Quail_Antwerp: Words from the Barnyard...

[keljonma]

Sounds like 2010 will be a replay of 2009 for you with hatching! I hope you have a great year with chicklettes!

 

[lorihadams]

Hey Aly, how old were your children when you started giving them formal assignments?

Congrats on the birds! I drove by a house yesterday that had embden geese walking around the front yard and it got me thinking about them too.....we are planning on building a proper barn for the goats and feed/hay storage and we are thinking of putting the chicken coop inside the barn with a separate run and a small access door for them to get into the pasture to free range so that the goats (hopefully) can't get into the chicken area and their food. I can't wait! I want to try different breeds out and I predict I will have a massive order for the spring too! Isn't it wonderful!!!

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

Poor dear Aly..

Insanity has become her.. covered with feathers and chicken poop.

Well, I'm not covered with feathers LOL

Chicken poop is a whole 'nother issue.....

and I'm not insane yet-but I guess that could be a matter of opinion....

Becca and I have plans with the local feedstore to have chicks there every Saturday in April. We plan to move about 600 chicks that month. We absolutely can do it!

The chicks on my "personal" orders will be raised up, and I'm only going to keep the ones that I feel are the "best of the best". The rest will be sold at the local swaps, or I hope to have a seller's booth at Nationals this year for selling started poultry.

And of course, as long as I'm hatching, from March until June I can sell chicks at Auction every Monday! and Bunnies, too!

This is the year, folks, my poultry venture is going to take off. I just know it.

Last spring/summer I had local customers who came and purchased chicks from me. Some of those people have said they hoped to get more from me this year...so I'm hoping for repeat customers. I also had people coming and buying started hens at $10+ a piece!

I'm also already watching Craigslist for any freebies that I can flip. That did so well for us last year!

Rabbits are getting bred this weekend...

This year I have some good quality breeds to offer, too. I have Show Quality Large Fowl Black Langshans, from a local breeder who worked with the shows for years (mostly with call ducks I do believe tho). The parents to the Langshans I have (and Becca has some, too) were shown last year, and did very well.

I also have Show Quality Call ducks this year. WHOOT! They are absolutely my favorites on the whole place!

I have my Welsummers, all who are from Non-Hatchery Stock (even tho I am bringing in 5 hatchery chicks this year) and the eggs I've started getting from them the last couple days are nice and dark terracotta colored! I'm so happy to see that, because I only got a couple eggs from them last fall before they stopped laying.

My DD has Black Cochin Bantams, her rooster, Cackle, is a smooth frizzle, and he's gorgeous and has great conformation and that perfect poufy tail...and then her pullet, Flicka, we purchased from a Breeder that was showing some of Flicka's hatchmates at Nationals. She's very fully feathered, and just gorgeous (if not just a little muddy right now!)

My Marans are laying cute little Milk chocolate colored eggs! (note to self, finish their hoop house!)

This year I'm keeping any and all Sussex and BLRW's that I hatch out from now until June to rebuild my personal flocks of them. It was a hard winter, and I lost close to 20 birds over the winter.

But we're over the hump, and I'm ready for whatever 2010 is bringing!

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

Hey Aly, how old were your children when you started giving them formal assignments?

Do you mean for school, or farm chores?

My oldest 3 children have all had some public school already, but I already work with my 4 yo son on colors, numbers, and his abc's. Baby Boy we're working on colors with (mostly consists of "look, your shirt is red today" or "your socks are white" not real hard "working" with him.)

As for Farm Chores, right about 5 years of age we start assigning certain tasks. Usually starts out with whomever just turned five takes over feeding of one of the outside dogs and works up to something bigger.

Like right now, my oldest DD and DS (ages 10 and 8 respectively) are responsible for feeding/watering all the rabbits. My 6 yo DS is responsible for feeding 1 outside dog.

Now, we start them as soon as they can walk on cleaning their rooms, making their beds, and sorting their own dirty clothes. That's house chores.

 

[lorihadams]

Thanks, we're just trying to develop a system for getting everything done. With the kids at almost 5 and 3 it gets crazy sometimes. They help out with laundry and they help me do food prep sometimes. With the weather so crazy here lately they don't want to go outside much so we haven't started them on animal chores yet but that will come when we move. I want to try to start some formal assignments with my son when he turns 5. My DD is a whole other issue, she's just not ready to sit still yet long enough to do much so we incorporate stuff into the day with her colors, numbers, shapes, abcs and such. We play "I spy" a lot!

I am worried about the history/social studies aspect of things. I don't worry about english and math and science but I hate history Not my thing. I just find it daunting to come up with plans for everything. I know it will work itself out but I'm just nervous. Thanks for letting me pick your brain!

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

For history/social studies, go to your library. There are A LOT of simple stories out there for young children about our founding fathers, the constitution, and colonial times in America. My kids have loved picking out some of the history books that are actually in story form, and not like a text book.

It makes it into a "fun" reading for them, and they're learning without knowing it LOL

 

[BeccaOH]

Poor dear Aly..

Insanity has become her.. covered with feathers and chicken poop.

ROFL

Gulp!!! Though I'm probably not too far behind her. :/

 

[FarmerDenise]

My DD went to public school, but we did a lot of teaching at home too. The library was definitely our hangout! We would read the stories and and then follow them through with some other activity. A lot of picture drawing, somtimes building forts and stuff with sticks or blocks and recreating the story with her little toy animals. Since I came from another country, we also incorporated different peoples traditions in some of our activities, starting with the ones I grew up with and then looking into other cultures or asking friends about theirs.
We also often played "imagine" games. Imagine we lived in "Laura Ingalls" time, what would you wear, what would we eat, how would we get our food etc. I would try to cook some of the foods with my DD.
This way it was fun for all of us. We often included her friends too and they loved these "games" also.

 

[Occamstazer]

I am completely in awe of your poultry operation, those are some impressive numbers!

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

So, last fall my mom told us all about her neighbor and how he raises pigs, and that he would have piggies ready to go in Janaury.

So we had told her to get a message to him on our behalf that we were definitely interested in 2 piggies.

Well, we had unexpected expenses in December/January, so didn't think we'd get those piggies. I told mom to tell him we'd have to wait and get piggies out of a later litter. Turns out, mom had never given him the first message anyway.

Today we got a wild hair up our backside and decided to drive over to visit my mom. Mom walked us next door to meet The Pig Man.

We got to his house and he meets us in the yard and hollers down the hill to us, "You here to see the pigs?"

Me: YEA!

Him: c'mon! I have a litter that will be ready to go in about a week.

Me: what?! you still have piggies?!

Turns out, the piggies were NOT born as early as my mom said they were, they were born just a couple days before Christmas!

Whoot! so I didn't miss the piggie boat!!

So, we chose our two piggies, and he said they'll be ready to go sometime the first week of February. He's castrating our little boy piggie this week, and our other piggie is a black and pink girl, whom I've already named Bella....

Bella is hopefully going to grow up and be a breeder pig for us...a nice Mama Sow....we'll see tho...

We'll be bringing home a total of 4 piggies...2 for us, 1 for my mom, and 1 for Becca.

Becca hasn't picked out her piggie yet. E's piggie is a red and pink boy, whom I've named Hambone....

Mom's piggie is Porkchop- and she's another red and pink piggie. Very cute!

They're Duroc/Yorkshire/Hamp crosses.

And now, I just can't wait for February!! whoot!

By this winter I'll have my freezer stocked with grass fed beef that we raised, pork that we raised, and poultry that we raised! whoot!!

oh yea, I'm gonna try meat chickens this year, too!

whoot!