Foxhollow Poultry Farm

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!

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.

Eggs everywhere!!! The birds are in high production with the increased natural daylight. Spring! Easter is coming and boy do we have eggs. There are eggs, and more eggs. Our new flock of Animal Welfare Approved laying hens has started producing their first eggs....finally. Seemed like forever until that first egg. They are now up to 5 eggs a day. Soon it will be 300+ per day.

Our older hens have started laying, the quail are laying, the geese are laying their huge white eggs (shown above compared to a chicken egg), and the blue slate turkeys are beginning. The emus on the other hand have stopped laying for the season. Wheew!  Quiche, custard, angel food cake or souflee, Anyone???

We have sent our Emus to the original flock where we bought them from in Cedar Falls. The person that we bought them from originally, had super bad luck with serious flooding in his field last year and lost 100 of 120 birds due to drowning. Perhaps we will get more chicks next year, but this year we are concentrating on smaller birds. The emus are awesome, but as we age they become a little hard to handle. They are spooky, flighty and run up to 35 miles an hour. Hubby and I cannot run at all right now. He is still recovering from a serious ankle break and I from knee surgery. The emus can be intimidating when they get spooked. We still have some emu products for sale, but cannot say what the future will bring.

Our new incubator is working overtime. Immediately upon it's arrival I set a large batch of quail eggs. I candled them yesterday and see that they are coming along according to schedule. They are growing quickly in their quiet darkness inside the shells. They only take 18 days to hatch. Can't wait for them to pip their shells on the 30th. These will be our replacement layers. They are so tiny when they hatch--just a little bit bigger than a quarter. Adorable fuzzy little things.

We also have another batch of chicks to be picked up next Thursday. These are chicks that we will grow in our pastures for meat. They are not cornish rocks, but a French breed of chicken that does better on pasture, loves to forage and has great flavor and crispy skin with less fat. They are also beautiful birds. It will truly be a pleasure working with them and watching them move around the grass.

Some wild stray dogs killed our ducks last week. What a disaster! Somehow they got into a 6 foot high fenced paddock. The fencing is in good repair. They killed every last one of them. I feel so bad about it. The worst part of the dogs killing the ducks is that they just do it for sport. They didn't eat them, just killed them all. I will order more ducks and  electric poultry netting and am still looking for a livestock guard dog. No duck eggs this year.  :(

Gotta let the birds out. The rain has subsided for the day at least.

Eat more pastured Animal Welfare Approved eggs!

Tai

 

 

 

We finally started working on our website. It was an easy process although it is not finished. The main problem I have is trying to get google to index it and list it. I have submitted the Url for their perusal and made sure that it was search engine optimized, etc, but as of yet (1 week later) it is not listed on a search. Any suggestions?? How long do they normally take to index a site? I am impatient I guess.  http;//www.foxhollowpoultryfarm.com.

We started cleaning out coops again and building some "rooms" or dividers in the broiler house this weekend. Some progress has been made, but never as much as we schedule. Things seem to take twice as long as we think they will.

Daylight savings time has caused some upset for us, but not for the chickens. They know when the sun comes up and exactly what time it is no matter what the clock says.

 

Happy New Year to all! Hope everyone had a beautiful holiday season.

The start of a new year brings the promise of a new beginning. I can imagine abundant crops blooming, chicks hatching, ducklings digging in the mud, and turkey poults following their parents around the yard. In reality the gray cold dreariness outside has got me to sit down and get the ordering of seeds and livestock done for this year. I must admit it has also given way to helping me daydream a little bit about the garden plan for this season. I can imagine the dark earth, the smell of it as it heats up. I can imagine the seeds having been planted weeks before, starting to grow and flower. Notice I didn't say I was thinking about all of the work that went into the garden in this daydream. All of the gardens I plant start as a daydream sometime in January when I know I must order seeds for the next year. I must admit that the gardens in my mind are exceptionally perfect and fine. Not a curled leaf, bug bite or bug is found. You would never see a garden so perfect anywhere, not even in a seed catalogue. The daydreams do not include the real life adventures like we had in 2008, of torrential rains, consequent flooding of corn fields and shallow roots on all plants which became weak and spoiled for water, late frost, later freeze, blight on tomatoes, potato bugs, cabbage loopers, caterpillars and even a small but very destructive tornado that went through our farm and garden. The tornado removed part of our chicken house roof this year and killed quite a few of our layer flock. Then our processor closed before we could get our chickens inspected to sell to customers. Boy it was a tough year at the farm. We like to call it a year of character building. Do we have enough character yet??? As I order the seeds and create the farm plan for 2009 I see none of this. I simply see the hope that lies in every seed and every egg to be hatched for a bumper crop year. My husband calls me Mrs. Sunshine.  We have to have a sunny disposition to do what we do.

 I have finished our order for seeds for crops to be grown for the next season. The list is long after considering everything that has been requested by our customers. We have added some new and some slightly experimental things as well. We have also added a couple of acres into production so we can provide more volume to our customers. We will be offering State Inspected quail for sale in late June or early July. Poulet Rouge chickens will be harvested about mid June. We will be starting ducklings in the spring for fall orders and we have added a lot more heritage and standard turkeys for Thanksgiving due to the large demand we had in 2008. Hopefully we can fill all requests for turkeys this year. If you are interested in a turkey you might drop us an email asap so we can put you on the list.Our new flock of Animal Welfare Approved layers is scheduled to start laying again in the spring so we will again have those beautiful, tasty eggs that you all say you miss so much. We should have pullet eggs (the tiny ones) starting about April. The quail are still going strong with egg production now. Thanks to all of our customers for their support and praise for 2008! Here's to a fresh new start, promise and hope of a new year, and to the gardens in our imaginations. We wish you all the best that the new year can bring.

We have finally received our Animal Welfare Approved status. After several weeks of waiting, a farm auditor coming to our place, our processing plant being checked out, and approval by a committee of animal welfare advocates, veterinarians, and others; we have been approved. Our eggs will now proudly carry the AWA sticker so customers know they are getting their eggs from hens raised humanely, with the highest industry standards. It is a great organization that is soley focused on the natural habits, welfare, and conscientious care of farm animals. This also helps the customer know that their purchases are from family farms that raise heritage breeds to the highest standards of animal welfare.  Your buying AWA approved items is a vote for the small family farmer and a vote for humanely raised animals.