything has its flaws and we shall see how this one works.

     Next up we are purchasing a chicken fountain from, http://chickenfountain.com/ so we will no longer have dirty waterers or the need to refill them since it will be hooked up to the garden hose. Plus I am going to be tilling up the run, digging it out and putting in sand. It always ends up super muddy in there when its wet out. Not a good thing for anyone checking for eggs or the chickens feet. Eventually we will be changing the layout of the run fencing, adding a roof that extends over the chicken coop and put up a rain barrel system to help with watering the garden and plants out in that area of the yard. So many things to do and they are not little things. I also would like to paint the chicken coop as well making it look prettier.


 That's all for now. Time to enjoy the rest of today, it being Mother's Day and all I want to wish all the mom's out there a Very Happy Mother's Day!