March!

Let's see...what is happening this month?

Well, so far, I have researched and figured out where I'm going to get my little magpie girls. Went and prepaid for them yesterday and the wait is on. They are due to arrive the middle of April. Perfect! Orchards Feed Store...they're alright.

The littlest pullets are just over two weeks old and are doing quite well. It's kind of weird to think that they are just over two weeks old, they are growing so fast! Maybe the Jersey's grew fast too, I don't remember.

Don't grow so fast!

We don't have a suitable little outside pen for them to hang out in, so I had to plop them into a big ol' tub and set them right outside the garage so they could at least feel the fresh air and see the sky. These littles are quite fast! While trying to catch them, they were jumping just about as high as the brooder wall which is oh I don't know 2' tall? Those little wings are now helping them jump higher now that they have some feathers! They are thriving though and that makes me happy. We'll have 6 more egg layers by mid-summer!

This month I'll be taking a week off of work to do some projects around the house and prep for meat chickens later this season.  That means we'll be building this chicken tractor:

This will be so much easier to build than the Justin Rhodes chick shaw that was last year's project. It works great and we love that it is mobile. This design appears to be less involved - we'll see. Check out the video - John Suscovich was featured on the Great American Farm Tour:

We have yet to figure out when our chicken processing will happen this year...more on that later. This will be a good transition for the littles when it comes to that. We won't be able to put them with the big girls until they are much bigger so this will be the perfect solution! By the time June rolls around they might be big enough to hang with the main flock. We'll see though, we might have to keep them separate for a little while. Either way, they will have a home for a little while - then we can get the meat chickens in there for a late summer harvest.  

John Suscovich is a big reason why I'm wanting to raise meat chickens. I had the thought to do it last year, but it wasn't meant to be. So why not this year...we have a little bit of experience and as time goes on we are finding out that there are some people who are interested in helping on processing day...YAY! There are more people who are freaked out and don't want anything to do with processing. That's fine, just don't spread negativity. Especially if great tasting chicken is the end result! Keeping it short - I could go on and on. Check out Farm Marketing Solutions HERE. If you do, you can get all sorts of cool stuff...

It's a terrible photo, but it shows all the stuff that we got from FMS.
I have the hoodie in red!

If you want to see the evolution of the meat chicken go HERE. We are going to be meat chicken farmers. #onemillionchickens

Other happenings this month: The girls and dudes will be moved again this coming Saturday - we have decided to get them back onto the garden one last time before the big planting in a couple of months.

We have noticed that in the last month that the boys across the street didn't come over as often to give our feathered creatures treats. Maybe the move to the garden will make them more comfortable with coming over again. We'll have to use both fences to get the entire area fenced in as well giving them grassy area to poop and scratch up too.

As time allows during this week, I'll be hanging out in my hoop house in the evenings getting my seed trays ready. We went to Freddy's earlier today and bought a couple of bags of potting soil and two bags of mushroom compost. It's time to get my soil blocker out and pick out the seeds I want to get started. Seriously - it's March...planting season will be here in no time flat!

It's time to stop goofing off and get down to business!!