Merphys law on the farm

Around this time of year I have learned that I should expect everything to go wrong. Water building up where you don't want it. The water lines freezing and unfreezing because of crazy weather changes. And mud so much mud. I believe that when working on a farm you need to expect everything to go wrong and do your best to be prepared for anything that could happen. Not being prepared can cause you to not only fall behind but in some cases can become very expensive fixes. Trust me on that one!!

Recently we have run into some problems ourselves and they will cause some issues and major rethinking on the property. 

The barn... We have an old tractor barn we turned into a horse barn which I then turned into a horse/goat barn 😊. I have been making plans to dig out the horses side and to lay down gravel and sand to help with water collection areas on the horses side. Great plan 👍. Until a section of the roof collapsed leaving me with only one bay ... We had the wood everything for me to build up the barn and fix it. Now I weigh two options. The wood that fell is to damaged to put back up so either way the roof would have to be replaced. So the only other option if I don't fix that section would be to fix it to leave the one bay and just build a smaller barn/shed for the girls. Either way in the end it will cost more than originally expected. It's just about figuring out what the best option will be in the end. I will post pictures once we decide.

In my eyes I try to look at everything as "it happens for a reason". Maybe the goats and the horse together would have turned out bad, so it's life's way of pushing me into a different direction, even it if ends up being a little more work. Even the worst catastrophes can bring to light a problem that you didn't even think of. I have said it before water collection is our biggest problem, so it's just a matter of creating drainage fields to help keep the property cleaner and less muddy. 

You can't think of everything but if it could happen expect that it might and try to fix it before the problem ever happens. Chickens hatching early, goats kidding early,

animal dies, what ever the issue try to think of a before hand "what would you do?"

The Farm Is Busy Busy Busy

There has been so much going on with the farm it can be hard at times to keep up. This past month we had ordered our new baby chicks for the new additions, we lost a few during shipping but for the most part they did very well. Since we had lost a few I ordered a few more and the new babies are set to arrive this week. I am excited for the new additions! When I started with chickens I had laying hens off the bat. I have had baby chicks, but only ones that I have hatched myself. But the new chickens will include

Jersey Giants

Black Polish

Bringing back White Leghorns

Columbian Wyandotte

I did order some of the same breeds that I already have to add a few hens to my flocks and add pairs for each breed. If I am lucky I can work towards the new coop by the end of the summer. It is basic but separates the birds so I can monitor breeding better. Ultimately I hope to have all boys and girls where they belong, making hating much easier when it comes to breed identification.

Along with the new expecting babies I usually have some in the incubator and they started hatching yesterday. They were a little early, well I should say one was because according to my counter it should have only been day 19. This can happen, if it absorbs completely and I hadn’t checked it before most likely would have not noticed. It’s not a bad thing, as long as they stay in the incubator until they are ready. It was hatched and walking around but I did notice that its sack was not fully absorbed, most likely due to hatching early. But I am leaving it in the brooder o give it some time and hopefully it will absorb as normal and be able to go in the brooder with the rest. The main thing is to not feed them until the sack is absorbed. Doing so will stop the absorption process there for killing the poor baby. Their best chance is in the incubator.

Lots of things to do so many new hatchlings. We are quickly working our way to plenty of almost layer for people’s homes in the spring. My biggest obstacle right now is the weather, its hot, its cold, its warm, then it’s a blizzard, now today its warm and now it’s raining. All I can say is mud mud and more mud. Building on the goat barn will be put on hold because with part of the roof the snow was not the roofs friend. That’s honestly the way that things can go the first few years when your starting up, things break, more things to build, more things to fix. But it keeps me busy, on my toes, and never lazy. More updates and pictures to come of the new hatch!!

How to select bedding for your coop

 One of the decisions that we have to think of when starting our flock, is what kind of bedding will be the right choice for you. There are many different options from pine chips, straw, leaves, sand, dirt, etc. I honestly feel it depends on how many birds you have, how often you want to clean, and time of the year due to smell. I will go over a few different types I have used, what I have thought, and my advice for you.

Being new to farming, when we started with our coop I used hay. As a city girl that's what I would have associated with bedding for an animal. When we only had the one hen it honestly wasn't that bad and I continued to use hay for a while.... That is till I added more birds. The hay became wet very easily and the smell was almost unbearable at times. I cleaned on a regular basis but keeping up with the smell was the hardest part. So hay in our coop was very short lived. If it is your only option and you only have a few birds you may be able to get away with it, but again I would not personally recommend it.

The next type we tired was pine bedding. I have to say this was not only the most visually appealing especially the first few days after lying it. But the smell and the absorption of previous smell made the coop smell very fresh. BUT.... When it did get wet it was HEAVY.. I actually continued to use the pine for over a year and even was using deep litter method especially with so many birds. But overall the clean-up and the loss of bedding during clean-up is what ultimately made me steer away from it in the coop. I still use it for the baby chicks and in the brooder box, but because the smell would become so bad at times I had to find another avenue that would work better for us. The one benefit that I do have to say from using it was composting, using the pine bedding helps with the carbon ration in your compost pile. So using this method you can weigh your options and how you plan to use the bedding after its removed from the coop.

The next and current option we have chosen is sand.... I have not been using the sand long enough to say how much I fully hate or love using it. But the smell is not as bad as it was before and the poop can be easily raked up. The only concern I have had more so in these colder months is the fact that the sand can dump together or become stuck and so I am not completely sold on sticking to it. I can and will continuously update how we feel about bedding and what I personally recommend for you.

Ultimately the options depend on the size of your flock and how often you are wanting to maintain the bedding. Just keep in mind the importance of keeping the bedding clean and dry for your girls. Disease and parasites can spread quickly and be very harmful to your flock and potentially costly to replace the flock.

Have a suggestion for a future post?? Feel free to ask!!

The Web Site

I have not posted any new post the past week and i do apologize but i have been working on the website to go along with this site. Any questions posts or comments feel free to ask!!

http://heathergorka.wix.com/rglivestock

When i started with chickens

When I first ventured into the world of chickens the most I knew was they were used for meat and eggs.. Basic... I knew the obvious that there would be different breeds just like other animals, but words like bantams, cockerels, pullets. All of these things were new and I did not know beak to tail feather about them. But like with anything else I do I researched as much as I could and learned more as time went on and wanted to go over some of the breeds that I have.

The breed that was on the property when we first moved here was a Black Australorp. It is unfortunate that I honestly do not have this breed anymore but she was a pretty one. All black with a greenish tint to her feathers, and a extremely dependable layer. But having just one chicken with such a big coop, I had to fix that so I ventured to find more chickens.

I searched online trying to find chickens wasn't even sure how much they would be. But I found around 15 from some people looking to get rid of theirs. I then had
Black stars
Red stars
Road island reds
Barred rock
And the white leghorn

I was luck to find someone looking to re home a road island red rooster and then I finally had my flock. The barred rocks I have to say have been the most skid dish out of the group I had. They are very dependable egg layers, all of them I have to say were laying daily. It was not long before I was over flowing with eggs with no clue what to do with all of them. They all worked well together as a flock and the only complaint I think I had at that point was that white leghorn can for the most part fly. They do not stay contained well and I would find them stuck outside of the coop from time to time.

I have to say I learned a lot in the short span of having them. I never knew the vent was for everything.... Everything exiting them... Not the best method in my opinion but a chicken is a chicken. Having them after time made my love and passion for them grow. So as any newer person to chickens I did the inevitable ... I hatched my own lol. It was fun and exciting all at the same time, mixed in with a little discouragement because hatching is not the easiest thing in the world with no experience and cliff notes from the internet. I do cover incubating in another blog on here. But in the end I hatched two more roosters and three of four more hens. I was ecstatic!!! We used the brooder box in the house (not a good idea btw makes a mess and can get stinky) then moved them to a transition coop we built in the roost. It is all framed out and lined with chicken wire so everyone can see everyone.

I had brought my new birds out to the coop and placed them sin the transition coop until I felt they were big enough to mix. Then came the disaster. My moms dog broke out of her pin and found the coop and killed every single chicken I had except for two barred rocks..... And the ones protected by the transition coop I had built... I was crushed. I did have some in the incubator but hadn't mastered my technique to feel okay with the few chickens I had left. It changed the dynamic of my flock by far and now I had three rooster to 6 hens. Not a good ratio btw. But I gave them plenty of room and worked overtime on the incubator and kept my fingers crossed..... Wouldn't know know they all hatched... I had the incubator full I might of even had my second one at that point and my lunch hatched around 80 babies last spring. I was able to replenish my flock traded the overage of roosters.... Downsized the overages on the hens... Now the breeds I had at that point were
Barred rock
Black star
Road island red

And my own mix the tetra tint. When I had the original flock I had my white leghorn hens and my road island red rooster. When you mix the breed you end up with a tetra tint. Now a lot of times mixing is mixing you now have a barn yard mix. But what I love about the tetras is you have the dependability of the egg laying from the white leg horn but now you also have a meatier bird from the mix wight the road island red. Beautiful combination with white chicks with either or both red highlights in feathers or black spots ( kinda like a Dalmatian ) beautiful hens I have to say.

Overall I have fallen in love with all the different breeds that I have and have made plans to add more or have added to the flock over the past few months.
Buff orphington
Silver laced Wyandotte
Americana's
Black polish
Sultans
And hopefully bringing back my white leghorns for those wonderful white eggs.
I also hope to expand our farm and the blog to also cover Guinea fowl and turkey's!!! It's an amazing experience going back in time it can feel at times and learning to appreciate all of the simpler things in life. I LOVE my chickens and think to some have already establish the chicken lady. Not the most appealing title but you know what... you are what you enjoy!! H

Incubating eggs

The most obvious when deciding if you want to try to hatch your own eggs is your rooster. And ask yourself a few questions. You need to make sure your rooster to hen ratio is good so most if not all the eggs you collect will be fetal. I prefer to keep at least a 6-1 ratio for hens to roosters. But do keep in mind to watch the roosters and make sure they are not beating up your lovely girls.

The eggs when you decide to collect you can collect for up to 10 days. DO NOT collect one day and put them in the incubator and keep adding more each day. Your hatch will not only fail but not turn out so well. Wait and collect all of them for no more than 10 days then you can set them to hatch. Everyone has there own way of hatching and guidelines they prefer for you to follow. But what I will go over is my preferred process and what I have learned from my personal experiencing to help hatch healthy happy chickens.

I pick a day about 10 days before I am going to set my eggs. The day before I am going to set them I like to put my incubators on at 99.9 degrees for a test run for 24 hours and make sure they are maintaining the right temperature for the eggs. This was probably the biggest thing I have learned with hatching. The first few hatches I did read about the temperature, but I was so anxious to get them going I skipped this first step and fail quite a few times. You may still have them hatch if you do not do this but the success rate of the hatch will be lower. But making sure your incubator is maintaining that 99.9 then you know they are ready for your eggs.

The next thing for you to consider is the humidity. This is another things to keep an eye on and I do recommend using a hydrometer to make sure the humidity does not raise before it's supposed to. The first 18 days the humidity does not need to exceed around 50% you do want some humidity but to much will drown the babies before they even have a chance. So using something to maintain this or at least keep track of it will most defiantly help in the long run. The last few days of the hatch around day 18 you want to raise the humidity in your incubators to 80% and can do it a few different ways depending on the type of incubator that you have. Some have the bottom sectioned for more or less water to help raise and drop the humidity. Some come already with the sponges to help. What I have found useful for mine since my incubators are basic still airs.The last few days for mine I use a kitchen sponge and a very shallow dish. I fill the dish with water and place the sponge in the container that it fits perfectly in. I had a lot of trial and error with this because if chick finds the dish they will go in it and if there is any space between the sponge and the container the babies can drown.  The first time it happened to me I was devastated. But just like everything else in life it was all trial and error.  Issues related to poor incubation are

• Crook neck
• Deformed toes
• Late hatch
• Eggs that fail to hatch
• As well as many others

The next things that you want to look at with incubating is turning. The eggs need to be turned a minimum of 3 times a day. This is to help make sure the embryo in the egg does not become stuck to the wall of the shell making it harder for the baby chicks to hatch. This can cause a few different problems

• Failure to hatch
• Early death in egg
• Crook neck
• Spraddle leg

For me personally I set a alarm and make sure I rotate around 4 times a day until day 18. When you go to flip the eggs try to do it as quick as possible without harming the eggs. But the longer you leave in incubator open the lower the temperature will drop. The more inconsistent the temperature are the more possible health issues you could have with your hatch. Some people try to skip this step all together by investing in automatic egg turners or even home make incubators I have seen knobs or pulleys that help swivel the shelf to help rotate the position of the eggs.  Keep in mind if you are using a egg turner the egg should be placed large bottom up to ensure the air pocket sets correctly to help for an easy hatch. If you are not and are in fact turning the eggs yourself you want to make sure you mark the eggs on one side. You can use X,O,A,B,C what ever shape or letter you choose but it will help when you are turning to make sure you were able to turn each egg. You want to continue your turning schedule until day 18. Once you reach day 18 I call it lock down. You want to make sure you have everything done and won't have to touch the eggs again until they hatch.


Candling the eggs is another point to cover because I made my mistakes with this one as well. It is very anticipating especially the first time hatching. You just want to see if they are growing. Trust me I couldn't stop checking them and that is where I went wrong. I would take a second more than I should have when it came time to turn them and I was fascinated. Honestly being a women who had a kid and all I wanted was to see my daughter growing. This is Mother Nature at its best and it is very hard to not be curious every step of the way. With saying this I have created my own system of checking to try to not disturb the babies as much as possible. You can see growth as early as 4 days, but I honestly recommend only checking them 2 times within your 21 days. The first time I check them is at 14 days, what I look for is dead or undeveloped eggs, and one of the big signs of death is a solid red ring and no veins, that is a definite indications of death inside the egg. I can go over some of these points a little more in later posts. But one of the reasons for checking is because YES a bad egg can explode in the incubator. So day 14 check all the eggs, look for

1. Movement
2. Good air sacks
3. And good veins

The second time I check them is right before lock down. I look to see that all the eggs are developing the same, again looking for those things listed above, and making sure I do not leave any dead eggs in the incubator before hatch day. I can also post some examples and pictures of all of the above during my next incubation.

This is now also around day 18-20 to set up the brooder box and lamp for your babies to be and make sure the box has had time to warm up before hatch day!!

The last thing to cover is the day of the hatch. Just with like all of the above, playing Mother Nature can be tricky at times. The eggs need to stay at 80% humidity preferable until they have hatched. In the beginning I did not realize how much a drop the incubator takes every time you open it. What I noticed is after it had been opened, pipped baby chicks can dry out inside the egg from the lack of the humidity and completely fail to hatch. I have had hatches take up to two days and have had to open it to takes out some of the babies but you want to try to keep it to a minimum. Once a baby chick has hatched and rested and dried it can become a nuisance to the other hatching chicks and can possibly knock around the eggs to the point of hindering the other hatches. My rule is I wait until I have at least 6 to pull out leaving at least 2 that are wet in the incubator before I pull any of them out. And this is for two reasons.

1. Leaving a hatched chick inside the incubator can help promote the others to hatch. The ones outside the eggs will peep to the ones inside the eggs encouraging them to hatch.
2. Leaving some inside the incubator helps raise the humidity back up after it has been opened. I'm not 100% on the science of why but after dozens of hatches it's a general observation.

(This photo was before I changed my sponge containers)

Another note to cover with hatching day is helping them hatch. This is something I have tried but honestly you can do more harm than good with this one. The hatching process itself is a big step into the world for a baby chick. They push and push with there legs till they finally hatch, there for the more you help the less work they do the weaker possible chicken you are now hatching. Sometimes there are just reasons they don't hatch. I have been here I have had the one that sat for so long and I tried to help and once it finally hatched I realized something was wrong with it. Not to mention you can hurt there ability to walk by helping and in the end they end up dying anyways. So my advice is let them do as much as possible with as little human intervention as possible. The same with eggs that have started to dry out, helping can effect them in bad ways, so if anything try to raise the humidity and give it time and hope for the best.

Over all it can be very rewarding and exciting hatching your very own baby chicks. To have a hands on experience and see everything from start to finish is an amazing thing to see. If you have any other questions about this topic feel free to ask!! Happy Hatching!!

Feeding my layers

   I have tried a few different things when figuring out how I want to feed my birds. I did a lot of research about food and what chickens can and can not eat. Some thing I didn't even know were bad for chickens like

• Potato
• Avocado
• Tomato
• Citrus
• Onions
• Dry Beans
• Dry rice

   Those are just to name a few. But aside from learning what not to give them they can really benefit from your kitchens left overs. Any time we have fruits or vegies that we didn't eat or maybe some bread or crackers that have gone stale in out kitchen. But do hold caution, if it is rotting and you wouldn't eat it... don't feed it to them. Another point to cover is if you are eating your eggs, there are a few things that if they eat it, the eggs will taste like it. For instance

• Garlic 
• Spicy Foods
• Broccoli
• Asparagus

  Food with very strong potent tastes can be transferred to the eggs. So keep that in mind while considering feeding them your scraps.

   When I first started feeding my chicken (because in the beginning the property had one chicken that was left from previous owners) I just fed her what they did. But as I started looking up chickens to enlighten myself a little I found so much information about what people recommended. In the end I started off with a nice layer crumble feed, and at first that's all I fed her. Then I got more birds and did more research and at first just kept feeding them the scraps from my house and there feed. Now for some people that is enough. But for me I wanted to look into more ways to benefit them and to in the end have the best quality eggs possible, not only for the nutrition of the egg but for me if I decided to hatch eggs maybe have healthier chickens.

   The first thing I decided to add was fodder. Which I will say looks a lot easier than it can be. Again with this online there are so many different ways people do there fodder. From a system to a simple set up. It has been a good addition to my feed and gives more weight to the fresh grain I buy from the mill. And over all they receive more nutrition from the sprouted grain than not sprouted. But I wouldn't not recommend doing it in the hot summer unless you are set up right for it. I learned the hard way and fought bugs tooth and nail. But if you can figure it out it helps out with food costs and can stretch a very tight budget. I do recommend putting apple cider vinegar just a little in the water to help fight of bacteria especially in the warmer months.

    These past few months I have changed my feed a little more and have been experimenting with it. You can find various recopies online for home made feed, but something that I have found is not all of the things listed are always available at ,my mill and ordering online can be very costly. That is one of the reasons I have stayed more towards premade feeds, but I am not apposed to not only saving more money but also trying something new. I will be considering adding and changing things in my feed but what I am mixing now is

• Barley
• Sunflower Seeds
• Oyster Shells
• Oats
• Corn (for the colder months)
• I add Soy from time to time

I have looked into other things to add like

• Bran
• Alfalfa
• Dried Fruit

But I can hope to post my final mix with the portions I have decided on. The corn I only add in the winter to help my hens stay warm. Corn to them can be nothing but added calories which they do not need in the summer time.

Between free ranging to the  different things I have decided to feed my girls, I feel they are extremely healthy. I do recommend if you do make your own feed to factor in minerals they may not get while free ranging. But overall the better they eat the better you eat. Another factor to think of is if you are not free ranging and your hens are in a confined coop, consider adding in grit into your feed. Chickens that free range will naturally pick up rocks but if kept in closed spaces you need to compensate for that. The best way to tell how your hens are doing is by the eggs, I mean you can have other physical signs but internal health you look at the eggs. If the egg shells are breaking easy they are lacking calcium. Along with lots of other things you can discover which I can cover in a later post.

  Have any questions?? feel free to comment, post and ask. New posts regularly!!