Changing of the Guard

Quail Update

As many of you may recall, I hatched some Coturnix Quail in my third grade classroom last March. After a week-long stay with my students, I took them home to the farm where they have been living contentedly and laying 9 eggs per day, almost without fail. Well, I was thinking about winter coming and making plans for survival. I came to the conclusion that I needed to do a little down-sizing. I put the 9 quail hens in a Freecycle ad and immediately received five or six responses. I contacted them to see what kind of situation they each had and I chose a family with five young children who live on a little farm in the next town over from us. This family came over and the children were all googly-eyed over these little feathered bundles. They each caught one and gently held it and placed it into the carrier. The little girls were already coming up with names; "mistletoe," "twinkie," and "featherball." The boys looked at me and said, "That ain't what we're namin' 'em." That made me laugh, because the boys had been talking up a storm and none of them talked like that!! (poor grammar, I mean).

I will do another "hatching" in my classroom again next spring, but this time I will hatch chicken chicks. Here is a link to the types of eggs Michigan State University offers at their Poultry Farm. They provided me with an incubator and the eggs hatched exactly on the day I requested! Any ideas as to what kinds I should get? Maybe Angelo (Farm Manager)would give me a mix! I'm leaning towards the Light Brahma breed right now.

I gathered the last batch of quail eggs and dedicated a little breakfast to them. I made a little omelet with cheddar cheese and some salsa. The heirloom tomato was still warm from the morning sun. Coffee with cream on the side!!


Out with the old and in with the new!

The hens started laying this past week and the eggs are mighty good!! The yolks have a strong orange color and are full of flavor. They are a little on the small size right now, but they'll get bigger as the hens mature. The brown one is from a Cuckoo Maran and the white one is from Floozie, the Buttercup. The quail eggs are on the left side!!!


School starts tomorrow

Oh yeah! I have a job. Tomorrow marks the beginning of my 10th year as an elementary teacher. I started a little late, and have been trying to catch up ever since! I have 26 students with names like Naomi, Max, Caleb, Cruz and Varun. It's always exciting to start fresh, but I'm starting to feel a little jittery!! What's up with that?!

Summer is on the Horizon!

HUKILAU
We have the privilege of sharing a cottage with our extended family. It is called Hukilau after a name the previous owners found in Hawaii. I know summer is just around the corner when we have our spring workday. This year we had a great turnout and worked, played and most importantly, got re-connected with each other after a long, cold winter.


Phlox Rocks!
Each year we chip away at doing things to improve the place. Wilma is a great flower child, she sticks these little surprises around.


Lydia, the Dutch Cleanser
Even the walls get some TLC! The cottage was built sometime in the 1920's.


Quail Keep Producing
I am getting five or six per day on average. Sometimes I get nine! Sometimes I get three.:(
Ruth successfully bartered some quail eggs for Jerusalem Artichokes, which were very nice in our salad, (along with some very cute and tasty boiled quail eggs). I like having something with which to barter. What will you trade for these?


Growing Up

Buff Cochin
Here is a photo update on three of my chicks. This one is a Buff Cochin, whose origins go back to China. She is one of two Buff Cochins in the flock.


Cuckoo Maran
This is one of the three boys. I understand that the boys are lighter in color, so I assume this is the lighter version as there are three much blacker birds. The hens will lay chocolate brown eggs!


Splash Andalusian
I am 85% sure that this is a Splash Andalusian. I can't find any other light colored chicken with greenish blue feet. The other one is almost pure white, with no other colors. What do you think?


On Deck (Baseball term for the next hitter, for non-Americans)
My next project is the vegetable garden. I have plans for the usual suspects: green beans, zucchini, tomatoes, yellow, red, green and chocolate bell peppers, cinderella pumpkins, regular pumpkins, white pumpkins, various gourds, carrots, and other as of yet unknown edibles. If you have suggestions, I will plant them and think about you, my friends, as they grow!

Chapel Opens in Basement of Cathedral

The 34 chicks made their big move today from the brooder to the 15' x 26' coop. I want to sit in there and watch them run around. They have been confined to a 5' x 5' brooder and now they can flex their wings and legs a little.

A white crested, black Polish and Floozy the Golden Pencil Hamburg, getting a sneak preview of their new digs.


The straw man cometh.

Ruth thinks, (and I agree) that the stone wall in the background looks like something from Europe. I'm OK with that.

The chicks are in this thing together. Most of them have been spending their time in a herd exploring the new environment. Some of them break away and run like a spaz and then come running back to the group.

They look (and are) so tiny! I built the roosts today, using an old and very long sawhorse. You can see it on the left side. I'm planning on doing something different with the old nest boxes. I like how they look, but I don't relish the thought of reaching a hand into those boxes and being greeted by an ornery hen!

I found two quail eggs Saturday, and two more today! Five weeks and three days after hatching, the quail are laying.

Quail chicks update

The quail hatched on March 26, making them about ten days old today. Here are two photos comparing them.

This is a photo taken on their hatchday. They were tiny, cuddly and downright cute.


Here are the same chicks on their tenth day. Look at the feathers! When we took the photos today, four of them jumped out of the brooder after I removed the lid and actually flew a few feet! They were not easy to catch, but we successfully got all of the vagabonds back into captivity. With all of the owls hooting around, Bishop the barn cat, Kestrels hovering around and other assorted hunters, I think the quail are content to be held captive. I will soon be able to distinguish between males and females. Males have a orange tint to their chest and the females remain white.


The females will lay eggs at seven weeks. They must be teenager quail right now.

Q-Day: The Invasion Has Begun

In February, my school had its annual science fair. A fifth grade girl was hatching Coturnix quail as her science project. She kept meticulous records and sadly, out of 24 eggs, only one quail survived. His name is Piggy. She asked me if I would take Piggy to my farm and I, of course, said yes. Hmm, what to do with ONE quail, and it was a raucous male to boot. I called the poultry department at Michigan State University and talked with Angelo, who is an amazing man. I ended up ordering 18 Coturnix quail eggs that would hatch on March 26. I arranged to pick up the eggs on March 24 and promptly placed them in an incubator in my third grade classroom. I got to school a little early on the 26th, and could hear their peeping before I opened the door! 14 of them had already hatched and were spazzing around in the incubator. I got out my video camera and started filming them. I got three or four of them escaping their eggs on film, with students watching along with me. How fun is that?! I am going to try to get some of that footage on here.

The picture below shows the empty eggs. Whew, that was a lot of work for the little guys.

Here they are, just 7 hours old. They sleep for two minutes and then run around frantically for two minutes and then it's back to sleep. They are so tiny!

I love this photo my wife shot of this chick. The marbles were in my classroom, and did a nice job of keeping the drowning fatalities low. The blue marbles are called "Blue Dolphins." I did lose two to drowning. One of them drowned in less than an eighth of an inch of water!

Did i tell you they are tiny? Well, it is hard to believe that those little eggs can produce a little chick and that it can survive! I am amazed at these little marvels.

Don't you want to to reach into that pile O' chicks and cuddle? The one with the red on its head isn't injured, that's Quincy. I used permanent marker, it's the only way I could think of to mark them so the students could name them! Other names I can remember are Louie, Cheep-Cheep, Pidgie, and Courtney.

I am going to build them a nice quail run complete with outside run. We're looking forward to serving our little nieces and nephews a fun mini egg breakfast, and also we are salivating over pickled quail eggs. If you have a good recipe, please let me know!

April 7, I have 30 layers plus a mystery chick coming in the mail from McMurray. The invasion has begun!

Life on the Farm

We have a beautiful little five acre farm located in mid-Michigan. We are surrounded by hundreds of acres of wild woods and fields that are carefully tended by a Christmas tree grower for the preservation of wild animals of Michigan. Twelve apple trees of various types, a grape arbor with four varieties of grapes, a few acres of wild blackberries and raspberries and sunflowers that have become self-seeding make up our farm. We have a drive-through corn crib, where I store my 1941 Farmall B tractor, a 11' x 20' chicken coop which I have converted into a studio for my creative wife, a storage shed where I would like to store a 1950's pickup some day, a green hay barn, a pig sty and a little chicken coop that needs some love. We add and improve each year and absolutely love the country life.

I have made a huge commitment by ordering 25 of the Ornamental Layer Collection from McMurray Hatchery. The chicks are due the first week of April. We have a medium sized, 100 year old barn, complete with a 24' x 18' chicken coop in the basement where these layers will spend the night. I intend for them to be as free-range as possible. I ordered a 164' poultry electric fence which will keep them safe during the day from roving coyotes and neighborhood dogs. I will lock them up each night in the coop.

I also am hatching 18 Coturnix Quail in my third grade classroom and the quail will have a cute new home as soon as they are ready to leave the brooder.

My 79 year old father wants me to raise 20 broilers for his freezer, so I will get those from the Family Farm store in the next few weeks. I understand they are ready to butcher in 6-7 weeks. He says he'll "help" me do that. More about him on another post.