Rogue Hawk Farm

Perhaps that would have been a better name choice for our farm since we recently experienced a miniature chicken massacre by hawk. I will spare you the pictures, but give you the damage report:

-one chicken died (and in a sad, sad way too)
-one chicken lost the skin on its back
-one chicken broke a foot
-one chicken is limping

We have the isolation tub in use right now. And lots of splits and neosporin (or at least the chicken equivalent of it.)

Now the question remains: What do we do about it?

We may possibly get a second coop and have 2 going at all times. That way, if the numbers dwindle too much in one, we can have a second group maturing to laying status so that our egg production never goes down.


Now if only farms didn't have so much upfront capital....

Superchickens!!! (and their capes)

A month or so ago we started to notice that the chickens backs were looking strange. Then, we noticed that one was missing a little patch of feathers. Thus, we launched our investigation.

Chicken health books said it could possibly be mites, fleas or other feather eating bugs.
We checked with friends who said they might be pecking one another.
Nutrition only dictated they get extra protein to rebuild the feathers they were losing.

As per usual in this family, we attacked it from every angle.

For the bugs we bought special eco-friendly debugging spray, completely cleaned out the chicken house, scrubbed the walls and roosts, sprayed it down, rinsed it off, let it dry, sprinkled diatomaceous earth and then replaced the bedding with fresh straw.


For the potential pecking issue, we made the chickens who were suffering from it little chicken capes.

They are certainly not the easiest things to get on, but once they're on they do a very nice job of protecting the bald spot. Here's one of our Ameraucanas showing off her new wardrobe accessory.

They look like little super heroes...especially when they fly. haha.





Now that we've had some time to see how everything worked, we're pretty sure they were just pecking each other because we had a lot of snow and they were cooped up for much longer than they're used to. I'm starting to think they're becoming mean chickens from all this snow because a few more have gotten pecked. I'll keep you posted once the snow finally melts out of their grassy area.

Roosterkas

So, as previously mentioned, the rooster (lovingly referred to as Stockpot) got eaten.

Now, one might ask, "How could you do that?!"

Well, it comes down to this. I had two options: 1) get attacked nearly every time I needed to take care of the chickens  or 2) have a delicious meal made from food that was grown safely and lovingly. Now ask yourself, what sounds like the better choice to you?

So, we butchered our first animal. Okay, well, maybe we didn't butcher him, but a very kind amish (or possibly menonite) family prepped our bird for a small fee. Much easier than getting everything set up ourselves for just one measly little bird (trust me, I've done 10-15 myself before).

Out of this whole experience came: 

Roosterkas

(our take on a traditional family meal of Chicken Paprikas, pronounced pah-prih-kahsh)

We even made the dumplings with our fresh hen eggs. The rooster and his hens were reunited for one last time!

Remembering Season 1 on the Farm

I am starting a blog to document the exciting goings on that occur at Rogue Fox Farm. It is officially the beginning of our second season here, but let's quickly recap last season:

We were a suburban family trying to learn the ropes of a farm. Given that, I'd say we did pretty darn well. We had a few disease issues - early blight with the tomatoes, some nematode issue with the rutabagas and possibly fusarium something or other with the okra...but I'm still not sure about that one. That being said, we got a ton of produce out of our 'little' garden. We grew a number of things including tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, squash, eggplant, okra, peppers, beans, rutabagas, lettuce, kale, swiss chard, etc.

We also tried our hand at animals...the easiest animals available: laying hens. We built their coop and raised them from chicks. There were 19 hens, 1 rooster. The fox, over the course of the winter, got 2 hens from us and we got the rooster (he had begun to get aggressive).  More to come on that.

And because pictures are much  more entertaining than words will ever be:

Gardens

Here you can see our lower garden through three stages. The dots correlate to the same plants in different stages. Red are the tomatoes (note the fence they're growing on disappear), Yellow are beans, and Blue is the okra.

 

Here's the middle garden. We only got one picture of it that season...I was lazy. And nevermind the Spanish labels.

  

While we're on the topic of gardens, why not show you our beautiful produce?

Produce

 We got quantity alright!

 

And variety...

 

And quality (usually, haha)

 

 We also got eggs for the first time. Cute ones at that. They are brown, blue green, cream and occasionally pinkish.

  

Chickens

They start out cute.

We made them a little halfway house to live in before the coop was finished.

And finally...there was a chicken coop built with love. LOTS of love.

Here's the montage of the creation and its residents in their full grown stage.