chicken snacks!

What can chickens eat you ask?  Question answered!
Also, on that note...we're always accepting approved leftovers/salad leftovers/compostables from your house! Feel free to drop them on our front porch!

It's Beggining to Look a Lot Like EASTER!

Happy ChrismaHanaKwanzaka to one and a Merry Non-Denominational Winter Solstice to the all!

Although what little winter we've had this year so far hasn't been rough for us it seems to have been rough on the ladies. Ever since the fall equinox we've noticed a dramatic, although somewhat expected, drop in egg production. We knew with the diminishing hours of daylight there would be less egg laying going on. What we didn't expect was for it to almost dry up completely.

Not knowing what to do we went and brought 6 new ladies into the flock. These ISA Browns are egg laying machines. Nothing stops them. Even at the worst of times we're seeing at least an egg every other day from each of them. While we are thankful for the presence and production we have learned that bringing them in when we did was probably not the best thing to do.

By bringing in the new girls we didn't solve the problem of why egg production was so low and, in fact, added a new stress on the rest of the flock by forcing them all to establish a new pecking order with 6 new birds. We went through long stretches where those ISA Browns were the only girls laying at all.

Then it happened. A sad day. A bird had passed from age and illness (much of our flock is over 3 years old, many of them I'd suspect are well over 5 years). The mean old bird who we affectionately called 'Broody Moma' after her propensity to brood all day and being one of the higher ups in the pecking order was gone and with her passing a valuable lesson has been taught.

We've learned just how much damage a broody hen can do to a flock, particularly when it dominates everyone's favourite nesting box. Most of our two dozen plus hens only use one or two of the nesting boxes and when that box is occupied, well, not much happens with regards to egg laying.

It has been a couple weeks since her passing now, and the ISAs are well integrated into the flock, so I believe the rest of the girls are getting back to themselves and the Easter Eggers are proving it. Today we had a half dozen eggs with many the breeds representing. We got two dark chocolate eggs, a couple of pink one, a green, and even one of our highly sought after blue eggs.

It's been a wonderful first Christmas for us on Lil Acre Farm, and even the girls saw fit to give us the gift of Easter Eggs again.

They're back!

The return of the Easter egg! Haven't seen one in about 2 months!

Keeping the ladies healthy!

3 new things we're gonna try to keep the ladies healthy!  I have 5 lbs of garlic in the cellar that I have been trying to make use of, so here's a good way to do it!  I'm thinking of floating the crushed cloves in their water as the method of choice for us.  We also have a 20 lb bag of DE that we also need to bust into and start using!

Thanks to Fresh Eggs Daily for the reference!

http://www.fresheggsdaily.com/2012/01/holistic-trinity-acv-garlic-and-de.html

A sign for Lil Acre!!!!!!!!!! way tooooo excited!

We ordered a custom sign for Lil Acre Farm...it arrived today...I loves it!
Big tree represents our beautiful huge maple in the backyard with our 2 swings in it, chicken...that should be self explanatory and then the flower at the bottom is a Lily, as this is all about her and her future.

Ordered from Barn Country Creations in Aylmer, Ontario.
https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/BarnCountryCreations
Yes, I do have a current Etsy addiction....

CAN'T WAIT TO POST IT AT THE ROAD!!

Oh Christmas Tree!

One good thing about having a sick kid is that it gives you some free time to catch up on blogging while you're home from work watching Pocoyo with her snuggled up against you.

This was a busy weekend with lots of projects. We had the flashing around the chimney redone. Hopefully it won't leak. Blew all the leaves and pine needles (at least five years worth!) off the roofs of the house and barn, cleaned out all the eaves troughs, hung an 8ft light above the workbench in the garage.....and cut down our first real Christmas tree!

Grandpa is always willing to lend a hand, this time by bringing over the chainsaw and doing the honours of felling the tree! Thanks Grandpa Stew.

Dad and Lily dragging the big tree back to the house. Lily is an excellent little helper on Lil Acre Farm.

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Had to stop and inspect the ice rink we built last week.   'Put me in coach!'

A little big....where did Grandpa go with that chainsaw?

There we go, all trimmed up and decorated!

Thanks again for dropping in.