Skip to main content

Big Move

Last year, we raised a mix of laying hens and meat hens.  We ordered 25 as chicks in a random mix and ended up with 7 meats.  Well, that wasn't quite enough for our family of 7, but it definitely got us wanting more this year.  We decided on getting 50 this year of the fast growing, Cornish Cross. 
 
We actually kept them in a second room off our chicken coop with our laying hens, and anxiously awaited their Big Move to the Chicken tractor in the yard, so they weren't making such a mess in the hen house!  Tonight was the move!
With the move to the tractor, also came a new water system.  We found chicken nipples in the farm store and drilled holes in PVC pipe attached to a hose and then a 5 gallon bucket.  The bucket is placed on the top of the pen full of water, and the gravity makes the water run to the nipples.  This is far less messy than the traditional waterers!  We had to watch the chicks for awhile to be sure they knew how to drink. 
As you can see, the chicks are figuring it out!  It's pretty fun to see them drink from a nipple.  Who knew that chickens could push a little nipple to get their water out?
 
One of the best things about doing so many chicks, this spring, is that after we got our chicks, they announced on the news that millions of chickens were sick and that the price of chicken will be sky high this year.  For us, we will have 50 chickens in the freezer by mid June!  What a fabulous and fun way to know where our food source has come from! 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

DIY Pig Feeder

  This is our second year of raising pigs for the fair.  We've had some bumps along the way, one of them was our homemade feeder of last year.  I tend to have ideas, and then Mr. Right gets the pleasure of trying to execute my ideas.  Most of the time it works out, but last year, our feeder was a fail.   This year, we need a feeder that can go a long period of time, since our pigs are not on our property where we live.  Our neighbor made a complaint about the smell of the pigs last year to our landlord, so the landlord told us no more pigs. (Keep in mind, there are only 2 pigs on 6 acres and they are only here for 5 months and then go to the 4-H fair and livestock auction) Thankfully, another neighbor graciously allowed us to pen up a corner of her horse pen, to put our pigs in.    This year, I wanted to be sure that Mr. Right did a quality version of the pig feeder that would make it through the entire five months, and hopefully...

Local Harvest

I am so surprised at the amount of people who don't take advantage of local farmers and produce!  We heard about a place called "Tomato Toms" and just had to check it out. (Especially since it seems nearly impossible to grow tomatoes in our town.  I think it's something about the elevation)  We took a Sunday afternoon to drive to explore local produce and find Tomato Tom. This drive, I thought for sure that no one could be possibly growing anything on such dry land (see the background to the first picture, below).  Then we drove up a scary driveway and look what we found: Tomato Toms was a fantastic sizable garden of u-pick heaven!  We picked 60 pounds of tomatoes in 10 minutes.  Then took about twenty more minutes to figure out just what onions and peppers we needed to go with our tomatoes. The tomatoes weren't store perfect, as in no blemishes or anything, but they were beautiful and tasted wonderful off the vine!  I don't normally ...

Burlap and Ticking

I found a queen size bed ruffle with  a ticking ruffle on it.  Immediately, I picked it up (for only $1!) at our local thrift store.  I knew that I would combine it with my find of burlap bags.  ( I picked up 200 of them for only $10!  Yes, that's right, they were only $.05 each! I overindulged in them, and could take no less than 200 because of the price.)  One of the problems with my new bags is that they are a little smaller than the printed ones that I have.  I personally like really long table runners because I have a really big table, but I decided to get over my own feelings and make this runner as long as I could (the ruffle really helped, too).  So here is the runner.  I think the ticking and the burlap really look great together.  I know how to make ruffles and have ticking, but for $1 I thought that this really was worth using from a different source! You could have it in the middle of a big table like above, or you co...