spring bedding change

Thinking of changing the bedding/litter in the indoor chicken coop to sand in the spring.  Have been reading lots of great things about it and love how the droppings can be scooped out like cat litter.  Looking forward to trying it!

http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2012/09/chicken-coop-bedding-sand-litter.html

brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

It's a cold one again this morning....have been giving the ladies a nice warm bowl of oatmeal in the morning to warm them up after a cold night!

plans to free range!

So currently our chickens are not free range, they live within our inside and outside coop's, which are enclosed.  We have been thinking that it would be nice for the ladies to do some free ranging in the warmer months, allowing them to find all the tasty treats (seeds, bugs, etc) throughout the yard.  So we've started looking into a couple ideas to allow a few ladies at a time to free range safely from time to time.  It is not safe to allow our ladies to free range as we have a large coyote and hawk population in our area and our neighbour is quite fond of toxic chemicals on his lawn, so we don't want them consuming that.
Here are a couple photos of what we're talking about building (well Michael building anyway...not me...)  Final plans yet to be decided...

kitty?

Seems our new barn kitty may have gone AWOL...haven't seen it in a few days and there has been no decrease in food in the barn.  We have a pet door in the garage so it may have decided to go out and no come back in...oh well...back to the drawing board.  Hope it's doing ok...

Garden layout

Here's the layout of the main garden that Michael has created...pretty proud of himself!

Now we just have to figure out seed spacing and how many plants to put in each section.  

Veggies are surrounded by some flowers we will be growing to keep out pests and also that can be fed to the chickens, including marigolds and nasturtium.  Both are packed full of vitamins for the ladies and keep the yolk a nice yellow.

Also going to experiment with a few new things we've never tried before including corn (including a nice heirloom seed called butter popcorn(what!!!??? can't wait), quinoa, ground cherries, etc.)

As a note we will likely be selling our extra stuff that we can't can, freeze or eat...so let us know if you're interested in a supply of anything during the summer, I'm sure we can accomodate.

Name the barn cat!

So we just acquired a grey barn cat with white markings from another barn struggling to feed all the strays around...I have no photos as it has yet to be seen since its release in the garage on Sunday.  Kind of looks like this...

we also have no idea if it's male or female, although that really doesn't matter to us in terms of a name.
"It" will be sleeping in the warm garage with its fire burning stove and keeping away the mice/rats/etc., so that we can keep our hens healthy and vermin free!
So anyway, it needs a name and we need help to come up with one...please post suggestions in comments!

winter, new barred rocks, greenhouse arrived, etc....

I am home today due to a sick little one, and it is actually quite a lovely winter day out there

I also took a few pics of the new barred rock hens that we picked up the other night for free!  They seem to enjoy the snow and winter weather, as they're the only ones hanging out in the outside coop.

The other ladies coming out to check on me as they think I'm giving out treats....which I was of course.

and last but not least, our greenhouse arrived today...which was super quick since we just ordered it on Friday!  Probably won't be assembling it for awhile but will post pics when we do.

Retirement Home

Want to retire to the country? Our hens do. Just took in two beautiful Barred Rock hens that are 2.5 years old from another hobbyist who wanted to retire them because they are 'too old'. I'm pretty certain these ladies actually lower the average age of Lil Acre Farm's flock as most of our girls are over 3 and some definitely over 5. These golden girls are all welcome here!!!

spring on the brain!

With the plunging temps and blast of snow and wind last night we have spring on the brain!  haha

Purchased ourselves a small greenhouse for starting seeds in the next 2 months or so.  Can't wait until it arrives!  

Plan is to park it out between the outdoor chicken coop and the main garden, where it can get a full blast of sun all day!

Michael has worked hard on a plan for the main garden and a list of seeds to be ordered has been made.  Hope to get them ordered next month!  Hope to scan the plan for the garden onto the blog next week!

More eggs!

Been getting 8 eggs a day for the past week, pretty much double the normal amount per day....no idea why...

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.

Feeling Festive!

So I have used the molting season to my advantage!  This is the brown one, pre glitter...also made one with black and white feathers and added glitter....will add the glitter pics soon!  Plan to make more...just have to find the time to get out there and gather more feathers!

Winter for chickens

Have had lots of questions about how we're keeping the chickens warm...lots of people wanting to know if we're using a heating lamp, no we're not as they are unsafe and there's risk of fire and injury to the birds.   We are using the deep litter method this winter.

Pruning Prunes

Better late than never but here are some pictures from last weekend. We were plagued with colds but that didn't stop us from getting our fig tree and raspberries winterized.

We had to do some research in what to do for a fig tree, but in the end it seemed pretty simple so we gave it a shot, and just in the nick of time as we had our first snow this week and a nasty bit of ice rain this weekend.

Here is our fig all pruned and bustled up against the cold...

Our raspberries are in a bit of a sorry state. We don't know how old the patch is but it looked like it hadn't been pruned in years. We had to do some looking into what to do for the ever bearing variety we have but it too didn't seem too complicated.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like we have many shoots for early spring berries this year, but there should be lots come fall.

Unfortunately none of our fruit or nut trees look ready for pruning, although they too are all in desperate need for it. We might have to look into pruning them in the dead of winter. In the meantime we still have lots of leaves to take care of.

Leaves...

 More leaves...

Sick and tired daddy and daughter relaxing in front of 'Finding Nemo' after a long days work.

Thanks for stopping by :)