I didn’t get to blog the last couple of months as much as I would like.  I’ve been working so hard on a variety of projects that I just haven’t found the time to sit down here and type out some of my thoughts.  Too, many of my thoughts have been scattered here and there and mostly I was afraid I would ramble too much!

To summarize where I am right now.  There are 3 clutches of eggs in the incubators, and a broody hen is sitting on 4 eggs, all of which are due in the next 2 weeks.  A lovely lady from Southern Indiana wanted some of these White Orpingtons from McMurray hatchery, but she was unable to convince her husband that driving 6 hours to pick up some pretty rare chicks was a good idea.  SO, another lovely woman on the Tennessee Hobby Farm Yahoo group that I belong to, happens to make half that drive all the time, from Knoxville all the way almost to Nashville.  Now, Indiana lady is able to drive down to the area around Nashville and so it looks like we’ll be able to get her the chicks she wanted with a transport!  I’ll take the chicks to their first ride in Knoxville, then they’ll go on a trip to nearly Nashville and THAT is where their new mom & family will pick them up.  How great is that! Where there is chicken will, there is a way!

The gardens are growing, some slower than others; Corn is growing well, strawberry season yeilded several quarts of fresh succulent berries, tomatoes and cucumbers are nearly ready to start picking, onions and winter squash are growing nicely, none of my bell peppers are doing as well as I would like, and so will be planting many more of those in the second round.  I’ve started more watermelon, cantelope, cauliflower and planted several Black Bean seeds yesterday.  Green beans are flowering nicely, but my spinach is not growing much at all.  The sweet potatoes that we planted are starting to take off, and our potatoe plants are out of control!    I still haven’t gotten much of the garden page update, but will put that next on my list!

Well.. it’s a busy time for me as my high school daughter transitions from one grade to the next, I’ll have to take a break from hobby farming soon to teach her to drive.  Of course we’ve been teaching her for years, but the serious stuff starts soon!

I’ve had a setback in my GLO project, which means that most of the eggs from one family do NOT look as though they are developing into wonderful little chicks.  I’m not sure what I’ll do, either scrap it or try again, but for now it’s just a setback.

Ok.. I have to get moving and get many other things done.  I’ll write again soon!  I’ll have lots of fuzzies to be bragging about soon, first clutch due this weekend!!!  Early Sunday morning I expect the pipping & zipping.

We have had a few light showers here and there over the last few days, all very welcome and appreciated as they were light and watered the plants well.  Did I tell you all about the fake “Topsey Turvey” bags that I made?  I’ll have to go and check, I think I’m way behind updating my gardens page.  Well..  I made 3 bags and they are doing SO well that they are all flowering; Bell Peppers, Tomatoes and Pickles!  Some of my winter squash is flowering and so are the cantelope, albeit a big early as the plants have not really grown very much since they were planted in the ground.  I’ve been pinching flowers as I read this will encourage plant growth and delay fruiting.  I hope that is correct.  Our first planting of sweet corn is growing nicely and the bush beans that have survived the dogs, cat & chickens are growing well.  The strawberries are just going crazy!  I’ve managed to freeze about a quart ziplock bags worth, mostly because we can’t hardly stop eating them while picking!  Plus, strawberries have a short window of opportunity…  within 12 hours they can go from not ripe yet to too ripe!  We have to pick twice per day and we still miss a few.  Lucky for the chickens though as most of them LOVE strawberries!

On Monday we started another addition onto our Hen House…following the same technique as we used for the Aviary addition.  We built 2 more coops/pens off of that.  Each pen is 7X9 = 63sf and is large enough for a small breeding flock of 5-6 hens and 1 rooster.  They are really fantastic as we followed the roofline from the Aviary on down 14 more feet and it looks just great!  This is also a benefit as the roof now stops right at our back garden which will make rain collection SO MUCH EASIER!

I placed another order with Murry McMurray Hatchery for 15 Black Australorp Pullets and 10 Red Cochin Bantams.  The Aussies are for me and the Bantams are for my daughter.  She has picked the little cochins as her own breed to work with and I’m very excited for her.  School is almost out and then she’ll have time to get her site updated properly.  I think she’s way behind as she still hasn’t added her prize winning Buff Orpington Rooster ‘Steve’ to the site yet.  He’s a lovely boy, and will be used in our Buff Orpington breeding plan.  The 25 white orps growing out from McMurry are a week and a half old and will be moving outside before the end of this week I suspect as the weather is stable and they are living happily without additional heat.

Clutch #3 was set late Saturday night, and within 12 hours I found 2 additional lovely fresh eggs so I added them too.  I didn’t actually have the incubator pre-set, it was a last minute decision, so I let the eggs warm up with the bator, so all in all they should only be a few hours behind and I have on them marked.  On Memorial Day I have planned to set Clutch #4 for this year, which will include the Black Orpington Chicks I have already sold.

My Turkey hens have moved to a friends farm in Knoxville, TN.  They are only a couple hours away, but there is a Tom there named “Jake” and he recently lost his girls to a mean old fox!  So, my ladies have gone to stay with Jake for a while, perhaps forever, where they have acres and acres plus the man they so desperately want.  I plan to get some of their fertile eggs when they all make nice with eachother.  Jake is a Burbon Red and so this will make the cross that I had hoped to make without actually having to aquire a Burbon Red to do it.  My poults from Sandhill will arrive in approximately 3 weeks and I can’t wait to have more of those little tiny peepers around here.

Well.. I must go finish putting the final touches on our new coops and get everyone moved in to their new places.  Of course I’ll post photos, as soon as we’re done

The lack of rain is very much appreciated today, as it seems as though it has rained for weeks!  We haven’t yet gotten as much rain as “they” those weather people seem to think we need, but the lake is up, the rivers are running strong and I really want to get dried out!

Between the garden, and the many new chicks we’re brooding or growing out, we’ve stayed very busy!  I haven’t hardly had a moment of free time, but it’s all exciting!  Today I took an order for 15 Black Orpington Chicks to be hatched and 10 White Orpingtons already hatched who will vary in age from 1 month to 3 months at the time of delivery, which is Father’s Day weekend!  I’m very happy to be helping a family get started with their own chicken adventures, and likely breeding and a little showing as well.  It’s a pleasure to help educate and supply starter stock, I really am enjoying what I’m doing!

The GLO project is SLOW going!  Perhaps I should consider renaming it to the SLOW GLO Project .  Turns out that not all hens like all roosters and not only that, but sometimes they might actually HATE eachother!  Well.. mine are not that bad, but my 2 GLW hens definitely do NOT like Steve’s brother Bob, and it has taken a REALLY long time to get my Buff Orpington Hens to come around to liking Pierre the GLW Rooster!  2 MONTHS longer than I’d hoped, and honestly that seems like an eternity in this chicken world.  Because of this, I will not be offering any more GLO Project eggs from this cross.  Once (and if all goes well) I make my 2nd crossing, late in this year, I will then again be offering those eggs for others who would like to try.

Blue’s Mixed Mystery Chicks have brought around an interesting turn of events, and it looks as though I am going to try to head down that road and see where it leads me.  Seems I have a lovely blue australorp looking rooster from my blue orp roo & black australorp hens.. as well as 2 black hens and an alternate black rooster.. all very australorp looking, with white wing tips and all.  They are quite good looking and WONDERFUL temperments as they were brooded for WAY to long in our living room.  I think I am going to collect a few more good production type Australorps and work them into this mix and see where it’s going to go.  Blue Australorps are a thing to behold and Australorps in general are such good egg layers, I can’t see this being anything other than win-win.

Well.. on that note, I have to run off, the white orpingtons from McMurray hatchery are lovely and I am slowly but surely filling out all the breed pages on my site with new photos.  I probably won’t be able to post too much this month as it’s a very busy time here on the farm, Strawberries are fantastic by the way, but I will try to post again around the 25th when I will set my first round of SLOW GLO Project Eggs as well as some Black Orpingtons for Alex and her family in Georgia!
See you then!

Yesterday we finished planting the first round of corn, and only have a few plants left to get into the ground before we call the 1st planting DONE!  I’m so happy!  We have added some really great things this year including 3 new Apple trees and 2 Concord Grapevines.  These will be fantastic for us as apples & grapes are at the top of our favorite fruit lists.  Next week I’ll be taking the time to update our Gardens section of this site. Remember Blue’s Mystery Chix?  Well, here they are at 2 months old, aren’t they adorable?

They are living on the back porch on an open deck, with netting to keep them in, and they come into a dog crate at night to sleep in the roofed part of the porch.  It’s temporary as I have all but 1 of them up for sale.  Turns out the Blue is looking like a Blue Australorp really, not Blue Orpington and the Blacks also appear to be Australorps and would be carrying the blue gene.  This may very well be helpful to someone working on a Blue Australorp project.  We’ll see.

It’s been a very hectic month!  I have not blogged as I would’ve wanted, but many things have been pulling attention away from my own personal website.  The crops are almost done being planted, we’ve had to bring in 4 truckloads of dirt, raise several beds, planted a few trees and so on!  Lots of chicks, lots of regular work, all distracting me from DawnontheFarm.com!  To make up for that, I created a quick Youtube video tour of the farm, because I lack good video equipment!  Enjoy:

Farm Tour

Today was very windy, I had to keep my seedlings inside.  There was also very little sun to speak about, the wind chimes played their song all day long and are still ringing as I type.  I have been in one big “blah” mood for a few days now, too much work, too little time, not enough motivation.  On Tuesday I received a box with little fuzzies in it, 9 white & 3 blue orpingtons.

Unfortunately there were shavings in the box instead of the usual packing materials and 1 of my whites had what they call spraddle leg.  This is essentially terminal due to the fact that they won’t be able to walk, feed or care for themselves.  Spraddle leg looks painful and when you see the pain wearing on what should be an energetic little chick, you just can’t help but cry a little inside.  It’s essentially like when Bambi was trying to walk on ice, and his legs flew out from underneath him, except in reality little chicks don’t get back up to regain their footing, they simply lie there, face into the ground crying, never able to get up again.  It’s awful and I hope that you never have to experience this, putting down an otherwise perfectly healthy chick because he/she seriously lost their footing.  This is why you MUST use some kind of non slip surface in your brooders for the first few days of life.  They won’t come back from this well, if at all.

The weather is supposed to perk up tomorrow and on Sunday as well, so I need to get some computer work done today so I can get out of this office tomorrow!  I’ll close with pics of my new fuzzies!  8 White Orpington Chicks, 3 Blue Orpington Chicks and 2 Mixed Wyandotte Chicks

Yes, that is correct, it’s been raining here for days!  I can’t wait for the sun to come back out and grace us with it’s presence.  My seeds are mostly sprouted now, and are enjoying very little daytime sun due to the weather, but they are still growing.  We’ve prepared another bed for growing food, right along side of one of our coops.  This is where I plan to plant onions and the like.  Since it’s a new bed, it won’t be ready for anything that isn’t tough for a year or more.  I hope onions will grow there.  It’s only 3 rows maybe 5-7 feet long.  I know it sounds small, but so is everything here on our micro-farm!    We are planning on trying to construct a cold frame of sorts on our property, to extend our growing season in both directions.  If I’m correct we should be able to grow a few things straight through the winter months, assuming we don’t get hit with blizzards and such.  I’m not sure what yet I could grow, but I suspect I can grow some tomatoes, parsnips, cabbages & lettuces, maybe even a cucumber plant or two.  This could be enough to keep us in salad & the chickens with cabbage for the winter months, which would be GREAT. Today I put the 2 eggs in the incubator in hatching position, again I’m using a carton to hatch these.  We expect them to hatch on Monday or more probably Tuesday.  It’s ok that there isn’t more, we cracked the other 3 eggs and it looks as though we have 1 quitter and 2 clear eggs, the quitter was in the first couple of days because there is essentially nothing there.

Today I need to get lots of computer work done, and so had my daughter go out to care for all the poultry.  The chicks in the turkey brooder outside are doing well.  They have a plastic storage tote filled with woodchips which they sleep & “dust”bathe in.  It’s the same as we are using for nest boxes, with a hole cut out of one end for entry/exit.  We have the lid off of this one and a 85 watt red floodlight shining down into it, which keeps it nice & warm.  The rest of the brooder is wire floor and they are getting used to that little by little.  This way they are out of the living room, in a brooder big enough for them (this is the turkey brooder) and they have both warm & outside temperature places to get to, it’s their choice.  Since they’ve had to huddle together in the evenings, they’ve been getting along much better since moving out to the porch last week.  Which is of course helpful, as the weather and their future coops are NOT ready for them to yet be living out in the yard.  I’ll hold the two hatchlings in the 3rd bedroom tub brooder until their new friends arrive by mail, and then I’ll move everyone out to Snoozer, our regular chick brooder.  By the time they are too big for snoozer, the chicks in the turkey brooder will have moved out, and so they can move in there.  At around that same time, I should be hatching GLO Project chicks and the whole cycle continues.

Once I sort the boys from girls on the 4 week olds (Blues Mixed Mystery Chicks) in a couple weeks, I’ll have a better idea of who I am keeping or not.  I was pretty sure for a while that they are all boys, but now I’m doubting that.  Regardless, it’s just better to wait a couple more weeks to more easily tell.

Ok, I have lots to do and little time to do it in, so, until next time, HAPPY SPRING!

Oh how many days go by!  It really seems like the day before yesterday that I made a blog entry! No really I swear!  Time just flys when your busy!  Lets see, I have a ton of things to do today so I’ll be brief.  Lets see if I can give you a summary of the accomplishments in the last week.

Gardening – I managed to plant 54 seed pots, within 3 days my broccoli & cauliflower sprouted and already began moving outside for daytime sunshine.  Cabbage has also started sprouting and I expect many things to continue quickly.  We put up solid edge borders on our raised beds, which were pathetically bordered by rocks before.  They looked nice, but needed upkeep constantly and we tended to lose a lot of dirt that way too.  So we’ve got those setup and we also dug a new bed where the little chicken tractor was formerly stationed, creating a 3rd planting area for my onions and such.

Chickens – I think I’m done selling adult chickens for now, as I only have Wattles left and a couple of buff hens to part with.  I DID hear back from one of the White Orpington breeders and some chicks are supposed to be headed my way on Monday!  At around the same time the eggs we removed from Broody will be due.  Unfortunately, only 2 of those are well developed the other 3 are quitters.  Which doesn’t surpise me considering all the interruptions she had on her nest, not to mention the cold snap that hit at the same time.  Did I tell you about the time I checked for extra eggs under her but found a BUFF ORPINGTON instead? It was hilarious and those little girls actually FIT under Broody!  Well.. it was a good chuckle.

Breeding in Pen #3 has started, the girls have returned to laying and have begun accepting their new rooster .  Pen #2 with the Black Orpingtons is also nice & peaceful, everyone getting on quite nicely.  Pen #1, the hen house, is still a bit up in the air.  Not too sure how mature my rooster is in there, although I have seen him taking care of business with one of the hens, I have yet to see any activity with any of the others.  He’s certainly NOT in any rush, and of course, he’s the one I need to perform the most!  Hopefully it’ll all start moving along quickly soon and I won’t have anything to worry about.  At least he is doing some of his job, that’s a good sign.

Turkeys – A New Hampshire man has 2 Jersey Buff turkey toms and no hens.  What a predicament!  I’m very excited, we are discussing the possibilities of trading a hen for a tom or even perhaps selling him my two hens so he can start his own breeding program.  I’d rather do the trade but many things to consider, such as our NPIP status, shipping stress on these very large birds not to mention the cost of shipping them, which I have yet to find out.  But, still.. possibilities are around so that is enough to brighten my day.

Ok..  I think that’s the major summary, I am 2 weeks behind on my work for www.JumpfortheCause.com a non-profit organization raising millions of dollars over the last decade for breast cancer research through a world record skydiving event.  If you don’t know I used to skydive but became more reliant on my tunnel flying, but am still active with all my old friends and always meeting many new.  It’s my honor to help them with their fundraising events through web promotion.  Visit, donate and enjoy!

Today was a fantastic day really.  It was warm and wonderful, the sun began to dry the wet muddy spots everywhere in the yard, and I got some good things done.  We started with the front porch today, which has been holding 3-4 chickens in dog cages for the last few weeks.  Lexi’s show chickens have been sold as she is interested in another breed, Seabrights.  She’s always been interested in them, but I encouraged her to choose a dual purpose breed in the beginning.  Now that I have my own breeding programs and poultry plans set, it’s a fine time for her to get whatever she would want and build her own coop for them.  So that’s what we’re going to do this year with her.

I sold the last two Australorps today to a lovely woman who lives not too far from me.  And now my Black Orpington Pen is just that only black orpingtons.  I must say, Broody is doing very well with the change.  We took her from the eggs late at night and placed her on the perch in the completely new environment with a different rooster.  She’s fantastic, eating, scratching and hanging out like the other gals. Yesterday we tried to put a couple of our little Buff hens with Wattles, who is now in his own pen, but he was a little too rough for them and they weren’t ready.  They managed to escape and we found them outside the hen house trying to get back in, so we let them.  Wattles will just have to wait a while longer for a girl of his own.  We moved the 2 Turkey Hens into the hen house too because they really needed some space to stretch out.  They have been living in their brooder at night and on my back porch during the daytime, but there is no roof so only when the weather was good.  Its awful when they are cooped up in there, its plenty tall enough for them to stand up but they can’t really stretch out, no dustbathing or anything and so it makes me sad.  Now that they are in the hen house, they can do more of the things they want to do until I get the Turkey habitat done.   So, for the first time in almost a year, there is no poultry on the back porch!  Of course, there are still 7 chicks in the dog crate in our living room.  It’s been nice outside for the last day but it’s still getting pretty cold at night, so I’ll keep them here a few more days.

I still haven’t started my seeds, probably because I just haven’t had a lot of energy to do much, and just doing the minimum can be exhausting!  I did go out today, saw lots of started plants already well into the growing stages.  It’s frustrating because I thought planting seeds now was early! But I guess next year I should start February 1st if I can find a way to protect them from the cold.

It’s getting pretty late now, 11:01 p.m. and I should get a few more things done before sleep, so, this is Dawn, signing off!

Today I sold my Blue Rooster.  He was my favorite for quite some time with his special silver coloring as a chick and perfectly sweet eyes.  He was picked on, the outcast for quite some time.  And one day, I came home and he was gone!  I couldn’t find him anywhere, and so I promised that if he came back home I would keep him safe.  He did come back the next day, must’ve spent the night out in the woods.  And I put him in the hen house with my flock of ladies and hoped he’d get along with the immature cockerel already there and he did.  He made a home, took care of all the hens all winter long, some more than others  and now, he is off to live in a new home.  I had to do it! I want to make room for the White Orpingtons I want and I’m waiting waiting waiting for some new Blue’s that won’t leak with the rust like my guy did.  He went with 5 SLWs that he enjoyed spending time with very much.  They will all be very happy together I suspect. We had to move our first hatch of 09 into the living room due to freezing temperatures.  After the first night I just go too worried that the lamp might go out and they would freeze to death before I even noticed anything happened.  So we now have a jumbo XL dog crate in the living room with 7 adorable and active baby chicks in it.  The cats & dogs don’t seem to mind too much although they aren’t used to the randomness of chick behavior.  They sleep for 10 minutes, hop around like popcorn for 10 minutes cheeping and chirping and then suddenly they are asleep again!  It’s funny really and something everyone should experience at least once, chicks are unique.

Incidentally I’m changing the breeding pens around one last time before they get too settled, and I’ll have that done by tomorrow night.  I’m going to move the broody hen and finish her eggs in the incubator, and just go ahead and put all the black orpingtons together in one pen.  I’m also going to wait on hatching any Buff Orpingtons for springtime and instead wait till fall to do a few of those I think.  That means a little more moving around and we’ll be done for a few months.  That’ll leave the other two pens available for the Gold Lace Orpington Project, everyone will settle down and we can get on with breeding season I hope. I have to update other parts of this website to reflect the removal of blue & his silver lace girls, and will get that done over the next couple of days.  SPRING is coming officially on Friday…  and I can’t wait.  I didn’t get my seeds started this weekend due to other things keeping me busy, but will do so tomorrow or the next day.  I can’t wait to eat fresh veggies and fruits!