Cranky n Stinky.com

I promised more pictures once the weather started getting nicer, and finally it is. First, a fresh dozen of our eggs from this weekend.



They made a special journey to a neighboring town. We'll know more soon...

Next up, our first blossom of the year. We now have three daffodils out, but this one was the first. I've been driving by other people's flowers in bloom for maybe a week now, and wondering when ours would show themselves.




Well, they have, and though it's going to be rainy the next few days, it was sure nice to have a warm sunny afternoon to enjoy them. We need the rain anyway, it's been a very dry spring. Great for not having too much mud, but it's also keeping our grass from getting established. Speaking of, we were working on cleaning up some leaves from the fall, which meant going in between the paddocks with loads of leaves. Well, today at work I got a text message midday - 'The boys are in the paddock!' I knew right away what this meant. Sure enough, I looked at our web cam and there they were, happily munching away at the young tender grass. Aaron went to investigate and determined what had happened. Seems someone cough, looking innocent forgot to latch one of the swing gates after she brought in the rakes...

The gates are secured again, and the boys left to gaze longingly at the greener grass.

This will never be a complete list, and we are constantly thinking about new projects as well as ways to improve what we're doing... but since it's always fun to share a list here are a few things we want to achieve around the home in 2009, ideas that we had in 08 but maybe didn't get to or ones we've had more recently. I'll divide into two groups.

Likely:
-Get a generator, so we don't face a multiday power loss again
-Put in a clothesline for less use of the dryer in warm months
-Rebuild our raised beds and use our own compost to fill them
-Set aside as much berries and meat as we did in 08 from local sources
-Process our fiber into yarn and goods [I should take a picture of starting pile... a lot!!]
-Stain the barn with the new paint sprayer we got (yes, my birthday present) - it's looking like it needs it

Maybe:
-Raise up our own chicks via incubator
-Actually do some canning this year now that we have some supplies given to us
-Try making new homemade items (yogurt, breads, and soaps come to mind)

Of course, we want to continue blogging, taking pictures, and trying new recipes out. We hope you'll stay tuned for '09!

Here are some parting pictures of our December 2008:

Alpacas outside after the ice storm:


After we had 3 days of continuous snow:


and lastly, some of the eggs we've been getting (no, this is not normal):


Happy New Year!

That's the theme for tonight. We're getting down to the mid-20s, which is basically real winter weather. Boo. I'm not real psyched about this. It also means snow is not far around the corner. I had to hook up the chickens' heater tonight, as well as the pacas' heated bucket. Hopefully they will do the job, safely. We've wanted to get a wireless thermometer to keep a reading of how cold it's getting in the barn and coop, but haven't yet. Guess it's time for a trip to Wally-world, someplace I really don't enjoy going. But for this kind of thing, the alternatives stores aren't any better, and Wally-world is cheap. Plus, someone has to pay back our debt to China. Well, ok, maybe like .000001 % of the interest on it. But I digress.

We had some strange egg milestones this weekend, after a warm rainy day (hey, it's New England - the weather isn't supposed to be predictable or anything). We had an 8 egg day. We also have gotten an enormous blue EE egg that must have been painful for the pullet, poor girl. We'll take a picture before it becomes Good Eats. Today, though, we had 5 brown eggs, and no EEs.

Is it sad if this is one of my favorite parts of the day to look forward to?

Bijan is doing much better, and able to eat well enough. He's almost a toothless wonder now, but somehow he gets it down.

I had a great weekend - got to see Iron & wine in a small venue setting. In some ways it was better than seeing them at ACL, but in others, it was worse. I was very keyed for both shows, but the nature of ACL with it being outside, sunny, diverse, all-day, enormous show made for a much more relaxed event; in Northampton, we were among the oldest in the crowd, there was not seat anywhere, and we were packed in so close that... well, maybe you should ask m750 about how close we were . Anyway, just a very different experience. I'm almost loathe to admit this, but I think I enjoyed seeing him at Austin City Limits better, it was just much shorter. Maybe we should just try to catch him in Austin proper. Although, we are taping the ACL showing on PBS this week.

I have added a latest music gadget thing on the right side menu, via blip.fm, if anyone wants to hear some of my recent favorite music.

As my last quick update, Aaron's birthday is coming up - Wednesday, Nov 19th! If you can, wish him happy birthday, he loves hearing from everyone! He'll be joining the ranks of the officially *OVER*t 30 crowd, as he's turning 31.

There's another blog that has posed a chicken survey. So, Aaron suggested I blog the answers... here goes.

1. Do you have a particular favorite breed of chicken, and if so what is it and why do you prefer it? Or if more than one, which ones, etc?
Fairly new to chickens, so I have no strong preferences. Our black sex links are laying like crazy, and our Blue Laced Red Wyandotte roo is quite the looker. Though he is a big baby. The Easter Eggers lay fun eggs and are pretty chickens, too. If I were going just for volume, the black sex links would win.

2. Do you use your chickens for your family, to sell, or both? Meat, or eggs, or both?
We have our layer hens and we only plan to sell the excess (to friends, coworkers, family). We subsidized the raising of 10 meat birds at another farm, and we've had 1-2 roasters a month since they were processed in July. This usually translates to several meals for 2 based on a 5-6 lb bird. The meat birds were able to enjoy fresh pasture and were fed w/organic feed.

3. What advice would you give to anyone wanting to start out raising them, other than reading some good books on the subject?
Backyardchicens.com, and build a strong run. Don't skimp on the housing and fencing, though the very resourceful can get a lot of building materials through yardsales, Craigslist etc. Just make sure it will be a clean and dry home. Overestimate the size you need, you can always add chickens if you want to later!

4. Do you primarily keep your chickens in a coop/enclosed chicken yard, or do they roam your property?
Our chickens stay in the run area for most of the time. We let them out only when we are ourselves outside doing work around the barn, yard, etc. We usually do this late in the day so twilight gets them back in the run. However, a cup of scratch tossed in the run will usually work too!

5. Do you ever let them into your garden? If no, do you have a fence or something to keep them out?
Uhm, yes, they have gone in our garden. It is not fenced from them. But our garden was not a wild success this summer. Next summer may be different.

6. Do you ever use a chicken tractor, and if so, is it for meat birds only? do you use electric/ net poultry fencing? I'm interested in which has worked for you and which has not. What has been your experience with pastured poultry 'a la the Joel Salatin sort (follow behind the livestock grazings at the optimum time), if that applies?
We do not use a tractor for the layers. The meat birds were in a tractor for much of the time.

7. Do you keep chickens year-round, or raise them for seasonal processing?
Year round; it'll be our first winter with the hens.

8. How many chickens of a certain type do you raise at one time (what works best for you as far as how many to raise at a time?)
I think this depends on your goals. If it's just family eggs you want, a half dozen may be enough. We have 12 hens and 1 roo, in part because I figured a few wouldn't make it. They all did! But we're happy anyway, a dozen seems like a good number for us.

Inquiring minds (me!) want to know. I've seen so many folks with their own styles of chicken raising, and I'm so curious to know what works best for you...
Raising them from chicks is very rewarding!

Well, I started this one days ago, but the title still applies. We got five eggs today, and for the first time two Easter Eggs! The new egg is a lovely shade of pale blue, not as green. It is pretty big for a first egg also (well, we think it is a first egg). Our trendlines are really beginning to go up in our graph, despite the daylight hours being much shorter at this time of year. According to our spreadsheet, we have gotten roughly 90 eggs since they started laying, which sounds like an awful lot for a short time. If we get up to 50% laying a day, that will be very impressive.

Fortunately, the temperature has moderated so the waterer hasn't frozen this week at all. We did get a heater base, and as of today, a heavy duty outdoor cord. The alps already have the heated bucket I got this weekend, though presently unplugged.

Yesterday, Aaron prepared a dinner with 10 of our fresh eggs, sliced dried tomatoes, goat cheese, and herbs (basil, chives) from our winter herb garden. We had some hearty bread on the side. More on that some other time... I've been negligent in my reporting on the hydroponic herb garden (Aerogarden).

It's also been great to have my Dad here, on this very historic week. We've had a lot of great conversations which makes for a great change of pace, even though this week has certainly been as hectic as any, with coordination of more alpaca moving going on. The vet will be out to our farm tomorrow, I've got the day off to spend with my Dad, though I am hoping to get to the gym as well. Aaron's parents will be here later in the evening before they head off on a fun trip to Costa Rica with his sister, her husband, and their granddaughter.

Over the weekend, I'm hoping we'll have time and good weather to get into the woods for some walking, as well as visit some local farm stores.

For those who may have missed, we have a cam currently pointed at our paddock. You may be able to spy pacas or chickens. They will be small (chickens especially) so look carefully.

http://www.crankynstinky.com/pict/tank.jpg

Works during the day.

All in all, we're well, but busy.

Ah yes, we decided to be geeks about our chickens' egg production by cooking up a Google spreadsheet to track our hens' laying history. Then we got the idea to make it into a nifty eye candy chart. Then we decided to embed it in the blog. See the title bar up top for the permanent home. For those too lazy to click, I'll help you for the first time:

We'll update it frequently, maybe not always daily.

That is how long it took for our chickens to start laying. Yes, they've started! I couldn't be more excited!
Aaron and I have joked about the $1000 dollar egg, and we're already to the $500 dollar egg. But having your own produced eggs is a great feeling. It's a relief to know that they are capable, and the time we've put into them is coming to fruition!

Tonight, I came home to let the chickens out with just a hint of light left, and all but two hopped down off their roost for treats (yep, 6:25 and they're roosting, it's so sad - pretty soon I won't see them at all at night). This is pretty normal - there are two girls who are early to roost and they value their sleep over treats.

Anyway, as the rest were having their cracked corn treat, after days of looking in the nest boxes only to see nothing, I said to myself, well, maybe because I cleaned them out yesterday there's an egg in there... It was just yesterday I had calculated their age to see if they should be laying, and yes, they were at the magic mark. But it was dark in the coop and a little hard to see. Is that a bunch of feathers, I wondered? Put my hand in, and not one, but TWO eggs, one each in the top nesting boxes. One is a brown egg, which means from one of our Black Stars, and the other an olive colored egg, so, from one of our Ameraucanas! I thought for sure the Ameraucanas would be a while longer. They are tiny, but solid shells, so they are healthy eggs! Now I can't wait to see if all the girls start laying, or maybe more importantly, if they'll keep laying as it gets progressively darker and colder...

We'll have to add free choice oyster shell to their diets, which gives them extra calcium they need to keep producing healthy shells. Next, we'll have to get an inside the coop waterer that will not freeze. We could be getting as many as

Picture below:



I will maybe get one compared to a real egg next.

Edit: Ok, here it is, middle egg is from a mature local hen (bought).