Birds & The Bees / Hens & Hives / Chickens And Honey Bees

Last week we tackled some much needed bee hive maintenance.  Our hives have always sat back behind the house under some spindly trees.  If you know anything about hives, shade and bee hives aren't a good mix, so we began the task of moving them.

Fall Mushroom Season - Edible Mushrooms Of Illinois

As the poultry season begins to slow down a little, Larry and I find time to sneak off and do something that we love, forage for fungi.  There is nothing more relaxing than getting into the woods and just start walking.

Yesterday morning, I headed out on the four wheeler to cut Bittersweet to fill orders for my Etsy shop, what a great time to also do a little mushroom hunting.
If you love Bittersweet for fall decor head over to the Chicken Scratch Store and get yourself a bouquet.
While cutting the Bittersweet I noticed all around me growing right in the grass was big beautiful Puffball Mushrooms.

Worming, Ear Tags & Vaccinations - Gotland Lambs

Last week we began the process of vaccinations, worming and ear tags for our little lambs.  We have five Gotland lambs so it wasn't a huge job but it was a learning experience for all of us.  We began the process by fencing off a corner of the paddock with a cattle panel and luring the lambs to the corner so that they were easy to catch up.

Coronation Sussex - The Poultry For Royalty

What better way to commemorate the royal wedding than to offer a 30% off sale on the chicken created for royalty so many years ago?  The beautiful Coronation Sussex was created to honor the Coronation of King George.  I like poultry with a history and I think you will too.
This past weekend we watched as the Royal couple Prince Harry and Megan were given the title of Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Hive Maintenance - Spring Hive Inspection

I always try and do a quick hive inspection in February just to check and see if all the hives have survived the winter.  To my great disappointment this February I discovered that we had lost two hives over the winter months.  We had a very harsh winter this year but I'm not sure if that had anything to do with the hives collapse.  Our spring came really late and from February until May we lost another hive and back in February this hive looked to be healthy. 

We've now had bee hives for about four years, I think, and we're still learning so much about the bees.  Probably one of the hardest lessons learned last summer was don't add a super (or box) onto the hive too far in advance of them needing it.  It's such a fine line, if you wait too long they feel out of space and they'll swarm.  Last year I'm pretty sure I gave a hive a super before they were ready for it and it gave them too much territory to patrol and it allowed wax months to get the upper hand and take over the hive.  That was my fault and I felt terrible about it.

We opened our remaining two hives today.  It's always necessary to smoke the hive before you begin.  Start by puffing smoke into the hive entrance and wait a couple of minuets before opening the hive.  Once you open the hive then give a few puffs of smoke from the top of the open hive.  Maybe you already know all of this information but there could be someone who doesn't know this.  It's taken a lot of painful bee stings before I was able to convenience my husband of this procedure.  It's much less stressful on the hive and the husband if you use smoke.

The hives seemed to be healthy, they're foraging, capping honey and raising brood.  I did see some queen cells being produced in one hive, so it's looking like they will swarm soon.  I need to keep an eye on them, I would like to catch the swarm and start a new hive.

We added new beetle traps to the hives.  I put 2 in each hive, they work very well.  Fill with oil, I use vegetable, or mineral oil.  The bees chase the beetles around and they run to hid in the holes of the trap and drown in the oil.  Hive beetles are probably our worst problem.  Our hives are sitting in a slightly shaded area and really need to be moved into the direct sun, no shade.  Beetles don't like a hot hive.






We opened the hives that collapsed over the winter just to take a look and see if we could tell what had happened.  Each hive had a full box of uneaten honey, so that tells me that they didn't starve.  Some of you more experienced bee keepers, if you have any ideas for us to check for let us know.  We would love to hear what you have to say.

Hive collapse is a serious problem here in the US and we need to do all that we can to help the bees. 

Share your words of wisdom about bee keeping with us, we would love to hear from you.  I'll leave you with these words that I know to be true.

Proverbs 25:16

If you find honey, eat just enough - too much of it, and you will vomit.

Have a blessed day!

Angie

Southern Illinois Water Emergency - Rend Lake Water Crisis

Photo credit, Chris Kays for the Southern

A breach in a 36 inch water pipe yesterday evening has shut down water to several cities and towns across Southern IL.  Residents have been asked to conserve water.  Many business, restaurants, hair salons and schools have been closed until workers can create a bypass for one of the three pumps that service our area.   

As you can imagine this has caused much panic and ciaos through our area as people scramble to the stores to purchase every last bottle and jug of water on the store shelves. 

The tiny town of Dahlgren IL, where two of our children live, will have it's water turned off within the next 2 hours and they aren't sure when it will be up and running again.  Would you be prepared in your home if something like this happened?  It hasn't taken much to shut down half of the water in Southern IL.  We've found that we're not very prepared.  We do have a pond for watering the livestock if needed and I suppose we can boil the water for ourselves.  We can use pond water for flushing toilets also.  What would you do, have you even considered it?  I hadn't until now.

As we sat and thought about how to plan for the next couple of days with the water issue,  we know that we must make preparation for our two incubators and hatchers that have a couple thousand eggs in them.  Our incubators and hatchers require a lot of water to keep the humidity at a constant level.  

This might not seem very important to some flocks but these eggs will be chicks and young pullets that will be shipped out for several weeks and months.  So it's important to us.

We'll be setting large pans of warm water in the bottoms of each unit which should keep the humidity at the correct level but will need to be checked often.  Hopefully they'll get the water back up and running before we need to test this theory but it's not sounding like it. 

Take a moment and make a plan today about what you would do if you wake up in the morning and there is no running water.  If you have a pond, do you have a way to filter that water to make it safe for drinking?  If you don't have a pond where will you get water, it's not as easy as just going to the store, keep in mind the shelves will be bare.

All will be good here on the farm with or without running water, I'm assured of that as I keep this verse in mind.

“But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:14  

Have a blessed day!

Angie

   

Boost A Chick Hydrating Gel - Poultry Shipping Gel

Out of complete desperation two years ago I began the process of creating a hydrating gel for shipping our poultry.  We had used a gel that's been on the market for several years now but it just wasn't performing as we needed and we were experiencing high mortality rates with our chick shipments.   We've shipped chicks now for around 10 years and when we first began, the postal system would get them  to their destitution in a very timely manner but for the last couple of years that has all changed and now the postal system gives themselves three days to deliver poultry.   Well as you can imagine that doesn't work out so well for live animals. 

We needed a product that could stay fresh for several days and provide what the poultry needed in the way of nutrition, hydration and beneficial bacteria no mater the age or size of the bird.  I've tested our product for two shipping seasons and made a few changes here and there.  Our mortality rates dropped, which was my goal all along.

Boost A Chick Hydrating Gel can be used to ship all bird species, quail, ducks, turkeys...if it needs nutrition and hydration, then you need Boost A Chick Gel.

The gel product that we used in the past would spoil and smell bad after the first day, I needed a gel that would stay fresh for three to four days in the mail.  I finally achieved that goal, I feel totally equipped and ready for this years shipments.
The gel is easy to use, just mix with water.  We glue plastic cups in the corners of the boxes and the hatch-lings have easy access to nutrition.

You can purchase this product from our website or Etsy shop.  If I never sell a single package I'll still be completely happy using it for my own shipments.  I hate to keep it to myself when I know how well it works and there has to be other small farms that can benefit from this product.
 

Boost A Chick Hydrating Gel is available in 500 dose or 2000 dose packages.

Down On The Farm Photos - Spring On The Farm

I have some sweet Jubilee pullets available for shipment now.  Isn't she cute!!!

Spring has sprung!

If your interested in purchasing Gotland lambs drop me an email.  I will have a couple of ram lambs and maybe one little ewe lamb for sale soon.

larry_angie@chickenscratchpoultry.com

Happy Spring!!!

Angie

Shearing Day - Gotland Sheep Shearing

We finally found a sheep shearer in IL, Hallelujah!!  He got us on the calendar for shearing on April 4th.  I thought that sounded like a great day since I didn't expect lambing until a little later in April.  As we rushed around trying to get everything ready for shearing I noticed Kajsa was hanging off by herself, her back was hunched and she wasn't acting normal.  I continued to watch her and pretty soon she is curling her lip.  DING, it finally struck me, she's in labor!!  As I've told you, we're flying by the seat of our pants with sheep.  Lucky us, the sheep shearer showed up just at the right day and time for us and Kajsa.  He took one look and said I see two little feet and a nose, you'll have a lamb in a few minutes.  Sure enough, within a few minutes we had a lamb on the ground.  The shearer took another look and said there's another one coming.  How exciting!!  A couple of minutes later we had two lambs on the ground, one little ewe and one little ram lamb.  We left Kajsa with the job of cleaning up the lambs and the shearing began.

This photo was taken just before the lambs were born.  She has that look of, help I don't feel well on her face.

 



The ram was the first  to walk into the shearing corner.  He went in looking all woolly and completely black in color. 

He bounced out of the corner nicely shaved, strutting his new Gotland gray coloring.  I would have never guessed that he would turn grey.  Gotlands are totally amazing with their color changes.

As soon as Kajsa had her lambs cleaned up, he went ahead and sheared her also.  That made it much easier for the lambs to find the utter.  Kajsa also had a major color transformation.  When she came to us last summer, she was very brown and black in color, she is now very silver.

When he was finished shearing we had four very large bags of beautiful Gotland fleece.   Can't wait to get them skirted and shipped off to the mill. 

Shearing is finished, they're good to go until fall.  We began with three ewes and one ram.  Lambing season is over and we now have two new little ram lambs and three little ewe lambs.  Wow a flock can multiply rather quickly :)

It's been amazing fun beginning our adventures in sheep.  I'd like to thank Kim Goodling of Grand View Farm for the beautiful healthy flock of Gotland sheep and the many hours of mentoring through emails.

Have a Wonderful Day!
Angie

All Natural Rodent Repellent - Rid Your Farm Of Mice

Larry and I have lived on this farm for 23 years and I must say a lot has changed over those years.  For the past 12 years we've operated a poultry breeding farm and hatchery right here in rural Illinois.  If you had asked me 23 years ago what we would do on this farm, I would have never said chicken farming but I can honestly say I feel blessed beyond measure!

Well, down to business now, I want to talk to you about mice and rats.  For the past 12 years, the more poultry we've added to the farm the more mice that we also accumulate.  Too many mice can become a real problem.   Once the mice move into the barns it's not long and you'll see rats and with rats comes a hole different kind of craziness!!  Larry makes bait buckets to put mouse poison in so that dogs and chickens aren't able to get to the bait.  This works pretty well but we've been using this method for years and it's gotten to the point that it really no longer works.   We're tired of spending hundreds of dollars every year just to kill mice.  Price a bucket of mouse poison, it's not cheap.

This is where the all natural mouse repellent comes into the story...

For the past 12 years we had no outdoor cats here on the farm, there wasn't really room in the barns for them to roam around, so we thought...so we just didn't have a cat.

This is Missy, there's really nothing special about her, she's not really very beautiful BUT she repels mice and rats like crazy!!  All Natural, no poison.  She is a hunting machine!!  She patrols 2 barns, a pullet shed, a brooder shed and a Morton building all by herself.
She climbs the wire pens and goes in and out of places I never thought she could go and she never offers to bother the chickens.
I think within the next month or so she will have eradicated the mice here at the CSP.
Good job Missy you win the Employee of the month award, sorry Lane and Heather :)

I recommend the all natural rodent repellent, it works great!! She is also very entertaining while gathering eggs :)

I have a quick story for you about little Missy, after I got Missy we had several other cats that just showed up (someone so nicely dumped on us) and my grand daughters had just lost a cat so I decided to send Missy and Barny home with my sweet grand daughters.  My son told me that when they went to check on Missy the next morning that she had disappeared.  Well two weeks later Missy showed back up at our farm, it was about a 15 to 20 mile walk for her and it took her two weeks to get back home.  So Missy is hear to stay.  I didn't know cats also had an inside compass.

Have a great day and instead of buying a bucket of poison buy a bag of cat food. 

Angie

New Breed On The Farm - Mint Cream Bar, Green Egg Layer

I love colored eggs if you haven't figured that out before now.  Eggs and birds in general have always fascinated me.  The fact that poultry paint such a lovely palette is very enticing, go ahead and admit it your enchanted by those beautiful colors also.   Chickens and their genetics are amazing!! 
  
Because of  my love for bewitching egg color, I began a year ago messing around with creating a new green age layer.  It's been about 10 years now since we created the Olive Egger and it's time to see what more can be achieved in shades of green...

Creating a new breed of chicken can take years of work and waiting to see if your efforts have provided what your looking for.  Each  tweak we make can take up to a year or longer before we know if the change was a success or do we need to head back to the barn and begin again.  You must have patience when working with poultry. 

Our goal is to create  beautiful shades of green eggs, including moss green, mint green and olive green.  This takes years of work and we're in the beginning stages.  I'm enjoying what I'm seeing so far and ready to begin sharing them with our customers but at the same time we've  began the next phase in the process, which will take another year before we know if the change we made is a success.

Did you know poultry that lay colored eggs depending on what breed, they color their eggs in different ways.  Some poultry color the egg  by applying the color to the outside of the shell.  While others color the shell all the way through.  Next time you crack a colored egg open go ahead and peel back the membrane on the inside of the shell and take a look at the color of the shell from the inside of the egg.  If it's a brown egg you will notice that the inside of the shell is white.  Chickens are amazing!!

This Army drab green egg is blue on the inside.  Marvelous Chickens!

We're excited about the Mint Cream Bar / Green Egg Layer and can't wait to share it with others who fancy a colorful basket of eggs.
We're accepting chick and started pullet orders now for spring
shipments.  Hope you'll be adding the Mint Cream Bar to your chick wish list. 

Head over to the website and begin your chick wish list.

Have a blessed day!
Angie 

From Sheep To Shawl - Gotland Fleece

Last summer we began a fascinating adventure in sheep.  I must say I was very nervous at first since we know absolutely nothing about sheep (slowly but surely we're learning).  It has been a joy getting to know and work with them and learn new skills.
Last fall I learned that I can't depend upon a sheep shearer in this area, they are very few and hard to find.  So I bought myself some hand shears and sheared them myself.  I learned to skirt a fleece, wash a fleece, card the wool and through the wonders of YouTube I've learned to use a drop spindle and spin my own yarn. 
I'm not a person who enjoys sitting around with nothing to do, I like to stay busy during the day and have a task.  Processing fiber this winter has kept me busy during the slow season on the poultry farm.

Gotland sheep have amazing fleece!  I love the colors of the sliver, gray, and charcoal gray.  I'm not a great spinner but with time I'll improve.  I'm sure to an experienced  eye this might look like a hunky  chunky mess but I love it!!
It has taken many hours of work to get to the stage of sitting down and knitting.  There are a whole lot of steps in making yarn...
Once I had the yarn spun, I decided I would make a shoulder wrap or shawl.  It's a very simple pattern that I got from Pinterest but also added my own twist to the pattern.  Larry made the buttons from deer antlers, wasn't that so sweet!

I wore the wrap out to take a few photos with the girls, it was so funny, I'm pretty sure they recognized the wool!

They never stopped sniffing.  I think they approved of what I had made with their lovely locks.
I still have more fleece, so it's on to the next project, what shall I make next...
Larry would you like a sweater or long underwear???

On to the next adventure, hoping for lambs in the spring.

Have a blessed day!

Angie

Frozen Eggs During Cold Temps - We Have The Solution

During these really cold months you probably have noticed that before you can get your eggs safely gathered into they house that most of them have froze and cracked.  I really hate it when that happens.  But I have a solution for that problem...  There is one breeding pen on the farm that the eggs never freeze, take a guess what pen that would be....

The sweet little Chocolate Oprington pen!!!  The eggs never freeze in this pen, these little gals take great pride in keeping eggs warm and take the job very seriously.  It's their goal each day to check out all egg boxes for abandoned eggs, tuck them under their fluffy little butts and keep them warm until you come and snatch them all up.

So not only are they cute, they're super functional dual purpose gals.  They lay cute small to medium  sized eggs, they keep your eggs from freezing during the winter months and they're great incubators as well.

They're perfectly happy to hatch eggs for you or to adopt babies that don't even belong to them.  They make wonderful little mothers.

 Let us help you out with your frozen egg issues.  Head on over to the Website and place a spring chick order and come next winter you'll never have another frozen egg. 

Stay Warm and have a blessed day!

Angie