Getting to know you, integrating new chicks or chickens to an existing flock

Adding new chickens to a flock is not very difficult. The main thing to remember is let the old flock see the new flock members for awhile before they can fully interact. I find the wire dog crates very good for this purpose. Young or new flock members can even live in the same coop with the original flock while in a kennel cage, everyone seeing each other and getting used to each other with the safety of the cage bars between them. I've never used these dog kennels cages for dogs but they get used for about everything else around here. Just very handy cages to have with farm animals around. I bought a couple of these cages new, afer looking for good prices and gained a couple more through yard sale finds. 

 I generally have chickens seeing but not touching each other for two weeks or so. The first times I let the new flock members loose with the old flock members I watch the situation carefully in case there are any issues. Usually there are not issues because once chickens have seen each other for those couple weeks they have learned about each other and who is where in the pecking order. These new birds won't be running with the flock for awhile yet since they're only 6 weeks old and it's winter but today was a rare sunny warm (ish) day so out in a sunny spot in the yard  the little birds went. A chance for fresh air, natural grit, exploration and getting to know the flock some more. 

This gaggle of pretty silkies were oblivious to the visiting chicks they don't venture much out of the run until spring arrives. 

 I finished off more maple syrup today bringing the grand total so far to just over 3 gallons of syrup. AND I'm caught up now with boiling sap. The sap hasn't run much the last couple days. Hopefully we will get a few more good runs but it's nice to be caught up. 

...It Melts, It Snows...

More of the same, a little melting, another snowstorm, boiling down maple sap, waiting for spring.

More snow greeted me this morning.

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow stops KitKat from helping with morning chores.

Ducks run right out, chickens not so happy about more snow.

A brave silkie leads the way into the snowy yard.

Ducks-where did our pond go?

Younger silkies-we'll just stay here in the cozy coop today, again that is a rooster in the nest box!

6 week old chicks still got a little time out in the run.

Cozy kittens have the right idea on a snowy morning.

Lots of Cleaning- Coop cleaning, chickens dust bathing, silkie needs a bath.

What a busy weekend it has been. So much to do with maple season, growing chicks and maintaining the flock's housing during this time of snow, rain, mud, wet, and sometimes nice days all mixed together.  The ducks part of the coop needs new shavings almost daily (maybe I'll try straw again and compare) but this day the whole coop needed to be cleaned out. I'd done it recently but the shavings the farm store had in were not our usual, they were so dusty and more like sawdust, just not pleasant and everything seemed to get wet sooner. So we got some other shavings and I gave it a good clean out and refresh.

The vinyl flooring for the coop was one of those best ever decisions, clean out is easy.

I think we can put away the heated water base for the season!  These do a great job keeping water unfrozen.

All shoveled out.

Nest boxes all clean with new shavings and a little sprinkle of nest box herbs

I love a clean coop, it won't stay that way long!

Grit and Calcium refilled. We put down grit in winter, snow lasts for months here preventing the chickens from getting natural grit

I let the little chicks have an hour outdoors, in the covered run again today, they really enjoyed it. Soon they'll be running with the flock.

I noticed that this silkie has muck stuck to her feet so in for a pedicure. She didn't mind at all and is resting comfortably indoors while drying.

Foot bath for silkie

The chickens and ducks are so happy with the amount of bare ground we have now. Snow is melting so fast. I know we will likely get more snow before winter is done but for today the birds had a grand time exploring, scratching and pecking playing in the mud (ducks) and lots of dust bathing. What a relief it must be for them after a long winter of snow covered ground.

Mo in the middle of dust bath pile.

Dust bathing pig (chicken) pile

Naptime for ducks.

KitKat patrols his domain.

Maple Time- My Process and My Breakfast

Batch number two of maple syrup is made and batch three is now started. Maple syrup total as of now 2 gallons and 1 (almost) quart. Not bad at all for the beginning of March. A couple people have asked me how I make maple syrup since I'm not a professional and have no special equipment such as an evaporator or outdoor stove. It's not too difficult to make a few gallons of maple syrup and maybe a batch or two of candy in your home. It is BETTER to boil outdoors because there will be a lot of evaporation from syrup making and we do boil outdoors some years but when you can't you can use the stovetop and try to vent out the moisture by cracking windows, opening a door etc.

Here is our current method. I will say that there are countless great tutorials online to see or read about maple sugaring step by step. This is just what works for me and our small scale maple sugaring. In February or March, when we see the first stretch of days that will be above freezing, with the nights below freezing we set the taps. You will use a drill to tap a hole into the maple tree the size of the taps. Taps come in metal or plastic there are pros and cons to both types we have the plastic taps. Place the tap into the hole in the tree, attach tubing to the tap and then place the other end of the tubing into a bucket. We have a bunch of food grade 5 and 7 gallon buckets that we found somewhat locally for a good price. You need a lid on the bucket so rain and debris doesn't get into the collecting sap. You can drill a hole in the top of the lids or cut a notch into the sides of the lids, either way works fine. Very large trees are able to have multiple taps. We have one giant maple tree that can take 3 taps and fills 3 buckets very easily. Other trees are smaller and take 1 or 2 taps. I think we have 8 taps set on 5 trees this year. We have done more in the past and might add more but these are our most reliable trees. Maple trees that get good sun will produce better than those in the middle of the woods. This is why you might see lines of maple tubing on trees along the road.

Once the taps are set all there is to do is wait and check the buckets at least once a day. A good run can fill a 5 gallon bucket in a day. Sometimes there will be just a little sap sometimes the bucket is full better to check than to have the sap overflowing the buckets and being wasted. Once the first few buckets are full I start boiling. I'm using the stovetop this year, I set a large stock pot on each of the front large burners, strain the sap for any debris then fill each pot about 3/4's full and let it boil. Add more sap as the level goes down in the pots. I just keep adding sap never letting the level in the pots go below half, you don't want the sap to start turning to syrup or candy too soon. After 4, 5 or so of the buckets have boiled down (depending on if they're the 5 gallon or 7 gallon buckets) it's time to let the sap, which will now be turning brown and smells sweet finish off. I'll admit it's by instinct that I do this. No year is the same, some years it takes more or less sap to make a gallon of syrup. The standard equation is 40 gallons of sap makes one gallon of syrup but it varies a lot.

Finishing off the syrup. As things get more brown and sweet I take it from two big pots down to one combing the sap from both. Then keep on boiling (evaporating) until the sap has turned to syrup. With a candy thermometer this will be when the sap temperature has reached 7 degrees fahrenheit above your boiling point. For many people this will be 219 degrees farenheight. Another clue is lots of little bubbles will be appearing on the sap, it kind of looks like roaring ocean water, the sap starts to look fierce and furious as it becomes syrup. I keep an eye on it when things start to look close. It will over boil if you leave it too long.Another way to test for doneness is to scoop out a little of the syrup from the pan, let it cool then taste it, check to see if it sticks to the spoon a bit, look at the texture. Does it taste like maple syrup, does it look like maple syrup? If you've reached the right temperature and/or the syrup looks and tastes right it's time to filter and put into jars.

I like to use quart sized mason jars to store my syrup. For filtering the syrup I like the smaller cone shaped filter cloth. The cones fit nicely into the mason jar funnel. Once I've taken a good guess at how much syrup I have made  I set out the appropriate number of mason jars, adding a funnel each into the first couple jars. In the funnel I place a small cone shaped filter. Then it's time to pour the hot syrup into the jars. It will take a little time to work through the filters but this is important, the filters strain out any debris that might have been missed and any impurities or sugar sand. You may need to replace the filter before the jar is full depending on the syrup, if the filter seems clogged replace with another one. You can wash them out and reuse them again later. Once all the jars have been filled I cap them and the maple syrup batch is done.

Sometime soon after the first good run and first batch of maple syrup is made I like to make pancakes for breakfast! When we have pancakes we usually have all sorts of extras too. I call it the full English Breakfast (I know it's not really) My husband is British but I am not. Also we're a vegan/vegetarian family but I can call it a full English if I want :-). Today I made pancakes, tomatoes, potato, fried veggie sausage, fried veggie bacon, baked beans. Some in the family will add eggs and mushrooms. We all like a little bit different things but here is my plate.

Of course the sap's still running so I can't stop boiling for long, pancakes cook beside the start of batch 3 of maple sap.

The littles visit the bigs, another gallon plus of maple syrup and we can see the ground...in places!

After the crazy weather yesterday snow, rain, ice, wind everything at once, we had a calmer weather day today. It was still windy at times but not too bad. Amazingly we suddenly have a fair bit of bare ground in the farmyard! Did the wind blow away the snow from that section? Or more likely the rain washed away the snow. There's still plenty of snow about but the bottom 1/3rd of the birds yard is looking pretty bare and they love it. They also love the bits of greenery on some branches that fell from evergreen trees in the wind yesterday. One more thing to love, a pop up pond has formed for the ducks. Bad weather seems to have brought good things to our flock.

The little chicks are just about 6 weeks old now, outgrowing the brooder.

Time to set up a visit to the coop area.

This is fun.

Littles meet the bigs.

Having winter chicks hasn't been too hard since we're nearly to spring I don't think they'll need to stay indoors overly long. I do think I'll be able to move them to the coop within the next week or so where they will have their own space until the older birds are used to them. I realised that in the covered, wrapped run it was much warmer than outside and I could even dig into the ground some even though most of the ground outdoors is still frozen solid. The run turned out to be a great place to let the chicks meet the older birds and have a good peck around in the dirt. The coop stays very reasonable at nights so the chicks should be fine when they move out there. We'll acclimate and then make the move.

A pop up pond!

Still a lot of snow around...

But magically a nice bare of snow area in the farm yard!

A bit of wonderful for the birds, suddenly there is a large bare of snow area in their yard! The chickens and ducks are thrilled with this development.

What else, well I finished off another gallon of maple syrup, a gallon and a quart nearly that makes this year's grand total so far-2 gallons and (almost) 1 quart. We made the rounds picking up animal feed at the feed store, also picked up some bagged shavings from a lumber yard so I can do a full coop cleaning soon.

Snow, Ice, Rain, Wind, and 6 Duck Eggs!

What a messy weather day today was. When I was opening up the barn for the day it was snowing, and icing and raining and very windy. Looked like we got about 6 inches of snow in the night and it turned to a slushy mess with the added rain and ice. The chickens weren't too fond of it but the ducks were happy with the mixed precipitation.  I got quite a lot of maple sap boiled down today, I might catch up, eventually. Cleaned the chicks indoor brooder, Hayley chick sat for one of the almost 6 week old babies while I tidied the brooder. And the big news of the day, 6 ducks eggs this morning! They were dirtier than usual,  but that's ducks for you even if you clean their pen they have it wet and dirty in a day or less. Only the Rouens aren't laying yet, they mature later, 8-10 months from what I've read and we got them in June so hopefully we're getting close, could be any day. All the adopted ducks are laying, that's a good sign that they've settled in. Khaki Campbells are laying and the black Swedish duck too.

The dogs always enjoy new snow, for a little while, then they want to come back in.

A 6 duck eggs day.

Hmm cats are certainly unique not sure what he's up to but his tail gave away his hiding place.

Hayley chick sits one of the big baby chicks.

Burnt maple=homemade flock block, cleaning the rabbit cage and FIVE ducks eggs.

I burnt a (thankfully) small amount of maple sap this morning while I was doing taxes (can I take this as a tax deduction?). I thought quick and tossed some chicken scratch onto the sticky maple mass, homemade flock block! I was almost in time to make it candy but it was just too far evaporated. The chickens and ducks liked it so not a waste.

Accidental homemade flock block.

Maple flavored flock block enjoyed by all

Five ducks eggs today! First time ever for five duck eggs. We have had four in the past with only three females at the time. We have one duck who has laying glitches. We have never had five duck eggs all in the same day so a first for us.

Five duck eggs today

Later in the day I cleaned the rabbit cage which meant I had to let them run free, in the fenced yard, and later catch them. The rabbits do not like to be caught once they're out, it was challenging. They really prefer their much larger spring-fall pen but they need to be in their winter cage in the coop for a little longer. It's an XXXL cage, not bad sized at all but not like their better weather cage and run.

We want more room, bunnies protest.

Lots more sap collecting and boiling and rotating the fast filling sap buckets took up a lot of the day. Not much else for this day.

Some silkies settle in early to get the roosts of choice for the night.