Asparagus planting, flock watermelon party and fiddleheads!

It's spring, finally, finally no more snow and ice. It was a long winter and we're glad for spring. Over the past week I've planted a new asparagus bed, cleaned the coop, worked on getting garden areas ready for planting, continued getting the baby chicks outdoors and in view of the flock for some time each day, removed the weatherproof wrap on the covered run and picked the first fiddleheads of the season. The flock has been glad for the warmer days, bugs and worms to find and longer pleasant days outdoors. They celebrated the start of the warm weather with a watermelon party.

Planting a new asparagus bed, with a little help.

Baby chicks are now 3-5 weeks old.

 Baby chicks enjoy some time outside most days now. 

They have a fenced area next to the main flock's yard.

 The frizzled tolbunt Polish is so pretty.

Finally time to unwrap the covered run.

 Coop cleaning time too.

 Some of the smaller baby chicks.

Fiddlehead Ferns!

The January chicks will be laying soon, their combs and wattles are getting red. 

This will be the baby chicks cage within the coop soon. For now they're still in the brooder in the house at night.

Some time in the run with the big birds.

A chicken and duck watermelon party to celebrate spring!

Baby chicks first time integrating with older chickens and ducks.

Where oh where are the duck eggs today.

Now that spring is finally in full swing all the female ducks are laying regularly. Some days we get 9 duck eggs from 9 female ducks. Most days one of the other takes a day off so average is 7 eggs a day. Or sometimes the count goes down and I know to look for a nest. Several times mama Duck has started nests and the Rouens, Jemima and Pebbles, are also a bit prone to laying outdoors. I think Angel has done this a few times too. We need no more ducks and have room for no more so we are definitely not encouraging them to keep nests! 

Sometimes all he duck eggs are in their pen in the morning.

Other days I have to search for a nest.

Since the ducks are well trained to go into their pen at night they haven't been sitting on these started nests anyway but they do persist in starting more when I find and collect existing nests. I guess they think I need these mysteries to solve sometimes. Their fenced area is large so their are many hiding places for eggs!

The ducks are enjoying all their little paddling pools now that everything had finally stopped freezing over. I refill the pools for them a lot but they soon manage to get them very muddy again. 

April Showers and Melting Snow Bring...Mud Season

Newest flock members growing fast, brooder upgrades, outdoor time and getting to know the adult flock

The growing chicks graduated from their first brooder into a larger cage/brooder about a week ago. The upgrades give them more space and some sticks for perches. We have two cages going so I can swap them back and forth now to give the chicks more to do and have a place to put them when I'm cleaning one brooder. I've also started bringing them outside on the nicer days just for an hour or so in a sunny spot. They're slowly getting to know the flock they will join as well as getting natural grit and finding a few bugs here and there. The chicks range from 4 weeks down to not quite 2 weeks now since we added two more littles. The two littles are supposed to be Black Marans but I think they're actual bantams and the store made a mistake. They're definitely not Marans. Oh well next year for a couple more Black Copper marans and those super dark eggs. Before long this group will move out to the coop, in a separate area. That way the flock will see them for several weeks before they are able to touch them. When we transition new chicks they usually sleep in a dog kennel cage within the coop and then have their own run area sectioned off outside for daytime. This works well and after several weeks I can let all the birds mingle without any trouble because they have lived together and seen each other for awhile.

Another Maple Season Complete

Maple season was long and productive for us this year. I finished the season with 10.5 gallons of maple syrup and 2 good sized batches of maple sugar candy. The sap was just about finished running on April 14 so I pulled most of the taps. A couple taps were still running a bit so I left them for another week and pulled the final taps on April 22. To make that much syrup and candy took about $60 of propane and I would guess more than that in electricity, possibly as much as $100 in electric but it's hard to tell for sure. Next year I'll be able to work it all out better since we didn't get the new propane burner until halfway through the season this year. Next year I plan to do all but the finishing with the propane burner. Our electric costs tend to be very high here ($400-$500 plus a month) so hopefully next year using more propane we will spend less for our maple. This is why pure maple syrup costs so much! It's good to be all stocked up on sweetener for another year. In addition to pouring it on pancakes maple can be used in place of cane sugar in many recipes and for sweetening drinks and more.

Chick Season Continues

We made it through the power outage with day old chicks just fine then had a quiet Friday. In addition to our six- day old layers we ordered we also reserved some cochins from a breeder in our state. The fun thing about their cochins is that they come in fun colors like calico and some have frizzled feathers. I messaged the breeder to find out why I hadn't heard anything in awhile from them. No answer but I found out through a chicken group and then checking the cochin breeder's own page that they were shutting down their business for the year. They had hatching/incubator issues with various power outages and also suffered predator loss :-(. So no calico, no frizzle for me or maybe....When some of us were chatting about this situation in a chicken group another breeder stepped forward to mention her Tolbunt Polish chickens which are calico type coloring and she was hatching frizzles too. I made an appointment to visit that farm on Saturday so off we went. The Polish chicks and also silkies and mixes that were available were all so adorable! We ended up choosing a Frizzled Tolbunt Polish, a Smooth Tolbunt Polish and just for fun a little showgirl (naked neck) brown silkie. The breeder then offered another silkie for free and we chose a lavender. What a fun little bunch of chicks. So now we had our just good layers and our fun and fancy chicks to raise this spring. We knew from the start that we had one frizzle and one smooth feathered Polish since they were several days old. With the silkies though it was a mystery that we had to wait a few days for since they were newly hatched. It has developed that the lavender silkie is smooth feathered and the little brown showgirl is...frizzled! I love surprises and that was a fun one. Now we have to think girl thoughts since these latest four chicks are straight run, it could go either way.

What a face!

Four new chicks on the ride home.

Showgirl (naked neck) Silkie and Lavender Silkie.

Frizzle Tolbunt Polish and Smooth Tolbunt Polish.

The Whole Gang- Ten Spring Chicks.