Intro to chicken berry farming:
Chicken berries?
I'm afraid I can't take credit for that one. My former boss called the colorful eggs that one day, and it stuck.
Another co-worker nurtured the idea that "squeezing" the chickens might help us produce more berries.
That's not exactly what gets produced when you squeeze a chicken. Just ask my son.
Chick update!
We just added (8) Isa Brown pullets and (5) frizzle bantam pullets to our flock.
Pics coming soon! :)
Free range
We only lock up our chickens at night for protection from predators. From morning until dusk, the chickens are free to roam but generally stay within 200 feet of the coop, eating bugs and taking dust baths.
Organic
Our chickens eat only natural foods, corn meal layer mix and whatever bugs they can catch, as well as vegetable and other kitchen scraps.
Farm fresh
We collect berries every day, sometimes more than once per day if the weather is extremely cold or hot.
Colorful mix
We have several breeds of chicken that give us berries that range in color from a very light brown to a medium brown and bright blue to a pale green.
NOTE: It is actually better if we DON'T wash the berries before packaging them, so do not be surprised if there is a bit of bedding, a downy feather or another manner of debris smudged on the shell.
There is a thin protective coating on the egg that keeps out bacteria and keeps the contents fresh!
They wrote the book on it ...
Meet the ladies!
Here are the berry makers.
Our little hobby farm specializes in dual purpose breeds and other varieties that are rare or fun or just interesting to us at the time.
Come and visit with a few of the ladies producing berries at this time.
Barred Plymouth Rock
Black Australorp
Buff Orpington
Rhode Island Red
Ameraucana (not a purebred, aka Easter Egger)
Ameraucana (not a purebred, aka Easter Egger)
We have several colors of Ameraucana 'type' hens. We also have a pair of White Rock hens that are not pictured above.
New to the flock since this photo shoot, and making pretty darkish brown berries for us are four Cuckoo Maran pullets that we hatched from eggs that were sent through the mail to us. (Video below!)
Finally, we are getting a few little beige berries from a pair of red frizzle bantam hens that followed me home from last summer's 4-H Small Animal Auction.
Add your links
Sites for chicken fanciers. If you raise poultry as pets, or for berries, share your favorite reference sites here.
BackYardChickens Forum
1 point
Backyard Chickens - Message Board
BackyardChickens.com - a place to ask, discuss and more...0 points
Michigan Poultry Lovers
Yahoo Group0 points
Discuss Poultry | Mother Earth News
0 points
A Chickens Tribe - tribe.net
The pet that lays you breakfast! Just to make it e more...0 points
Hobby farming for fun and healthy living
You know what's coming ...
It was inevitable ...
Which came first?
Fetching blurbs now... please stand bythe chicken
purplelady says:
No, No, everyones got it wrong. First there were bushes. The bushes grew berries. Then there were chickens. They ate the berries. Then the chickens laid the eggs. And then came the Easter bunny!
Posted April 26, 2008
the egg
Egg toys!!
Our first "homegrown" chicks
The next day, she decided again she would NOT leave the nesting box. We took her berries and left.
The next day, she once again declared she was NOT ready to abandon her berries. We relented.
Twenty-one days later, she became a first time momma.
chicks: day one
Chicks #1 and #2 look on as chick #5 emerges from its egg, still wet and not yet fluffy.
chicks: day six
Cute chicken toys!
week old chicks peek out
Some mixed breed chicks from our backyard flock. This was our first time hatching eggs and we were pretty excited about the whole process.
Runtime: 2:07
428 views
1 Comments:
chicks: day eleven
chicks: day twenty-four
Wow, more chicken stuff.
chicks: day forty-nine
Again?!
day old chicks
This will be boring for 99.9976% of you, but we got a real kick out of watching our hen hatch out her eggs after sitting on the nest for 21 days straight. She is a Black Australorp and she was sitting on Cuckoo Maran eggs. Seven hatched in all, five survived.
Runtime: 6:46
749 views
2 Comments:
maran in the hand
How do you like this lens?
|
XP
We got some chicks today that are less than a week old, and we are going to try to sneak them under "Crabby" tonight ... wish us luck! With any, she'll think they came out of her eggs, and 'mother' them well. Posted April 26, 2008 |
|
|
XP
One of our Cuckoo Marans has gone "broody" and boy she is a protective one! Will try to get some new pics added soon. Posted April 17, 2008 |
|
AllHorses
Need to add photos of our grown-up Cuckoo Maran hens; we are getting eggs from them every day! Posted March 24, 2008 |
|
freelief
There's my buddy! Looking for pics of a "proper" black silkie roo, a blue silkie and a black or blue frizzle to add to the content below for reference. Posted February 28, 2008 |
|
|
freelief
Thanks for the comments everyone. I'll have to add a module or two devoted to the Fluffy. We aren't quite sure what the Fluffy is. Posted February 05, 2008 |
young "Fluffy"
WHAT IS THE FLUFFY?
Well, he's a bantam. And he's a he.Beyond that, it is a bit hard to guess where his genetic road trip took a wrong turn.
When we were "chicken noobs" we thought he was a black silkie.
Then we went to 4-H Fair, and saw what a black silkie was supposed to look like. That was not our Fluffy.
I posted his only-a-mother-could-love face on a chicken group. I asked if he could be blue. That started an interesting debate. In the end, those who believed that he was a partridge and those who believed that he was a blue were about evenly split. No consensus there.
At issue is his being a silkie at all. Some have speculated he may have some frizzle in there somewhere.
Does that make him a sizzle?
Somehow, blue partridge sizzle doesn't have the same warm fuzzy feeling as simply calling him our special Fluffy.
ain't he tweet?
Here, chick, chick!
Please RATE this lens:
(5 stars is the BEST!)
