Free Range Friday

Free range Fridays are back!  The chickens are wandering the yard again.   We took a month or so of lock down to show them where their nesting boxes are and where the food will be,  but today they're dining on worms and grass.   All under the watchful eye of their shepherd...

Bear's Compound

Well,  with the first night of bad rain getting ready to come,  I made sure that Bear,  the Guardian of the Farm,  had a good shelter.   I set up two dog houses,  one for sleeping (yes that is one of our bedroom pillows for her) and one for food (no one likes mushy kibble).  Their backs are to the wind.   There is also a 5 gallon heated water dish,  for later this year and there is the possibility of adding a small heat lamp to the sleeping shelter. I'll plug them both into a thermo cube so they don't come on until it gets really cold and then turn off after it warms up.  
Don't know what a thermo cube is?  More to follow on those.

Red's shelter

Took some time this weekend to improve Red's shelter.   We moved it further downhill other of the wind.   I also had to dig it in on the windy side to level it.  Now hours water is out of the sun,  less chance for growing bad stuff.   Also his feed and sweet feed are in there. Should be good for my shelter shy friend.

Impromptu reason gutter feeder

I made this real quick last night.   It's my answer to spreading feed over muddy and wet ground.   Just an old piece of rain gutter from Mom's house,  some scrap wood under it and some landscape timbers for support.  

Been off-line for a few

Sorry there haven't been a lot of updates lately!  I'm about to catch up the last three weeks.  Here goes...

Comic moment on the farm

Wow.  This just blew my mind.  I'm not sure whether the horse was grooming Bear or being playful or just trying to eat the dog!  Give me your best guess.

Horse eating a dog: http://youtu.be/0dxy-LFEpZU

New arrivals

Well,  after having turkey eggs in the incubator almost 20 days,  it looks liked the first one that will emerge is Henny Penny's little egg that joined late.   I've got the brooder in and ready to set up.   Tomorrow morning we should have a new chicken on the farm!

P.S. don't leave the incubator open for very long when they're coming out.   They need that moisture to keep the membrane loose and easy to get out of.  We're keeping the incubator at 60 plus % rh.

More Birds!

As we wait for word from our incubator...

We picked up another Tom Turkey and a rooster.  The rooster is likely a Black Cockerel, but I'm not sure.  Our friends who are moving had these two poor birds left so they have now joined our flock.

This of course, brought no little disgruntlement from our current rooster and tom turkey!

The current tom quickly put his rival in his place (as of this morning though, they seem friends).

However, this was not the case for "Rusty Rooster" and the new rooster affectionately called Blacky.
Those two locked in battle for a good half hour under our porch trying to pull each others comb off.  At the end of the first battle, Rusty who is maybe 2/3 the size of Blacky seemed victorious and Blacky exiled himself to further down the fence from the roost are of our porch.
Not leaving well enough alone though, Rosty later followed him to his exile and battled him again.  Rusty was pretty badly defeated this time and left on the ground while Blacky moved back up the fence line to the roost area.  When I and Caleb got to Rusty, he was still on his back.  Upon seeing me, Caleb and Bear, Rusty rolled over, got back on his feet and scurried back up the hill.  Coming behind a bush he ambushed Blacky and joined battle with him once more!
Bear, who had made a good effort to stop their previous battle at the porch, this time physically separated them.  I'm guessing Rusty was claiming Bear as his "muscle" and with a loud crowing let Blacky know to leave the roost area again!

At the end of the day, Rusty resumed his dominate place at the top of the enclosure with Henny.  Blacky took a room in the butterfly bush that has been turned into apartments by the bantams and Rhode Island Reds.

This morning, they seem to be coexisting....  (seem)

Candled and waiting...

We stopped the eggs from turning Friday and candled them as we took the turner out of the incubator.

From my count of 12 (+1 of Henny Penny's):

5 duds
2 probably
6 definitely got a bird in there!  (including Henny Penny's egg)

Here goes nothing!  Just the waiting.

Free range is where you find it...

Well,  I no sooner opened the garage doors this morning than in walked one of our Rhode Island Reds.   He proceeded overt to a shelf in the garage and headed in to make her impromptu roost.  
I guess home is where you found it.

Moisture in the Incubator

The turkey eggs are about to hit day 21 in the incubator.  That means it's time to stop rotating them.

We've been keeping them at about 100° F and 50% humidity.
These are the guidelines we've gotten from a few different sources.  One of our friends, who have been very successful, said they don't worry about the humidity at all.  They don't have a hygrometer in their incubator even. 
Their success speaks for it self, but I decided to mind the humidity none the less.  My last (unsuccessful) run of eggs I had a hard time maintaining the humidity. 
This time I patched a lot of the holes with black electrical tape.  By using it at the bottom in particular, I was able to keep the moisture level up.  I also avoided the mess from missing the water channels. 
As with most Styrofoam incubators, mine has water channels.  Getting the water into them is not easy when you have an automatic egg turner.  Last time I seemed to get more into the base with its drainage holes and in turn lost that water all over the wooden filing cabinet in the mancave.  I also covered some of the upper holes.

In short, my veteran incubator friends are secure with "set it, forget it".  Me, I'm the nervous type.  I like seeing my temp/humidity levels every time I go to my desk. 
Below is the hygrometer we got from amazon to complete our incubator.
It's cheap, but pretty accurate.  I like the min/max function also.  It tells me how its been while I wasn't watching.

More tomorrow!  I'll let you know how the candling goes.

New Additions

Well, since our last post a lot has happened!
We now have 6 adult Rhode Island Reds and 4 Bantams!  We're still building the final coop, so for now they've taken to Karen's butterfly bush.  It is definitely more interesting now!

More to follow!

The Turkeys take a roost

Today we introduced turkeys to our flock.  They were a little rattled by the trip from Luke and Angela's, but after they were here they were right at home.   They don't really dig the horse or Bear...  I'm sure they'll warm up soon after a whole night of Bear's protection and barking.  

Our turkeys claim there own perch.

Evening at KY Kids Farm: http://youtu.be/8IgSBr5aIlQ

Chickens and Mulch

Check out this video of our chickens going beyond a dust bath to packing their feathers with mulch and dirt.   Their enjoying the coolness of the shade.  Also their getting their fill of the bugs,  worms and grubs in the mulch.  
It makes them happy,  that's for sure!

In the near future we'll be purposely putting some mulch beds in proximity of their nesting areas in order to preserve our planting beds.   I'll probably also feed worms from our future worm beds into it too.

http://youtu.be/nnU_5-eZOQs

Fixing the fire extinguisher

Have you ever lost the plastic arms on your fire extinguisher bracket?  
That's no fun,  especially if it hands in a high traffic area.  

Here is a fix,  especially if you or someone you know is in the Army.  
First you need boot blousers, which are basically large elastic bands worn strong velcro on the ends. 
Next,  loosen the bracket and slide the blouser behind it and re-tighten it.  BOOM, your fire extinguisher is safe again.    

As a side note,  pull the velcro tight enough to leave a tab for easy snatching and pulling.

Hope that helps...

Good Reading!

I've been focusing on the chickens lately, and a friend of ours who farms on a larger scale than us recommended this book.

"The Small Scale Poultry Flock"
by Harvey Ussery

This is the EVERYTHING about "it" book for chickens.  from hatching, through feeding and on to cooking...




Thanks for letting us borrow it John!  Our copy is on the way from Amazon now.

Cleaning the coop

In our effort to keep healthy and happy chickens, I have the coop a good cleaning.

I pressure washed everything in the coop.   Oddly enough,  the chickens managed to poop on everything.  I also took this time to put up or new improved brooder. It's been outside since we introduced the reds to the flock.

Our "Country Tuff" wagon made a great washing platform since it's mesh and can move to better drainage areas.  

To top it off,  we moved the cage over 20 foot to allow us to scoop up the contaminated soil. I stopped after I filled the first barrel.  Should make some good compost in a short while.  

As a side item,  Red did his part to help me with the excess grass I brought up to line the cage...

Candling

Today we took a couples minutes to show our son where his new turkeys were!  It looks promising so far...
Four of them looked like they might not be developing.   However all the rest have something going on,  including Henny Penny's egg that we pulled in.
More to follow,  but looking good!

Still holding at 101 degrees and about 40 to 50 percent humidity.

Turkeys

A good friend of ours is selling us some turkeys.  When we told our son we were getting turkeys,  he said, "with vegetables?"

I guess we know the fate of these two birds...

Woodworking Begins

Part of the KY Kids farm is our woodworking!   WELL...  That shop is now up,  running and producing.  Pretty soon we'll add these custom desk plates to our Web site for ordering.
Until then,  just shoot me an email about them.

Henny Penny gets broody

Yesterday as I went to collect our usual tribute from Henny, I found that she was still setting on her egg!  
Well,  she gave me a look that told me she was not releasing this egg.   So I let her be and decided, "good for her. "
However,  later we heard a terrible ruckus.   Apparently our Franken - birds dislodged her from her perch!   She was upset to put it mildly.   Well, this morning I brought her egg into the incubator.  
We already have the turkey eggs in there,  but I figure the needed conditions aren't too different.
Here goes nothing!

Turkey Eggs- take 2

OK, our first batch of Turkey eggs didn't do so hot...

Not to make excuses, but it was our first attempt at them, we had just gotten the incubator, and we really didn't have a clue what we were doing!

Thanks to our friends Luke and Angela though who set us up with another batch of turkey eggs and gave us some good hints and advice...  Now we are ready to try again!

So this is day one.  I fixed up the air circulator in our unit.  The person who sold it to us had suspended it by shoelaces before.  We went with zip strips and we also plugged up some of the holes in the bottom of the unit that were making it impossible to hold water and retain humidity.

Here's a quick prayer that God blesses us with turkeys...

Irrigation 2.0

Well,  found this timber in the shed a couple days ago...  I was contemplating the fact that I needed timers for our garden,  and the individual ones we had before were getting,  well,  older.  
So here goes nothing.   Let's see if it works.   More to follow.

Irrigation

Well, today I put the final touches on our irrigation system.  In the past I used post mounted sprinklers or drip hoses (regular hoses with holes drilled every couple feet). 
This year we're doing BOTH! 
For sprinklers we have the cheapest ones they sell at Dollar General.  3 of them.  The water pressure here is too low to successfully run all 3 at one time. 
For drip hose, we're switching in soaker hoses.  We buy the cheap 50 foot ones at Dollar General again.  Then we cut them down to 25 foot and cap the end with hose repair parts.  Basically, for the price of a 25 foot hose at Lowes or Walmart, we get two. 
The soaker hoses are connected to a "manifold system" of pvc pipe. 
This all connects to a 4 way splitter.  The soaker hoses have a manual timer.  The rest have to be switched manually for now.

The Chickens...

Well, here its what we have in our flock so far...  Two Marnes, nine cornish cross, five production reds, four rhode island reds and our newest addition, six leghorns.  The Marnes are our senior class, the cornish are our juniors, the reds are our sophomores and the leg horns are our freshman class.  In this grand analogy, Bear the German Shepherd is the principal...

Getting Started

Welcome to Kentucky Kids Farm!

We're a small family farm in North Central KY on about 6 acres.
Keep coming back for pictures, updates and cool pics.  Also, feel free to give us your feedback and ideas.

This year is mainly about setup, next year we hope to suppliment our family income with produce and eggs from our little farm.