COOP Thoughts And More Quick Fix Engineering

You could almost hear the chicken equivalent of a sigh this week as the grass came in fully and I now can move the tractor to a fresh patch every other day. We can tell the difference in the eggs. The yokes are back to their deep yellow-orange color from the added carotenoid content.

Another smoldering issue we've been dealing with started last summer. One of the hens insists on sitting in her nesting box at some point during the night and filling it with crap. At first this was just an annoyance as we could shake out the nest pad in the morning before they lay. But now it seems that at least two others are doing it too. The odd thing is that they don't seem to stay in there all night long because we can hear them jump down from the roost pole when we let them out in the mornings. This doesn't seem to be tied in with broodiness either as they don't linger on the eggs once they lay. More QFE to the rescue. We now slip in a blocker panel in the evening before they go in. This keeps them out of the boxes at night. It is much easier to go out in the morning and take this panel out than having to shake pads and play with poop first thing in the morning.

And speaking of nest pads, those commercial grade pads we got in last month are really working well. Much better than the homemade variety.

First Turn Over; Spring Has Finally Sprung

Hot Damn! Spring is finally here! And no sign of snow in the forecast; isn't that a change of pace for a western Maryland kitchen garden! Easter weekend meant finishing up preventive maintance of all the power equipment and doing a good deep till today of the Food Patch and the tomato/pepper bed. I even managed to sneak in some early kale and chard seedlings into one end of that bed. The rest of the week is supposed to be rain so we'll have to wait a while to get in some onion sets, cauliflower and broccoli seedlings. And the strawberry sets are due in this week so we'll need to get those in soon too. I ordered 25 Sparkle and 25 Seascape from Johnny's. This cycle the strawberry bed will move to the center of the Patch. Sparkle is a classic June berry whereas Seascape is an ever-bearer used by many commercial operations. Between the two we hope to have a steady supply of strawberries all season; a large harvest of Sparkle in the spring and a smattering of Seascape the rest of the season. Of course that will have to wait until nest summer as this season will be taken up with bed establishment via picking off of all blooms to allow the plants to establish themselves for next year.

In other news, the girls were finally moved from their winter quarters by the Food Patch back over to their turf/pasture area. That part of the yard is till a bit sparse but the grass is beginning to green up and you could almost hear the chicken version of an "ahhhh" when we got them over there yesterday. Most likely we will need to move them every other day until the turf is completely back to full spring-time green but it is nice to finally get them back onto some semblance of turf. This week also will be the last flat of sprouted rye forage sprouts for them. That exercise was definitely worth the trouble and provided some much needed green forage through the depths of winter.

Hopefully Idun would be proud!