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.
Baby quail. 🙂
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. 🙂
…and welcome to this, the first blog post of many to come. It’s the Monday after Daylight Savings time and the morning after a surprise (but not really all that surprising) overnight 4+ inch snow here in the Midwest. The chickens hate it but our dog, Archie, LOVES all the fresh powder everywhere! He’s been visibly smiling all morning, no exaggeration, as he runs laps around our small 5 acre farm in the fresh snow.
I’m guessing you’ve figured out where the name Archie’s Acres came from…
Archie is our 1 year old (turned 1 on March 4th) Australian Cattle Dog/Border Collie mix. We found him on a farm in Miles, Iowa near the hatchery that we visited last Spring, my only regret was that the farmer wanted us to take him immediately, but he was only 5 weeks, so we made up an excuse to allow him to stay with his mom for an extra week but still, taking him away from his mom at 6 weeks broke my heart a little. But he’s our little bear and he’s a barrel of personality and obviously, a total mama’s boy.
At this very moment…
we have 24 snow-hating chickens shouting in the chicken coop. I mean, I get it, they don’t wear shoes so snow is probably pretty uncomfortable to walk on. They also can’t see any grass, bugs or worms because of the snow, so I get that aggravation there too. So my temporary remedy for their unhappiness will be to bring them a huge bowl of oatmeal after I finish this post.
Chickens looooooove oatmeal…
…and if there’s anything a certified chicken lady loves; it’s making her chickens happy. Along with the 24 cranky birds currently throwing tantrums in the chicken coop, we have 2 injured chickens resting in a makeshift rehabilitation center in our garage. One of our best layers, Brownie our Isa Brown hen, injured her leg and is now confined to our cat’s travel carrier. She’s eating and drinking and in good spirits, she’s probably also really enjoying being warm and away from the snow. About 2 feet across from her is Newman, our lone Blue Laced Red Wyandotte rooster, he also has a busted leg. Chickens are very social creatures so there is something comforting about them having each other to recover with, not that I’m a fan of having 2 injured chickens, but it’s always easier to have a friend.
There is a such thing as a roost being too high…
I’m realizing now that the roosts in the chicken coop are too high off of the ground, they’re a good 10 feet high, the previous owners built them this way and since we had no idea what we were doing, being city dwellers and all, we just assumed they were just fine. So this past week has been all about building chicken ladders and ramps for the bigger birds to safely get down from the roosts in the morning. The drop is especially rough when they fly down out of excitement, which is basically only when I enter the coop with a treat. Because they know what it means if they see one of their humans holding a bowl!
Springtime is chick-time!…
So of course we also have 20 2-3 week old baby chicks in our homemade brooder in the garage. The brooder is a 6 foot tall wood wardrobe with 2 heat lamps inside. These babies were hand-picked from 2 different hatcheries in Iowa based on their breed’s egg color (in this case, they either lay blue or chocolate brown eggs), the rareness of the breed, their genetic broodiness and finally, some were picked to add a little unique coloring to the flock. As we approach farmer’s market season, it’s become important to us to offer a rainbow variety of egg colors since we discovered the vast color palette of farm fresh egg colors!
Chicken eggs come in a rainbow of colors…
To put it normally, there are so many awesome, natural egg tints and tones that exist in nature and that’s just so so cool! And if we think they’re THAT cool, other people need to see them too! So on that note…we are also currently incubating 14 eggs that I purchased and were shipped from a farm in Florida and a farm in Pennsylvania. These chickens will lay the most beautiful shade of blue/teal egg, naturally. Hoping for hens, of course, but considering our hatching luck in the past, the egg genders will be 3:1 roosters. But we’ll make it work no matter what the outcome because the thought of giving life to these sweet little birds makes me happy.
Our current egg color selection. It’s a mini-rainbow.
Our barncat is about to become a momcat…
Oh and on that note; we currently have our barncat, Lima, trapped in a makeshift delivery room in our garage. She is days, hours even minutes away from giving birth to what we guess are 4-5 kittens! She’s such a sweet cat. And if I’m being completely honest, she’s the nicest cat that we have! And she found us! When she arrived on our front porch last summer she was no bigger than a kitten herself, even though she had clearly just weaned or was still nursing kittens. She’s very small, her height seems to have been stunted, we’re guessing because of malnutrition, but regardless, she’s the nicest little girl. So cuddly and affectionate and appreciative. She will happily watch tv with us on the couch while our 2 actual indoor cats, Oscar and Tika, would rather not be touched and certainly not cuddled!
Our housecats are jerks…
Don’t get me wrong, we love our 2 cat babies that we brought into this marriage, but they are spoiled. So Lima is now more of a farmhouse cat than a barncat, which is a good and bad thing, we enjoy her cuddly company so much that we’ve taken her away from her work of being a master mouse hunter! So we’re looking forward to assigning posts to a couple of her kittens. One will be on mouse patrol in the chicken coop and the other will live in the garage. They’ll pay for their room and board with hard, fun work that they enjoy, which when you think about it, is a wonderful setup!
So back to the to-do list for today…
We currently have about 80 seed starter pods budding in our kitchen. We have a really fun variety of multi-colored peppers and tomatoes planted and prospering at the moment. We also have about 140 pods waiting to be used. But if I’m being honest, last night’s snow and the cold temps this week are giving us an urge to hold off on starting anything more at the moment but it’s the Midwest. Next week it will feel like spring. And then the week after that it will snow one more time. And then maybe after that it will be Spring for good. But maybe not. My wife is from NE Iowa and I’m from Chicagoland, so we know the games the weather plays. But to answer my own question, yeah we need to start some more seeds today. They need a 6 weeks head start before going into the ground anyway.
Pallet chicken coops are awesome…
We also need to finalize our pallet chicken coop and garden fence project by planning out the layouts and drawing up blueprints! We took about 30 pallets from a local tile shop with the intention of building a fence around our herb garden and a small chicken coop. As part of our future chicken breeding program, the four roosters that are currently 2 weeks old, will need to be separated from the hens in about 6 weeks and live in a bachelor pad.
Rooster bro time is important.
If there are no ladies around, they will live happily with each other bro-ing it up, watching sports and drinking beer like bros do. However, if they’re with ladies, they will fight each other to the death for alpha status. And we need these beautiful boys to be healthy and available for egg business this fall. There’s a very cool science about their specific breeds and uniqueness that I’ll explain later. And the roughly 2 foot tall garden fence will be to keep the rabbits and the chickens away from our herbs!
Well, we should probably get to work on today’s farm to-do list, and one of us should probably go check on Lima in the delivery room! Again, Welcome to Archie’s Acres!
