Between a trip to Costa Rica, dance lessons in January/February and a slew of other things, the year has started off with a bang. But, all of this activity has left very little time for the bees, sadly. To my knowledge, I have never waited until the first few days of April for my first “post Winter” look in the hives. By this time, I have already looked in all hives and probably have a dozen nucs up and rolling! But, this year has been different. I have drastically reduced my hive count from many dozens to “8 to 10” over the last couple of years, but I still need to get out there in February for the best results!

For 2025, my first look was this past Saturday, April 5. I started with the Home Apiary in Goochland. In the Fall, we had 3 full hives (one of them a bit light) and 1 Nuc for overwinternig. As of Saturday, we only had 2 full hives remaining. One was if full swarm mode with open queen cells. I’d guess the first ones will be capped by April 8 and swarming will take place later in the week. I created two nucs from this hive, one with a couple of queen cells and one (seemingly – I can miss em sometimes) without any queen cells (just with eggs.)

The second hive was starting to build out, with capped brood, a few drone cells but a lot of room to grow. I installed a queen excluder on this one, but otherwise left the population alone to continue build out until I create a Nuc or two from it.

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!

Yesterday, I noticed that my bull calf was limping. He was basically not putting any weight on his back, right hoof. Once I got closer, I realized he had a piece of wire wrapped around his leg, just about the ankle. He weighs around 400 lbs, so now was the time to put the cow catch to the test. Plus, my hay guy had offered to help me put a band around his genitals.

The Lord truly blessed me today, as I was able to isolate the calf, get him into the catch-chute and actually secure him in the catch. I eased a piece of rope around his leg with a slip knot and, with the help of a couple of folks, was able to pull it back off the ground and secure it to a post. This allowed us to cut the wire and free him from his problem. We also had to cut his genitals out and wash it with iodine.

In the end, he walked off looking better than ever. I’ll have to monitor him for a few days, but one more adventure down on the farm!

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!

This is the time of the year when lots of prepping starts. We have lots of eggs in the incubator, setting to hatch out of the next 7 days, one hen that’s broody and should hatch out this week, a bunch of fun breeds of chicks coming soon, honey bees that are building up for Spring and vacant garden slots that need tending!

Whew. It’s actually sort of exhausting when I write it out like that, but today’s post is focused on the Garlic/Shallot beds. I’ve found, over the years, that the main onslaught of the mid- to late-Winter onslaught of weeds hits hard towards the end of February. Therefore, I used the last week of January (and, because of usual delays…the first week of February…) to weed out my winter plantings (primarily garlic and shallots these days) and mulch or put a weed prevention down.

The beds all already have a few weeds (the early birds, I suppose) poking through. I was able to get the raised beds weeded today and put some weed prevention down. We’ll see how well it works.

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!)

Figuring out the pecking order for the 5 roosters is much easier. Flash (Cream Legbar) would be the main man closely followed by our other Cream Legbar rooster. I say closely followed because the two are constantly butting heads. However, Flash remains the winner. Anyway, in third would be Mr. Maran, and no that’s not his name. I just call him that because he’s a Maran rooster and why not? Then our big boy Easter Egger followed by, last but not least, good old Welsummer. A bit off topic, but someone is coming this week to pickup the last Welsummer rooster that we have for sale, which is good. We have multiple people coming to pick up the roosters, so I hope to have no more roosters for sale by the end of the week! Yay!