Our second hatch of 2017 resulted in Easter Egger, Oliver Egger, White Leghorn, and Delaware chicks.

DEVELOPING

Candling an egg on Day 5. This egg looks good. You can see the embryo in the middle surrounded by blood vessels. You can also see the air cell at the top of the egg.

Both our egg turners have quit working. So, I set these eggs right in the incubator and turned them by hand.

HATCHING

One egg pipped!

CHICKS!

I adore this one. It has a unique pattern for our flock.

White Leghorns

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Most birds and reptiles have an egg tooth, which is an essential part in the hatching process. On birds, it is small, sharp, and sits at the tip of the upper beak.

The egg tooth is the cream colored pointy object at the end of the beak of this chick:

While chicks are developing they need oxygen. Since egg shells are porous, chicks receive oxygen through the pores. As hatching day nears, though, the chick gets too large for oxygen to flow well. It is then that chicks use their egg tooth to break into the air cell inside the egg to get more oxygen.

There is a limited amount of oxygen available in the air cell, so soon they use the egg tooth to pip a small hole in the outer shell. Then they rotate and unzip the egg shell.

In the cracked part of the shell the beak and egg tooth are visible in this photo:

White Leghorn chick pushing itself out of the unzipped egg shell.

This Easter Egger is resting after a long day.

This 2 day old chick still has its egg tooth, but within the next day or two it will fall off.

HAPPY HATCHING!

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Already well in to Augsut and here’s what going on:

• Tilapia feeding time
• An Easter Egger has decided to sit on eggs in the goat house.
• There is a cucumber growing in the herb barrel that I didn’t plant. Weird. It’s doing well, so I’m leaving it.
• Farmer John made me a hall table out of an old closet door. I love it! It holds cookbooks and cookie cutters.
• White leghorns are one of my favorite breeds for egg laying. They don’t eat a ton, and not too much disrupts their laying.
• A deer and our goat, Sven, ate dinner together one evening. Neither one seemed bothered by the other.
• For the first time I harvested mint to make mint extract. It’s sitting nicely in the cupboard for awhile. Hopefully it turns out as good as my friend’s did.
• I’m also making calendula oil for the first time. I love the calendula flower and I’m excited to turn it into a salve or soap.
• Farmer John picked peaches at a local orchard and canned them. He would have liked to have canned more, but he ran out of time.

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This week it’s all about eggs.

We have eggs coming out our ears. The ladies are laying great. This is a fabulous problem to be having. We are also hatching eggs.

•  For the first time ever, I ordered hatching eggs. I’ve been wanting to add to our Marans flock, but haven’t found what I was looking for locally. Also, I would like to try raising Cream Legbars and haven’t found what I wanted locally. So, I opted to order from out of state. At this point, I am unsure if I think this was a good plan. I was definitely excited to try it as this opens more options for future breeds. I was impressed at how well the eggs were packaged and that none were broken. Once I got the eggs home, I let them sit for about 7 hours before placing them in the incubator. Possibly I should have let them rest for 24 hours?

• About 36 hours into incubation, I tried to pick up an egg to give it a little turn. It was stuck like glue to the turner. The egg broke. Two more eggs did the same thing. And by stuck, I mean stuck, stuck. We had to use a scraper to get it off the turner. My guess is it was the egg leaking, then hardening. Weird. I have never had that happen before. I’ve also never had eggs shipped across the US before. At this point, I need to do more research to find out if this is a common problem with shipped eggs, or if there was something weird with this batch. Also, the egg yolk and white parts seemed a different consistency, more liquidy, than regular eggs. Coincidence? I’m not sure.

• We quickly took the eggs out and cleaned the incubator. Then, put the turner and good eggs back in.

• The next day I checked on the eggs again looking for any that might be stuck. One Marans egg was stuck just a tiny bit. When I picked up the egg a tiny piece of shell stayed in the turner. Ugh! The membrane was still intact. So, I put tape over the missing shell piece and am hoping for the best.

• Thankfully, no more have stuck since then.

• Almost a week into incubation, the majority seem to be developing. Awesome!

• However, last night I noticed a slight odor when I opened the incubator. Dang! Farm Girl and I used our detective sniffing skills to find the culprit. We found it, took it out and smashed it to see why it was stinky. Nothin’. It wasn’t developing, but it also wasn’t rotten colored. It was more liquidy, though, than I feel it should have been.

• I am conflicted on what to feel about this. It is definitely frustrating since these eggs were quite expensive. However, it is still amazing to me that I can hatch any eggs that came all the way from Ohio. The way things are going, I will be thrilled with a 50% hatch rate.

• The barn swallow babies I’ve been admiring have learned how to fly, so I’m sure they’ll be on their way soon.

• I found another nest. This time belonging to a white-crowned sparrow. So far, there are just two eggs.

• The ladies are cranking out eggs like crazy. We’re getting nearly 2 dozen every day.

• We can’t eat all the eggs we are getting, so I have been putting extras in baggies and freezing for future use.

• We have two incubators. A couple weeks ago, I set eggs in one of them for the first time this year. Right now they are busy hatching!

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• The grape vine has taken off

• I think the deer mama’s have gone off to have their babies. There are a couple yearlings walking around by themselves wondering what to do.

• Apples! We have struggled getting our fruit trees to actually grow and produce. I see quite a few apples on 2 of our trees. Woo hoo!

• Waiting impatiently for the raspberries to ripen.

• A flock of cedar waxwings have ventured our way. I love them.

• Foxgloves in bloom are my cue that summer is here!

• Sven mid chew.

• I let the cilantro flower. Oops.

• Our Littles are growing up.

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May & June are my favorite months to enjoy our flowerbeds. This May has not disappointed. The foliage is filling in and the blooms are lovely.

BIRD VILLAGE

There is a lot (almost too much) going on in the bird village. After many years, this area is finally starting to feel like a complete project. If only I could keep the weeds out…

Snowmound Spirea

Lupine
This has been a great year for the lupine.

Lincoln Star Clematis

Allium

And more beautiful blooms

Near the Bird Village is a native rose that’s looking great.
And, there are a couple iris’ in our little meadow.

SHADE GARDEN

Top Left: I’m not a huge rhododendron fan, but I love the light purple blooms on this one.
Right: Variegated Weigela. Love it and all its pretty pink flowers.

FRONT YARD & POND

The lithodora is looking fabulous this month.

Top Left: Variegated Vinca Major
Top Right: Cotoneaster
Bottom Left: Thyme
Bottom Right: Hardy Geranium

Top Right: Columbine ‘Aguilena’
Bottom: Easter Egger hen searching for bugs in the creeping thyme

To enjoy more Bloom Day posts check out May Dreams Garden

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• Last week I posted a photo of a bird’s nest. Here is a pic of the bird bringing goodies back to the nest. Are there eggs in there? Will there be eggs?

• The weather has been lovely, so the bees and bugs have been out enjoying it.

•  I saw my first American Goldfinches of the year at our house this week

• A couple weeks ago Farmer John brought home a few chicks. The middle photo is an updated pic of one of the Delaware chicks.

• We often have a mama (or two, or three) that hatches chicks this time of year. Our first one hatched the other day.

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• The cement path that was begun 7 years ago is now complete. So, so excited about that!

• While we were mixing cement for the path we also poured cement to secure 2×4’s for our soon-to-be-installed patio lights.

• The spring flowers have been extremely lovely this year. I’m loving it. And, so are the bugs. The amount of insects out and about is crazy. I don’t remember this many out so early.

• The violet-green swallows are here. I enjoy watching them fly around searching for a lunch of insects.

• The dirty, crummy task I did this week was clean out duck sludge from the pond in the front yard. It was disgusting, but absolutely needed done.

• Mo, our one eyed Easter Egger rooster, has been living with the goats. He got inside their fence and can’t figure how to (or doesn’t want to) get out. It’s actually a good spot for him. He can mind his own business without the other young roosters bothering him.

• I can only guess that the barley seed I got is bad. I’ve tried starting it a number of times and it just won’t grow. Such a bummer. I was hoping this would save us money – instead I just wasted money on bad seed. Blah. I’ll try barley again. But, not yet – I’m irritated.

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• I think our seedlings are enjoying the warmer weather. They seem to really have taken off. #exciting!

• The ladies have started laying well again. Woop, woop!

• Our plum tree is blooming!

• The one good thing about being down to only one duck is that the fish in our ponds are out a lot more. They don’t have to stay in hiding anymore.

• We often have deer around. Lately, there have been 3 hanging around. They have nibbled on all the day lily leaves.

• The fodder. Oh, the fodder. I’m beginning to think the barley is just not good seed. 99.9% of it doesn’t sprout. This week’s experiment was putting rye grass on one side and barley on the other of the same container. This way I know they are getting the same exact attention. The rye grew great. The barley didn’t. I’m going to try the barley one more time before deeming the seed bad. My one change this time will be to initially soak it for less time. When I get home this evening I’ll set it in it’s tray and hope for the best.

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2015 has officially ended. Let’s look back at how our farm and gardening endeavors played out this past year. We had a fairly steady year with good food being grown and plenty of animals to keep us busy.

CHICKENS

We dabble in a variety of things related to farming and gardening, but chickens will always be a main stay for us. That being said, this year we did take a slight step back. We didn’t incubate eggs, we didn’t attend any shows or swaps, and Farm Kid2 decided not to continue with poultry in 4H. But, that doesn’t mean we’re short on chickens.

We chose not to incubate eggs this year. We did, though, have 3 broody hens hatch small clutches. Click here to read about the first hatch and click here to read about the second.

The majority of our birds are Rhode Island Reds and Easter Eggers. But, we still have two golden polish hens that are nearly 4 years old. They lay a fairly small egg and are such a great looking bird.

Mo, our Easter Egger rooster, has been demoted. For a number of years he was our top rooster. However, some young, cocky boys have moved up and taken his spot in the pecking order.

Three of our handsome fellas.

We were given this Old English Game bantam. I think he’s beautiful. He’s meant to be a show bird, but at the moment nobody in our family is showing poultry.

This wasn’t an outstanding egg year. One day, though, Farm Girl decided to count how many eggs we had.

We raised 10 birds for meat. Usually we roast the whole chicken, but one night Farmer John made chicken strips. They were delicious!

Four white leghorns, one buff orpington, one barred rock and one black australorp were added to our laying flock this year.

DUCKS

The ducks have given us a bit of excitement by each hen hatching eggs this year. That’s a first for us.

Our two Welsh Harlequin ducks.

Sally, our male Muscovy. The left photos are from January and February of this year. The right was taken in September. His looks changed significantly.

Both ladies sat on eggs this year, which was a fun experience for us. To read about the first hatch click here. And click here to read about the second hatch.

I’ve enjoyed watching how the Welsh Harlequin/Muscovy cross ducklings change as they mature.

Unfortunately, we lost Sally and one of the Welsh Harlequins to predators in the fall.

GOATS

The goats are cute as can be doing goat type things. You can read more about them here.

PIGS

We’ve had two sets of hogs this year. The first round Farm Kid1 raised 2 and sold them to earn money for a computer.

The second round was to fill our freezer, as well as to sell. The pigs were a Hampshire/Berkshire cross.

OLIVER & LOIS

A couple weeks ago we acquired a pot bellied pig named Oliver, and his friend Lois, a pygmy goat. My hope was we could be their forever home and they would live happily ever after with Sven and Olaf. Unfortunately, things aren’t working out as well as I had hoped. So, we are in the process of finding them a new home.

FLOWER BEDS

There wasn’t a lot of action this year in our flower beds. But, the same ol’ trusty trees, shrubs and perennials put on a pretty show mainly in the spring and summer months.

The ducks, unfortunately, are not great for the plants. They step on them. They sleep on them. They poop on them.

The deer also make flower gardening a challenge. Apparently some of our plants are quite tasty.

The only new additions to our flower beds were 10 lavender ‘grosso’ plants. They’re in an area that I’ve struggled with for years. I finally decided lavender was the thing to spruce it up.

PONDS

We have two small ponds that I love. Our farm critters as well as wild critters love them, too.

GARDENING FOR FOOD

Another thing we didn’t spend as much time on as in years past, was the garden. It is incredibly time consuming keeping up with the weeds and by the end of summer it had gotten a bit out of hand. We did harvest some produce, though. We got onions, potatoes, a few eggplant and squash, cherry tomatoes & herbs.

We tried the three sisters method in one area of the garden. Corn, beans and squash all growing together. It worked kind of . Everything grew. But, we tend to have trouble with corn and it didn’t grow fast enough before the beans grew tall. The squash (pumpkins & gourds) grew well, though.

Many of our seeds didn’t germinate this year. I think the birds got to them. Darn it. I should have had a fabulous showing of tall sunflowers mixed with viney cucumbers growing underneath. What I got was one sunflower. One.

This was not a great year for tomatoes. We only picked a handful of big, juicy red ones. It was so hot this summer, I actually think we didn’t water them enough. We did, however, get renegade yellow cherry tomatoes. They reseeded from last year and were a pleasant surprise.

Fruit. My favorite items to pick from the garden is the fruit. Our grape vines are finally producing well, we got a couple apples, lots of plums and lots of raspberries.

NEW PATIO

Our only big project of the year was pouring a much needed back patio. We decided to do stamped concrete, which was a lot of work. But, I’m so happy to finally have a patio. The ducks, too, are quite happy with the patio. It is one of their favorite places to hang out and poop.

AQUAPONICS

This was our first full year experimenting with aquaponics. We have three grow beds, one fish tank and a sump tank.

A good sized pump cycles the water and aquarium heaters keep it warm. Depending on the time of year we keep the water between 70 and 80 degrees.

We have a fan for circulation in the greenhouse.

Grown in the garden beds were/are peppers, Mexican sour gherkins, tomatoes, eggplant, mixed greens and okra. This growing method works very well.

I also started nasturtiums right in the garden bed and overwintered geraniums that loved the greenhouse.

We grow tilapia in the fish tank part of the aquaponics system. The fish aren’t growing as quickly as we thought they would. But, at the beginning of December we did finally catch a couple fish and have them for dinner. I was hoping they’d be good, and they were.

Whew! There were no major plant or animal changes this year. But, just keeping up kept us plenty busy. It’s so much work living this way, but so rewarding. I can’t wait to see what 2016 will bring.

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