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!

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.

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.

Christmas is coming. Time is zooming by at a sonic rate. One more farmer's market to do. December"s coop drop off. Quail egg and Jelly tasting at the Gateway Market. Broilers to go to the processor. Several birthdays. Gifts to buy and wrap. Two christmas meals to cook, cards, decorating........whew! It makes me appreciate the time I spend out in the chicken houses, where I guess you could say it is a type of quiet serenity somehow amidst all of the cackling, crowing, gobbling, flapping, and honking. The animals all have their regular routines. I guess I find comfort in that. Every morning it goes like this in the broiler house. I knock on the door, Cy Snoodles, the Tom blue slate turkey gobbles and drums, the geese start their noisey cacophony, the rooster crows. I open the door and am greeted by Two Feathers (a three year old ameraucana hen from our last flock that became the favorite hen of all the roosters in one day and consequently had only a handful of feathers left before I rescued her from the little beasties). Two Feathers flies up and lands on my hand. Shadow the little black cochin bantam does his dance for me and follows me around for attention until I pick him up and talk to him for a minute. The 6 week old broilers all come to me for today's treats of corn, veggie peels, or scratch grain. This morning something is different. Goldnplump, our buff cochin is sitting on a pile of 50some, three week old broiler chicks keeping them warm. Makes me chuckle. Needless to say she can't cover them all and they spill out in a wide white circle around her. An occasional little white head pops out from under her buff wing and then snuggles back into the soft warm feather pillow. When she sees I have treats she comes over to get some as usual, but this time she is clucking and showing the baby broilers that this is a good thing to eat. Ha ! Like they really need instruction on eating! She snatches a piece of grain in her beak and delicately drops it in front of a baby chick. It is hilarious. I love to see this type of maternal behavior.

Our last batch of broiler chicks was mothered by our Peahen, Penny.  It is interesting to see that maternal instinct is so strong. It is a deep warm feeling that chases away any cold that this winter might bring. I might add that Goldnplump  is the quintessential broody hen in the typical Cochin manner. She hatched several geese last year for us. Our chickens got their Christmas presents early this year. They all got new heaters for their houses so they will stay cozy this winter season.                          

The geese are indeed getting fat but I might add that all of the turkeys, geese, chickens, etc are safe this year as we are dining on grassfed prime rib.Must get back to the whirlwind of the season's activities. Hope to post more again before the holiday, but if not, we hope you all have a super warm, happy holiday season!

Looks like the snow beat us again. No matter how hard we work or how long the fall season extends itself there are always a few things that don't get done before the snow falls. I think we just make the "to do" list longer. It is  not supposed to accumulate, so I guess we still have half a chance before the white blanket rests permanently on the ground for another 4-5 months. Winter seems to get longer every year. Maybe that has something to do with age?

 We have started our new flock of heritage layers that will provide us with beautiful fresh eggs for another two years. The tiny little chicks are so cute right now. All different color bitty balls of fluff. Some of them are asserting their personalities already at 2 weeks of age. We have Rhode Island Reds, Silverlaced Wyandottes, White Leghorns, Speckled Sussex, Black Australorps, Ameraucanas and a handful of several other heritage breeds.  The eggs they produce will be all colors, ranging from pure white, tinted, green/blue, speckled to brown. Laying should begin in April with tiny pullet eggs. Can't wait. This is the first time in 3 years that I have had to purchase supermarket eggs. I can definitely tell the difference and might add that our family has become quite spoiled with all the free range eggs we can eat. No more Angel Food cakes and baked custards for a while. Here is a photo of some of the new layer chicks.

We  have added a "chicken cam" to our list of things to do. We have access to a nice security system with several cameras and are thinking of hooking it up online to give viewers a look at the chickens. Hopefully we will get this figured out and installed in the spring. Should be fun for viewers and give us the ability to oversee how everyone is doing out there especially at night.

Our free range broilers will have a new experience this morning when they venture out into the light dusting of light snow for the first time in their lives. This is the first year we have raised broilers this late in the year so these chickens will have a unique experience. They might be a little shy of the snow at first but I bet they will still venture out in it. They can always stay inside as well, but I have trained them to love to go outside. A handful of treats always coaxes them outside in the beginning; now when I knock on their door they scramble and beat the Peacocks, our 2 lucky turkeys and a few pet hens kept from the last layer flock. Bet they will be surprised this morning to see the white ground. It will probably melt after an hour or two anyway. Just a taste of what is to come. Brrrrrrrr. Already dreaming of spring.  What to plant next year?

We do have some upcoming events such as the Winter Markets in Des Moines on Nov. 21 & 22 and Dec.19 & 20. This will be our first year in attendance and we are looking forward to it. Other things on our schedule for December will include a tasting at Gateway Market in Des Moines of our herb and pepper jellies. I will post a time and date as soon as it is decided upon.

We are also joining the Iowa Food Coop this year . It is a new coop and allows patrons to purchase food from local Iowa producers online. Once orders are placed customers will pick up their items inside Merle Hay Mall. It sounds like a very good idea. We will list our broilers  and emu products now, our jellies and eggs in the spring. What a great idea for people who love locally grown food. Hope it is very successful for all involved. You can check it out for yourself by going to http://www.iowafood.org/

Does anyone have any suggestions on what crops they would like to see available from us next year?  I am going to start planning the garden in about a month and am always looking for new and interesting ideas for produce.

Must attend to the animals. Stay warm.