September 2009: The rain does not stop

Potatoes in hay bales- the plan: this is our hay bale potato bed. The idea was to plant the seed potatoes into the bales, give the bales a good drenching with liquid fertilizer and then sit back and watch the plants grow. It shouldn't have been a problem! After all, last year we harvested over 200kg of potatoes and potatoes always seem to grow well!

Potatoes in hay bales- the reality: as you can see in the photo above the area where we planted potatoes last season is still pretty much under water. Planting in hay bales seemed like a good alternative. Right now it doesn't look as if that worked. The hay bales are wet and cold and the plants have not broken through the surface yet even though they were planted on August 14th, seven weeks ago. The tubers didn't rot in the bales. They still look good. They are just waiting for the weather to warm up!

Chooks and ducks: an early start to the breeding season

The black ones are Plymouth Rock hen/Welsummer rooster first crosses (F1). Pure black females and males with light barring. The barring gene is sex linked and makes it possible to tell the sex of the chicks at day one. The brown ones are purebred Welsummers.

Right: chicks at two days of age. Two Salmon Faverolles in the front, two Welbars (F1)  in the back. Every once in a while a first cross male chick with barring has light silver feathering. It will be very interesting to see how this changes as they develop. 

Right: the Minorca rooster and his three hens. Their favourite spot is the sunny area next to the horse shed.

Incubators and lots of  fertile eggs
 We currently have over 150 eggs in our incubators, we stopped counting! Why do we raise so many chicks? Here are our objectives for this breeding season. We want to:

And we don't want to hatch eggs too late in the season. Our Minorcas hatched on February 13th and felt the winter cold a lot more than the older birds. Our hatching season should be over by Christmas. Unless a broody hen decides to extend the season on her own terms! But no hen has become broody yet, even though that would be so much easier for us than using an incubator.

Last year we bought two incubators, a 12 egg and a 24 egg unit. They both work very well, but there just isn't enough room in them for all the eggs we want to hatch. An incubator with a capacity of 100 eggs costs well over a thousand dollars, and that is totally out of the question for us. But is it really necessary to pay that much money for a box with a heating element and a temperature controller? Wouldn't it be easy to build something like that ourselves?