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!

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.

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!

 Spring is toying with us. Our weather has been anywhere from 7 degrees to the high 50's. The reality of spring will HOPEFULLY be here soon. This time of year is quite frustrating due to the wait for nice weather and wait and wait and wait. Our first planting in trays has been done indoors again this year. We didn't get  our hoop house up last fall so we will build it this August to extend our winter season. Greens, herbs, and radishes in November! What a treat.

We bought a large, used, Humidaire incubator this weekend. It was an unbelievable find! A gentleman in Fort Dodge was going out of business and wanted to sell most of his poultry gear.  This incubator will help us increase our flock this year with about 400 chicken eggs per setting, or a couple thousand quail eggs. After the tornado that went through here last year our flock was pretty low in numbers. We need to increase our flock size and conformation after that destruction. Our plan is to be able to sell some chicks to other farms next year (2010). Thanks for understanding to those of you who have inquired for chicks this year. We just don't have enough to go around yet. 

Our table poultry production schedule has been bumped up considerably from last year. We are adding two new types of ducklings to our roster this year. The French Grimaud,  a large type of Long Island Duckling is one of them. The other is a Barbary/Muscovy duck that has little fat, lots of meat, lots of eggs, doesn't quack but does fly. This should be interesting! We may need hardhats in the duck yard now.

Our heritage layer flock should start producing eggs within the month. Looking for those first eggs is more fun than an Easter egg hunt as I have been raising the chickens for almost 6 months. I ask them daily "where are the eggs?" No reply and no eggs....yet.

We will also be breeding and selling Red Golden Pheasant this year. They are a beautiful bird --Males are bright red, yellow, orange, and blue.

So far they are settling in to their new environment with the Peafowl, and Slate Turkeys. Everyone is getting along together pretty well.

All in all things are pretty much on schedule at present. The only problem I have is a list 5 pages long of things that have to be done when the weather warms up. Until then we are waiting!