Chick Days at Little Sprouts!

It's HERE!     It's HERE! 

The chicks have hatched! Right on schedule. Well over half arrived by tonight, and the rest should be hatching tomorrow, at 21 days. So far, there are 109 chicks running around tonight in the indoor brooder, and another 24 drying in the bottom of the incubator.

A veritable sea of chicks!

This little guy seems to be somewhat in charge, keeping watch over his brothers and sisters and cousins.

 This hatching is the first of likely three hatchings this year. This is the start of our new approach to raising chickens for both meat and eggs.  More on that in a later blog post!

These will also serve as the winter egg layers! The eggs were collected in mid February from hens that needed no extra light to lay through the winter. In theory, they should be more consistent layers during short days in winter when they mature.  Next we will do a summer set of hatchings to get hens comfortable laying in the dry heat of summer.

I'll explain more in later posts.

Brooder Setup

We are trying a new "indoor brooder" setup this year. The weather is a bit wet and clammy to send these newborns right out into the night air, so they are going to stay inside for a week or so as they get strong. But by tomorrow night, there will be 200 chicks if all goes well. How do you keep that many little feathered friends warm and dry ?

We used to use the eco-glow heaters from Brinsea.  They are wonderful heaters! But as you may recall, most of ours burned up in the chicken coop fire a couple of years ago. They are quite pricey, so we opted not to replace them. Instead, we switched to homemade brooder heaters using ceramic screw in heater elements.  These elements come in  50 to 250 watt varieties, produce no light, and provide a decent even heat without much waste.

So the design is simple, a plywood base with 7 screw in light sockets mounted underneath. Each socket then gets a 50 watt heater. The base is 34" x 34" with 350 watts of heat. Then we put legs on the corners that are adjustable height.  It is a decent homemade version of the EcoGlow heater.

The sides are 8 inch tall plastic panels from an old bed frame. Underneath is a piece of greenhouse plastic to protect the floor, covered with a few layers of newspaper. Tomorrow we might add a few shavings.

For extra safety this first night, we added Styrofoam panels to hold in heat and insulate a bit. Probably not necessary, but don't want to take any chances!

This little guy looks like she is basking in the sun at the beach in mid summer! The black circle above him is the ceramic heater element.

Winter Chicken Flock in the incubators!

Today we put the new winter laying flock into the incubators. a total of 158 eggs!

The incubator on the  right is the one without a working door this year... If you recall, I left them out int eh summer 2 years ago and the front doors warped so they would not seal. We replaced 2 doors and mode those useable, but the third is not working yet.

Unfortunately we had a little mishap.. I washed the incubator egg trays in the dishwasher on the "sanitize" cycle. Nice and clean but.. yes.. warped! Now we can only fit 36 eggs per tray, like turkeys.  The rest we put on the bottom and will manually turn them until the first candling. 

The exciting part is.. this is a winter flock! These hens layed eggs without light. The means their offspring are much more likely to lay in the winter consistently, even without light.  We will have a steady supply of fresh eggs all next winter.  

When summer comes, we will hatch another flock in the middle of summer. The offspring from summer laying hens are much more likely to lay in the heat of summer. 

In theory, we will have a fairly steady supply of eggs year round!

Turkey flock growing

the turkey hatching is going ok. There is about 55 turkey hatched now, with only a couple more coming. This batch had a lower hatch rate, probably because the weather back when they were laid left the eggs dirtier than normal. But its not too bad. Almost 50% live birds. The next batch is in the incubator and I suspect we will see more like an 80% hatch rate.

There is one white turkey again! Hope its a female!

Time to get another indoor brooding bucket. These little guys are crowded with so many arriving at once. They will stay inside for a good week before moving to the outdoor brooder this time of year.

posted from Bloggeroid

First 14 Turkeys arrive!

Here are the first 14 turkeys hatched out and happy for this year.

Aren't They just so cute!!!!

As of this morning, there are a total of 51 hatched and healthy.

After about a week inside, they will be moved to our outside brooder for the next stage...

First 150 turkeys in the oven!

Finally, after 3 years of skipping thanksgiving, we put the first 150 or so turkeys into the incubator! There is room for about 40 more, and then we will have a pause while waiting for replacement parts for the third incubator.

It took a little "creative repair" to get these incubators back in service. I didnt think soon enough ahead to order necessary parts to bring them out of storage and into service. But hey, duct tape, some fish line tubing, some careful patches and they are working!

At this point we are on target to get about 100 to 120 turkeys for thanksgiving. When we are more sure of the hatch rate we will start taking deposits for thanksgiving turkeys.

The best news is, this starts our year round fresh turkey! Plus all the add on like that delicious turkey stock, organs, bone broth.. yum!

posted from Bloggeroid

Miracle at Little Sprouts!

Ever so often something happens that gives you pause, something so unexpected and unusual that it makes you think there is more here than meets the eye. Today.. is one of those days.

There was a tragic setback in our new chicken flock last night. It got colder than expected, and the baby hens didnt stay put under the heaters. They wandered. They wandered so far that they didnt manage to find their back to the heaters in time. Kaelyn found them this morning, laying lifeless in the corner of the brooder. 18 little hens on the brink of death.

Now.. let me say this before I continue... this happens occasionally for one reason or another. Chicks do not have the capacity to maintain their own body heat for long and quickly "go to sleep" and die when they get cold.  What we do in these situations warm them as quickly as possible by placing the babies into a warm incubator  with light airflow. BUT.. it has rarely worked. In fact, historically speaking, the chances of these chicks living were about 1 in 100.

But you do what you can.. so we placed them into the incubator as usual and waited. The children got together and prayed for the little birds. It was quite a sad moment. We didnt expect many, if any, to make it. They were lifeless, most totally without movement.  The ones that could move would only slowly slide their limp head back and forth. some... were stiff.

2 hours later... I am sitting in my office and in runs the children overwhelmingly excited! Levi is holding the tray in his hands. I didnt know what to expect until they announced "they ALL made it!" Sure enough, looking into the tray, all the chicks were alive, standing, chirping, and looked perfectly healthy!  Totally amazing! So the children ran them back to the brooder heaters and let them get some food. They were running around, eating, drinking, acting like nothing ever happened, all 18!

I have no explanation for this... except that... the children prayed.  God hears the prayers of little ones... and answers.

Are you my Mother?

Woke up this morning to these adorable faces peering through the glass. Priceless. I love this job!

Welcome to the world little ducklings. May God give us the means to provide a wonderful life for each one of you.

Duck hatching season

Duck season is in full swing here, with cute little ducklings hatching daily. The kids love ducks, wholly different personality than chicks. Ducks are cuddly, loving, and will happily follow anyone. Levi and everett spent the morning with some lucky little ducks

Silver Appleyards hatch

The first batch of silver appleyard ducks have hatched! We are excited to bring these fine heritage meat birds to little sprouts. Soon there will be a flock of twenty or so running around the farm.

In a few months these buyers week provide a very unique collection of pastured poultry products, all soy free, organic, free ranged, and heritage. Stay tuned!

First turkeys in incubator

Turkey season is upon us ! Well... The starts anyway. We collected all the Turkey eggs we could find (some from under sitting turkeys) and placed them all in the incubator. Right at 200 eggs total in the first batch. It is likely a lot of these first eggs won't hatch though, so we'd be happy with a hundred from this first batch.

After a week we will candle them and remove any that aren't maturing to make room for there second batch.

Turkeys on the way!

New chicks are in the new brooder!

Everything was ready finally and we moved the chicks that are the starts of a replacement for one of the flocks lost in the fire to the new brooder Bradley built.  56 little chicks found their new home this afternoon.

Fifty six is a start,  soon to be replaced by about a hundred hatched in another week or so.  The genetics in these 56 are closest to the 300+ lost birds.  All the rest will be a couple generations behind them .  Right now we are just happy to be back on the road to our next flock.

The birds seemed happy to be in the open space of the new brooder,  and the children enjoyed letting them go into their new home.

The new chick brooder

 The new brooder is here!  And not a moment to soon!  As I explained in the last post...  The chicks have grown so fast they are escaping the water trough and roaming our home!

This new design has the following features :

Movable

wire bottom easily detachable for cleaning/moving

Sold sides to block cold wind  and escaping chicks

Plenty of room at 8x8 yet light weight

Solid roof to block rain

Lots of ventilation

Hinged top for easy access

Overall it is like he best design so far!  Now we can add heaters,  water,  bedding,  and chicks!

Special thanks to Bradley and Tiffany for making this happen so quickly!

Fire at Little Sprouts

making this blog post, heart still heavy with loss, hands shaking,  I tried several creative titles. But no. sometimes it just is what it is. We had a fire.

The front chicken coop caught on fire around midnight.  Cause undetermined. I have my strong suspicions, but there is so little left, it can not be determined with certainty.

What I am certain about is the death and destruction. All of our original chickens, and all of our recently hatched 4th generation birds are gone. The building and all of its contents a total loss.  Fire has the ability to destroy so much, so fast.

The weather station we just installed was mounted to the top corner of the chicken coop. around midnight the temperature started rising. It reached 129 degrees at 1:22am and went offline.  I woke up about 1:30 with a strange feeling inside. An old feeling, long since forgotten. Fire truck. They have a particular sound. As a volunteer fireman in texas for a number of years I got accustomed to that sound. Tonight I awoke with a dread in my stomach because that was the first sound I heard. Firetruck. Sure enough, the units were just rolling into the front drive as I ran out to see the building about half gone. My heart sank as I ran back inside to alert all the sleeping children and my wife that we needed to wake and prepare for the worst, just in case.

Fortunately the fire was contained to the coop, the light rain helped to keep it from spreading.

Nevertheless, after the fire was out by the experienced efforts of our local fire department, It is heart breaking to see about 400 chicken bodies on the ground-- trapped,  burned, cooked. not a one escaped.

Tomorrow will be time for retrospection, cleanup, paperwork.  Tonight is time to consider the delicacy of life, how easily it can be taken from any of us in an instant, how powerful nature is in spite of our best efforts, and how human we are.

Chick Days Are Here!

We are very happy to announce that with the arrival of February, CHICK DAYS are here! Little Sprouts is now hatching our unique chicks for you! Our chicks are unlike any others you can find, our own mix of heritage breeds and traits. Every chick will be different, like a unique fingerprint.  We have found these mixed breeds to be hardier, healthier, and still as productive as commercial breeds. Plus they are a joy to watch!

Why hatch through Little Sprouts?

Hatching with us means that you have the opportunity to be involved in the process beginning to finish., You will:

• Pick the individual eggs and / or parent flocks of your chicks
• Participate in egg candling at 1 week, and 2 weeks
• Learn about the hatching process
• Locally bred  birds for better Oregon weather tolerance
• Mixed breed birds with  vigor not possible from purebred birds. 
• Parents raised locally on organic non-gmo, soy free feeds

The Details

Chicken Breed:

These chickens are a two to five generational mix of several heritage breeds including Araucanas, Kraienkoppes, Golden Sex Link, Black Sex Link, Dorking, Barred Rock, Sussex, Buff Orpingtons, Rhode Island Reds, Astralorp, Wyandottes, Java, Brahma. All of these are intermixed, you can not choose a breed, the qualities of these breeds are mixed in different proportions in each chicken.  These are mostly egg laying breeds but will produce roosters and hens of 3 to 5 lbs each if raised for meat.

Timing:

It takes 21 days to hatch a set of chicks, give or take a day. You can pick them up 1 to 3 days after hatching.  

The chicks need special feed and heat for 2 to 3 months.

They are ready to lay eggs at about 6 months

They are ready to use as meat at about 6 to 9 months

They lay for 3 to 5 years, each set of 4 hens laying 3 eggs per day. winter laying is possible with lighting. 

Sexing:

We offer only straight run, meaning no sexing done. Expect half your chicks to turn out to be roosters, half hens. You can raise the roosters for meat, sell them to others, or return them to our farm (we do not buy them back but will accept them as donations). Sometimes you can tell sex by 3 months, but often not for 6 months. 

Cost:

The total price is $7 per chick hatched. 

Special discounts available for orders over 2 dozen. 

To reserve your spot in the incubators email or call today!

hatching@littlesproutsfarm.com

541-826-4345

Here are some shots of the last flock of chicks hatched, taken at frenzied feeding time! These will give you a feel for the variety available in these cross breed chickens.

WEBcam on the chicks is public

I made the webcam accessible to the public, so you can watch their antics from home :)

Just go to the link above for "farm webcams" and log in with "visitor" and "farm" for password.

Enjoy!

It works!

After a frightful night of waiting and watching the webcam....  I am very happy to report that 100% of the chicks made it through the night!  The temp outside dropped to a mere 24 degrees,  and yet the chicks stayed warm and cozy all night under the 12v heaters!

I checked once about 2:30 and was shocked to see a handful of chicks running around and eating / drinking.  But then i realized the layers next door get up at 2am yet!  So all was well.  The chicks woke up,  had a snack,  and went back to their warm beds for the rest of the night.

Finally it looks like we have a brooder setup that can handle a few hundred birds,  stay dry and warm,  and have battery backup protection in the event of power failure.

New brooder ready to go

The chicks for our next winter laying flock have been hatching this week!  So far 80 percent of the first batch are out and healthy,  that's about 90 birds.  The first few days thru stay inside in a large bucket with heaters,  but then they move to the new brooder.

We have struggled through many designs for a brooder.  More enclosed means more cleaning,  more warmth,  but more trouble with humidity and water spills.  More open means risk from wind,  rain,  escapes.  Heat lamps caused crowding,  and a fire hazard.  On and on...  So finally we have arrived at a compromise that busy might work.

One thing that makes this harder is the scale.  When we hatch birds,  turkey or chicken,  we do 200 to 400 at a time. That's a lot of little chicks!

So this year we have a new setup just finished. It is inside one of the original permanent coops it front.  Mostly solid on 3 sides to block wind,  yet open enough to keep humidity down and plenty of fresh air.  We set up the solid panel brinsea heaters in sections of 5 heaters each.

These heaters are awseome and this year even more so.  The heater elements run of 12volts for safety.  They make no light and produce 60 watts of heat under a 2 foot square  black area. The birds natural instincts are to hide under the blackness like mom's wigs for protection or heat.

This year I wired all the panels together to a rv type 12 volt converter / Charger and 12 volt deep cycle battery.  This way the brooder had no 110 volt lines in it (for safety from shocks and fire hazard) and the Battery keeps the heat going for 2 to 4 hours in the event of a power failure!  No more rushing feverishly to crank the generator before the chicks freeze in the night if the power is knocked out for short times.  The converter automatically charges the battery and runs up to 10 heat panels just like in an rv system.

So this morning before deliveries we moved in the first 98 chicks!

Incubators are full!

The incubators are full!  The next winter laying flock is fully started.  There is a total of  378 eggs incubating.

This weekend we will check them to see which are not fertile (usually 10% arent)  and replace those with fresh eggs.

What a beautiful sight!

The new laying flock is started!

Today we put the eggs into the incubators for the next winter flock.  We decided to hatch 2 flocks a year,  one in early winter and one early summer.  That should be best chance for a sturdy winter laying flock and a consistent summer laying flock.

So far there are about 140 eggs in.  Another 140 to come.  Our target is 300 eggs hatched at once to end up with about 100 laying hens in a flock.