The new incubator seems to be doing a really good job. We had “dry membrane” issues with 3 eggs, but I don’t think we’ve seen that before. We did open the brooder up a day early, because of all the ones that had started hatching 3 days before. Next time, we’ll wait for the target day, to see if that prevents this issue.

Most of these chicks are meant to bolster our current numbers, but we plan to start a batch of Blue-laced Wyandotte’s next along with a batch of barnyard mixes and bantams to sell. The operation seems to be working, if we can keep the predators at bay!

Interestingly enough, they did seem to hatch out around days 22 or 23, instead of 21, but she did an outstanding job with them. She hatched out 11 but we did lose 3 after the move to the nesting box. Unfortunately, the roosting box in our coop is a good 3 feet off the ground. The last time we had a hen hatch in this box, she brought the chicks out and when she went back to the nest, several of them didn’t make it back up the ramp and died that evening when it got too cold. It was heartbreaking.

So, now we move the hens to ground nests in a different coop, where the chicks can easily go to and from the nest. We’ve done this countless times – always at night (so the hen is less prone to vacate the new nest when we put her in) but never in the dead of Winter.

Unfortunately, it appears that 3 were somehow unable to get warm that night and did perish. Not an ideal situation and we’ll probably do some extra “post move” checking the evening we next move a hen in the Winter.

Regardless, we have 8 little bantam chicks running about with “their mama” (really a collection of eggs from the various hens that were laying at the time.)

We ordered Welsummer and Cream Legbar chicks, adding to the genetic diversity of what we have. What’s truly amazing is that we placed this order in mid-January and these things arrived on Feb 6 (pretty much exactly when they promised.) The key here is February! I expected them to ship in late March or later, due to the weather. These little chicks made the trip overnight, when the temps dropped to near freezing at our house, and all arrived seemingly healthy. My daughter says they included a heating pad, which must be the case. I was really amazed with this whole thing.

In the first 72 hours, we have lost two chicks. If we manage to have 13 make it through the first 7 days, I’ll be very happy. All seem strong and healthy now, but you never know.

I’ll definitely be using Meyer again!

Although this was the second automatic chicken door that I purchased, it was my first venture into the solar powered doors. For reasons that I do not recall, I chose one from chickendoors.com – a standard pullet, solar with battery. They have other sizes, but they all appear to operate on the same design.

To begin with, I must applaud them for good customer service. It may be a small shop, but I feel like I receive pretty quick, personal response from the people that are running the show over there. They are friendly and quick to try to help with issues.

The first negative about this setup is that the solar panel comes without anything to easily attach it anywhere. Mine didn’t even have screw holes – picture just a flat panel. If I had spent the extra effort to fabricate a holder for this panel, I probably could have avoided some issues. As it was, the thing would occasionally blow off the chicken tractor, which was a hassel.

The second negative is the hookup’s. Wires run from the solar panel to the battery and then from the battery to the door (obviously, this is necessary…) The problem is that it’s not a simple male/female plug at each interface. Things are quite complicated and I ended up having to patch or fix various pieces of it a couple of times.

The third negative is that there was no app to manage this thing (at least when I purchased it.) I only mention this as the other two doors that I have experimented with both have apps, which make it easy to manage the opening and closing of the door.

The forth negative is the price. It came at quite a premium to the others that I have been using and testing out.

For the final negative, I know about their good customer service because I did have issues with this door. I installed it towards the end of February, 2022 and it stopped working towards the end of November, 2023. The company has given me a number to call to fix it (which I do plan to do), but my other door was working so seamlessly that I decided to just purchase a new door and deal with it later.

For me, after trying three doors (one of which was this one), I do not recommend this door to my friends that ask for recommendations. Other models have proven to be better for my needs.

Then the wind came… We live in the rolling hills of central Va and our pastures surround our farmhouse on top of a hill. The Fall winds, as we were to discover, were quite strong on top of these hills. After the tractor was blown over the first time, I attached rope to each side and staked it down. But, the wind still proved too strong and still damaged the tractor. Eventually, I moved it to it’s current location, at the bottom of the hill where it is subject to very little wind.

In all of this time, we would get up in the mornings to let the chickens out and go out in the evening to close them up again. Although sort of fun at the start, it became quite the honorous task…especially if we were out in the evening and not due home until late. With the doors open, the coons, oppossums and foxes had free range on our chicken… I needed a way to automate this.

Fortunately (and per usual), someone had already encountered this problem and resolved it with the automatic chicken door opener! After some research, I decided on what appeared to be a good brand and give it a try. I have since tried 2 other brands and will report my findings here, in future posts.

These doors make or break it on the FMH. They require little maintenance and keep the chickens safe from the nightly predators (who I regularly catch on my game cam every night!)

Snow also heralds in a few tasks on the homestead. Oddly, the main task involves our song birds. Snow makes foraging for seeds a bit more difficult in the wilds, so we make sure the bird feeders are full and scatter some extra feed on the ground for our friends. Snow also can mean frozen water for the animals, so we check all of the rabbit and poultry waterers, in addition to a quick check for the cow troughs. All in all, everything was fine this morning (the temps barely hit 32, which didn’t cause any issues for our animals), but it was a good reminder for what is to come.

Interestingly, we are starting to get a rise in egg laying. I’m pretty sure it really starts to turn on after the Winter Solstice (around Dec 21), when the days start to get longer. But, we’re already seeing a slight uptick now.

Lots of fun on the horizon! Spring is just around the corner!

On Tuesday, February 7th, a hawk took the life of our head big chicken rooster, Wyatt. Wyatt was a purebred Wyandotte purchased as an egg and hatched out by us in an incubator, so he lived his entire life with us. He ended up getting chosen to be our new rooster and enjoyed free range life with 12 hens. We choose Wyatt because of his calm demeanor and protectiveness of the flock. He was truly the dream rooster! Wyatt died bravely defending a hen from a big hawk. Thankfully, we had just chosen one of his sons, Carter, to be our backup rooster in case something like this happened….. thank the lord we did or we would be without a rooster right now. However, Wyatt was so amazing that we want more chicks from him, so we recently put in 23 eggs(fathered by Wyatt) and 18 Bantam eggs in the incubator. They should hatch in early March.
We hope to get at least 8 hens that we can keep for our own flock while also selling a lot of chicks for other breeders looking for some stunning hens or/and roosters. Wyatt’s Legacy will continue to live on by his offspring. RIP Wyatt!

Soon thereafter, I (again, being overly ambitious!) purchased some bantam eggs online. In the end, we had around 2 dozen eggs, half duck/half bantam, all “scheduled” to hatch the same day. For reasons that I am still unsure about, the thermometer in the incubator began giving wildly varying reports, on random days. These reports caused me to make adjustments to the incubator (sometimes drastic, in retrospect), to attempt to keep the temperature hovering around 100 degrees.

In addition (yet another variable), I removed some plugs on the incubator (per incubator instructions) once the first hatchings started. This definitely ended up drying out a few of my eggs (the ducks had broken the shell, but the membrane dried up too hard for them to make it through.)

The end result was that 7 our of 12 ducks hatched (most 3 days early!) and only 1 bantam hatched. This was one of my worst runs with the incubator and, given the evidence (early hatching), I believe that I had it too hot for sure, for the vast majority of this run. And, it seems that the last week was really off – at that point, the ducks had over 3 weeks of “slightly hot” incubation and appear to have survived it. But, the chickens had only had 2 weeks before the “bad” week came on and they did not do as well. Another possible miss might be that you simply can’t try duck and chicken eggs together. I know that eggs begin to give off heat at various stages of incubation and maybe the ducks did the chickens in.

The end result is one very special Bantam (I have contacted the folks who sold me the eggs to get the exact variety) and seven ducklings. If you have never raised ducklings, they are the messiest (or nastiest, as my daughter would say) little things. They throw the water everywhere and pretty much turn their brooder into a muddy mess very quickly. Watching Pipsqueak (the name we gave to the Bantam) amongst those nasty ducklings caused me to do what I have never done before – I purchased some chicks (more bantams, to be precise.) I normally only incubate eggs for new fowl, just to reduce the risk of bringing a disease on from another farm.

And thus, the “Toddlers” were formed. Pipsqueak with some Bantam crosses (Game Bantams x Appenzeller spitzhauben). As with our Blue Andalusians, we have too many roosters with this crew, so I will need to begin thinning them out a bit. My pop may take one or two for their funny look and hopefully I can sell or give away a couple before Winter. Next Spring, I hope to raise some more of Pipsqueak’s kind and begin selling them from the Homestead.