Mid to End of May at Czar of the Woods Farm

May has to be one of the most beautiful months there is.  Everything is bursting with life and it simply put, it feels good to be alive.  With the mild winter we had and unseasonably warm weather we had in March and April everything has sprung forth with life and become green faster than I can ever remember, complete with Alice in Wonderland sized weeds.  In the 3 years that we have been on the farm I don't ever recall the pasture grass growing so high so quickly.  I would imagine those that make hay might be able to get 3 cuttings in this year as opposed to the usual 2.  Certainly good for those of us that have horses, etc. in that it might bring the cost down with supply being up.  With the cost of fuel for tractors though it will still likely cost more than it did last year.  A local hay farmer called me out of the blue the other day and asked me if I wanted to purchase some of his early cut bales.  Sure do, the stuff is beautiful (he gave me a bale for the horses to try and they loved it)!

Speaking of horses...on May 1st our boarder Divo left so that his owner could move him to a barn where her sister also boards and so that they could ride together.  That same day we were lucky to have a new boarder arrive at the farm, Rocket; a 20 year old Quarterhorse who is absolutely wonderful in every way.  Since Czar was so very attached to Divo I was worried that he would miss him so I made sure that Rocket arrived within a few hrs of Divo's departure so that Czar wouldn't have any time to miss Divo.  You never know what to expect when 2 horses meet.  Czar, is a 27 year old Arabian who is still very much full of life and still has a feisty side.  For every horse he meets he wants to desperately be their buddy but in horses when this is the case it is often up to the other horse to decide and accept, or not.  Luckily Rocket seems to be accepting of everything in life and is easily one of the most easy going horses I have ever met.  He really could have cared less about Czar and simply wanted to check out his new digs.  I guess that was all the acceptance Czar was going to get so he took this as a cue to try to mount Rocket, fully erect.  Rocket, the poor guy, hadn't even gotten a meal in his new home yet.  Luckily these horses don't live in North Carolina and luckily for Czar's old man heart this didn't last long and they became true buddies.  From day one they bonded very quickly and are pretty much always right next to one another or eating from the same hay pile.  The weather has been amazing, and dry, almost too dry, for the past 3 weeks and the new couple has been outside, even at night (which is real good for horses), so they have continued to develop and incredible bond.  Watching this unfold has reminded me just how amazing horses are and we are really lucky to not only have them in our life but on our property.  In the middle of winter when owning horses is as difficult as it gets, it is days like this that I long for.  Thank you to Judy, Rocket's owner, for being an excellent boarder so far and we welcome both of them with open arms to Czar of the Woods Farm.  Rocket is truly one of the nicest horses I have ever met and we hope that he stays here for a good long time!

Rocket on the left and Czar on the right love to eat from the same pile of hay.  This means that horses are buddies, accepting of one another and safe together.

This has been and remains one of my favorite vantage points at the farm.  Standing in the northeast corner of the property, looking southwest.

We have yet to finish installing all the new fence posts in the back pasture due to a partial barn rebuild project taking precedence (sagging roof in one corner due to foundation rot) but I really wanted to get this new duo out on the amazing green grass that has grown so quickly.  So I installed temporary fence posts where there were no posts and now there is a combination of permanent and temporary with electric tape to keep the horses in.  While it's not ideal it does the trick for the time being and the horses couldn't be happier.  They didn't know what to do with themselves and didn't know where to start eating.  They looked as though they were eating their last meal the way they gorged and move to another area so as not to miss out.  Can't keep them out there too long as if they eat too much too fast so early in the season they can colic (which can be fatal).  I have been putting them out there for a few hours each night and seeing horses in our back pasture again is sublime.  After having it closed for the better part of 3 seasons so the grass could re-establish itself after over grazing from the previous owner's horses it was a long time coming and what a beautiful sight it is.  Nothing quite like seeing horses in their natural environment in a sea of green as they nicker to show they are content.  It really is perfection.

Here the boys enjoy the luscious green, spring pasture grass.

Our rescued Western Box turtles are loving life in their outdoor enclosure that is rapidly filling with all sorts of plants that make for great hiding places and homes for the insects that they eat.  The warm sun is a turtles best friend.  While the turtles don't do a whole lot I love having them and knowing that they have a really sweet enclosure on our property that we built for them.

 Can you spot them?

I also opened up the bee hive to see how they have been doing as well since the weather we have been having is perfect for bees.  They are drunk on pollen and nectar right now bringing it all back to the hive in the process of making honey and more bees.  It is quite a production and seemingly effortless yet chaotic choreography.

The light yellow "capped off" areas are what will eventually become honey.  There are other capped off areas that are darker and not seen in either of these frames that contain baby bees known as brood.

Henrik Watches Chicken TV!

The chicks are 3 weeks old now and we have been having unseasonably warm, and gorgeous, weather for the past week with temps in the mid 70's to upper 80's!  For mid-March in the Buffalo area this is unheard of.  I actually cut the grass today because it has already grown so much!!!
I thought it might be nice to get the chicks out of the garage and out from under their red heat lamp to actually see the real sun.  I moved them out on the grass in their temporary housing and they loved it.  You know who loved it more?  Our 5 1/2 month old son, Henrik.  I put him in his Boppy pillow to prop him up and he watched chicken TV for quite a while.  They watched each other very intently not quite sure what to make out of the other.  So cute!

And here is what the chicks looked like the day they arrived.  We split an order of 27 birds with my friend Megan of which we ordered 9, all from McMurray Hatchery (click here to watch a video of their amazing operation that hatches millions of chicks each month).  A week later we picked up 2 more birds from a local feed store for a total of 11 new birds to add to the flock.  We got the following breeds: Araucana (aka Americana) which lay blue, green or pink eggs, Barred Rock, Partridge Rock, New Hampshire Red, Cuckoo Maran which lay chocolate colored eggs, Black Australorps, a Red Frizzle Cochin Bantam (gotta see it so click the link here for a photo of what it will look like), a white mystery chicken that I didn't order and possible one more, can't remember.  They grow so fast and go from cute to awkward teenagers in no time as they are in the photos above.  All the chicks that we got aside from the Red Frizzle are heavy layers in that they lay large brown or colored eggs and lay them often.  Gotta earn their keep!

The chicks are born at McMurray Hatchery in Ames, Iowa (Gangloff if you are reading this, yep these chickens were once your neighbors) and are shipped at one day old arriving by 3 days old in this specially designed box.  

Here they are all huddled together to keep each other warm which is why they ship a minimum of 25 chicks.

This is one of Megan's chick, what she believes to be a Dorking Bantam.  I could not believe how small this bird was in my hand!

Here the chicks begin to eat and learn how to be chickens.  Immediately after arrival you have to dunk each one's beak in water to teach it to drink.  The seem to have eating down without any tutorial.

Weather Extremes and Chicken Update

We had arguably the most mild December in terms of weather that I can ever remember.  Not only did we  have very little snow and a green Christmas but the temps approached 50 degrees.  Around Christmas it also finally stopped raining and the animals here at Czar of the Woods were very happy to get out and enjoy the unseasonably warm weather and sunshine.
The chickens are finally producing more eggs in part because of the new ones that we adopted from the SPCA (not only are the new ones producing more but it seems to have induced the others to lay more as well), the weather and I told them that they would end up as soup if they didn't start earning their keep.  As you can see the chickens thoroughly enjoyed time outside in their chicken yard for Christmas.

 The bounty!

Even the horses got outside for the first time in a while due to all the rain and mud.

And what a difference a week makes.  These photos taken with my new outdoor, mounted wildlife camera (more on this to follow in a coming post) show winter as we have come to know it around here...thermometer on the barn reads negative one degree fahrenheit (30+ in the barn due to heat the horses give off).  This is more like it, although I don't like it.

Operation Chicken Drop or Chickens Can Be Real A#@holes!

I wanted to increase the number of chickens in our flock because my 17 chickens have not been producing enough eggs for us or for my egg business at work.  On a good day lately I would consider myself lucky if I got 4 eggs.  The eggs usually vary from day to day so I know that many of the chickens are laying but too few and far between to keep up with demand.  Supply was low.  I can't blame it on the cold either because this had been going on since the summer when a good number then was 7-9 eggs/day with that number slowly decreasing.  In the spring most of our chickens will be 2 years old which is arguably approaching the end of good egg laying days for the girls.
When we initially bought our chicks in the spring of 2010 we picked a variety mostly for looks and not necessarily all heavy layers.  We get many big eggs and many small eggs from the smaller, but unique looking chickens; variety in chicken and variety in egg is nice but I really want consistency now that I've gotten the unique chicken thing out of my system.  Chicken feed certainly isn't getting any cheaper and the girls need to earn their keep.  Periodically in every flock chickens die and over the past almost 2 years we went from 20 or 21 down to 17.  Time to get more chickens.
There are several means to get chickens: buy as chicks on-line or at a local feed store (not possible this time of year), friends of friends that raise them, craigslist, or rescue.  I opted for the last, well thought I would look into it anyway.  Within the last couple weeks I contacted the Erie County SPCA (where we adopted our pot-bellied pig in January 2010) to see if they had any hens that might be looking for homes.  At the time they did not but a few days ago I got an email from the barn manager to tell me that some hens became available.
There were 5 in all: 4 white chickens (possibly White Orpingtons or White Rocks) that were found as strays in Elma (Elmanian chickens-since my parents live in Elma my mom and I will periodically discuss whether or not they are Elmanians (read terrorist sounding) or Elmanites (Amish sounding) as my mom prefers) and a Red Star that came from somewhere else.  They all seem to be laying eggs quite nicely so I decided to go check them out.  Drove out to the SPCA yesterday and the place was a hive of activity as they were in the middle of their annual Radiothon to raise money.  I was happy that most of the dog kennels their had signs on them saying "Adopted: going home soon" or "Adoption Pending."  I didn't get to see the cats because the place was full of people waiting to get processed and take their forever pets home.  We have plenty of those furry types for now so I was the guy adopting chickens.  Yep, I like what I saw so they came home with me.

2 hens in one dog crate and 3 in the other.  2 of the white hens had some feather loss; who knows why since they were strays.  Could be normal molting or weather related.

The chickens remained in the crates until nightfall at which point I added them to the flock of "sleeping" chickens.  Flocks are much more likely to accept new members if added at night because they are in a way tricked into thinking that they were there all along.  Chickens are not the brightest...or always the nicest.
First thing this morning I checked on how things were going and if the new girls were assimilating, being allowed to is more like it, into the flock.  The coop was very loud as the girls were trying to figure out what happened overnight.  For the most part things were going well but of course the chickens were picking, literally, on the one that had the most feather loss.  Not sure how long this will go on but once chickens lock in on something they tend to not give up on it.  It can take months for them to accept a chicken, and will beat up on it in the meanwhile.  Not all chickens survive the hazing process.  I hope that is not the case here.  Chickens CAN be a#@holes!

The 4 chickens on the ground are 4 of the 5 new ones.

And the 2 white ones to the right are new...

Breakfast in the coop is always fun to watch!

And Czar, backlit by the morning sun coming through his window eats his breakfast and wants to know what all the ruckus is about.

As does Divo.