Wit, Wisdom & Wonder

After considering our unusually sunny weather, I decided to go ahead and stick the Geo-Bachelors (aka the returned Silkie cockerels) into West Wing Pen #2. The extensions don't have any roofing, so very little shade from the sun. Just what they can gleam from nearby trees and what little roofing kicks out over from the regular pens.

They seem okay, just a bit confused. Frankly, I'm not sure they've noticed, these are Silkies, yanno.

I was on such a roll today!

I sold all but the two Frizzles chicks I wanted to retain for the breeding program, so all Wendy's chicks have been sold. She'll be reunited with Napoleon this afternoon. The two chicks will be relocated to Pen #4.

The Silkie cockerel bachelors will be relocated to Pens #5 and #6, since I'm awash in extra cockerels, having taken back 3 from a customer. I did manage to rehome 1 with a customer today - gave him away as a freebie for her having bought 8 chicks. The others are up on Craigslist, if they don't sell I may end up taking them to the auction a week from Monday.

I also sold the two so-so Frizzle pullets I wasn't thrilled with, as well as Salt's pullet. Salt has been returned to the main flock. I made a wonderful deal for the Lavender Orpingtons because frankly, I'm just tired of them and wanted them GONE. So they are. Abracadabra, I'm $20 richer for having done so!

Now, we just need to get the Rhodie pullets moved over to the main flock tonight and tucked in the coop to acclimate. Otherwise, we're doing pretty well on our goals. And yanno, those Silkie eggs to hatch!

I found even more Black Oil Sunflower Seeds (apparently there were some in the cupboard), so I'm soaking another set for fodder - they take 48 hours before they are ready for pressing. The Farro seeds only needed 24 hours to swell and begin rooting, so the seeds are out on the rack pressing for another 24 hours. I've updated my post on BYC, but I need to add pictures tomorrow. Which reminds me, I need to buy more seeds!

In chicken news, we've moved Salt and her chick (needs a name STAT) to the Chickenheim pen #6. Immediately, Salt and Wendy started sparring. Ugh. Hopefully those two ladies will simmer down and things will be peaceful from here on out. Salt's chick and Wendy's chicks are about the same age, but Salt's as a standard sized one is roughly 4x the size!
Must get pictures tomorrow if the weather holds, tonight the rain started up so I wasn't going to take my camera out in it, sorry!

We have three broody mammas who should be hatching chicks (not counting, just planning) sometime soon.

Salt, our grumpy Cochin, is sitting on a solo egg. We tried to sneak more eggs in, but she would carefully push them out from under her.

Wendy, our marvelous smooth-feathered Silkie cochin mix, should be giving us a huge clutch of Frizzle and other chicks.

Ruth, our delightful Ameraucana Cochin mix, has a nice group of green eggs that should be hatching lively feather-footed Ameraucana mixes.

The trick is finding places for all these mammas and their chicks. And of course, keeping Big Blue from going crazy. He's already insanely protective, trapping the dogs under the porch for vast quantities of time! We've got an idea to section off the Blue shed pen and possibly the middle section of the blue shed.

We're also going to move Napoleon to one of the new pens, Pen #4 this weekend. He'll have some new hens to keep him company, Silkies courtesy of my breeder buddy on the peninsula. Just waiting on confirmation we're good to go. We may end up moving the Orpingtons, as well, to Pen #5.

Picy goodness once movements have been made.

So far, the Rye seeds are by far the best sprouters!



As expected, the Black Oil Sunflower Seeds with their harder shells are growing a heck of a lot slower. Roughly a day behind, so we'll be starting them today one day ahead of the next batch of soaking seeds.



Basically, we're having a Day 2b.

Earlier I posted Silkie chick pics, go back and squee over those. This will bore you to tears unless you're into sprout juicing or fodder growing.

Day One - (Tuesday) - Rinsed 4 cups each of both Rye and Black Oil Sunflower Seeds multiple times, then set them individually to soak in their respective bowls. Since I need to find binder clips to enclose the tarp cover, we're temporarily using the oven! :D

Day Two - (Wednesday) - Rinsed both sets of seeds, used the ricer to drain. Then divided each in half, set in respective trays with drilled drainage holes. Used unused trays to provide gentle pressure to simulate soil weight. Will be providing watering 3x Thursday.

Looking ahead, here's our plan (gleaned from BYC):

Day Three - Take both trays, rinse seed thoroughly (usually 2 or 3 times) and divide up into 4-6 trays filling about 1/2-3/4" set on shelves in living room rack, water 3x

Day 4-Water 3x

Day 5 thru finished height-water 3x day

When dividing them up into 4-6 trays, the rinsing helps a ton, plus they're well sprouted and there is plenty of airflow to keep the souring problem away.

You've all been very patient as I've droned on about the West and East Wing chicken breeding pens. And possibly you've been fortunate enough to miss our experiment with mealworm farming. Now, you're going to hear about our newest idea, fodder growing!

Using no nutrients and no soil (or replacement), fodder uses only the seed itself and water to grow a grain replacement for livestock. Basically, you use organic seed grasses, water them several times daily over the course of a week or thereabouts (depending on the crop) by draining the water, re-capturing it, then harvesting it. The seed husk and roots become the base of the sprouts, forming the "biscuit". Watering is a pretty basic, quick maintenance program. Feeding a biscuit is a hell of a lot faster than walking around throwing feed at chickens! :D Efficiency is good!

What I love about hobby farming is the ingenuity of folks - people use tiny greenhouses, spare bathrooms, corner hallways and spare materials gleaned from yard sales. Sure, there's gorgeous setups and expensive systems you can buy. But there's a lot more thrift store systems out there. Ours will be one of those. Likely, using a lot of the stuff we have around here and a few things we've loaned out to folks that we need back. (Alicia, this means you!)

Basically, we're trying to bring down the cost of our chicken hobby. The biggest cost is feed, by growing our own fodder, we'll buy a pound of feed and get roughly 8 pounds of fodder out of it. Since we have around 20 standard sized chickens and 10 bantams, that's roughly 30 chickens. One biscuit should last us a few days. Not sure how many chicks a biscuit will feed, but we'll need to supplement with medicated starter, in any case.

http://fodderfeeds.com/Overview.htm

I made the sad realization that I really need to get selling ASAP before someone (aka hubby) begins accusing me of hoarding Silkie chicks. 25 Silkie chicks is really too many for our brooder as they continue to grow, though its acceptable right now. I'm also looking at the month-old Silkies running around the bottom of the blue shed, who need to start migrating outdoors, likely to the interim hutch with Snow. There's barely a week's growth difference between them so perhaps in the next night or two, I'll start moving the two month olds out with Snow for company and to allow them to acclimate to the weather.

To do this, I've put the black Silkies up on FB, CL and BYC Washington forum. I'll likely need to put them up on BYC Auction, perhaps even a notice on the local feedstore bulletin board. We'll give CL a few hours and see how things go.

I'm also strongly considering selling off the Birchen pullets. I'm giving them until Monday morning to begin laying then they are off to the auction. Lay or else!

*sigh*

Gearing up for my Flame Keepers schedule and wanted to take inventory on what's going on vs what's been completed.

Ongoing:
Silkie chicks - we have LOTS of Silkie chicks. Honestly, I've no idea how many, its roughly 35 or so. 24 I picked up last week, the 6 we hatched here (mostly Frizz), then the ones we purchased earlier. I will take an inventory! Update: 33 :D

Orpingtons - the waiting until they are old enough to breed has begun. Geesh. This will take until roughly July.

Ameraucanas - I'm THIS CLOSE, to pulling eggs out to have Silkies brood, since the Silkie mixes aren't laying anyway.

East Wing - Kevin dug the fence trenches, so we'll need to staple boards to the bottom of the fence and bury it, then back fill the trenches. From there, we need to finish the upper fencing (i.e. between the pens so they can't fly from one to another), connect the upper to the lower fencing (likely tightening the lower fencing in the process), then hang the gates (after purchasing them, budget ouch) and procure 2 additional coops. I'm thinking a minimum of 2 more work days here. *cross fingers*

Flash's ears - poor guy, he's had yeast infections on and off all winter. We've finally found a natural herbal product that seems to be working. He's not thrilled by the process, but he's definitely finally on the mend. Hopefully, this time the treatment will last awhile. The prescription stuff never seemed to last long.

Done:
Denim bench pad: I still want to decorate it with a few stars, but otherwise its holding up well. Proud of it and its likely to get a few matching pillows at some point.

Wormery: Josh is finishing up as I type by drilling holes (in fact, doubling the number) in the other two Sterlite containers for air circulation. Lori is coming by to see them around noon. I'm tapped out budget-wise, so the rest of the worm purchasing is on her.

West Wing: Up and running, all we need is warmer weather to paint the coops! I'm pretty thrilled to have it good to go. We'll be moving around some chickens (an eternal process) but its great.

Our pretty little Ruth, who is still dreadfully camera shy not to mention cranky about the cold morning:



The joke that will never die, my gorgeous cock, Quicksilver (aka Blackbeard) our Silver Duckwing Ameraucana:



One of Wendy's white chicks, 4 out of the 6 look Frizzled, this one looks very much like a little duckling, don't you think?:



Our little Silkie chicks have entered the dinosaur phase:



One of the Lavender Orpingtons. I'm particularly proud of this photo, she looks surreal, almost too perfect to be real like she was made in a prop department for a movie:



Here's where I laugh at myself, this is Fooz, our Black Silkie. Fooz needs a haircut as you can likely tell, so I asked one of my Silkie breeder friends how to do this. My dear friend assumes a few things about me at that point: 1) that I have blunt kid scissors (I do not), 2) that I know how to cut "like a pie crust" (I do not) and 3) that I have the nerves to give this a shot (I did). So here's Fooz, before her haircut (feathercut?):



Here's the $10 double up cat condo I bought at the livestock auction (you can get all sorts of wonderful things at the auction, you never know what folks will bring in). Libby and Hobo adore it, mostly Libby likes getting in the topmost condo and whacking Hobo as he sits nicely on the shelf below, death from the skies.



Nobody uses the bottom one, except Doodle sticks his toys in it to keep them away from Gracie (it doesn't work, she finds them). Tonight, Hobo decided to get up top - frankly I'm somewhat surprised he fit. He's basically a bowling ball surrounded by fur at this point - he's 16 pounds and growing! His nickname is The Belly.