June 2020 - Chicken tractor tour

Hobby farming with the family. We’re giving you a little tour of our chicken tractors here. Our tractors/moveable coops are designed using John Suscovich’s book “Stress-Free Chicken Tractor Plans", and we can truly say there was not a lot of stress that went in to building and using these houses! The idea behind these is to allow our meat birds to get fresh air 24/7 and to be able to forage grasses and insects, while keeping them safe from predators. Predators around here include raccoons, possums, coyotes, foxes, and hawks.

(We also have a flock of laying hens and a couple of roosters - they have their own coop which is part of our barn. No chicken tractors for that crew. We’ll have to do a separate blog post on those pampered ladies.)

Chicken Processing Day

This past Tuesday was the end of the line for this last batch of chickens. The kids helped load them up into the crates. It was HOT, but they learned from all the scratches last time that long pants and long sleeves and gloves are best for this job. They are hard workers.

James then drove the chickens 2 hours to a USDA-inspected processing facility. Our freezers are full again and we are happy to provide our customers with fresh, pastured, ethically-raised, non-GMO, non-weird-stuff chicken!

Week 3 - To the pasture!

Saturday morning - the 3-week-old chicks were chased around by our children and gathered up to be moved to their outdoor (and final!) home. They are now in the chicken tractors where they can peck around in the grass and receive fresh air 24/7. The tractors are moved each day so they get a fresh spot to forage and fertilize.

Check out the video to see some funny chicken-chasing and endearing face-making and nose-picking by the 4-year-old.

First Post - First Hundred Chicks

On Thursday morning the girls and I picked up the first batch of chicks from our local post office. (100 chicks of 400 total that we’ll be raising this spring/summer.) We could hear them cheeping when we walked in the door. The box was a little smelly but the girls were still arguing over who got to hold it in the car on the way home. Only one died in transit with another two passing on shortly after arrival. Lots of excitement in the brooder with the kids, including cousins, holding and loving on the little fluff-balls.

Check out the video to see our brooder set-up and James’ coiffure.