Foxhollow Poultry Farm

With a week's worth of elbow grease and 12 hour days we have finally created a space clean enough to call our hatchery. The walls are white, floor is epoxy painted, vented heater, lots of lights, incubators, hatcher,new work counter and eggs!    The space began as a dirty dusty, cob webby, collect all storage space that hadn't been used or cleaned in several years. The difference now is nothing short of amazing.                                  

                                                        

This weekend we will move in a desk, books, and file cabinet to be able to keep records of all of our hatches. This new room will finally supply a great place to do paperwork for our poultry business as well.

 We set over 100 heritage turkey eggs and 300 chicken eggs for a sample run. It is so difficult to wait for the 3 weeks (chickens) and 4 weeks (turkeys) to go by. I feel like a kid at Christmas...waiting. Waiting for the eggs to hatch. I've been told I am worse than a mother hen. Okay, I can live with that...probably pretty close to the truth anyway.

Our hatchery has a capacity of up to 1200 eggs total in a full batch, depending on what type and size of eggs are set. Needless to say we will have chicks and poults for sale to local area customers this year. All of our poultry will be born and raised right here. We will no longer have to drive hours and endless miles to pick them up. We should have no bad surprises opening the boxes upon our return home. No need to order in chicks and create stress for them. They will go directly from the hatcher into the brooder with food and water available immediately. From the brooder they will go onto grass and hoop houses. Less stress for everyone...myself included. As my friend Ken said "Time to get cracking!"

 

 

Wow! What a season this has been. It looked perfect on paper and started without a hitch but then....Torrential rains plagued us all summer. We had 2-3 inches of rain every other day.  One 3 day stint accumulated 13.5" of rain. That's right. In 3 days! Needless to say it was more difficult to raise our poultry on pasture this year. The rain caused some losses of birds that was unavoidable. Lessons learned and we are praying for better weather next year. Fall however was unusually mild and has let us have extra time to work on projects such as insullating the chicken breeder house.

Other challenges this year included my father falling and breaking his second hip, pneumonia, anemia, etc. He was in and out of the hospital all summer and fall. As my mother does not drive it was up to me to take her to the hospital, nursing facility and shopping, etc. This took at least 4 hours every day (travel time of 2 hours) but we got it done. Dad is now at home barring any more problems. We also had about 50 white turkeys taken from our field. That was the only conclusion we could come to. No signs of predators...and it was all large turkeys. None of the younger smaller ones were gone. We have been through every scenario possible. Very strange and sad to my way of thinking that someone might actually do that. Times are tough for some I guess.

Turkey season has wrapped up for the year except for about a dozen turkeys that will go to process the week before Christmas.  We had exceptional luck with our heritage turkeys and had over 120 to sell to customers. We are planning on hatching even more next year and even have some local farms that are interested in buying poults next season. Our old Humidaire 50 incubator finally gasped it last hatch. We are planning on installing a new on-site hatchery to help us in the effort to become even more sustainable for 2011. It should be able to hatch over 1200 birds at a time. Some of our turkeys are starting to lay eggs already! We will post photos and give more information about this exciting project in upcoming blogs. Many new and interesting ideas taking shape and turning into the planning stage for next year. Will post again soon!

We are up and rushing towards our production schedule for 2010. Looking at the schedule on paper at the beginning of the year is always daunting. Three pages of graph paper showing the growth of birds of various ages and stages of development from hatching egg to processing. We will be about three times busier than last year. I do have some help this year.  My intern from ISU has been a big help last year and is continuing with her help this year.  I cannot describe how thankful I am for her presence on our farm.  Her personality always buoys us up no matter what the circumstances are. 

I am also conducting research and fact gathering for a book about our poultry system for raising birds.  The book is supposed to be about 350+ pages and will discuss suitable breeds of poultry, hoop housing and how to raise birds outdoors year round.  It is a long involved project and should be completed within the 18 month time frame given to me. This project, our poultry with increased schedule (x3), taking care of aging parents and grandchildren have all taken up almost every minute of every day. I keep promising my poor neglected husband that we will take a couple days away from the farm.  It hasn't happened yet in the last 2 years.  It will within the month.  Recharge, renew, and redo.

Here is one of our television segments for Living the Country Life about various types of eggs we raise and sell at our local farmer's market.  

http://www.livingthecountrylife.com/lcl/file.jsp?item=/videos/index&temp=yes&bcpid=1156002551&bclid=1336697566&bctid=53212064001

Just about over our last push to get our poultry schedule wound up for the year and then a break.........oh, no that's right we have to start planning for an increased schedule for next year.  We are adding another 20 acres for birds next year. This season has proven even better than I thought it might with the addition of  more restaurants to our customer base and our regular customers ordering more frequently. Heck of a good year.

The turkeys are going to market next Sunday and that will be our final meat birds for the season. We have made 2 trips to the processors already.  Can't wait for this to be over as it is a LOT of work moving the turkeys until they reach their final destination. Each turkey gets moved about 6 to 7 times from the field to the grocers shelf or customer's arms. I think I have lifted at least 7 tons this year already.That's a lot of turkey.

We are now Animal Welfare Certified for our meat chickens as well as our turkeys!! It always makes me feel good to achieve that certification as it indicates that we are doing a good, humane and sustainable job of raising our birds.

Follow us on facebook (foxhollow farm) and twitter (foxhollows) as well. The posts are much more frequent on those social networking sites.

Will post more after Thanksgiving if our arms don't fall off first.

 

This week  and next will be the grand finale of baby poultry started for the year on our farm. We will have 300 poulet rouge chicks hatching this week and 600 ducklings next week. The movable hoop housing on grass with electric netting has worked exceptionally well with a few tweaks. We were moving the houses every day or two, but the inside of the houses became too dirty even with the chickens in there just overnight. With the addition of straw bedding and moving twice weekly the process worked much better. Less work and better for the chickens! That combination isn't often true.  Day ranging is where it's at for us! Here are some new pictures of some of the three day old baby chicks. So cute!

The warm weather has taken a toll on our blog writing. So many little mouths to feed and so little time. New turkey poults arrived early this morning to round off our total to produce for this year. People really love free range turkey. We have hatched quite a few blue slates this year despite an incubator malfunction that ruined 24 eggs. The turkeys have been fun to raise so far this year. The first batch is 7 weeks old and live in a coop on the premesis with fenced in grass run. The second large batch will be raised on 4-6 acres of pasture in hoop housing similar to our poulet chickens. They will also have their flight feathers clipped and portable electric fencing for protection. Haven't tried day ranging turkeys before, but hopefully everything will work out as well as it did with the chickens. The following photo shows some of the 7 week old turkeys in their coop for the night. Note the disparity in size between the Nicholas Whites and the Blue Slate, Chocolate, and Bourbon Red Heritage turkeys. The heritage indeed take a lot longer to mature.

Nicholas White and Heritage Turkeys

 

Our houses, fields, brooders, and hoop houses are full of poultry right now. Almost all of the poultry to be raised this year is on the farm at this moment except for another 200 or so turkeys, some more muscovy ducks, and a couple hundred quail. Bird chores take about 6 hours now. Today an additional amount of time will be taken to ensure the birds do not get too hot as weather is expected to be in the mid to upper 90's. A little too hot for all of us here.

The newest arrivals here are the Embden geese and some muscovy ducklings. The little goslings are so adorable. They kind of walk like tiny penguins. I have combined the two in the brooder, which seems like a good idea as they are both the same age, water fowl and get along really well together. The geese have made the muscovies calm down and more friendly. Instead of running when you open the door, the ducklings now come to greet you. They may have to be separated later in life, but for now all is good. Here are their pictures.

 

 

 

Our pastured poultry hoop house is finished. Photos show the completed project with the electric poultry netting, and the chickens.  The chickens are about 3 weeks old and are really enjoying their new digs. The houses seem to be a good design, wind resistant, rain proof, predator proof, provide shade and are large enough to house our flock without being too heavy to move every day or two. I like this idea better than the Salatin type pens that are moved daily where the chickens are on grass, but caged. This design allows for shelter and protection, but also allows the chickens to range in the grass and dust bathe away from their shelter. All in all I think it is the best way for our farm's poultry to be raised. 

The best mother's day gift is probably a relative thing dependant upon the particular mother in question. My best mother's day gift was made for me this year by my husband. It is a hoop house that we will use to pasture our poulet rouge chickens with the addition of electric poultry net. The photo below shows the work in progress. Although it is now finished and will be loaded with poultry in a few hours, the photos do not show the completed house. We added tarps, automatic waterers, feeders and a door on one end. Will update it when I get more batteries for the camera. (Now I dont run out of film, I run out of batteries!) Here are the pictures.

 

Since it was perfect weather, we decided to move our replacement layer ducklings to their new outdoor summer quarters. We used a large dog kennel covered with tarps, straw bedding, put a heat lamp in, waterer, and feeder.... and the ducks. They are so funny to watch and just adorable even though they may be the messiest animals ever.

The breed khaki campbell duck is specifically used for eggs. They are abundant producers and can lay up to 300 eggs a year. The chef's in town are waiting impatiently for their eggs. They should begin to lay in late August. Seems like a long time from now to have to wait. Hurry up little ducks, the chef's are waiting for your delicious rich eggs!

This weekend we put up the portable poultry netting in the rain. It was a simple process that took a minimum amount of time and made our chickens really happy. They didn't even care if it was drizzling rain, they just roamed around all day and enjoyed their new grass. We will move the fencing as necessary to keep them all on fresh grass all season long. It is electrified to keep out the predators.  Here is a picture of the hens enjoying their new pasture.

Last night I was awakened by a loud chirping at 2:00 am.I got up, being careful not to awaken my husband, and got the flashlight.  It was the sound of the first arrival of Blue Slate Turkey poults hatching. We set 36 eggs from our current breeders to hatch for future breeding stock. Yes, we keep the small incubator in the bedroom, doesn't everyone?? I have since moved him along with 5 of his brothers and sisters out to the brooder house. They will be a staggered hatch which will continue for about 4 days. The Blue Slate turkey is considered critically endangered by the American Livestock Breed Association. They are heritage turkeys. Although we can still acquire some from a couple of hatcheries, we decided to hatch our own due to their cost.  Here is a photo of one of the first to emerge.

 

Yes we are buried under pullet and quail eggs and yes here is still another recipe for pickled quail eggs. Like all other sequels it might be redundant, but have had a lot of requests and you gotta do what you gotta do. It follows. Got our facebook page set up and it is coming along nicely, however I can see that it can be quite a black hole where all of your time can go into with very little effort. It is still fun and have found lots of friends and a few fans. Great for networking. It would be a great project for the winter months when there is not too much else going on here.

Pickled Quail Eggs 3 the final sequel.

SWEET AND SOUR EGGS

1 3/4 cups of apple cider

1/2 cup cider vinegar 12 oz. red cinnamon candy (like the little red cinnamon hearts)

1 tablespoon mixed pickling spices 2 teaspoons Kosher or pickling salt (the course kind)

 1 teaspoon garlic salt

Hard boil 24 eggs and cool. Peel the eggs. Heat all of the pickling ingredients to a boil. Simmer for 15 minutes. Cool. Pack eggs into a glass jar and pour pickling liquid over the top. Let sit for two days before eating. These will keep in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks. They are yummy.

 

 

 

I was asked by a friend from the Des Moines Farmer's market to set up a Facebook page. (Foxhollow Poultry Farm) Seems like a good idea. I am trying to set it up and I think I have the hang of it, but this time of year I probably won't be spending a whole lot of time on it due to the hatching chicks, ducks, quail, turkeys, etc. We are really expanding right now and we haven't even been able to plant the veggies yet! All these hungry little mouths to feed. This week we are getting more layer ducklings and poulet rouge chicks. Will post a picture when they arrive. Another 300 to care for! I really love the baby poultry.

Egg production is climbing ever higher. I have a New Hampshire chicken that is laying an egg about the size of a goose egg every three to four days. It weighed about 6 ounces. Ouch. We used one of them for breakfast last week and discovered that it had 3 yolks in it! Will get that picture uploaded as soon as I can. This is the first 3 yolk egg I had seen. Last flock I had a chicken that laid an egg inside an egg. That was really weird the first time I cracked that one open, only to find another whole egg, shell and all inside the first one. They definitely keep it interesting.

Tai

Last year the Iowa Lottery called us again for some of our barnyard "talent". Our white Orpington hen named Mattie was chosen as the Iowa Lottery's spokeschicken for their Cheaper by the Dozen Promotion. They came to the farm to take some digital pictures (CGI) of her beak in order to be able to manipulate it on the computer so she could appear as if she was speaking. The next day she had to go to the studio so we could get the rest of the shots (her sitting on a nest of golden eggs with microphones in front of her as if she were a celebrity at a press interview.) the whole thing was hilarious to watch as they filmed it. Well that was last year and I thought Mattie's fame and fortune days were over. I was watching tv during lunch and happened to see Mattie's commercial was being run again this year. "Crazy", I thought jokingly saying to myself that she should surely be due some residuals. HA. Well the studio that did the spot called the next day to say that Mattie woud have another check in the mail as they would run the spot all of April  due to popularity. It makes me laugh so hard to think that this chicken's commercial was so popular that the lottery brought it back. Mattie is worth her weight in gold, not only as a tv star, but also as a pet. She is the tamest calmest bird I have ever seen. I told her she could retire now, but she still lays an egg daily. Check out the Iowa lottery's website to view her commercial. It is funny. Here is the link:: http://www.ialottery.com/PressRoom/N08-26-08_player.html

Here is an awesome recipe for pickled eggs. We use either quail or small pullet hen eggs. This recipe has almost a barbeque flavor to it. Good way to use up those extra eggs.

1. Hardboil about 2 dozen eggs and cool.

2. Peel eggs.

3. Make pickling liquid.

Pickling liquid:

1½ cups cider vinegar

½ cup water

1 tablespoon dark brown sugar

2 teaspoons granulated sugar

1 teaspoon mixed pickling spice

1/4 tsp chili powder

¼ teaspoon liquid smoke 

2 teaspoons salt

Combine above ingredients in a saucepan and boil for 5 mins. Cool.

Pack hardboiled eggs into a jar and cover with pickling liquid. Let set for 2 days before eating.  Will keep in the refrigerator for 2 weeks. Yummy.