Blog Posts

Hatching Chicks

2/15/2014

Life on a homestead just isn't complete without baby chicks. Our broody hens will start hatching out the little peepers come Springtime, but we decided to get a jump on things back in January by incubating some of our Lavender Orpington eggs. Just before Valentine's Day we found ourselves with a fresh batch of Spring chicks! Here's how it happened, from nest to brooder.
This is a general description of the incubation process, for more specific details on how to properly incubate eggs, just google "how to incubate eggs"!

We have a variety of chickens in our coops, but when we want to hatch a certain breed, we separate out the hens and rooster of that breed, group them together, and gather the fertilized eggs for a few days.

This time we chose the Lavender Orpington eggs to incubate. We placed the fertilized eggs in the automatic egg turner inside the preheated incubator. We filled the humidity basins with water, closed the lid, and waited.

Three weeks later when we heard faint cheeping coming from inside the eggs, we took the eggs out of the turner and laid them on the mesh floor. Over the next several hours, fifteen chicks made it out of the eggs and into the world.

The chicks needed to stay in the incubator for about a day to dry out and get their bearings. Then we carefully placed them in a cardboard box so we could transport them to the brooder box. Some chicks took longer to hatch, so we ended up doing this a few times.

The chicks were nice and fluffy when we moved them, but we had to move fast in order to keep them from getting cold. Once out of the incubator, they were quickly run to the brooder in our lower room. The box had been preheated and stocked with feed and water.

Our brooder is a square wooden box, with a hole in the top for a heat lamp, and peg board on the side for air circulation. Once inside, the chicks quickly found the red water nipples and the feed trough, and they chattered excitedly as they explored their new digs.

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Cutting Wood

2/10/2014

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Part of living the homestead life is being energy efficient. In the winter months we use a wood burning stove as our main source of heat. We try to get enough wood stacked up in the fall to carry us through the winter months, but this winter has seemed to stretch on longer than most. Faced with a forecast of freezing temperatures and a dwindling stack of wood outside the door, we needed to take action. So, off we went to cut some wood. Here's how the day unfolded...

Step 1: Saw

Step 2: Split

Step 3: Rest

This log was part of a tree that fell last summer during a windstorm. It was just asking to be turned into firewood. The first step was to saw it into sections with the chainsaw.

Once the log was sawed, it was time to split it into pieces. My husband told me to aim for the diagonal veins intersecting the growth rings. I just let him do it...

...while I held the chainsaw. He was doing such a great job, I hated to interrupt him by asking for a turn. Notice my yellow work glasses? Wearing those made the cloudy day seem brighter!

Step 4: Load

Step 5: Haul

Step 7: Stack

When the wood was all split, it was time to load it. This is where I came in. Here's my routine: Grab as much as I can carry and carefully stack it in the truck bed. Repeat...

Due to the sudden drop in temperature and my resulting frozen fingers, the careful part went out the window. I just threw it all in the truck bed, and we headed toward home.

The final step was to unload the pickup. By then it was snowing pretty heavy, so we hurriedly stacked the wood on the porch. Right outside the door, ready to be burned. We'll straighten it up later!

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Hatching Chicks

Cutting Wood

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