Speaking of Chickens - Homeschool Freebie

We try to never waste an opportunity in our homeschool day. That includes activities around the farm such as incubating eggs.

Thankfully a friend stepped up to help me this time. She shared a wonderful resource for the lifecycle of an egg. The best part is, it's FREEEEE. Gotta love quality that doesn't cost a cent. In other words, it's cheep, cheep, cheep. You don't find that very often.

I wanted to pass it on to you so you can follow along with us as we put our eggs into the incubator today. You can get a bird's eye view of what's happening each day in this 3 week process.

Egg Hatching and Chick Observation Packet (Free)

Enjoy.

Farm Update

It's been busy and will get really busy this next week on our farm. I thought I would share what's going on here.

Photo Credit

Our little girl goat, Esther, who had a neurological issue with her rear hips and legs is doing so well. She is running around, jumping, and growing like a week. Her Mom tried to kill her so we had to pull her and bottle feed her. She's doing great with the bottle.

All the babies are starting to eat grass and alfalfa without spitting it back out. I have caught them chewing their cud a few times. I have heard the all telling burping sounds and felt their rumens, well, rumenating.

In about 2 weeks our two baby bucks will go to their new home. They are going together to hobby goat owners that we know personally.

Photo Credit

Our chickens are laying eggs so well, but they refuse to sit on them. This is not unheard of with chickens purchased from feed stores. They are pulled immediately and are not taught to mother, so they usually don't sit on their eggs.

However, our rooster has things figured out ... it appears. We were able to purchase a nice incubator with an egg turner at a trade days type sale last weekend. It's brand new and we got a great deal on it. We will set it up tomorrow, let it run all day, and then start collecting eggs.

If our rooster is as good as he thinks he is, in about 3 weeks we will have baby chicks. He needs to be as good as he pretends to be because it's the only thing saving his time on our farm. He's a mean old grouch.

Photo Credit

This has been a gorgeous winter. It's been what most would call fall/spring weather. It was 80 yesterday. It's never 80 here in February. The Farmer's Almanac says we are done with all freezes and bad weather so it's time to start planting.

We began our seeds indoors (except potatoes, we don't pre-sprout them). So far we have cukes, carrots, lettuce, large and small tomatoes, cilantro, and one corn plant sprouted so far. We have more that ought to sprout soon.

My tiller needs a tire fixed. My husband will be doing that on Thursday I will then till the area and we will start planting this weekend.

Photo Credit

I finally found a local source for raw milk. Who knew that would be so hard. Now that I have a reliable source, I am going to start making yogurt. We got our heirloom cultures in today and will start them tomorrow. Once they are cultured we will hopefully keep them going indefinitely so we have reliable and healthy cultures anytime we want yogurt.

I also shared our new tortilla recipe that my kids love. Tomorrow I am going to attempt to make baked tortilla chips with them. I will definitely let you know how those turn out. If they turn out well, I will share how I did it.

While we have a lot coming up, it's exciting. This is the first year we have everything humming so well. It seems we have finally hit our groove on our little farm. Gee, and it only took us 6 years.

All Cooped Up

We have chickens.

We had a temporary coop made from our old coop from our last chickens.

It wasn't good.

It's roof was low.

We had given away our hen house so we were using a very rigged up house that was super basic with no laying boxes.

It wasn't good.

That's all changed now.

We spent 2 days putting together my husband's idea. Well, not two. We spent yesterday morning at church, but came home, at lunch, and back out we went.

The chickens are delighted. No, really, they are cracking us up with how they are acting in their new super coop. It's not done. The house you see at the end of the pictures below will be fully enclosed soon and we will be putting skids on it so it can be moved around the yard from place to place. This will keep them on fresh grass with fresh supplies of bugs.

The coop with the girls and our one roo inside. You can see the house at the end partially covered (it has a roof and 3 half walls.) Not bad. It's so nice out now we didn't even want it finished yet so we are waiting to buy more wall material. It has an arched roof on the entire yard so nothing can get into the pen with the chickens. At the end where the house is, there is a very, very thick fabric waterproof tarp that will give them extra shade and weather protection.

This is the gift my boys made for their chickens. It's a roosting tree. Simple 4"x4" in the ground with 1"x1" posts all around at different heights. The last picture will tell you what they thought of it, so keep reading.

Inside the pen - you can see a bit of the detail of the ramp and awning better. See that big gray thing right in the middle there? That's my second favorite chicken equipment ever. It's a double walled chicken watering can. When you take the top off one wall comes with it. You fill the can with water for the chickens and no water comes into the drinking trough area until you put that lid back on all the way down. So you can move it where you need and nothing spills. It has a handle inside of it so you can move it with the lid off. It has a handle on top so you can move it with the lid on and it locks so the lid won't come off. It keeps the water so clean and fresh (much better than the plastic ones) and holds a lot of water. Never thought I would be excited about chicken accessories.

So, I said the watering can was my second favorite item, here's my first. It's our laying boxes. Yes, that is a cord in the picture. It will be tacked up today. We bought these at a second hand store this week. My husband had been eyeing them and we were actually able to make a deal with the woman that owns the store (it's a really nice store, a fun place to shop for cute things for your house and adorable new clothing). He had some items that are similar to the metal things she sells (her biggest business) so the price was taken way down after we traded those. We attached it to the house so it wouldn't move no matter how rambunctious the girls got and filled each box with nice fresh hay for them. Now we just wait for eggs.

Back to the roosting tree. We looked outside last night as we walked past the kitchen window and here's what we saw.

Sorry the picture isn't very good. It was very dark and I used my cell phone. First the rooster got up on the top of the tree and strutted his stuff. He was acting like he was king of the world up there. It was hysterical. This picture was taken about an hour later and you can see one hen on the arm on the left. Then that's a hen on the tallest point. Right next to her (we are moving left to right) is our rooster. Then three hens on the right side of him. They were there until after we went to bed last night. So, I think I would call that a hit.

We have another roosting bar closer to the hen house, one built into the frame of the hen house, then each level of the hen house has one on it. So, roosting is an easy job for them with many locations.

That was our weekend. What did you cook up this weekend for fun?

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

I have a few things in the works around our home, and that means I have new topics for posts soon. I thought I would share a preview, of sorts, about what's brewing in my home and head.

Soap. I like soap. I don't mean, "yeah, it makes me clean, no way I would do without it" like. I mean I like soap a lot. I love the smell, the non-smell (if it's unscented), the feel of a smooth bar of soap. I like cute soap, plain soap ... OK, I might have a soap problem. However, I also don't like soap that isn't safe and bothers my kid's skin. This means I am always on the hunt for soap.

Until I got a wild hair to make my own. I figured I would quell that wild hair with a simple Google search on how to make it. I would discover it's very hard and give up. Yeah, no. So, join me when I take you on an adventure that is me making my first homemade soap.

If soap making wasn't enough, I also got a crazy idea to make my first quilt. It was a long drawn out thought process that went something like, "hey, quilting, why not" and off I went to the store. I have my fabric, my rotary cutter, my cutting pad, my measurements, and I will actually be starting soon. Pop on over to see if my first steps into the quilting world are a success or a flop.

It's been a while since I updated on our fine feathered friends we own (a.k.a. chickens). I will update with pictures, funny stories, and maybe even a first egg soon.

Tune in soon as I walk you through these happenings and more. We have a busy month so it should be fun.

Our Week in Pictures - LOL Version

 He likes inequalities in math so much. Who knew?

 Scrabble, Scrabble. We play often. We usually use real words. LOL.

 Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Onions. My new favorite books for working in the garden and with our chickens. My little onions all sprouting and growing. We now have more than that sprouting after all the rain.

Because when Mom says put on your shoes to go feed the animals she didn't say put on matching shoes.

 My newest addiction. Trim Healthy Mama's homemade ranch dip. Seriously, if you knew how easy this was and how tasty, you wouldn't buy bottled anymore.

Yes, that is a spoon in the pico de gallo. Yes, he did eat it like a meal. Yes, I love my little crazy pico loving monkey.

Happening Week

This has been a crazy week and it just hit me that I hadn't posted in a while. I am sorry about that. So, what happened at our home?

Let's see:

We got our sons music room together ... mostly. Yes, that is a tool box you see. I said mostly. But this point I was wiped out. This room, you see, is our younger son's bedroom. We moved him in with brother and their drums and piano into his room. They love it. But, it was a lot of work taking down furniture just to move it to the next room and have to put it all up again. We have some things to move to our storage building and we are done in there. I am thinking of moving our big book shelves that house the medical supplies in there. I believe there's room for it (it's a tiny bedroom). That would free up some nice visual space in our living room.

We also bought an 8 pack of chicken nuggets. That was completely unexpected. We used to have chickens. We have beautiful Rhode Island Red layers. Our younger son figured out where eggs came from and never ate another egg. Our older son dived so much in his eating that he didn't eat them just because he felt no hunger and ended up with a feeding tube. So, we just had more pets to care for each day. We gave them to a friend with a chicken business and moved on.

Now my sons are doing better. But we weren't getting chickens. A few days ago we were all in town doing errands and my husband asked what all we needed to do. I told him and he asked if we needed to go anywhere else, then listed the farm store. I told him I didn't need to head there, but if he had something he needed to go for it. He said he saw their "chick days" sign up and just thought we might take a look. I couldn't figure out why, but the boys wanted to see the chicks and the bunnies, so I told  them we could go look but we were NOT buying anything.

Yeah, by the end of the trip Daddy and the boys ended up deciding we needed chickens again. We got home with me saying 4 chickens, you can each pick 2. That night my husband was chatting with his Mom on the phone and said, "yeah, we are heading back into the chicken life. The boys are getting 8 chickens". WHAT! I asked what he meant. He said he figured 4 each would be good, didn't I think so too. Um ............... sure.

Yesterday, after music lessons, we went back to the farm store and picked up our 8 pack of chicken nuggets. Seeings as the kids wanted them and were going to care for them, I let them choose what they wanted. They picked 2 of each breed. A few have names. The yellow ones are Sunflower and Buttercup (you can tell Sunflower because she has a black spot above her eye). The little black one there by herself is Egg Nog. The two striped ones are Mars and Chocolate. The other 3 are still waiting on their names.

And so you see, THAT'S why I have not posted in a few days. Add in church, taking my mother-in-law to hear her favorite local gospel group sing, music lessons, thinking about food all the time to get it into my sons, and more, and life got a bit crazy.