Foxhollow Poultry Farm

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

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.

 

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.

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.

 

 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!