Greener Pastures

On October 12, 2020 By Tiffanie WrinkleIn Chickens, farmingLeave a comment

Unfortunately, I have neglected my duties in keeping up with this blog. Having a newborn is busy, and I did get caught up on that and left my blogging to fall to the wayside. This last year has been a tough time for us, as we have tried to decide what we could do to make our small farm more profitable. Should we focus more on custom hay? More or less cows? Should we keep the sheep? What are we going to do with our chickens?

We started this year with few conclusions to the questions above, but have slowly worked this year to do away with certain areas and start new projects. As we are wrapping this year up, we feel like we are finally in a place to update and move forward.

Last year, we were heavily focused on two new projects: hatching and raising chickens and raising a sheep herd. For many reasons, these two projects were not right for us. In regards to the sheep, we were unprepared for the different needs they had to cattle. While we did feel like we had done adequate research, it seemed like there was always something new going on with them. We had several get sick, and a neighboring dog who killed several of our babies. After a few months, we decided it was best to sell what sheep we still had and take a step back to clear our heads. As for the chickens, we got a little (a lot!) carried away. We are the type of family that goes in head first and again while we did do a lot of research, and felt prepared for this step, we were very unprepared for the amount of chicks we would end up with no outlet for them. After hatching our last batch of chicks we ultimately realized we did not have the outlet for the chicks at that time and decided to cut our losses. We sold our incubators and the last of our chicks, keeping only a few free rangers for our egg supply.

We sold our sheep very early in the year, and spent the summer only dealing with our cattle. B took a full time job in the spring, so our summer has remained busy with both of us working full time jobs and keeping up with the cattle we have. Mid summer we made the decision to let our leased cows go back to their owner. We have about 20 head of cattle, and were leasing another 20 head of cattle at that time. The lease cows are no longer on the farm. Instead, we have now turned around and leased our own cattle to another farmer in the area.

A cattle lease is pretty straight forward: one person owns, one leases the cattle. For ours, we provide the land and we are responsible for the vet bills on our animals. The other farmer is responsible for feeding the cows through winter, taking care of fences, helping them calve and providing a bull for breeding. When it comes time to sell calves, we will split that check 50/50 with the other farmer. It generally works out for both parties as the lessee is not financially responsible for the animals, and we both benefit from the profits.

The thing that has been in the back of our heads all summer though, is what can we do to potentially be more profitable? As it stood at the beginning of the year, we were losing money on the farm, as the expenses from last year were not completely covered by the money we made from custom hay and selling calves, and that does not include wages. We weren’t even making enough money to cover the fuel, netwrap, vehicle maintenance, vet bills, and the long list of expenses that goes along with running a farm. By the end of hay season, we had decided that making custom hay is not something we wanted to pursue as well. It is a very time consuming task, and it is something we hate doing. Therefore we decided we did not wish to continue with that.

All of this brought us full circle to a small project we looked at last fall/winter. Last fall, B had looked into growing mushrooms as a hobby. There are many different varieties of mushrooms, and we have at this time successfully grown two types: pink and blue oysters. We had purchased a shipping container in the spring, and we are now in the grueling process of turning it into a MushRoom. The grow room will be at the back of the container, and we will have lab at the front to prepare our mushroom spores and liquid cultures for growth. It has been a long process for us, as we are both working full time now with a toddler. Slowly but surely we are making progress in this venture. We are really looking forward to sharing more of this journey with everyone, and we do have some ideas up our sleeves.

While I am sad to see so many changes in the farm over such a short period of time, it has been good to see changes. Change promotes growth. We couldn’t grow with the way we were doing things. We have goals in mind for our farm, and if there is not growth on the farm we are stagnant. This does not mean that we wont one day have sheep or chickens again. However, we will take a hard look at why we failed before. We will take time to improve our methods and learn from our failures. We appreciate everyone who has followed our journey so far, and who has been supportive or offered advice. We could not have done it without everyone’s support.

Until next time,

Summer Break

On July 10, 2019 By Tiffanie WrinkleIn blog, farming, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’m sure we’ve had some of our followers wondering where we have been the last few weeks. It has been several weeks without a post. I wish I could say that we had taken a lengthy vacation to somewhere exciting. That has not been the case.

The last few weeks have been quite hectic. One reason we have taken a break from writing is that we have been awaiting the arrival of our first child. She arrived on June 22, and we have spent the time since adjusting to our new role as Mommy and Daddy. Another reason for our hiatus is that we had taken some time to re-evaluate the projects we have going on now, and to see what changes can and should be made.

As you all may know, this year is a growth/trial and error year for us. We are looking for new ways to expand our farm, and to find a niche that works for us and our schedules while adding diversity. When we added chickens, it was only for free ranging, and the option of having our own farm eggs and having our chickens to eat when they reached end of life. That transitioned into trying to hatch and sell babies, going as far as to becoming NPIP certified. After much discussion and evaluation, we have decided that hatching and selling baby chicks was not for us. As a result, we are now back to free ranging our ladies, and all our girls are much happier.

This summer has been busy for hay. With all of the rain, it has been near impossible to get hay cut in a timely manner. This is a source of supplemental income for us, and it has made it difficult not being able to complete the jobs in a timely manner. The weather dictates our ability to cut and bale the hay, as we want to have as little rain on the cut has as possible before baling. This has caused us to lose a couple of jobs as well, as someone else was able to get to a field of hay before we could. That being said, we have managed to have a good year for hay. The majority of the hay we have cut has been good quality hay, and we have excellent hay customers who have been so patient and understanding.

We do have another project up our sleeves, which I will be sharing with you all soon. We are so very appreciative of our followers, and I cannot wait to share the next leg of our journey with you all!

Getting to Know our Chickens: Mottled Orpington

On May 7, 2019 By Tiffanie WrinkleIn Chickens, farmingLeave a comment

Good afternoon, and welcome to Part Three of my series: Getting to Know our Chickens. I have really enjoyed writing the posts for this series, as I am learning facts about the chickens that I did not know before as well. It is somewhat overwhelming at times how much information is related to each breed, and just how much information is involved in chickens in general. They are quite interesting creatures!

We add Mottled Orpingtons to our flock sometime around February. We initially saw them when we went to pick up some different chickens from another breeder. When we picked up the other chickens, we purchased some eggs and decided to have these pretty babies on our farm as well.

ezy watermark_07-05-2019_15-27-46 — One of the babies we hatched, April 2019

We love Orpington’s. They are such a good breed of chicken, as far as docility. They are great layers, and will often lay through the winter. The Mottled’s (MO’s) are somewhat a “designer breed.” They are considered a rare breed. They have the fluffier, feathered body style that is well known for Orpingtons, and they have gorgeous black and white feathering.

MO’s are considered a dual purpose breed. I have touched on this before, but dual purpose means they are slow growing, great egg layers, and still good for eating (if you choose to do so) when they stop laying. They do lay a light to medium brown egg.

One thing about the MO’s that is somewhat unique is that a lot of breeders have trouble with fertility in their MO’s. With their fluffy bodies, there are a lot of excess feathers around their vent. This can decrease or completely prevent the amount of semen that makes it to the eggs. Because of this, both hens and roosters must have the feathers around their vent either shaved or plucked.

ezy watermark_07-05-2019_15-28-51 — Our flock of Mottled’s. We love their gorgeous black and white feathering!

Another tip that we have found with this particular breed, is that two roosters are better than one. We currently have 6 hens, and one rooster. The fertility rates/hatch rates have varied in our hatchings. We will add another rooster soon to hopefully increase our fertility and hatch rates.

In some parts of the world, MO’s are also called Spangled orpingtons. This can get confusing. We have always called our babies Mottled but many in other countries refer to theirs as Spangled. The MO’s were imported to the United States in 1903. They were originally “created” by William Cook. Mr Cook was a skilled breeder, and is responsible for creating multiple Orpington breeds, including Black, White, Buff, Jubilee (speckled), and Mottled (spangled) Orpingtons.

Overall, we are extremely happy with the chickens that we have added to our farm, and I look forward to showing you our other babies in the near future!

Building Chicken Coops

On April 26, 2019April 25, 2019 By Tiffanie WrinkleIn Chickens, farmingLeave a comment

To say that I am not a carpenter is a huge understatement. I am quite sure that I have never built anything in my entire life. When B and I first started the idea that we would separate our chicken breeds from the others, we wanted to find a chicken run and house that was simple and cost effective. If you aren’t careful, you can spend a LOT of money on a chicken coop and run.

We decided to do some research on designs that we liked, and proceeded with building our first coop. The first coop we made was supposed to be for full grown birds…. Ultimately it was a failure. At least, it was a failure for what we intended it to be for.

For our design, we wanted to stick to a simple box where our birds could roost for the night, lay eggs, and be sheltered from the weather. The first coop that we built measured 6 feet long, 4 feet tall, and 2 feet wide. We intended for this coop to be split in the middle, and shared between two runs so that two kinds of chickens would share this space. Hindsight is 20/20, and we quickly realized this would not be nearly enough space for full grown birds. Even for the few we planned to have in each chicken run. Along with the design flaw of the first chicken coop, we immediately noticed a couple of things that we wanted to do differently with our second run. I stress again that neither of us are carpenters or builders.. With the run itself, we stapled cattle panels to 2×4’s, and bent them into a “tunnel.” We then attached the board to the back side, attaching our chicken coop to the backboard. We covered everything with chicken wire, and we were done. We recycled a door for the front of the coop, with the idea that this would be our entry and exit into the run/coop.

Our second run/coop was a little better. For version 2.0, we put three T-Posts down each side and ran a cattle panel on each side, securing it to the T-Posts. We then put three more cattle panels covered in chicken wire over the top in a “tunnel.” We used wire for the front and back, and then we decided to move our tiny little “first draft” chicken coop over to the second pen. We removed the divider in the middle of this little coop, and viola. We now have a grow out pen for our chicks that we have hatched that aren’t big enough to go with the grown hens but are too big for our brooders. The smaller coop is much more suitable for our smaller chickens in their grow out pen, and we built a new chicken coop for the adult chickens.

For our new coop design, we went with a 4x4x6 box for our hens. Each box is plywood, reinforced with 2×4’s for stability. Each coop has a roosting bar inside, and a couple of brooding boxes as well. Some people out a brooding box for each chicken in their coops. We did not do that. Most of the time (almost 100% of the time) chickens will only use one or two of the boxes inside the coop. It was unnecessary to put more than two in each coop for the amount of chickens that we have in each coop.

Now that we have got our design down, we can focus on making minor improvements and adjustments. For example, we will go back to add a better roof for the coops so they last longer. We have looked at a lot of commercial chicken coops, and they are quite costly. Of course it does help that we have a lot of the wire, T-Posts, and cattle panels on hand. A lot of this design was considered because these are the materials we have free access to, simply re-purposing the supplies we currently have.

When looking at commercial chicken coops/houses, we have found them to be way too small and not cost effective at all. A lot of “good” ones cost $200+ and are quite tiny. We love having the ability to play around with our design to make improvements and build houses for our babies with materials that we have on hand.

Getting To Know Our Chickens: Black Copper Maran’s

On April 24, 2019April 24, 2019 By Tiffanie WrinkleIn Chickens, farmingLeave a comment

Good morning, and welcome to “Part Two” of my mini-series, Getting to know our Chickens. I am excited to be telling you what I know about Black Copper Maran’s today.

Maran’s are a popular bird among “chicken people,” and we are partial to the Black Coppers. The reason these chickens are so popular is due to the fact that they are “chocolate eggers.” This means the eggs they lay are deep chocolate brown. This color of egg is highly sought after. Black Coppers (BC’s) are known for laying the darkest brown eggs.

BC’s are good for our farm for several reasons. First of all, they are good egg layers. On average a BC will lay 3 eggs per week, or 150-200 eggs per year. Second of all, BC’s are considered to be a hardy bird during the winter months. The flip side of that, however, is that they are NOT considered to be a hardy bird during the summer months.

BC’s are not considered to be an especially docile bird when compared to other breeds, but they are known for going “broody.” Broodiness is an excellent quality in a chicken. Broodiness is when a chicken will sit on the eggs to hatch them. Broodiness is rare in a lot of chicken breeds, and being a good mother hen is rare as well. Although we do have a hatcher and incubator for hatching our own chickies, it is nice to have hens on our farm who would make good mama hens if we decided to let them hatch naturally.

What we like most about the BC’s is their looks. Traditionally, male BC’s are black bodied with copper feathers around his head and saddle. Females are almost completely black, having only a bit of copper around their heads.

Our Copper rooster, in with all of his ladies. We currently have him with Copper hens and Ameracauna hens.

BC’s have an interesting history. With a lot of breeds, their lineage is clear. What breeds were mixed to accomplish the final result. With BC’s, the lineage is not that clear. During the 12th and 13th centuries, English ships came to port in French towns. When they docked, the crew would generally release their game roosters who had been victorious in fights. The game roosters would then breed with “swamp hens,” and this was how the original Marans came to be. The local farmers began breeding the offspring with other local birds in the 19th century, selecting for egg size and coloration.

During this time, WWII brought on a steep decline in interest in the birds. Luckily, individual breeders continued breeding and working with Marans. Although BC’s remained popular with individuals, there was not a clear standard for these chickens. In the 1990’s, breeders got together to set clear standards, and there began to be world wide interest in the breed. In 2010 Black Copper Marans were accepted into the American Poultry Association’s Standard of Perfection. They are one of the most sought after breeds, due to their unusually dark colored eggs.