Life's Cycle

Penny graced our farm this weekend with a beautiful litter of Tamworth piglets.  As Boris spends all winter with the herd I was not entirely clear when to expect her to farrow.  Pigs are amazingly accurate at three months, three weeks, three days gestation but without knowing when exactly the deed was done the 3,3,3, means nothing.  When I arrived home on Friday evening Trenton announced "Penny is nesting, she is carrying around wood."  He tossed her some additional bedding and soon after the first two piglets arrived.  As this is her third litter she tended to business and start to finish delivered 10 healthy piglets in about 3 hours time.  After the challenge with Sparklers litter where we lost half of them the first night I was a little apprehensive Saturday morning when I went to check on them.  Penny is a great sow and had 10 nursing piglets cuddled close to her big warm body.

We experienced the other end of the life cycle on the farm this weekend as well.  We started our laying hen flock with a half dozen chicks 5 or 6 years ago.  Our original laying hens were an eclectic mix including a Buff Orpington, Barred Rock, Silver Laced Wyandotte, Americanas.  The boys did not officially name each chicken but the orpington and rock quickly became Buffy and Rocky.  These hens welcome new pullets to the flock each summer and managed to avoid predators as they enjoy the free ranging life.  Buffy and Rocky have sat next to each other on the roost in front of the window each night, the prime spot as the most mature members of the flock.  Rocky has looked a little rough this winter but I figured if we had not culled chickens as they went into the first molt there was no reason to cull her now.  Saturday morning when I went into the coop Rocky was standing on the floor with her head down and eyes closed.  She stirred a little but quickly closed her eyes again.  I figured she was dying so I brought water close to her incase she wanted a drink.  I debated about what was the reasonable thing to do for a dying chicken.  Should I let her be, move her off the floor into a nesting box, cull her?  I decided to let her be for a while and went on with Easter prep.  Saturday evening the boys did the chores so I did not see if she made it up onto the roost near Buffy or not.  Sunday morning when doing chores I found that she had died.  My uncertainty about how to treat the aged laying hen was answered by nature.  She went quickly and in the coop she had returned to each evening.  What more could one ask for?

Spring Yard Work - Chicken Style

     We have just finished a record breaking week.  As spring officially arrived on Wednesday the temperatures soared into the 80's and stayed there until Friday.  The animals have loved the spring weather.  Sparkler and her piglets have joined the other sows with access to the pig paddock as Penny, Brownie and Fuzzy await the arrival of their babes.

     The laying hens have been outside from dawn to dusk each day working diligently to discover edibles or soaking up the sun as they dust themselves in the dirt outside the barn.  The picture above shows the results of their work.  The area in the picture is the hillside between the drive to the back of the barn and the road to the pasture.  Each spring the chickens scratch the fall leaves to the bottom as they eat.  They work quickly one day it is leaf covered the next it is "raked."  This is not the only area they clean up for spring.

      We have always allowed our laying flock to free range.  When Mike first built their coop in the barn he incorporated the old dairy gutter into the coop.  He build a trap door in the wooden floor section covering the gutter that could be opened each morning and closed each evening.  Our flock increased from its original 8 to have about 20 hens and just one Araucana rooster.  The hens are an eclectic mix including Buff Orpingtons, Silver Laced Wyandottes, Barred Rocks, Araucanas, Welsummers, Speckled Sussex and a Rhode Island Red.  This mix comes from the desire to try different breeds and the love of the wide variety of eggs they lay.  (the beautiful dark brown speckled eggs of the Welsummer hens are my favorite.)  There are more Araucanas than any other breed no matter which hen adds to the flock by hatching and raising a brood the pullets are green egg layers.