Our introduction to keeping chickens, the high's, the lows and pics of our journey.

[Bens-Hens]

Your distances are crazy impressive. I did my annual charity 5km this morning & it felt utterly brutal. The happiness endorphins that it is OVER!

That is pretty feathering on the roo, but I can't help but notice the green grass. We need some of your rain for sure.

Thanks. I am training for a 85 km trail race in September, so I need to keep that momentum going. Just had my biggest weekend to date (which is why I have been pretty quiet here), 43km yesterday and almost 30 today. I admit, I had a nap this afternoon hahahaha. You know it's getting crazy when even your runner mates are calling you crazy!

It all started with 5km for me. I still do parkrun with the family (free 5km every Saturday) and it is a much respected distance, first of the long. Just far enough not to be easy, but not too long that it is unachievable. I am super proud of some of the people I run with, they have truly changed their lives by being active, I guess I can relate it to when you see some friends get their own chickens and they look after them and then one day you see a pic of the family all eating their first egg hahahaha. I have seen that a few times!

We got the chicks in with time to spare today, was getting dark and cold very quickly so they are back indoors now. I have had to make some extensions for our veggie patch. Seems Summer had taken a liking to jumping up in there and looking for the worms I keep transferring into there from our farm.

 

[vehve]

85 km, that's bordering on insanity! I worked with a guy, he was of African descent and had taken up running marathons when he was 42, and was still doing it occasionally at 60 years of age. In his prime he had run 4 marathons in 4 days, that would really suck the juices out of you.

I'm too lazy to do real long distance running, I just go for the occasional 5 km run now and then. I would really need to start doing it more, since our dogs are looking a bit out of shape and all they do in the forest is eat blueberries, so it'll take some effort on our part as well to get them moving. Wouldn't hurt us either to build up a bit of stamina.

I would just have to endure the first 2 weeks of suffering until it turns to something enjoyable.

How quickly do you get the worms to breed, Ben? Say you throw in ten of them, how soon will you have 50? I'd like to get a flock (pack? pride? a murder? perhaps a swarm?) of worms living under my compost, and maybe in the raised beds too.

*Edit* I had to look this up. A group of worms is referred to as a bed, clew, bunch or clat.

 

[Bens-Hens]

I never even considered what a bunch if worms would be called!

I think it depends on the environment they are living in. I bought a starter box of about 2000. Then we feed them and when the farm gets full I turn the bin a bit and take some castings and live worms to the garden. I have no idea how many we have, but we do find live worms around the yard and we never used to.

 

[vehve]

I never even considered what a bunch if worms would be called!

I think it depends on the environment they are living in. I bought a starter box of about 2000. Then we feed them and when the farm gets full I turn the bin a bit and take some castings and live worms to the garden. I have no idea how many we have, but we do find live worms around the yard and we never used to.

How often can you harvest your slippery little friends? I wonder if I should just try to find some angling worms once I get the composting pile dumped into it's cooling storage.

By the way, the insulated compost is pretty crazy, some of you might be weird enough to have checked out my hot composting thread, but my first batch has gone into cooling down mode, and is now at 46 deg C, while the second batch is heating up, and is at 63 deg C. It's been a little over 3 weeks since I stopped adding to batch 1 and started on batch 2.

 

[Bens-Hens]

I will have to head back over and catch the updates!

 

[Bens-Hens]

Again we hit equal high for the egg count! I am still to catch the new mystery layer in action though!

 

[vehve]

Again we hit equal high for the egg count! I am still to catch the new mystery layer in action though!

Yay! Perhaps it's your slowly maturing Wyandotte? I'm about to order one of those skelters too, do you think the bantam size is ok for bigger eggs too? I don't think the Alho eggs will stay in the larger size.

 

[Bens-Hens]

I'm not sure, our 40g araucana eggs go ok in there.

I will say though, they are a nice rack to store eggs in, but really don't roll all that well. We clear it each afternoon, so we can keep track of how many eggs we get a day, and usually who lays around what time of day.

 

[vehve]

I'm not sure, our 40g araucana eggs go ok in there.

I will say though, they are a nice rack to store eggs in, but really don't roll all that well. We clear it each afternoon, so we can keep track of how many eggs we get a day, and usually who lays around what time of day.

Do you have the larger or the smaller one? I was thinking of just going with the smaller one. Our egg production (or consumption) probably won't go over the capabilities of that rack, if we get more, we can just give them to the neighbors.

 

[scottcaddy]

There are over 1500 photos posted in this thread.

Just sayin

And no where enough of 'far off lands'
just saying

Scott