Barley And His Wives

This year turned out to be "The Year of the Rooster".  It had nothing to do with the Chinese zodiac, mind you.  It was because everyone unloaded roosters on us.

One day a neighbor showed up, shortly after the incident that led to the goats being jailed indefinitely behind permanent fencing (the neighbor to the North had caught them on wildlife camera destroying his corn field).  We took a deep breath when we saw the pick-up truck pull up, and wondered what priceless food crop they had eaten now.

But instead he wanted to give us ten roosters.  His elderly mother had ordered a bunch of straight run chickens to start a laying flock, and half of them grew into a rowdy bunch of roosters.  They weren't sure what to do with them, and hoped we could take them off their hands.

We didn't have the time or funds to raise meat chickens this year, so a bunch of free roosters destined for the pot was an attractive prospect.  Arrangements were quickly made, and we found ourselves with ten roosters all of a sudden.

A week or two before they crowed their last crows and fought their last petty battles, one of Rose's friends made the unpleasant discovery that a little pet chick that was supposed to grow up to be a backyard laying hen was actually a loud, obnoxious rooster.

Barley was just barely out of the awkward adolescent pin-feather stage when we got him.  He was still peeping, but nonetheless was able to screech out a surprisingly powerful peep-crow with his little beak gaping open.  It would have meant death to put him in with the other chickens, so he was kept in a separate coop in the orchard until he grew up.

Once the other roosters were out of the way, he was moved to a moveable coop, which he had all to himself.  He would get so excited to see us arrive every day.  His crow gradually got less squeaky and more polished and professional. He added some extra doodle-doos in there at the end, too.

Just after I planted my starts in the winter garden, we started having trouble keeping the hens in their moveable coop.  The cows were in the next paddock on hay, and Sappho (nicknamed Sapphole), kept jumping out, bumping the lids off, and then going to check out the neighbor's cornfield that the goats had already ravaged.  The hens were all over the place scratching up bugs and roosting in stupid places.  Miraculously, none of them went missing - at least none that we noticed, since they all look exactly alike.  Meanwhile, they ate my entire winter garden and scratched up all the beds.

It took a week or so to finally round them all up, and they started ranging quite far.  One of them made it all the way through the garden to where Barley was housed.  Confused by seeing the other coop, she bobbed cautiously over to check it out.

As soon as he set eyes on her, Barley go SOOOO excited.  He flapped and crowed and did little dances and raked out his wings.  After his long, monastic celibacy, here was a gorgeous female (well, sort of - she was in the middle of a molt, but I don't think he was so particular) coming right for him!  It was his dream coming true.

Ethan caught the stupid hen and popped her in the coop as a sort of revenge for eating all our vegetables.  Barley went insane with joy.  He was so excited he couldn't stop dancing around in a little circle.  The hen was bewildered and not super thrilled about being the object of his attentions, but it was too late - she was stuck with him.

A few days later, another hen ranged over that way, and in she went.  Barley could hardly contain himself again.  This was beyond his wildest dreams.

In just a few days, his breast became noticeably more puffed and his strut got more swagger.  His toes barely touch the ground now since acquiring not just one, but two wives.

Nesting

Yesterday morning I heard a strange tapping on the front window.  When I opened the curtains, Penny was standing on the windowsill peeking in.  Later, we discovered her sitting in the egg basket that Ethan left on the front porch.  She looked very comfy.

She made herself a little nest and when she got up, there was a fresh brown egg, already in the egg basket!

Two Gardens

Peek-a-boo!
I do hope this becomes more of a habit.
I thought I might write a little about the gardens--my winter garden, and my dreams for the summer garden--

Thanks to our friend Danny, we found a wonderful source of horse manure.  It's a horse-boarding place, there's tons and tons of it, and they are so happy for us to haul it away.  We also found some huge pieces of cardboard, so garden construction is underway.

Here it is-- the whole side of the garden--15 beds and all, not counting the corn and pumpkins.

This past week I was worrying I may have been over ambitious this year.  But we only have five more beds to build--two more loads of manure to haul away.

Last summer's garden was a smallish garden.  It only took up a quarter of the space, and I built three permaculture beds around the corn patch.  Everything did so well, but I ran out of room.  It changed my gardening philosophy in that I only planted a few plants of each thing and nurtured them along.  It was so shockingly productive that way.  Before I had been planting dozens of plants in hopes I'd get a handful of something out of them, but it was too big and there were too many to really care for them all.

This year I am only planting a few plants of each thing, but I really want to give everything the space it needs.  So that's why the garden is so big this year.

We had such a busy late summer/fall last year, that the winter garden was not really well done.  I actually ended up buying starts this year instead of trying my own starts.  I finally did get some nice kale to grow.

We have potatoes starting to peek out, and some of the carrots did sprout at last.

The onion patch is doing well this year.  I did two different kinds of beds with them, and it turns out the most back-breaking one to build did the very best.  Oh well.

I'm even getting a tiny bit of cabbage.  We also have a revolutionary hoop-house for cold protection.  I'll admit, this is the first year the winter garden didn't just freeze and get eaten by rabbits.  It's been kind of shocking, really.

Now that so many things have gone to seed, there's not too much growing there now, except the borage.  She is certainly queen of the garden at the moment, and I enjoy her beauty every day.  I even made an herb cream cheese spread from the leaves.

Younger Buckthorne is doing quite well.  He was jumping about playfully yesterday.  Firefly is due today, and May tomorrow, so there just might be a new baby goat at some point today.

Spring Broilers

Last year we only did two batches of broilers.  They were both called "Black Broilers" at the hatchery.  Ethan got excited about them, because we had been doing batches of the Cornish X Rocks, which we didn't like for several reasons, the chief ones being that if the food and water wasn't far enough apart they would eat themselves to death and have heart attacks and the way they would get so large and immobile that they ended up lounging on the cactus and blackberries and get really gross cactus-spine pimples that ruined the carcass.

The first batch of "Black Broilers" turned out great.  They grew well and were extremely vigorous, to the point of being hard to catch.  Unfortunately, the next batch we got (from the same hatchery--I won't say any names) were just awful.  We gave them the same food and the same care and it was about the same conditions, but it was like they had sold us a batch of reject black sex-linked laying hens.  There were maybe six roosters who got to be a decent size, but the rest stayed like laying hens.  We even grew them out for an extra month, hoping to get something out of them, but alas.  A good 1/4 of them were only the size of pigeons--literally, I have to cook three of them to feed our family.  But the most disturbing thing was that when we processed them we found one of them was deformed and had been born with no wing on one side.  It wasn't like it got ripped off or anything.  The skin was perfectly smooth, it just didn't have a breast or wing on one side.  When I wrote to the hatchery and told them about the deformed bird they sold us, they sent back this completely inadequate reply:

We appreciate the information and will keep this information for our records.  All breeds can grow differently from year to year depending on external conditions.  We appreciate your business and look forward to your future orders.  Thanks again for the information.

It's really too bad, but there will be no future orders!
We did get some really nice batches of laying birds from them.  Our Araucanas and Barred Rocks are great chickens and they came from that same hatchery.  However, the last batch of laying hens we got from there we lost a bunch when they first arrived, and they just don't seem as good as the other birds.  I wonder what changed.

Anyway, I'm really excited about this new batch of broilers.  My uncle in Maryland suggested we try the Freedom Rangers.  He had already grown several batches with great results.  They seem to be what we were hoping for with the black broilers--a good meat bird that is also suited to an outdoor, small-scale production model.

An interesting story:  when Ethan picked up the chicks at the post office, they had two batches of chicks for pick up that day, so he had to give them our address so they could tell the right one.  The other batch was from the same hatchery that had sold us the bad batch of "Black Broilers."  Ethan said our chicks from the Freedom Ranger  hatchery were peeping like mad, but the other batch sounded very weak.  The woman at the post office told him, "I don't know what's wrong with these other chicks.  They don't seem to be doing as well.  They didn't even have any air holes in the box when they got here."

So far they are growing well and thriving.

We've been getting the most beautiful eggs lately.  The Araucauna layers have started laying their beautiful green eggs, and we've even gotten a few turkey eggs (the beautiful speckled one at the top).

The new California White layers are still too young to lay, but I am hoping they will be laying well for Easter, because everyone like the white eggs for dyeing.

The only other exciting things around here have been that we put a weaning ring on Butch, our steer from Matilda and put him out a few weeks ago.  He was supposed to be in his own paddock, but he quickly escaped and is in with Matilda and the rest of the herd now.  It was fine for a while, but he figured a way around the weaning ring, so we haven't had any milk.  There's just no way we can catch him right now, either, short of one of those nifty stun-rifle things they use for tagging wildlife.

The problem should be short-lived, because this weekend we are hoping to bring Dennis Stolzfoos's Devon bull from Full Circle Farm here, and we will be keeping him in our only permanent-fence paddock with Matilda, Geranium, Chestnut and Isla and a bale of hay, so Butch's milk-drinking spree is soon to be at an end.
What do most people do for weaning calves?  I'm hoping it will be easier once we have more calves and they can keep each other company, but I could be really, really wrong about that.