rescue Archives - Archie's Acres

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

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!

Tag: rescue

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