Farm animals – Page 2 – Beautiful Chaos

A new chicken coop on the quick

Transforming our geese coop into a chicken coop

In December the fox took our runner ducks and now he paid us a visit once again. The fox chewed itself trough the chicken wire of the coop and took our rooster and 3 hens. We had not been closing the little door of the main coop, thinking, behind the chicken wire the chickens would be safe. The fox made 3 holes in the chicken wire and we upgraded the chicken coop in order to close the holes. We attached some wooden boards around the bottom of the coop, covering the holes in the chicken wire this way.

Chicken coop with 4 white chickens scratching around

From now on we are closing the little door of the inner coop every night again.

2 Days after the fox attack the poultry dealer came into our village and we purchased 4 new chickens. They are called greenlayer and they actually lay light greenish eggs. We got one in white, one in black and 2 in gray.

Gray greenlayer behind chicken wire with a black greenlayer in the back

Well, let’s just say getting the new chickens was not a good idea. The old chickens attacked the new chickens right away. Since the new chickens just ducked and did not do anything else, we had to separate them before the old chickens would have eaten the new chickens. Since the new chickens where so out of the wind and hard to cache, we decided to take out the old chickens and put them into our livestock trailer for the time being. The white greenlayer turned out to be ratter aggressive to and we had to take that one out of the group of greenlayers as well. We put the white greenlayer with the old chickens hoping it would help that it has the same colour. It took several weeks, but they have arranged them selves.

Now to the new home of the old chickens. The livestock trailer is not very ideal, although it is spacious for the 5 chickens. It is old and the wooden panels are broken. Every time I opened the door I was afraid it would fall of, so we need another chicken coop soon. With little time on my husband hands we decided he would transfer the geese coop into a new chicken coop. The geese never really used the coop and since the gander turned so aggressive we luckily found them another home a few weeks ago.

My husband made the inner coop safe against fox and marten with a door with a more stable mesh fence and closing the front wall with wood. My husband builds a large aviary to the frond of the coop in which we put some old wood chips in which the chickens can look for insects.

A-frame chicken coop with 5 white chickens scratching around

I think the chickens are happy to be able to go outside and find insects again.

5 White chickens scratching around in woodchips

One of our dogs loves to keep watch in the shade of the chicken coop.

A Great Pyrenees resting in the shade of an A-frame chicken coop

Making hay and biomass

Preparing for winter and next garden season

With the sheep and hare came the need for hay as winter feed. We have had sheep and hare before and made hay before, so we already have a baler. As a new addition, to make life a lot easier for us, we have a bale collecting trailer now and we are so happy we got this. It made collecting the hay bales from the field from something physical demanding to an easy one-man job.

**Hay bales being collected from the pasture with a bale collecting trailer**

We are lucky to be able to use a pasture nearby. This pasture is too small for the farmer to use with his big machines, so we can use it for free. We do need to bring it back into shape again, though. There has nothing been done this season and partly the reed grass and thistles had grown higher as the tractor is. The advantage is that everything has sown itself and there are no seeds left on the stalk. This makes it very interesting as biomass for the garden.

Normally the first half of September is a little late for making hay, but (in this case) we are lucky with another heat wave and where able to make good hay on some parts of this pasture and on other parts we made biomass for the garden.

**Stacked hay bales in a barn as winter feed for sheep and hare**

The good hay was pressed in small square bales for easy handling as animal feed and the biomass was pressed into round bales using the blades in the baler to cut the material smaller for easier use in the garden. Mainly the biomass is meant for mulching the garden beds. Without any seed pressure this is ideal. The straw I was using until now is still full of grain seed and I have grain growing everywhere, which is a bit annoying.

**Stacked biomass round bales sitting outside**

We did also have the change to make straw again early August, since that is needed as stable filling. The straw wasn’t very nice this year due to the strange and wet wetter this summer, but we are happy we where able to make any at all.

On the pasture where we made hay, there is a small water stream running trough the pasture with some big willow trees. We found massive damage from the beaver nagging on a big tree.

It is impressive to see how big the woodchips are this beaver produces.

Expanding the homestead and harvesting

What’s there to harvest and what animals did we get?

Well, that is just the way life goes. No baby, but back in action doing gardening and expanding our homestead.

My husband and children had finished planting all of de gardens. Some gardens did Ok, others where ratter disappointing. I will be reviewing our different type of garden beds after they have been harvested and prepared for winter.

Harvest

Meanwhile harvest has been somewhat disappointing. The onions where very small and I will not come around to buying onions in winter. I am trying to shorten the time that I will have to buy onions by using onion tops and spring onions as much as I can for as long as they are growing in stead of using the onions we have in storage.

The garlic did well and even had some nice size bulbs compared to last year. What I found so strange is that some of the garlic plants also made a small bulb in the stalk above ground level. I have never seen this before, but apparently some varieties do this instead of making a flower.

2 Garlic plants with nice bulbs and small bulbs higher up in the stalks

I am also saving some seed. The kale, unlike last year, survived the winter and bloomed beautifully. After the seed where done I cut all of the seedpods of and let them dry for a while. Deseeding the pods was a bit unpleasant, because the seedpods where a bit sharp and stung but with gloves on it was ok. We got enough seed to last us a life time.

We also collected seed from mustard, spring onions, lupine, peas, carrots, different grains and different flowers.

Seeds from carrots with some carrot seed heads — **Carrot seeds**

I am also drying some marigold flower leaves to make some calendula salve.

Marigold flower leaves on a paper towel to dry

We finally started to harvest tomatoes, but we are losing the plants to blight again. Surprisingly late since we are having rain for over a month already. Luckily we also have a greenhouse now and there is no blight in there yet. With the first chilli’s turning red in the greenhouse, I made a chilli sauce on tomato base. My husband enjoyed it very much after a few months without chilli sauce.

A harvest basket with tomatoes, chilli’s and a cucumber

2 jars with a home made tomato base chilli sauce — **tomato base chilli sauce**

Other then that we have been eating potatoes from the garden, but the beans have been very disappointing. We are also having some cucumbers from the greenhouse.

My sons Hokkaido pumpkin was the only pumpkin plant to really survive and thrive, so he is very proud of that and checks the crop every day.

An almost finished pumpkin with a small new still flowering pumpkin growing on a bed of straw

I have been trying to harvest some blackberries, but since they are wild growing most of them are hard to reach and will be enjoyed by the birds.

As for our homestead

My husband left to collect sidewalk tiles at a friend’s house. He came home with 2 runner ducks (a couple). I’ve always wanted to have runner ducks to eat the so many slugs we have in the gardens. Apparently they also eat lettuce, so I did not let them in the main garden yet, but they where in our garden 3 with the compost bed with the potatoes. They seemed to find more then enough to eat there. As the type of crops growing will allow, they will be moved trough all of the gardens.

Well, since the runner ducks do not go into there coop we also bought some geese to protect the runner ducks against the fox. After that the potato bed, obviously, was done.

As the coop we build for the runner ducks stayed empty we also bought some meat chickens after which we where gifted some dwarf chickens we put in the coop with them. Well the coop was a bit small for all of these chickens, but after the meat chickens have been butchered the coop is a very comfortable home for the dwarf chickens (they are so cute).

4 dwarf chickens and a dwarf rooster sitting on fence

We got 5 female sheep, lambs from this spring, and we plan on breeding with them. They are still too young though, but next year in the fall we would need a male sheep as well.

We went out for some hare to raise for meat, but now we have one female for breeding and 3 males which are the hare of the kid’s. It is unbelievable how much the kid’s love there hare and care for them and cuddle with them. I have never seen such tame hare before. Well, we can’t possibly butcher these, so it will just take a bit longer before we will eat some hare.