Week six - Through the eyes of a child...

There is little more amazing to watch then a child learning... Our experience as leaders in our local 4H club has given us many opportunities to see this first hand. Whether its learning to cook, sew or fix an engine, how to take care of an animal or grow your own food... watching them learn and grow is pretty amazing to see! 

This month we've been hatching chicks and thus have had a number of visitors! 

A couple of the 4Hers have been following the chicks progress and have waited anxiously for their eventual arrival.

The kids have learned how the egg is formed inside the chicken and how often they lay eggs. We have also learned how long it will take for the chick to grow inside the egg (21 days) and finally they've watched them emerge and thrive. 

While they may not grow up to be chicken farmers, they have learned important lessons of life, natural selection and the responsibility of caring for another being. 

Hope they look back on these experiences as fondly as we do... 

Week #3 - A Valentine Chick!

This is our heart egg! 

Due to hatch on Valentine's Day it is just one of our many hatching eggs that we are incubating. This is a bit of new skill for us and we have predictably made a number of mistakes. 

Fertilized eggs needs just the right conditions to hatch... steady temperature between 99-100F, humidity between 60-65% and regular turning (3 times a day). We have a pretty basic incubator that can hatch out up to 60 chicks at a time. 

This year we have a couple of kids from our 4H Club who are following the progress of the eggs from laying to hatching. They are so excited to watch them emerge and are already dreaming up names for each one...

Fingers crossed! With some luck and learning we will see have some fluffy chicks in a few weeks. 

Double-double!

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This is the real Canadian farmer's double-double!

Misleading...

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These three eggs are all from hens who are roughly the same age.... what's ironic is that the huge white eggs is from the smallest chicken in the barn! 

The winter coop!

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The winter coop is warm and snug and the girls seem to be adjusting well to the move inside. 

While I'm sure like all of us that they would prefer to out in the field and sunshine scrounging for bugs (well I'm good without that last part...), they seem to be happy enough scratching in the leaves and straw that we use for bedding in the coop. 

They sure have lots to say anyway.... #cluckinghens

Consistently inconsistent!

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Store bought eggs seem boring.... all one colour and size. Our hens give us all shades, shapes and sizes! #fiftyshadesofbeige

Egg-citing facts!

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Did you know that hens will lay eggs even if they never see a rooster? 

Similar to humans, female chickens have all the eggs that they will ever lay in their body when they are hatched and will lay eggs as part of a regular cycle (usually every 25 hours) as long as they are well nourished, happy, stress free hens. 

That being said, laying will decrease or cease for periods of time when depending on hours of sunlight, temperature changes, and periods of molting (losing and re-growing of feathers). Egg laying also decreases as the hen ages! 

Grumpy old men...

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We love geese eggs and were hoping that at least one of this year's geese would be a female... however as luck would have it, we believe all are ganders! 

They live out in one of the back corrals and honk and hiss at anyone going by. They are like a group of grumpy old men who fuss and gossip about each other, yet can't stand to be apart! #sillygoose

There is always one...

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There is always one... each day when collecting eggs, there is always one hen (at least) in every coop that is broody - which essentially means that they want to sit on the eggs instead of you taking them away. 

We have discovered a errant rooster amongst our new batch of chicks which we are planning to pair up with our broody hens to see if we can raise our own chicks. #anewadventure

So that's where she's been hiding them...

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We have a couple of hens that wander around the property that we have not been able to locate their secret egg laying location... well we finally found it! 

Like a present each day....

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I never get tired of collecting eggs on the farm. 

There is something both soothing and exciting about peeking into the nesting box to see what's there. 

Its like getting a present every day! 

A ride to Russell!

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Today Farmer Phil took a long ride out to Russell, Mb to pick up a truck load of hens. While we usually raise our layer hens from chicks, we annually go out west to pick up 19 week old chickens who are ready to lay to supplement our summer egg supply.  

It was a long drive, made longer due to much construction but he safely arrived with 120 layers this evening for us and a neighbouring farm. 

Extreme eggs!

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While I haven't bought eggs from the grocery store for years, I remember them as a dozen very white, very consistently sized eggs in every carton. 

As a small scale egg producer, we experience the tremendous extremes and variations in size, color and markings in our chickens eggs! 

I think it makes it more interesting as every carton is slightly different! We ate this tiny egg this Sunday and it had a tiny yolk inside about the size of the tip of a pencil! 

Consistency is boring

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Having laying hens means that each carton of eggs you put together is a little bit different. 

Unique shapes, shades and sizes create a interesting surprise in every dozen! 

In the future we are hoping to expand the breeds of hens that we raise and add some green or blue eggs to the mix!

Hide and Seek

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While the majority of our laying hens hang out in 'chicken tractors' or movable shelters that we shift to fresh grass/pasture each day, some of our more wily ladies invariably escape to range around the farm throughout the day. 

These are some of my favorite girls with whom we play an eternal game of hide and seek. We make half-hearted attempts at catching them and they pretend like they don't watch our every move out of the corner of their eye. 

Egg-ucation

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Did you know that a hen has all the eggs that she is going to lay in her lifetime already inside her when she hatches! 

Each egg starts out as a tiny follicle in the hen which takes about 24 hours to form into a complete egg as it travels through her body. 

How amazing is that! 

Time for chores

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Time for chores, everyday! Feed the chickens, water the cattle, collect the eggs, milk the goats, repeat. 

Farm life has a reassuring, re-occurring routine that is both gratifying and aggravating all at the same time!   

The bucket...

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If your back door is anything like ours, the entrance way sports a collection of muddy barn boots, discarded work gloves, coveralls and hats along with the eternal bucket.... could be a bucket waiting to be filled with water, could be a bucket of kitchen scraps waiting to go out to the pigs, or it may be an bucket of eggs coming in to be washed.... but there is always a bucket. 

An odd egg...

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I don't profess to understand the science behind the odd eggs that invariable come from our hens, however, I'm sure there is a likely explanation.

I prefer to imagine that there is intentional artistry involved.... that the hens congratulate each other on particularly funky looking eggs like we revere artist and their work hanging in the art gallery. 

I wonder what this egg symbolizes for the artistic hen that created it? 

Chicken Haiku

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My mind was wandering as I washed today's eggs... as a result, I present to you a chicken haiku (apologies in advance): 

Our hens lay them all, 
brown, white, beige, speckled, large, small.
They are all yummy!