Brooding Pullets

The chicks are now five days old and doing great!

The sixty pullets are ten each of these six breeds:
Dark Rhode Island Reds

Production Reds

Buff Orpington

Black Australorps

Golden Sex Links

Dominique

They live in this brooder. Cost to build: $0

Modest exterior

We have not lost one yet. 

Water Catchment for Chickens

The layer hens now have a self contained water catchment system.

Even though they are only a hundred feet from our doorstep this is a vast improvement.

Chicken Tractors

 We have five chicken tractors with a total of eighteen layers in them combined.

A chicken tractor is named so because of its ability to replace a traditional tractor by tilling, weeding, mulching, fertilizing and so on. 

Pastured Poultry in Drylands

These hens have been getting moved on our native drylands pasture at least twice a day ,,,,sometimes four or five!

Hens on a diet of leafy greens, sprouted wheat berries and barley, and organic scratch, no soy whatsoever. 

These three hen tractors can on a good day produce three eggs each!

Pastured Hens and Cover Crops

Right now we have nine hens pasturing in three of these tractors.

A planting of rye and buckwheat where we grew a bed of greens and carrots last year. This fall we will plant garlic here after the chickens scratch through a few plantings like this.

Moving the Chickens

Mike came out early this morning to load up ten hens and our 10 x 7 ft. tractor to take to a neighboring farm at the Real Food Nation property.

Hens waiting for better pastures.

Just two miles down the road, these ten hens will have plenty of pasture for weeks to come, eating up and tilling 70 sq. feet per day. We are attempting a cooperative relationship with other small farmers in ways like this that can benefit everyone and the land and animals bugs etc.

Pastured Poultry on Salad Greens

We thought we could salvage some seedlings we planted in this bed in Feb. but the aphids were just everywhere...so hens to the rescue!

It is so great to see chickens living in this environment and as farmers we have such great control of what they eat and how they impact the land by being able to move them on and off areas.

Talk is Cheap

Roma

Basil

Cabbage in coldframe

Putting up zucchini

Baby Turkeys!

We got one Bourbon Red and a Broad Brested Bronze

They Grow Up So Fast

 See the turken in the above photo?


We are already on the second fifty pound bag of feed.

Another Chicken Post

...I know, enough already, but these gals are one of the main things feeding us right now.

Winter Time

These lucky hens get a serious variety of fresh produce from a few places around town.

Seedlings and Chicken Run

Lemon Cucumber seedling with it's trellis:
hoping to make some good pickles this year.

Australorps

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manure is good for plants

alpacas are funny, curious creaturesyoung ones:

spring has sprung!

both these photos i took with my camera phone, so the quality suffers..but becke took the camera with her to california for the next week, so any work/ progress will be documented by said phone till next wed.

snowbrew

nice snowy day off, why not have a homebrew?!?



got ingredients for a true american style imperial IPA...should be delicious and taking a reading of the dark ale today..that will be delicious.

good start to 2009

my bounty from the farmer;s market this morning, plus some delicious oatmeal cookies from Carol
later on I cut quite a bit of fire wood and wheel-barrowed it all to the road and loaded the Chevy

more chicken pictures!

While the landlady is in NYC for the week, we are looking after the property and the chickens as well. Fed them yesterday and took a bunch of photos. The one for-sure rooster is in a few of these pics. They got a totally unripe watermelon and some basil and burrito leftovers. needless to say they were stoked. Garden is loving the cooler temps and scattered rain-showers today and yesterday. Harvested some peas, beans, jalapenos and squash. Also sunflowers are flowering! pics of those for sure.