Heritage Chickens

I ran across an ad the other day that caught my attention…

Fresh chicken eggs for sale. Our chickens are free-range, and fed an all natural grain diet with lots of fruits and vegetables daily! Also, our chickens are Heritage Chickens of various breeds, many of which are on the Critically Endangered species list…so by buying local you also help preserve breeds which would otherwise be lost.

Now my curiosity is peeked! These are not just ordinary chickens, there is something unique about these particular breeds…Heritage Chickens…

Now, if you have been reading my posts, you know that I am bent on having dark brown chocolate colored eggs, that I found out come from French Marans, and blue eggs that come from Aracaunas.

These lovely eggs are from Heritage Hen Farm.

But now I see that there is so much more to know…a whole new world opening up to me…

The eggs in the photo above are from Heritage Hen Farm, an amazing little farm in Florida that sells all kinds of good food including organic eggs and raw milk at their little stand…

This photo was from an article about the farm by The Palm Beach Post.

But now  look what Neiman Marcus is selling as their 2012 Fantasy Gift made by these people at Heritage Hen Farm…a  $100,000  chicken coop…

Who would have ever thought???

You can read more about this Beau Coop at Neiman Marcus.

More on Heritage Chickens to come… 🙂

Radishes

It’s November 25 today and I found a surprise in the garden…

Yes, a gigantic radish!  The one that is next to it is a large one, maybe as big as a golf ball, so hopefully you can see how big it is. We ate it in our salad tonight along with a beautiful head of bok choy.

Today I completely thinned out the kale, and I might be having a bit of a problem with some kind of disease…fungus or mold…I’m not sure. Tomorrow I plan to clean up the bed by weeding it really well. I hope the kale will survive.

Sage gave me some grape tomatoes that a neighbor grows up in Arkansas with the instructions to throw them out into the garden and then stamp them down into the soil with my shoes. I did that today and I’m hoping that next year we’ll have an abundance of these thriving tomatoes.

And…there is a tiny tomato growing on the tomato plant in the hoop house…I’m amazed for there is no heat in there. When it is predicted to freeze I just wrap some plastic around the plant. It is still alive and well. Yay!

Found this cool site today for gardeners…Smart Gardeners

Check it out…you can make a garden plan for free and obtain lots of info about gardening.

The Cat…

How do I describe this cat…

BLACK…definitely black. The first time I saw him he was looking right through the living room window at me.  The second time he was on the total other side of the house peering through the kitchen window. He just sits there and stares with his PIERCING EYES…

He’s ELUSIVE and you feel like he’s STALKING you…

He also visits the chicken coop, which has me very concerned.

Today I was walking to the greenhouse when I spied him running up to the garden before me. I ignored him and he disappeared into the thick undergrowth of the woods. As I was walking back I saw him again, but this time he was headed in the opposite direction toward the chicken coop. I decided to run at him as fast as I could to possibly scare him away for good. I kept my eyes on him the whole time, except for one split second while I leaped over the bridge…I looked up and he had totally disappeared! I quickly looked around in all directions and the cat was no where…NO WHERE…unbelievable!

This is the cat that is LURKING STEALTHILY around our property and I’m concerned!

Wild Turkeys, Wintery Weather and Change for the Chicks

It’s almost Thanksgiving and these 5 handsome  male turkeys came strutting through the yard. Don’t they kind of remind you of the shooting gallery at carnivals where you  try to hit the ducks as they go by?

As wonderful as it would be to have a wild turkey for Thanksgiving, I’m not going to shoot them…they are just free birds enjoying the forage…

These guys have beautiful feathers…

Notice the red throats…These fellas are Rio Grande Wild Turkeys…

The weather is changing…we are getting an Arctic blast that is bringing the temperatures down from 75 to 28, so I went down to the coops this morning to clean them up, put extra pine shavings around and make sure there was plenty of fresh water and food for the cold spell…

And I got to wear my Chookas for the  first time…I’m so thankful for my barn boots…

Yesterday in the new coop, I let the door open, so the chicks could all come out of their box and have access to the enclosed run. One came out almost immediately. The others seemed very reluctant. So, I just left them alone for awhile and about an hour later when I checked they had all come out except for 3…

These 3 really looked like they wanted to come down, but were just to afraid to take the leap…They kept peering over the edge at their siblings who were enjoying the freedom of the run, the food, and the fresh water…

Waiting and hoping that they would follow the others, I left them alone again and when I came back they still hadn’t made the jump…

So, I helped them…just gave them a nudge…and there they were with all the others chirping and scratching and doing their little chick things…

 

Later in the afternoon we had to use a net to gather them up and put them back in the coop for the night. Somehow they are going to have to learn how to go up and down their little ramp, but that’s for another day…

Did you notice the little furry feathers on the feet of the little chicks?

Tonight we are all safe and warm…I hope you are too, wherever you are. : )

New Coop

I guess I would call this a chick nursery … I’m hoping to use it until the pullets start laying, and then transfer them over to the big coop with the nesting boxes…

The chicks are really in their awkward scruffy stage right now, not cute any more. They are flying around and getting rather feisty.

This coop is built  into an old horse stable…

The chicks will have plenty of room to fly around outside the coop, but inside the protected enclosed stall. I found out that it is imperative to use hard cloth, not chicken wire to keep harmful predators out.

While my son was working on this, the hens nearby were not very happy with all the noise of the electric tools. They still haven’t recovered to their previous foraging selves. Hopefully they will soon…but I’m a bit worried about them. I don’t remember hens being so cautious, but I guess that can be a very good thing?

Every time I go down in the early morning light to open the hen’s coop, I see this beautiful cotton wood tree all glorious in it’s golden hue…

And it’s reflection in the creek as I pass over the bridge…

I just had to share that… : )

More pics coming of the new coop when it’s all finished.

Fresh Salad in November

I have so neglected my garden journal being busy with all the chicken stuff. Tonight, though, I have to share with you the salad from the greenhouse that we are having for dinner…

Fresh red and green lettuces…kale and spinach…

A little parsley sprinkled on top with the edible pansies…

Looks scrumptious…doesn’t it?

So, what else is happening out in the garden…

The bok choy is getting bigger all the time and variegated nasturtiums which are not flowering yet…I can’t remember if you can eat the leaves???

The tomatoes have tiny yellow flowers on them… they survived the freeze…I put another layer of plastic around them and they did fine…

Outside the greenhouse the cabbages are beginning to look like they are starting to head…

Unfortunately the cauliflower died in the freeze. I didn’t realize they were not as hardy as the cabbage, so next year I’ll have to be sure and cover them.

And here is what the chickens got for their dinner salad… ; )

An Apology

I feel like I need to apologize for my last post. I commented on an article I read about a “particular” apocalypse, without really knowing what it was about, and when someone informed me, I realized how gruesome it was and how it really should not even be mentioned and certainly not joked about. I felt really bad about mentioning it and revised my post, so again I apologize if anyone was offended. I will certainly find out about things I do not know about before I do that again. I’m sorry.

“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.”  Ephesians 5:11,12

Wellies

I am happy to know that my Welsummers, or Wellies are the breed of choice  according to an article in My Pet Chicken. It was nice to read such good things about these wonderful hens…

Wellies are aggressive foragers. Plus, the hens are a heathery brown with reddish hackles, camouflaged so they are hard for predators to spot in the brush.  Welsummers lay large, chocolate brown eggs with speckles, so even the eggs have camouflage. The hens are very good layers, too, laying four or more eggs a week. They can do well in both heat and cold. They do occasionally go broody (although not so often that you’ll be fighting to get them back to laying again)… and they’re among the sweetest birds in my flock, to boot.

• Aggressive forager? Check
• Natural camouflage? Check
• Cold tolerant? Check
• Heat tolerant? Check
• Good layer? Check
• Large eggs? Check
• Will raise chicks? Check
• Can avoid predators? Check.

The hens are finally free range. : ) It took awhile for them to get past the fence, but they did prove themselves to be aggressive foragers when Attila the Hen finally lead the Wellie sisters out of the cattle panel pen into the open forage…

You can tell which one is Attila…she has a weird feather sticking out on her side…I tried for days to get them out into the green grass pasture, but they were very cautious.

Loving the green…

Finally they all followed…

Attila ventures further around to the other side of the barn…

And while I was going through all these pictures to post…look what I found…

That is a very cool pic, don’t you think?  I got it totally by accident. Have you ever noticed when the hens are preening themselves their eyes are closed? This is Hendrika, she is the Wellie with the darker feathers on her neck…

Chookas and Chooks

I bought myself some barn boots…

They are CHOOKAS and I think that is so fun, because I just found out from a very wonderful New Zealand blogger that chickens are called chooks down there.

So these Chooka boots will be wonderful when it is wet and muddy and snowy outside, and will keep my feet nice and toasty warm and dry when I go out to take care of the chooks. Love it!

You really should visit her blog  My Tiny Brood of Backyard Chooks.  She really keeps you on the edge of your seat with all that goes on with her amazing hens.

And shoes.com has these boots for 25% off and free shipping…

I have so much more to say about what is going on with my chooks, I’ll be back soon! 🙂