We added more chickens gradually to get more eggs and once we moved out of the city and begun to free range our birds across several acres the flock really exploded. Partly because I got an incubator and partly because we had so many losses in the flock initially while transitioning from confinement to free ranging. A year later we’ve added heritage turkey, guinea and ducks to the operation.

Between broody hen hatching, incubating, chick buying and predator losses, I honestly can’t tell you how many birds we have anymore. I know breeds and origin for everyone just not solid counts anymore. I can say that we’ve got enough to supply our family with year round eggs plus much, much more.

What I’ve really been after all along is the beautiful rainbow of eggs to enjoy… 

Right now we aren’t even in what I’d consider the “peak laying season” as the daylight hours are still gradually increasing as they lead to summer solstice in June. We don’t provide artificial light in our poultry coops to control their laying cycles, it’s all sunlight driven here.

We fill one of these baskets a week on just chicken eggs, it’s about 6 dozen eggs. We aren’t eating 6 dozen eggs a week so we are selling extras to our neighbors in and around Golconda, Illinois and we will be back to the farmers market with eggs this summer. If you need eggs give us a shout and we can schedule a time for you to come by!

When egg purchases are slow I like to get egg-adventurous and make new things. I just realized I’ve never tried sending hard boiled egg to school for the kiddos lunch so I boiled up some eggs. Today I’ve also got plans for a banana cream pie but I’m also eager to make:

• Lemon curd
• Baked custard
• Gluten free angel food cake
• Picked eggs

Nathan is famous for making his crepes or his German Baby that use a great many eggs. What is your most loved, egg heavy recipe?

The post Beautifull Naturally Colored Eggs appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

You see we were pointed in the direction of a homeless livestock guardian dog. We’ve known we needed one since our beloved family dog lost her life last fall.

Luckily we’ve only had one farm predator issue since losing our farm guard dog, Dixie. You might remember my post about the mink killing my birds just before Easter.

We still have our herding dog that we are trying to train (she might be pregnant!) but we know she’ll never be a dog we can trust with our baby poultry… and she’s not a guard dog.

Anyway, over the weekend we just became more farm legit! We picked up Winnie, a 4 year old Great Pyrenees from a shelter. We knew she could have past life issues that could make her unsuitable for our farm setting but the shelter offered to let us foster her while we test the waters and after four days I’m pretty confident she’s a keeper (so is Adalyn!).

She’s huge but so gentle and submissive. She’s not shown any aggression to any of our family farm residents and she’s been introduced to everyone, cats, ducklings, ruminates, chickens, kids, herding dog, the neighbor’s Great Pyrenees…

Also, we put up an electric fence to attempt containing our barnyard creatures. The grass is always greener on the other side of the road, according to our goats, and we’d really like to avoid having one hit by a car…

Speaking of running over ruminates- I ran over a lamb last week! It was horrible but lucky. Little Sam the lamb was asleep under the back of our Prius Friday afternoon as we piled in the car to get to the girls first softball practice. My rear view mirror and backup camera were clear so I backed up… Heard this knocking sound under the car. Immediately stopped to investigate and found my lamb underneath the center of the car, pinned, bloody nosed and freaking out.

OMG I ran over my lamb!!

I was having a heart attack, the kids in the car were very concerned and needy, the lamb was being squished by the car… but somehow I managed to successfully drive the two front tires up on a couple split logs of wood, to raise the car up enough so that I could free Sam the lamb. Had to pull him out sideways by his fur.

While I freed Sam Everly was tasked with calling her dad home to help out…

“Dad, come home now a lamb has been run over!”

We had to leave for softball right away and someone needed to stay with Sam and assess the damage… Luckily Sam didn’t get run over with the tires of the car, just grated a bit beneath the middle of the car and the gravel drive. He knocked his nose hard in the freak out.

After he was freed he was up and walking fine, bloody nose stopped after applying some pressure and an hour later he was out munching grass with his lamb you girlfriend Holly.

Lambs sleeping under the car is another reason we ran our electric fencing… and I’ll always look under the car before getting in and driving. OMG!

The post Meeting Winnie, running over a lamb and shock fencing… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Death

Take today for example, we awoke to a gruesome/ fascinating discovery: The back legs, tail and uterus of a dead mouse on the floor. The mouse was pregnant, like 4 babies were identifiable. We could have cleaned it up and tossed it out before the kids noticed but we have a very science minded child- so we picked it up and put it aside for looking at.

“Aw…” Everly remarked at the babies “but it’s good they aren’t taking over our house!” she added. She’s right, baby animals are cute and it’s sad when they die but a house full of rodents is NOT a good thing. Our cats live in the house with a job to do. They earned their keep on this kill.  If you want to see it you can here- most of my facebook friends seemed disturbed so I opted NOT to show it here.

Later, when we went out to feed the livestock the girls spotted a dead cardinal in the grass near a waterway. “Can we take this inside to study mom?” they asked me. They know not to touch without asking first. This dead bird had some decay and possibly disease by the looks of it, so we opt to look at it where it was, without touching.

Back when the below freezing temperatures and snow were here their daddy brought home a few dead birds that likely froze to death over at the farm shop. One was a woodpecker two were common grackles that we studied and identified using our bird books.

The girls drew diagrams of their birds and labeled them. They even plucked a few interesting feathers to glue to their observations page.

They love to get to see birds up close.

New life

A “peep” sang out from our poultry incubator in the living room this morning, we have eggs that are due to hatch. The girls ran over and really looked at the eggs. One had a small crack and the longer we looked the more we noticed!

Turns out three eggs are in the process of hatching early. I keep hatch records so I was jotting notes down and the girls decided to join in. Adalyn drew pictures of the eggs and colored them in accordingly (we have some easter egger chickens). Everly documented the date, time, titled her journal entry and labeled/ colored the eggs on her observation page. I smiled at the sight of their self driven activity.

Being mindful of teaching moments and really letting them become immersed in both the good and bad of farm life has really been working out.

Of course, we didn’t just expose them to gruesome death right away. We eased in with the topic, first when our pet bunny died, then as we saw death around us (an elderly neighbor died, we saw a dead squirrel in the road, our dog was run over, chickens died, turkeys needed slaughtering, we tried to save orphaned lambs, newborn calves needed warming and bottle feeding, etc).

I think being so sheltered from death makes it seem more devastating (for kids and adults). What do you think?

The post Life, death & kids… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Next week we are planning to bring a dairy goat home, plus her mating partner! The ordeal of trekking back to Evansville for house upkeep and to pickup our milk has been taking it’s toll, big time. The kids don’t enjoy being cooped up in a car all day and we lose too much time during the travel that we could be putting to good use around the house and farm. The number of leaving-the-farm-errands MUST be reduced… So I’m taking up goat milking next week. Wish me luck.

I’m intimidated and anxious about the mater of fencing for the goat. I know they can be difficult and sometimes a downright headache. I’m hoping we get lucky or can manage it because we NEED the milking to take place here on the farm for the sake of simplicity. This weekend, better known as Goat Prep 2014 will be our last shot at getting ready before the goats arrive.

We also processed the first of the 40 Red Ranger chickens this week. I’ve been caring for to 40 Red Rangers here on Tanglefoot Ranch, they are meat birds for a farm project. One of them got a hurt leg in a chicken tractor moving ordeal and was just too far gone to mend. To be humane, Nathan ended the suffering and surprisingly Everly was his helper. Eventually the girls will see slaughter from start to finish but we haven’t been pushing them, rather I’ve been trying to shield them, Adalyn specifically.

The other night when Nathan went out to start the slaughter process Everly noticed he had left right away and wanted to go out with him. I warned her about what she might see and she was eager to go and watch “cause I’ve never seen it done before” she commented. Then she went out and took part in it ALL. Her favorite part was when the organs came out and we got to identify and discuss the workings of the digestive system. I cringed a little when she came back inside to ask me if I’ve ever seen “a chicken’s face cut off”. She was referring to it being bled out and then beheaded for plucking. LOL. She took it like a champ, it’s a good thing too because slaughter day is on the horizon for all the other meat birds. Our plucker and kill cones are being engineered right now by the men of Tanglefoot Ranch.

Oh, speaking of Everly… She just had her fifth birthday! A few friends made the trip out to Tanglefoot to help us celebrate. She had a Hello Kitty cake, got her own puppy (a working dog. Red Heeler/ Border Collie breed named Snowball) had friends over to play with, it was a great day for her. So great that she zonked out in the middle of our nightly story time. Look how big she is!

We’ve been working on herding dog training for her new puppy. Snowball has strong herding instincts and has already taken to rounding up the turkeys, chickens and even the girls. This scares them and can result in unwanted bites or scratches when puppy enthusiasm combines with herding needs not being met. We have lots of work ahead of us with her but I think she’ll also be a great addition to the family. She’s already bringing out the best in our existing dog, Dixie. Dixie seems to love being a leader and she loves the freedom and space she now has to roam here on the farm. 

I bet when the goats arrive Snowball will get enough herding work to keep her busy ;P

The post Herding instincts, birthday joy and milking goats… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Also, my new chicks are integrating to the main flock right now and we are preparing to move in just a few days so our chicken coop situation is in transition. I also figured the stress of the transition was possibly impacting the egg output from the hens.

Today there was quite a squawk fest out of the chicken coop and my girls anxiously ran out to collect the eggs. However, there were no eggs to be found. So we went about our garden and backyard chores. I opened the compost bin to get some fresh compost for one of the plants and I left it open for the chickens to scratch around in since were getting ready to move and we have no intention of taking cooking compost with us. I had the compost bin open earlier in the week for the same reason but husbands who work outside the homestead (he has just 3 work days left!) miss lots of strategic decision making and close the compost bin back up thinking they are being helpful.

Anyway, after a while we went back inside had some cold water ate breakfast and we heard the chickens squawking again. We went out to try to collect eggs and once again there were none to be found.

They always say if you’re missing eggs, go on an egg hunt.

All week we’ve been hunting around the yard in strange corners, under bushes and behind various things to see if we could find any hidden eggs, we found nothing. After the recent squawk fest we noticed the Rhode Island Red hanging out at the base of the open composter. Just out of curiosity I bent down and peeked my head in the composter…

I found two Rhode Island Reds and one of my Americauna hens sitting on what seems to be a pretty large clutch of eggs inside the composter, on top of the compost.

Now, assuming the eggs have been there for a while….

1. Are they cooked?

Compost bins are HOT, deathly hot. The hens laying in there were panting up a storm. I put a bowl of water in there for them because they didn’t seem interested in budging. The temperature read shows the air inside the compost bin at 85 degrees and the soil temperature is the same since it’s pretty dried out.

2. Are the hens broody and sensing they should be hatching these eggs?

Remember my 4 new roosters? They have been seen this week jumping then hens (as in sexing them up). Now I think their immediate success in mating is probably unlikely but on the off chance that they are successful and these hens are broody… should we let nature take its course and see if we get baby chicks?

Based upon the heat of the composter these eggs probably aren’t going to be edible, so if they are fertile I guess it’s less waste right? But we are moving in just a few days… Wont the move disrupt a broody hen’s hatching process, especially for a first time brooder?

What do you think?

The post Tales from the backyard flock: Are they cooked or do they have chicks in them? appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.