archiesacres@gmail.com, Author at Archie's Acres

August 14, 2017August 28, 2017

Farm life: a month at Archie’s Acres

How is it August already?!! This summer has flown by and farm life has been hectic for us lately! Not surprisingly, so much has happened since the last time we blogged that I need to do a top 10 list to catch up.

1. Chickens

Two of our hens successfully hatched 8 chicks of their own. They were both 1st time moms so for the first week they actually hung out together and co-parented the babies together. We weren’t sure how the new moms were going to keep the other chickens from pecking the babies to death, but after seeing what they did to Archie when he accidentally walked to close to the babies, it became very clear that these are hardcore, protective mammas. It. Was. Awesome!! The babies are over a month old now, they are traveling in their little pack of 8 and are free ranging and roosting together. It’s very cute and we’re proud of their moms.

5 of the babies venturing to the garden for treats (aka split/damaged tomatoes)

2. Quail

Our quail have finally started laying! These little birds are laying machines! We have 14 girls and although it took longer than the usual 2 months for them to get going, they are now finally getting around to providing us some sell-able farmers market eggs.

3. Swimming pool

The giant black walnut tree fell on our pool. We spent hours and hours digging up a spot for the pool, had our neighbor bring his skid loader over to help move earth and sand around, and set up the pool (it was NOT an hour long process as advertised). We used it every hot day for about 3 weeks, and then the first of many nasty storms came through and blew the tree onto our pool and our upper garden. Fun times.

Well it was fun while it lasted – at least the tiki torches survived

4. Stormy weather

On that note… the storms throughout the month of July really hurt our town, our garden and our driveway. Our town declared a state of emergency after half of it was under 3+ feet of water; many homes were damaged and destroyed. Many farmers around us had to claim total losses of their corn and soybean crops because of it. It wouldn’t stop raining. We got 11 inches of rain in one weekend! Our gravel driveway was badly damaged; we would cart rocks and gravel to fill in the deep ditches channeled out by the constant running water from the top of the hill, but then it would rain again and the rocks and gravel would wash away and we would have to start over. Our tomato and pepper plants are strained from the all the rain as well.

Pearl City, IL – yes, that’s the main street

5. New goats

We have 3 new goats to the herd! Their names are Lefty, Willie and Bobby. They are siblings of Pancho. We invited Pancho’s parents to our pig roast back in June and they saw Pancho’s new home and asked if we’d take the other 3. How great is that?! The 4 goats and Tilly are now one solid, happy herd.

6. Another new addition

And since we now have a little herd, we had to get a little herd protector! Meet Moose, our new livestock guard pup!

He’s a Karakachan; we got him at 11 weeks and he’s the biggest sweetheart. Neither of us had ever heard of this breed before, but after doing a little research, it turns out this breed is amazing. They are massive, Bulgarian shepherds. Bred to stay up all night, they are loyal and protective. Moose will be well over 100lbs.

7. Kittens are the cutest

The kittens are now 5 months old. They are the sweetest, nicest, cuddliest little fur balls and they run this place. They hang out and mouse in the chicken coop, a couple of them sleep on the front porch at night, sometimes they sleep in the garage. I’ve never felt better about the mouse population around here than I do right now. We’re so happy to have such a productive little crew!

8. Scourge of the garden and orchard

Ugh, the Japanese beetles are here! We lucked out last summer, clearly. This summer they are here in swarms. They’ve eaten all of our sweet corn and have devastated our cherry and plum trees in the orchard. I hate them!! We were not anticipating they would be this bad, so next year we’ll be better prepared and ready to pounce. Just another farm life lesson for us.

9. Rooster separation

We had to build a bachelor pad for the surplus of roosters we had running around the farm. At one point we had 10 roosters and 40 hens, and it was horrible. As soon as the young ones hit chicken puberty it was a stressful free for all. The hens were looking beat up and they weren’t laying as much; we were down to getting 6 eggs a day! It was a mess. So we built the boys their own little coop and run, because without females around, boys will actually happily coexist with each other. Otherwise a few of them would fight to the death and we love them too much to have that happen. Eventually we’ll set up a separate breeding coop so we can pair one rooster with a few hens to get all sorts of fun egg colors.

10. Farmer’s markets

And finally, to wrap up this last month+, our farmer’s market game is pretty solid. We are figuring things out slowly but surely and are able to fill a booth with veggies, herbs, eggs and other things from our garden! How cool is that?! Hanna and I have been able to keep our giant garden alive and thriving, even though we seem to make every mistake possible and kinda have the worst luck. But we’re doing it and it’s awesome! And I’m already looking forward to being even better next year!

11. Bonus update

And yeah, and Archie is still an awesome little bear.

June 28, 2017August 14, 2017

It has been a while…but we’ve been busy!

It has been a very busy couple of months on Archie’s Acres. We’ve begun working farmer’s markets and we’ve adopted/rescued a few new residents. We’re so happy to be able to give them happy homes. Also, sadly, we had to say goodbye to our head rooster, Nacho, who died last week.

We lost our alpha rooster last week. Very sad. — Nacho was the head rooster on this farm. RIP

Nacho was a huge loss. Our hens have been staying close to the coop ever since; however, we’re hopeful that one of Nacho’s two sons will step up to protect the flock.

Farm life is an emotional roller coaster most weeks.

Meet Poncho!

He is our new 2-3 year old Nigerian Dwarf goat rescue. He’s a nice, friendly and well behaved guy. We adopted him from a couple in Monroe, WI who had too many wethered males in their herd. (By the way, wethered means fixed.) He was their favorite and didn’t want to see him become someone’s food. So we were happy to take him! He will join Tilly as a landscape specialist.

Our Nigerian Dwarf goat rescue. — Poncho.

He and Tilly became fast friends, Tilly was sooo happy not to be an only child. She hated being in the pasture alone so she hung out with the chickens, and for a time, thought she was a chicken. She even went under the house to cool off on hot days, like a chicken….

She is under the house trying to cool off on a 90 degree day. — Tilly thinks she’s a chicken.

Meet Betty White

Betty White came from our neighbor ( a few miles away) who is a goat farmer. She didn’t become a mom this past season so he informed us that the herd would see her as a drain on the herd and would most likely beat her to death this winter, so we gladly took her. We named her Betty White because she’s a feisty old broad who doesn’t take any lip from anyone. She’ll be an excellent addition to our tiny herd.

She's our newest goat rescue. — Betty White

These 2 goats have joined Tilly in the our 3.5 acre fenced pasture and will work as landscape specialists. I think we’re all very excited about this!

We are excited to announce that we could be at a farmer’s market near you!!

This was our booth at the Glenwood Sunday Market last Sunday, June 25th. — Our farmer’s market booth!

Currently we are participating in the Rockford City Market every 2nd and 4th Friday of each month. And this Sunday, July 2nd, we will be doing the Glenwood Sunday Market on the North side of Chicago in Rogers Park. We’ve enjoyed the process of having a booth at a farmer’s market. It has been fun and we’re very excited to be a part of these wonderful events. Being able to provide people with organic produce and tasty eggs is extremely rewarding. Stay tuned for more farmers market announcements! We’ll try to keep our calendar in the “Shop” tab of the website up to date so keep checking.

We’ll also announce our market schedules on Instagram @archiesacres and Facebook @archiesacres

April 28, 2017April 28, 2017

Countdown to the last frost is upon us!

Good Afternoon! And Happy Friday!

It’s been a very busy but exciting week here at Archie’s Acres! The last frost is upon us! And the 100+ tomato and pepper plants couldn’t be more excited. No wait, scratch that, Hanna and I couldn’t be more excited to get them out of our sun porch! They’re about 6 inches tall and clearly looking for more space to grow. And of course we’re all for that. We’re hoping for only one more week of a frost threat out here. Oh please…

In preparation for the big move, we’ve begun building a 150′ by 35′ deer/rabbit fence around our entire garden. It’s a lot of work, and really kills your hands, but it’s worth it. The deer, rabbits and raccoons are ferocious eaters out here!

Wrapping the entire area in 30lb test fishing line and 2 feet tall chicken wire.

Spring is the season for Baby Animals.

…and we have a couple around here.

Our baby chickens are growing and flourishing. They’re learning the rules of being a chicken. And believe it or not, there is a protocol and of course a pecking order. The 20+ babies that we got from the hatchery in Iowa (Hoover’s Hatchery: https://www.hoovershatchery.com/) are now about 2 months old and are living outside in a rabbit hutch that we converted to a chicken coop. They’re still unable to join the adults because they’re not even close in size so they won’t stand a chance with the adults, who tend to be bullies.

The 7 blue egg laying chicks that we hatched in the incubator earlier this month are happily in their brooder in the garage, growing and socializing and learning chicken things. They have about 2 more weeks until they have all of their feathers and can handle the outside temp changes. But we’ll most likely keep them in the brooder for another month since there is only 7 of them, and they won’t outgrow their current space as quickly.

Baby Quail!

We have also hatched 7 baby quail in the last week. They are Coturnix quail, which is a breed of Japanese quail; they are the easiest quail breed to start with, they are cold hardy, mild-mannered and prefer to hang out on the ground which makes egg collection easier. We will sell their eggs at farmers markets this summer.

At first we had only hatched 1 quail, who was alone for over a day, he/she was very lonely, so a new hatchling made him/her very happy. He/she was very concerned with the well-being of the new baby. It was very sweet to watch. Since then we’ve hatched 5 more. They are the tiniest creatures. And their growth rate is impressive. In just 2 weeks they have developed at a rate that would take a chicken over a month to reach. These quail will reach full maturity at around 2 months old, while a chicken will take 5-6 months.

One of our baby quail needed braces for his splayed legs.

Baby Lamb!

Annnnnd we now have a baby lamb! Her name is Tilly. She lives in our house currently, as newborns are prone to hypothermia. She is 1 week old today and follows us around like a puppy. We got her from our friend Mike, who is a hog/sheep farmer nearby (he was also our realtor). Tilly was a triplet and her mom was unable to make enough milk for all 3 babies, so she needed to be bottle-fed, and we volunteered. At first it was a tough process, she didn’t take to bottle feeding very well. But 2 days later, she was a maniac at feeding time. She hits the bottle like a tiny bass and inhales her food. She’s growing and getting stronger every day. She will be in charge of landscaping our 2+ acre fenced in pasture. It’ll be nice to not have to make the time to mow that.

Busy busy busy…

All of these baby plants and animals have kept us very busy. Please follow us on Instagram. @ArchiesAcres

I try to post at least once a day. And as Spring really kicks in, we’ll have more of a focus on our organic vegetables and herbs. 🙂

Thanks for reading!

April 20, 2017April 21, 2017

Farmlife is a busy life!

Yes yes, I realize that it’s been forever since we’ve posted an update. So I’ll do a top 10 list of things that we’ve done since I last checked in.

TOP 10 THINGS WE’VE DONE ON THE FARM…

1. Those blue egg layer Cream Crested Legbar and Whiting True Blue eggs finally hatched! We have 7 beautiful new chicken babies! I’ve been actively humanizing them by relentlessly picking them up, so they’re a friendly little crew.

2. Our windbreak has been massively added to on the West and North sides of the farm by planting 25 arborvitae trees, 10 plum bushes, 10 serviceberry bushes and 10 nannyberry bushes. They’re all only about 2 feet tall, but seem to be doing well. Now we just have to wait 5 years…

3. We tilled our entire 150′ by 35′ garden. Since we don’t own a tiller yet, so we borrowed our neighbors. Geez, tilling is hard work!

4. We planted over 150 potatoes. Many many radishes, onions, peas, carrots and Brussels sprouts seeds went in the ground too….

5. We re-potted over 150 tomato, pepper, cauliflower, flower and broccoli seedlings. Some of the rarer tomato and peppers seedlings will be sold at the Rockford Green City Farmer’s Market this summer for the first few markets anyway. We’ll be there every 2nd and 4th Friday until the end of September.

Here’s the link to find out more about the market:

http://www.rockfordcitymarket.com/

6. We built a deer and rabbit fence around the entire garden. The rabbit and deer population is impressive out here. When we come home in the evening, there are always at least 8 baby rabbits running across the driveway. And we learned last year that they are ferocious eaters!

7. We weeded, re-roped and trimmed back our Centennial and Chinook hops plants to get them ready for Spring. This is the 2nd year for these hops so we should get an even better crop this summer! Last year we only got enough to do 2 batches of beer. So this year we’re hoping for at least 4 brewing sessions with our own hops.

8. We just started hatching quail eggs! Last night, in fact. We have 20+ cortunix quail eggs in our incubator. So far 3 have hatched. They are so cute! And surprisingly loud. We plan to sell quail eggs this summer. Quail develop surprisingly fast, they’ll be fully grown and laying in only 2 months!

9. We have moved all of our Iowa hatchery chicks out to a pen across from the chicken coop to get them acclimated to life outside. They’re all over 7 weeks now so they have all of their feathers and can survive the elements. Happy to report that all are doing well!

10. We have finalized our farmer’s market paperwork with the Rockford Farmer’s Market. We’ve bought all of the licenses that Illinois requires for every single thing they can think of. And it’s a lot. We have an egg license, I have my ServSafe food handling certification, a food handling permit and our individual licenses to sell in each county where we plan to sell. Plus our LLC insurance, FEIN and sales tax ID requirements are all squared away. We have all the required packaging and labeling materials to sell in Illinois, it was tedious and over-the-top, but that’s finally done. Phew.

Life is good here at Archie’s Acres. Spring has the trees and flowers blooming, the grass is green and the woods are coming back to life! It’s so fun to watch nature do its thing every spring.

For daily picture updates about Archie’s Acres, follow us on Instagram! @archiesacres

https://www.instagram.com/archiesacres/

A beautiful Spring day at Archie’s Acres.

April 3, 2017April 3, 2017

A busy weekend of baby chickens!

Hatching eggs is a beautiful experience.

I previously wrote about our little breeding program to expand our chicken egg color palette, well on Friday another important step was taken, we successfully hatched 3 bright blue egg layers. The hatching rate wasn’t great. Only 3 out of 9 eggs hatched. Usually 60% can be expected. Ugh. It appears that a few of the eggs we received from the breeder in FL weren’t fertilized, which is really annoying considering the cost, but at least we got 3. And they’re sooo cute!

Blue Egg Layers

2 of these chicks are Cream Crested Legbars and the other is a Whiting True Blue. The Cream Crested Legbars are a purebred, rare breed of blue egg layer. While the Whiting True Blue was bred by Dr. Tom Whiting, a poultry geneticist, they’re a relatively new breed, but they consistently lay a blue egg and that’s all that matters. Don’t ask me which chick is which though. It’ll be a few weeks until I can answer with confidence. But I can tell you that the Cream Crested Legbars have awesome hair!

Clearly, it’s easy to identify a Cream Crested Legbar.

But back to the hatching…about 7 hours after the first chick hatched we realized that one of the babies was struggling to escape to freedom. We learned from previous hatchings that not helping can lead to curled toes, vitamin deficiencies and death. (Remember the story about our rooster, Jerry) However, we’ve read that helping can cause development issues and even death, this is all based on the idea that people might force a chick out of the egg to early.

Our cat was obsessed with the hatching chicks.

This was not the case, so we decided to go ahead and open the egg. Carefully, with tweezers, patience and a warm, wet cloth to try to moisten shell and internal membrane. (The internal membrane that lines the inside of the egg, which you may have noticed when peeling a hard-boiled egg, dries out from the exposure to the air after the chick breaks the shell), so this little guy didn’t stand much of a chance without our help.

Check out the chick rescue video on Instagram @ArchiesAcres

It was a wonderful moment when we realized that we saved this sweet little baby. S/he was very weak from the rough start but has since made a full recovery. Here’s a pic from right after the “delivery.” The video of the rescue is on our Instagram feed as well.

Newborn baby chicken. We had to help this little one along.

We’re happy to report that all 3 chicks are doing well!

In the next day or so we have another incubator filled with 6 eggs that will (hopefully) be hatching. Stay Tuned for that!

March 30, 2017

Meet the inseparable brothers, Jerry & Beavis!

Meet Jerry and Beavis!

They are not only brothers, but they are the best of friends. You will never see one without the other a few feet away. We hatched them last Spring in a homemade incubator made from a cheap styrofoam cooler, a glass lid from a small aquarium and a lightbulb. We couldn’t believe it worked! We turned the eggs 3-5 times a day. It was tedious. But so cool!

Our homemade incubator and egg turning schedule was a success.

We hatched 3 boys and 1 girl.

Jerry and Beavis are the 2 remaining roosters from the 4. Rillo, the 3rd boy, got picked off by a hawk last summer. Beavis’ mom was a Cinnamon Queen hen and his dad is an Old English bantam rooster. Jerry’s mom is a Silver Laced Wyandotte with the same father. (We only had one rooster at the time) His name is Nacho. He’s the boss.

When Jerry was born, he had a severe vitamin deficiency from the 11 hours it took him to break from his egg. It generally only takes a couple of hours for a chick to hatch. So we had to give him vitamin water (Flintstone chewable vitamins crushed into a water paste) manually a few times a day.

He had badly curled toes on one foot and he would stare up at the heat light so tall that he’d fall on his back and be stuck there until one of us flipped him over. We were very worried about him. But our treatment helped and now he’s a regular dude with curled toes on one foot.

Jerry and Beavis spend every minute of the day together. They stay out later than most of the chickens, clucking and beeping as they scamper around looking for seeds that might have fallen from the bird feeders. They frequent our wrap around porch every day between 10am and noon, where they shout together.

The boys shouting on the porch in unison.

March 28, 2017March 9, 2020

Did you know that there is a rainbow of eggshell color possibilities!?!

We have really been getting into chicken “husbandry” this year. What exactly does that mean? Well, we have seen the egg shell color possibilities on Instagram and our working to expand ours. The chicken ladies on Instagram get real nerdy scientific with it and we’re both kind of obsessed with the possibilities.

egg, rainbow, chicken — Our current egg color selection. It’s a mini-rainbow!

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not taking our current ladies for granted! They do great work. We love the different shades of tan, white, pink and brown they give us. We just want to add a little more pizzazz to what we can offer our farmers market patrons. Because it’s fun. And we love pretty things.

Eggshell color is all about genetics.

So because of that we have researched chicken breeds and how to cross them to make different egg shell colors. We recently purchased Black Copper Marans, Cuckoo Marans and Welsummer chicks from Hoover’s Hatchery in Iowa to provide us with a dark chocolate egg…

maran, egg, chocolate, color — Marans have a beautiful chocolate brown egg.

Aren’t they gorgeous?

For the blue eggs needed for our rainbow, we ordered 4 Easter Egger chicks. 3 females and 1 male. And we also purchased 8 Whiting True Blue eggs from a farm in Florida and 6 Cream Crested Legbar eggs from a farmer in Pennsylvania. We are currently incubating all 14 and they should be hatching within the next week

How many chickens is too many?

I know what you’re thinking, “that’s a lot of chickens!” But really it’s not going to be. Our coop is set up to more than accommodate the chicks we bought from the hatchery. Plus the hatching rate for successfully incubating eggs is only about 40%. So we’ll be lucking to 5 out of the 14 we incubated. We’re good on space, but I admit that I’m a certified chicken lady. That being said we have well over 30 chickens right now.

Egg husbandry chart for colors:

This shows how to cross chicken breeds to create fun egg colors.

As you can see; the process is fluid and there’s no guaranteed result, but that’s the fun of it! We will have special chicken runs built to facilitate this process. And we specifically bought a Black Copper Maran male, Cuckoo Maran male and an Easter Egger male. The breed that comes from crossing a dark brown layer with a blue layer is generally referred to as an Olive Egger, and the olive/green tint varies vastly.

So there’s your crash course in the wild world of chicken breeding for egg colors. We will have dark brown and blue eggs added to our current colorful arrangement by late summer. And olive, green and mint colored eggs by next Spring. We will also be selling fertilized eggs for people who would like to incubate and raise their own special Oliver Eggers. Keep a lookout for us!

March 27, 2017March 27, 2017

Gardening season is almost here!!

Nothing beats Springtime in the Midwest!

As Midwesterners, after struggling through blizzards and freezing temps all Winter, springtime is always welcomed with open arms. However, this Spring is extra special, because we now have a yard (5 acres of it) with copious amounts of garden space. And we are over the moon about it!!! At our apartment in Chicago, I only had a 4′ by 5′ area on our deck to use as my personal garden. I had just enough space to grow a couple pepper and tomato plants. But now our current setup is a lower vegetable/fruit garden of 150′ by 30′ and an upper herb/flower garden about 18′ by 18!’ I’ve always hoped to be able to put my green thumb to work!

150′ by 30′ garden?! Only in my wildest dreams!

Having this much gardening space is amazing. And because of the endless space opportunities, I went a little crazy on seed buying. We have some very pretty and unique plant seedlings growing in our indoor greenhouse right now. Tomatoes and peppers are taking up the vast majority of pods at the moment. Mainly because they are best started indoors before transferring outside, unlike our radishes, kale, mesculin greens, melons, arugula, corn, peas etc which are best grown from direct sowing.

100+ starter pods are sprouting!

Greenhouse sprouting success! 22 varieties of happy little tomatoes.

22 varieties of tomatoes

We have blue, tie-dye, green, chocolate brown, yellow, orange, pink, orange /red striped, purple of all sizes…the list is a lot longer. We’re so excited for you to see them! And we’re even more excited to sell them at farmer’s markets this summer! Here is just one of the 22 varieties that I’m super pumped about…

Tigerella tomatoes. These are going to be beauties.

We also have 7 bright and colorful varieties of belle peppers. Purple and chocolate varieties included, of course. Here’s one of my favorites…

Purple belle peppers; not only yummy but super pretty too!

We have 7 varieties of hot peppers. The shishito peppers are a personal highlight, I’ve been obsessed with them for over a year now! Shishito peppers are small Japanese peppers that have the sweetest/most pungent flavor, they taste like a belle pepper x 100, but they’re considered a hot pepper because 1 out of 10 is spicy. They’re so delicious, even if you get a hot one, which isn’t really that hot. I first tried them at Bangers & Lace in Evanston, IL. The head chef at the time, Justin Schaub, sautéed them and tossed them in with the fried cheese curds. The app was a real showstopper.

the color Purple looks great on food!

Not only do we have purple tomatoes and peppers but we have purple broccoli, kale, potatoes, cauliflower, green beans, Brussels sprouts, corn and tomatillos! We are not only growing delicious, organic food but we want it to be pretty food!

March 23, 2017March 23, 2017

Being a chicken lady isn’t always easy…

Life is not all about treats, cute faces and beautiful eggs when you’re a chicken mom. Oh and let’s not forget about chicks, and broody hens who surprise you with a new chick every now and then, and watching a sweet incubator hatching, and feathered mobs rushing your porch every morning…

Chickens can have health drama.

2 days ago, Floppy wasn’t up in the roosts at bedtime with her friends. She was kind of dazed, a little lethargic and very, overly people friendly. We knew something was off but we weren’t sure what. We have a checklist we go through when trying to figure out what’s wrong with a chicken. Is s/he pooping. What color is their comb. Can they walk. Can they stand. How’s their breathing. How do their eyes look. Those few questions narrow our course of action down significantly…there are 4 main concerns that we have when dealing with an oddly acting chicken.

Floppy, named after her awesomely floppy comb.

Is she egg bound?

Every once in a while, due to a calcium deficiency, stress, a rare double-yoked egg and sometimes illness, a hen will be unable to lay an egg. Which will kill them. Think about it, the egg is in there until you help her get it out. If you don’t, and she can’t, she will die. Our first hen loss was in this way. Penelope, she was one of the 9 original chickens that came with our property, courtesy of the previous owners. We worked for 3 days to help her, and she was working too. We gave her warm epsom salt baths to relax her, making sure her backend was submerged. We made a little bed for her, a little bigger than a nesting box with a towel over top to give her a relaxing dark place to sleep. We even applied Preparation H to her since she had been working so hard for so long, to help ease some of her local pain from pushing. We worked really hard, and so did she. But to no avail. The loss was particularly tough.

Could it be Marek’s Disease?

This is a viral disease of poultry, primarily chickens. It can cause partial or total paralysis of the legs, wings, and even neck, it creates tumors in the body (often near nerves which causes the paralysis), blindness and death. It’s spread through dander so it’s a serious concern for us. If one chicken has it, they all will have it. But just having the disease doesn’t mean they’ll show symptoms, therefore all new members of our flock are required to be vaccinated and we will no longer be taking in rescues due to learning about it. So on that note, the first thing we’d look for is leg, wing or neck paralysis. And go from there.

Chickens get colds and flus just like humans do.

Wheezing. If there’s any wheezing or one eye is cloudy, they’re going into our homemade chicken hospital to begin intravenous antibiotics. We have had amazing success with 1cc of Duramycin 72-200, twice a day. We’ve had Claire, Newman and Ruby all make a full recovery after 5 days of treatment. Which makes a chicken mom feel really good!

Could it be chicken crop issue?

A sour or impacted crop is always a concern. The crop is basically the holding area for food before it travels to the stomach. We’ll often comment on a chickens’ “food boob” being especially large after a big meal, it’s because the thing is packed with food waiting to be digested and they’ve clearly had an amazing meal. A sour crop happens when the crop is never fully emptied, which means there’s old food in there fermenting, which results in a bacterial / yeast infection within the crop. Sounds pretty gross, because it is. Long grasses, excessive amounts of bread and pasta, moldy food and inadequate amounts of grit can cause this.

Since our chickens free-frange, a lack of grit is not an issue, but undigestible pieces of manmade material is, little pieces of plastic or a rubber band, which is how an impacted crop can happen. A strange object is blocking the crop from being emptied. Chickens are nosy, they’ll peck at anything. This is why I give the chickens a large bowl of yogurt a couple times a month. To keep things moving, keep a steady flow of good bacteria going. And I don’t often give them bread or pasta, which doesn’t offer much nutrition anyway. An impacted crop will feel hard and the sour crop will feel soft, and the best time to check is first thing in the morning, if the chicken is lethargic, since the crop is emptied almost completely overnight.

And none of these applied to Floppy…

Her lethargy and death happened abnormally fast. We found her standing on the coop floor, not even facing a corner (which chickens do when they’re sick) just staring at us. She had no symptoms of anything, aside from just wanting to curl up into a ball. She seemed dazed. Her crop was a little mushy, but not overly so. We gave her a epsom salt bath anyway. She would not open her beak for anything. We placed her in a dark warm corner with a towel. And she died peacefully the next morning. We think she must’ve eaten something poisonous. She was only a year old. It was really sad, and strange. We buried her next to Penelope at the south end of our property.

We buried Floppy next to Penelope, our 1st major hen loss.

March 18, 2017March 18, 2017

Quick trip to the Third Coast and Kittens!

Michigan sunsets: Swoon!

The keepers of Archie’s Acres went on a quick trip to Union Pier, Michigan on Wednesday. We stayed at a wonderful little B&B and slept in until 9:30am 2 days in a row!! What?!! We also visited Greenbush Brewery, Round Barn Winery, St Julian Winery and the Journeyman Distillery, with a quick stop at Three Floyds Brewery along the way. And of course we did a little antiquing! However, if you’re looking for a bargain, this is the not the area to shop. The prices reflect the large amounts of money that have been moving into the area for decades.

Michigan: The Third Coast

It’s obvious, and accurate, why they call this area the Third Coast, behind the Pacific and Atlantic coastlines of course, because it really is. The beaches have soft, white sand and are home to the largest freshwater dunes in the world. The sunsets are on par with anything you’d see on the West coast of the United States. That’s my personal opinion anyway, even after living in California. One of the definite highlights of our little trip was walking down to Lake Michigan to catch the sunset. Absolutely stunning!

Union Pier, Michigan Sunset. March 16, 2017

A 2 day trip was the perfect amount of time to relax and recharge, especially since we have so many adorable little faces waiting for us on the farm. On Friday afternoon we got home just in time to see the kittens start to open their eyes for the first time!