2013.05.17 – Brooding Black Sumatra Hens Hatch Clutch of Chicks

 Videos  No Responses »
May 222013
 

On May 17th, our brooding black Sumatra hens hatched out a large clutch of chicks together, as a team. They had went broody almost simultaneously in a nest box together, and the chicks hatched over a two day period, during the warm parts of each day, beginning in the very late morning or in the early afternoon and wrapping up each evening. The hens began teaching the young chicks to drink water and forage for food immediately after they hatched and began toddling around, and the hens are decidedly proactive about protecting their young chicks, often offering a unique challenge to the keepers of the flock who frequently visit to refresh water dishes, offer snacks, and spend time with the birds.  So far, the black Sumatra hens have been great moms, and this has been the best incubating and brooding experience we’ve had! The hens do all the hard work, and they do it better than we could ever dream of doing it.

The chicks these hens have hatched were from fertile eggs gathered in our latest breeding project, crossing an amazing black Sumatra rooster with three black Sumatra hens, two black Orpington hens, and a black Orpington x Ameraucana hen who was hatched in an incubator on our homestead last spring. We are excited to have hen-hatched chicks growing up here, understanding the ways of our homestead, learning all they can learn from our mature flock from the very first opportunity.

2013.05.13 – Hot Pigs Love Water

 Videos  No Responses »
May 162013
 

Two weeks ago, we had nearly half a foot of snow covering the property. This week, afternoon high temperatures have been in the high 70s and even into the high 80s. The pigs have very much appreciated a little bit of extra bath water to help ease their transition from winter to summer.

Especially Blondie, who is growing ever larger with piglets.

 Posted by at 2:09 pm  Tagged with:

2013.05.13 – Wildlife

 Videos  No Responses »
May 152013
 

We’ve been seeing all kinds of fun wildlife around the farm this spring, though we rarely have the camera ready to capture all the interesting wild creatures who live here with us. Here are a couple quick clips of one of our resident sagebrush lizards, as well as a new visitor, a yellow headed blackbird.

2013.05.10-14 – Homegrown Asparagus

 Videos  No Responses »
May 142013
 

Last spring we planted a 100 foot row of one- and two-year-old asparagus crowns in the garden. We did not harvest any asparagus last year, and we’ve decided to only harvest a very small amount this spring so that the crowns can continue developing, and we will hopefully have larger harvests in future years, with the crowns having much longer lives as well. We’ve planted about two dozen more two-year-old asparagus crowns this spring in addition to the crowns from last year. The varieties we have are Jersey hybrids, Purple Passion, and M. Washington (not sure if it is Mary’s or Martha’s). We roasted a little chopped asparagus in lard we’d rendered from one of our pigs for part of today’s lunch, and it was absolutely delicious. Simple and extraordinary.

2013.05.09 – Homegrown Hybrid Laying Hens

 Videos  No Responses »
May 142013
 

Here is a quick video update of some of the homegrown hybrid laying hens from last fall’s hatches. The hybrid ladies lay all different colors of beautiful eggs – white, off white, tan, greenish blue, blue, medium brown, medium brown speckled with light tan spots, dark brown speckled with medium brown spots, medium brown speckled with darker brown spots, etc.  Included in this video are Barnevelder x Ameraucana, black Orpington x Ameraucana, and Barnevelder x Jaerhon hens, as well as purebred hens from the free range flock, including the mother Barnevelder and several Buckeye hens. Our La Fleche rooster, El Diablo, is standing around crowing for the ladies, as all the roosters always are.

2013.05.06-09 – Silver Fox Rabbit Buck with Free Choice Den and Pasture

 Videos  No Responses »
May 142013
 

Henry has been delighted with his new home which gives him a lot more choices with how he spends his time. He has daily access to a grass pasture for grazing, as well as a large den space that can be locked up tight to keep him safe at night and from predators when we aren’t nearby watching. He is a really fun rabbit, and we love to spend time playing with him.

We have sad news to report about the first litter of Henry’s children that we were expecting on our homestead. Our doe June gave birth to eight babies (7 blue silver fox and 1 black) outside of the nest box over the course of several days at the beginning of May during our last spring snowstorm. We found her giving birth to the first kit on the wood board on the floor of her den instead of in the lovely nest she had built inside her homemade wooden nest box. She had left it laying there exposed, but luckily we found it in time, and brought both mom and baby inside the house to continue the kindling since we didn’t want to stay out in the snow ourselves to sit, watch, and wait. We believe her pelvis may be fused, and that is why it took her so long to have all the babies. Another compounding factor is June’s history. She has been a very skittish doe ever since the rattlesnake bite, and any changes in her normal routine really make her upset and grouchy, sometimes even unwilling to eat, drink, or cooperate at all, even after only minor changes in her comfort zone. So she was irritated to not be in her comfortable routine and home, and she was confused and in pain from her kindling not going well. During the night after the first kit was born, she gave birth to five more kits. Even though she had built another nice nest of grass and fur in the store-bought nest box we used with her inside the house, she gave birth on the floor of the cage, and she squished and killed three of the babies. We gathered up the two survivors, and helped them into the nest with the first born baby. The next night, June had two more kits, both born too weak to survive. She was doing very well at that point, keeping herself clean and checking on the kits occasionally in their nest, so we moved her and the nestbox back into her normal home, hoping that the return to her normal routine would help things continue improving with her caring for the litter. She did well with her three babies for a couple days, but it was not meant to be. During the middle of the night, somehow she managed to spill them out of the nest box, and she left them exposed. They died from the chilling since they still had no fur of course, and they could not get themselves back into the safety of the nest and all of the soft warm fur that June had pulled from her pelt for them. Mother rabbits don’t move their babies into or out of the nest, so June had no way to save them herself. We are very sorry to have lost this first litter, and we’re also very sorry that June’s first pregnancy has not gone well. We will not be keeping her around in our breeding program long term, but we have gone ahead and bred her with Henry once more before we cull her, to see if there is more we can learn from this situation. And we are also hoping to have a litter of meat rabbits to raise up on our grass and clover pasture areas this year. June has offered us so many opportunities to grow, and we are very grateful that she has been so good to us despite all the obstacles we have faced together.

2013.05.09 – Black Sumatra Chickens

 Photos, Videos  No Responses »
May 102013
 

We have been incredibly pleased with the black Sumatra chickens that we received last spring from Sand Hill Preservation Center. The birds are very beautiful, with elegant long feathers, proud stature, and rich black plumage with a dark green shine. The meat and egg production capacity of these chickens is greater than we ever expected. The hens lay regularly even in cold weather and snow, and their eggs are very light tan or off-white in color. The roosters have great voices, making many different kinds of sounds beyond their fantastic crowing. The roosters are not aggressive with people, and they do not even fight with each other very much, other than a few fights for social status during breeding season which is to be expected. The roosters are very good at dancing for the hens, and the hens will often crouch down and wait to be mated by the Sumatra roosters. We have not had any problems with the Sumatra chickens feather-picking each other like happens with some other breeds, though sometimes as chicks they do seem to act more aggressively than they later act as adults. They seem to mellow with age, and they are very friendly with people. They are somewhat slower to grow and feather out than many modern breeds developed for production, but they are very strong and hardy. They are also observant, and they always sound an alarm and take cover when a predator or threat approaches their area. It is good to have chickens who are looking out for each other. They learn quickly and teach each other what they’ve learned. The hens seem to have wonderful instincts as well. They defend their nests very well, and they are said to be good mothers. We have two Sumatra hens right now who have gone broody – they are both sitting on clutches of eggs, and we are very excited to see if they will successfully hatch out a new generation of Sumatra chickens for us. We are thrilled that the black Sumatra chickens have been so successful for us here on our homestead, and we hope that preservation work for this species will continue so that people all over the world can enjoy raising this rare breed again.

Here is a video of several different breeds of chickens out foraging in the woods around our homestead. One of the roosters featured is our black Sumatra that has maroon in his green/black plumage.

2013.05.01-03 – Spring Garden Endures May 2nd Snow Storm

 Videos  No Responses »
May 092013
 

We have been planting both seeds and started plants into the gardens regularly for quite a while now, and we’ve been lucky enough to receive fairly regular precipitation lately too, which can sometimes be a rare thing indeed. On May 2, we received what we think will be the final snowfall until next winter. It all melted in very quickly, and now the planting will be happening even more often.

Some of the plants growing in these gardens right now include: one-seed juniper, tree cholla, prickly pear, three lobe sumac, smooth sumac, yucca, peppermint, yarrow, mullein, spearmint, chocolate mint, garlic chives, onion chives, Egyptian walking onions, sunchokes, strawberries (Ft. Laramie, Ozark Beauty, and Whopper), white sage, salvia, dianthus, motherwort, valerian, comfrey, garlic (Inchelium red, Purple Glazer, and others), elephant garlic, multiplier onions, wild plum trees, shallots, day lilies, honeysuckles, snapdragons, hollyhocks, horehound, dandelion, torch lilies, tulips, hyacinths, irises, daffodils, muscari, Russian sage, Siberian pea shrub, lemon verbena, lemongrass, feverfew, catnip, catmint, medicinal skullcap, digitalis, Roman chamomile, poppies, gumweed, blue flax, rosemary, arugula, turnips, beets, snap peas, asparagus (Purple Passion, M. Washington, Jersey hybrids), maple tree, aspen trees, hyssop, hardy hibiscus, snowball bushes, many varieties of sedum, oregano (hot & spicy, Italian, Greek), thyme (winter, German, Greek, creeping), marjoram, white Dutch clover, astragalus, mountain spring parsley, plains spring parsley, salt and pepper parsley, aurinia, blue mustard, tansy mustard, stork’s bill, Dakota mock vervain (prairie verbena), desert lilies, Nuttall’s violets, scabiosa, vinca, wild onions, various annual and perennial grasses, beehive cactus, king cup cactus, Heritage raspberries, red Canadice grapes, Red Lake currant, hops, tall phlox, lamb’s ear, sweet clover, alfalfa, lilacs, field bindweed, morning glories, mums, bulbing onions, bunching onions, bok choy, collard greens, mustard greens, cabbage, spinach, tatsoi, cilantro, spirea, forsythia, echinacea, stinging nettle, mallow, salsify, rubber rabbitbrush, Saskatoon blueberries, lovage, dock, potatoes, purple leaf sand cherry, and many, many other plants.

2013.05.01 – Video – New Silver Fox Rabbit Doe

 Videos  No Responses »
May 022013
 

We recently introduced a new doe to our silver fox rabbitry, “Kaanapali” who came to us from a friend’s rabbitry (and who is now nicknamed simply “Kaana”).  She is a very beautiful doe, the daughter of Phatty and Poppa Smurf, and she is warming up to life on our homestead more every day. She is less than six months old and still has a bit of growing to do, but she is going to be a massive rabbit.

Page 1 of 23 1 2 3 … 22 23