Farmer Training

I missed the Farmer Training last month (signed up but the day slipped by). I will be attending the next session (on my calendar this time):

When: September 16th at 5:30pm-7:30pm


Where: SouthShore Library at 15816 Beth Shields Way, Ruskin, Florida 33573

Who: The Center for Integrated Agriculture (http://farmertraining.org/events.html)

A dozen eggs doesn't make me a farmer but I can dream...

EGGS!!!

Finally the long wait is over. Today I checked the coop and found not one, not two but three beautiful pink eggs. Since I haven't checked since Sunday, I'm not sure if it's just one of the girls laying daily or if this is the first laying for 3 of them. My guess is that it's the first day for the three since the weather has finally changed- ever so slightly- with the cooling afternoon rains. I no longer find them burying themselves in the sandy soil under the orange tree, which I guess cools them down a bit. They'd sit there with their beaks open, trying to vent some of the internal heat (that's what happens when you can't pant or sweat). The one bird not laying may be the one I exchanged a while back to replace the rooster. I think she may have been younger than the rest of them.
Anyway, we are having omelets for breakfast!

Day 93

The cockerel we said good-bye to...

So the 'girls' turned out to be '3 girls and a boy' but Erik at 24 Rivers Farm was nice enough to exchange the cockerel for a pullet. Being new to the group, she got harassed quite a bit by the existing clique and after 3 weeks still tends to eat apart from the others. She did learn very quickly the routine of heading toward the coop with the first strains of 'Good Night Ladies'. They are all growing strong and healthy but -damn- how much longer before those eggs start coming? The oldest are now just over 4 months old. Then again, patience is not one of my more reliable virtues...

Basic Guide for the Backyard Chicken Flock

Good paper on raising Florida chickens. Most resources in print or online are written by folks who need to worry about really cold weather. This one is through UF Department of Animal Science:
Basic Guide for the Backyard Chicken Flock
AN239, a 4-page illustrated fact sheet by Derek L. Barber, provides basic information for small-farm owners about brooding, housing, feed and water, nesting, breeds of chickens, and hatcheries, for starting a backyard flock. Published by the UF Department of Animal Science, April 2010.
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/an239

Chicken siesta

So the girls are settled in nicely- here settin' on their front porch...
They have finally been trained to go into the coop at night- sometimes with a song, sometimes they just head on in on their own. I've taken down the smaller fence since I don't have to worry about them being as flighty as they used to be. Now if they'd just start laying those eggs...

Projects, projects...

So I had a wonderful Mother's Day, puttering around with all my current projects:
The pond, which is ground-zero for the hydroponics attempts, was emptied and the hydropipe repositioned so it flows but sits entirely out of the water and has an adequate slope to keep the water moving without rising more than an inch or so. The plants that had survived in there for the past few months had shown serious signs of too much water- pale, stunted and barely holding their own. So now I'm ready to try the next run of plants- this time I'll focus on herbs since they require less fertilizer and grow smaller so I'll have less of a tipping issue. I will also think about different ways to set the pot on top and hold the growing media in, since that was part of the tipping issue as well (lost a lot of perlite that way).
One interesting outcome of my time emptying the pond is that I found out that chickens like fish as much as cockroaches! There were hundreds of small fish in the pond, mostly volunteers from who-knows-where: mosquitofish, killifish and varigated mollies. Invariably, some fish got caught in the bucket I was baling with and ending up flopping on the ground as the water drained away. The chickens saw them flopping around and had a seafood feast. I still saved plenty of fish to put back in the pond but the girls had a great time dispensing with the overflow.
Last, but not least, the garden's soaker hose was repaired so now I can be sure that my tiny garden will get watered- at least until the rainy seasons starts. I planted this garden very haphazardly over the course of a week and it shows in the growth of the plants. I don't mind the lack of organization but I wish I hadn't planted the beans so close to the fence. The girls have quite long necks when they are reaching for a tasty treat and all the leaves nearest the fence have been picked and poked. Ah, well... It'll be good for the eggs.
Next possibility on the research horizon- rabbits!

Chicken project- first month

The girls are on layer feed mix now. Just a month or so to go before I can expect some return on my labors with fresh eggs! Yum!

Chicken update

Nearly a month at home in the backyard coop and the girls are getting big. I got in touch with the farm who sold them to me because I forgot to ask the exact day they were hatched. The three older chicks hatched 2/21/10 and the younger one 3/8/10.

Today was the second day that they walked themselves into the coop in the evening, with just a little encouragement from me. I'm trying to train them to learn that it's time for bed when I start singing 'Goodnight Ladies'.

This is also week 2 for a small, somewhat conventional garden (I say 'somewhat' because I do not plan to use pesticides and hope to fertilize with compost enhanced with chicken manure) I created using some of the great pile of soil left over from when they installed the sewer system next door. Under all the fill dirt below the first couple feet of digging was the compressed, rich black remains of the wetland area that existed under this housing development back in the 50s when it was considered an improvement to convert all those useless, mosquito infested acres for the good of the economy. At least I'm trying to also plant native plants for the benefit of some of the descendants of the critters that were displaced half a century ago.

Day 2- Chicken project

I've temporarily reduced the area the girls can forage in since 2 of them squeezed through the backyard fence yesterday while I was trying to get them in for the night. Luckily I had the other 2 already in so their frantic peeping kept the escapees close by. I was able to corner one and catch her outside the fence because she ran into a corner that had the solid shed on one side and a smaller gauge wire on the other so that was fortunate. The other, smaller/younger, pullet popped back through the fence so rather than try to catch her, I set up the smaller pen area using about 20 feet of chicken wire I happened to have on hand (this is why I never throw anything away...) and left one side open and went inside the house. After a little while, she came out of hiding and found her way into the penned area and right up to the coop door to get closer to sounds of the rest of the girls. Watching, I went out, closed the fencing up so she couldn't get out if she ran again and I easily grabbed her and put her in for the night. Another comic moment NOT caught on tape- thank God!

New project- Chickens!

Since the hydroponics project has been put on hold due to some yet-to-be-resolved issues, the next project to bring fresh food to the table is the introduction of 4 pullets to the backyard.

I played with a variety of coop designs but after pricing the materials needed, I decided to make use of the old metal shed that contains seldom used equipment in our backyard. Rather than give them free reign in there, I designated an area using some random materials and leftover wire fencing where they can stay at night, safe from predators. An old boat hatch was my only expense. It allows entry into the shed, has a nice fold down door for a walkway and easily fit (well, my hubby put it in and there was no cussing so it must have been easy :o) into the metal wall of the shed.
The biggest concern was how the dog and cat were going to handle them, but after a few stalking attempts and the firm "NO!", hopefully they'll loose interest. In any case, the chickens are certainly sensitive to their surroundings and have shown they can evade these playful dangers.
I can see the biggest challenge for me will be finding a way to train the chickens to go into the coop at night. We've got some big things that go bump-in-the-night around here and the girls need the safety of that coop whether they like it or not. Anyone watching me try to catch them last night would probably have had a good laugh. Well at least I got my exercise for the day...