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Nothing spectacular for most folks, but the Flying T now has its own Facebook page.  Please stop by!

Mystery Chicks Contest Update – 8 Weeks

Pictures of our mystery chicks at 8 weeks.  Any new guesses?  If so, see the original contest page!

Chick A – View 1

Chick A – View 2

Chick B – View 1

Chick B – View 2

Chick C – View 1

 

Chick C – View 2

 

Mystery Chicks Contest Update – 2.5 weeks

All the chicks are starting to get their wing and tail feathers, and we’re getting a bit more convinced of what breeds our 3 mystery birds might be.  Here are some new photos.  If you think you’ve got an answer (or your answer has changed), post a comment on the contest page.

Chick A – I can’t help but think of the Looney Tunes “Chickenhawk” character when I look at her.

Chick B (in the middle of the photo surrounded by Barred Rocks)

Chick C. Color is really coming in on her.

Any new guesses?

 

Mystery Chick Contest Update – 10 Days

The chicks are doing well for the most part.  We lost two barred rock chicks in the first few days, but the others are thriving.  We’ve already removed 2 sides of the smaller enclosure to allow the chicks a bit more room.  They grow pretty quickly, and for those of you participating (or desiring) to compete in the contest, here are some updated photos.  Feel free to change your answers at any time as the chicks become more recognizable.

Chick A – 10 days

Chick B – 10 days

Chick C – 10 days

Feel free to join in!  Just click here to read the details and submit an entry.

Contest: Identify the Mystery Chicks!

Our first contest…  Be the first to identify (correctly) the breeds and genders of our mystery chicks and win our grand prize!

As a surprise for David, we added 3 hatchery-choice “mystery chicks” to his order of Barred Rocks without his knowing it.   They are supposed to be 3 different breeds of brown egg layers.  The kids have made guesses on their breeds, and I think they’re definitely right on two of the three, but I’ll keep their guesses secret for now.

Rules:
1) To enter, simply post a comment with ONE guess for each chick’s identity.  Something like:

• Chick A: Pearl Guinea Fowl, female
• Chick B: Ruffed Grouse, male
• Chick C: Purple Tribble, hermaphrodite

2) We’ll keep the blog posted with pics as the chicks mature, and announce our findings when we’re really sure.
3) Any disagreements on the breed will be settled by Judy, “the Chicken Lady,” at Clark’s Grain Store.
4) Winner will be the first (based on the time/date stamp of the comment) with all three breeds and genders correctly identified.
5) Make sure there’s some way for me to get in touch with you – if your sign-in name doesn’t have a way to do that, you can shoot us an email (our contact info is on our farm website: http://www.flyingtnh.com).  Just make sure to identify yourself and your post.

The prize?  Public recognition on our blog, bragging rights, and (if you desire) a guest-post on your blog acknowledging your chicken identification expertise!

Three hints:
1) They should all be breeds that lay brown eggs.
2) They are supposed to be females.
3) Hatcheries make mistakes from time to time, so the above hints might not apply.

So, without further ado, I present the lineup of our dastardly suspects:

Chick A: Wanted for possession of an unlicensed peeper

Chick B: Accused of appearing in public with an indecent hairdo

Chick C: Wanted for grain rustling

Yes, we’re alive!

It’s been a long time since we posted, simply because this Fall has been pretty overwhelmingly busy!  To give you an idea of some of the things going on these past couple months at the Flying T…

Fall was spectacular this year, and though we got a light dusting, we didn’t have a repeat of the Halloween snowstorm of 2011.  Here’s a pic of the Flying T in late fall from the air.

The beginning of Fall also brought some new additions to the Flying T.  One is “Rocky,” our new black labrador puppy.

He’s growing fast, and has made friends with just about everybody except the house cat.

Fall is a wonderful time of year in New Hampshire – the temperatures are perfect for us, and get us out and moving even more than in summer.  Here’s our son showing off some moves on his bike and a makeshift ramp he put together.

Our younger daughter had a “coming of age” milestone – reaching the age we have determined is the minimum to be allowed to operate the tractor solo.  She’s been very proud of her newfound freedom and ability to pitch in to some of the heavier-duty chores.

The ducks hatched their last clutches of the season.  They were much smaller than earlier in the year.  We believe this is due of the loss of our prime drake to a predator a bit before they started setting.

With the new arrivals, we also had a few departures.  Another duck to a predator, and a hen to a mishap.  And then another departure due to sheer meanness.  One of the roosters, “Big Daddy Rooster,” attacked the kids one too many times, so he is now at freezer camp.

Of course, the big news for the region was Hurricane Sandy.  We escaped most of its wrath, though we did lose power for long enough for us to get the PTO-driven generator running.  Our biggest need for power is to run the well – the horses alone go through about 30-40 gallons a day.

We found by running it only a few hours a day, we could replenish water supplies, get the family through the showers, and run a load of laundry.  Thanks to all the linesmen and emergency workers who got power back up and running so quickly!

The power company also did us a huge favor this summer by cutting down some of the trees that had been threatening the lines (and thus our road and driveway also), so we had little cleanup to do post-Hurricane.  However, since I was told to stay home from work, the chainsaw still got some work as we got back to clearing more of the back pasture.

I also ended up flying a few Hurricane response missions for FEMA with Civil Air Patrol.  You can take a look at some of the 175,000 damage assessment photos we took at this link:

http://fema.apps.esri.com/checkyourhome/ (Zoom in about 3 clicks until you start seeing green dots around the NYC area.  Each of those is a photo).

And so, as the fall winds up and the winter starts to move our way, we’re finishing up our preparations… just like this snapping turtle who two of our ducks escorted off the premises on her way to hibernation.

Hopefully it won’t be too long before we can post again!  Blessings to all of you as we approach this season of Thanksgiving (though every day ought to be a time to be thankful)!

Prize Rooster

In our last post, we mentioned that David’s barred rock roo won “Best Standard Cock” in show in the open class.  Here is a pic of the proud chickenman and his bird!

David has these words of wisdom about showing well at the fair:

“You need to clean him well and wash his feet with a toothbrush with a little soap to get the dirt out.  Clean feet are important.  The judge may pick up the bird and look at his feet.  When you wash them, you have three containers.  One is soapy water, and you dunk him three times and get soap on his back.  In container two, you put water in it and dunk him three times.  The next one has vinegar in the water, and you put him in that and it makes his feathers all shiny and ready for the show.  Then you gently gently wrap him with a dog towel like he’s in a sleeping bag.  Then you dry him off.  Then take a little petroleum jelly to rub his wattles and comb and shanks on the day before the show to make them shiny so the judges are impressed.”

Mom’s disclaimer:  Be careful when you dunk the chicken not to immerse their heads – they can easily drown.

Chuck the Chicken Duck, Part II

A while back, one of the kids wrote a blog post about “Chuck the Chicken Duck,” one of our Araucanas who felt more comfortable with the ducks than her own flock.

Today as we were cleaning the barn stall the ducks stay in at night, we found Chuck inside.  Normally, she lays her daily egg in one of the nesting boxes.  However, Midnight started setting yesterday (Katy has already been setting in the other box since the beginning of the month), so now both boxes are occupied.

We tried to shoo Chuck out the door to keep her from disturbing them.  Every time we did, she ran back in, or flew over the door or stall wall.  She was very determined, and agitated that she didn’t have a place to lay her egg.  We finally gave up, figuring that the ducks would scare her away and Chuck would find somewhere else.  The ducks are quite grumpy when setting, and aggressive at driving intruders away.

Sure enough, as Chuck hopped up on the nesting boxes, Midnight chased her away.  But Katy evidently is more patient, and we returned from a wheelbarrow dumping to find this:

Katy is quite the patient one.  We’ll wait till she makes her daily jaunt off the nest to eat and drink to get Chuck’s egg…

NPIP – Exam Time for the Flock

Yesterday, at our request, a representative from the Department of Agriculture came out to visit and test our chickens in conjunction with the National Poultry Improvement Program.  NPIP is a voluntary program that provides testing for common ailments in home and commercial flocks.  NPIP helps us to ensure a safe food supply and avoid the transfer of disease through other means (after all, taking care of chickens is not a hands-off activity here at the Flying T).  In addition, it allows those who raise chickens to avoid unnecessary medicines and antibiotics.  Finally, by working exclusively with NPIP-certified hatcheries and home producers, we can reduce the chances that our healthy flock is infected by birds or chicks we purchase as replacement stock.

Some of the NPIP tests are required for 4H and other shows.

The actual process is quite simple for a relatively small flock like ours (23 birds)… or at least it should be.  First,  you need to make sure they’re contained.  To accomplish this, we simply turned off the coop’s automatic door after the chickens had gone to roost for the night.  Simple, right?

However, about an hour before the NPIP representative arrived, our son went to change the chickens’ water, and six of them slipped out the door.  The three kids and I had a heck of a time chasing them down.  Free range means no fences, and lots of places for them to hide, squeeze under, and run through.  It also means that trying to entice them back into the coop with grain doesn’t work well, because there are lots of other, more tasty things to sample out in the woods.  However, after a bit of running, diving, and even climbing the compost pile, we managed to get our escapees back into the coop.  Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated the exercise, and so I have no pictures to share.  They would’ve been worth sharing!

OK, it is a simple process, once you’ve got the chickens back in the coop!

We enlisted the kids to help, and they crammed into the grain room along with the NPIP tester, Tara.  One kid would go into the coop and pick up a chicken, then bring it out to Tara, who would start by banding their legs with a numbered tag (for our older chickens, this also required removing their previous NPIP tags).

Then, she turned them onto their backs, and plucked the feathers from a small area under the wing.

A quick scratch with a scalpel to draw blood, a few drops in a plastic vial, and the chickens were released to go .

Within about an hour and a half, the vials were filled and the process was complete.  Tara said that she recently did a flock of 250 birds, and that took all day (with several helpers).

The chickens were none the worse for wear (though they were a bit indignant).

We should get our NPIP renewal certificate in the mail in a few weeks!

Spring is in the Air

Spring is in the air here at the Flying T.

Our resident Boer Goats, Jessie and Gracie, are off at another farm for a month or so in the hopes that they make very close friends with the buck there.  That would bring us kids in September.  In their place, we welcomed two more 4-month-old full-blood Boer does, Ruby and Samy (Samantha).

The Muscovy ducks started laying a few weeks ago, but weren’t sitting, so we ended up collecting a lot of them.  They’re not bad eating and very good for cooking.  On Monday, however, Midnight got the urge and has been faithfully attending a nesting box full  of eggs ever since.  If all goes well, we should be seeing our first batch of ducklings mid-May.

One thing that hasn’t been here at the farm is much in the way of rain.  That, and a dearth of snow this year, means the ground is a lot dryer than normal.  We’ve done some improvement to the soil – lime in the fall and manure in the spring.  But the grass isn’t growing very quickly yet up here or anywhere in our neighborhood up here on the hill.

I overseeded the pasture with with a mix of Orchardgrass, Kentucky Bluegrass, hybrid Fescue, and White Clover right before what was supposed to be a pretty good rain, but it never happened.  Instead, the chickens have had a bit of a feast – an expensive one.  Hopefully we get some rain tonight.

The Winter Rye we planted as a cover crop in the vegetable garden, on the other hand, is quite healthy and ready to be tilled under so we can plant our lettuce, broccoli, and the like.

The drought hasn’t seemed to bug the apples or the peaches, though.  And so far it looks like they survived both our 1st attempt at pruning and some voracious Ruffed Grouse.

The berry bushes are starting to sprout as well, and if we can keep the chickens and goats out of them, hopefully we’ll have another plentiful harvest like last year.

And back in the house, our seed starter setup is working just peachy, with the tomato plants just about ready to transplant into 4″ pots.  They’ve actually done so well that we’ll probably end up selling some of them because we can’t use half of them.

So, all is well here on the farm, but we sure are praying for rain!