Our new life: Welcome to Bane MicroFarm!

[GabrielBane]

Update from "The Farm"!



Good morning from foggy Jacksonville, Florida! It's been an eventful few weeks or so here on our property! Not all of it is great news though, but that's the nature of homesteading... I'll delve deeper below....


As I mentioned before, we did receive 4 piglets from a very kind neighbor. They were Yorkshire, Old Spot, feral pig (I know, I know....) mixes. We enjoyed their presence for a week, however..... they just vanished one night. We didn't find a compromised spot in the fence-line of their wood-lot pen, our cameras didn't catch anyone taking them from the property, they're just.... gone. We can't necessarily prove or say they've been taken, so we've put out missing piglet ads and hope they'll turn up. It's been a bitter sweet week ,since they were Eric's pride and joy to have around (even more so than his beloved Turkeys). It's a hard lesson learned. Double. Triple. Quadruple check your pens and property lines for security. We're going to wait off until that wood lot is even more cleared out and then try again with pigs at another time. Right now, I don't think we're ready for the heart-break of missing stock.

However, Our chickens are doing great! Our Sulmtalers have officially graduated to an outdoor chicken coop! (Which I may add was an AMAZING gift from our grandfather)







This coop is 12x3x5.5(at the tallest point), and in the long run, it'll be used as the head quarters of my Naked Neck breeding program, for now, the Sulms rule the roost, while we get our larger 20x20 coops up.

We did decide to sell off our Ayam Cemani. We had intended on switching from Cemani into Svart Hona, but due to tragic circumstances, the Svart Hona flock I was going to purchase was taken by predators, so we have neither... (for now) That being said, the plan to breed large, fibro naked necks is still on the very top of my to-do list!

Speaking of Naked Necks, they're still in the brooder with the cream legbar and their mutt siblings (our breeder mixed his NNs with EEs, Marans, Rocks, and who knows what else!), we're excited to say we're more than likely keeping this entire batch of em, so long as their end weights end up on the meatier size!


(Same hatch date!! incredible size difference)

 

[Ballerina Bird]

So sorry to hear about your pigs! I hope they might still turn up.

That is a very attractive coop; thanks for showing the pics.

 

[Treerooted]

Good luck with your homesteading adventure! I've also just entered that world a few months ago with a move to a new property, but with a toddler to look after and winter set in, there's not much happening right now. When it's -20 C (-4 F) out I'm always a little jealous of warmer climates.

So sorry about your pigs

, hopefully they turn up.

 

[GabrielBane]

Good luck with your homesteading adventure! I've also just entered that world a few months ago with a move to a new property, but with a toddler to look after and winter set in, there's not much happening right now. When it's -20 C (-4 F) out I'm always a little jealous of warmer climates.

So sorry about your pigs

, hopefully they turn up.

So sorry to hear about your pigs! I hope they might still turn up.

That is a very attractive coop; thanks for showing the pics.

Thanks y'all. Still no signs. We hope they're okay.

 

[SilkiesForEver]

Subscribed. Looking forward to seeing your progress!

 

[GabrielBane]

Update from the FARM!


And oh boy, it's a big one...

It's been an eventful week or so on the farm. Our second incubator was MIA and after a call to Amazon's customer service, it should arrive Thursday. Which is great, because at our state's rare breed showcase we may have been a tad impulsive...
We mentioned we were dabbling with Isabel Orpingtons and had acquired some started chicks from a local breeder. Well, I was meeting up with her on Sunday to return a transport cage/pick up some replacements (we'll get to that in a little!) , and we may or may not have picked up a started flock of English Mottled / Split Blacks.... 6, actually. 1 Cock 5 Hens.

Here's the two with heaviest mottling;



We'll snap more photos of them as we get them set up in their coop. We're eager to expand our Orpington varieties and grow our breeds. They lay a very generous size egg as well. The solid black girls who don't go into the split mottled breeding pens are going to be bred to our Black Sex-Link NN boy to hopefully breed some size into our large fowl NN. Inversely, our two smaller mottled black NN pullets will be bred to this orpington cock (size differences permitting, he's a MONSTER.)

@Kev do you think this would be a good idea? I figured I could slowly breed bibs/bow-ties back out, but in the long run, I'd love to have an a meaty NN with the english orpington build. Breeding the black NNs with the slight mottling to him should provide all Nn Offspring with some sort of mottling? (sorry to tag ya randomly!)


In our last post, we told you guys about the brooder we had on the way. We got the first tier/heater assembled, and we even have a short video of our new arrivals in it! We received 45 day-olds from Brinkhaven Acres in Ohio. We have heirloom Barred and Siler Pencilled Rocks, Welsummers, Blue Copper Marans and a lone Partridge Wyandotte.

(Follow the video to vimeo, we use that instead of Youtube.)

We also updated our coop plans! After talking to our designer/contracter, we came up with a simpler system to the 2 20x20 coops. We're actually doing 3 coops in this design;

(please excuse his spelling errors lol)

He's also going to be repairing our dock and doing a lot of the construction projects around here. His name's Ralph. I'm sure you'll hear me talk a lot about the work he does. He actually made both of the coops that I already own and swear by.
The first structure should be up at the earliest on Monday! Pictures and videos of the assembly will definitely follow.

In the department of the critters, everyone is doing amazing! I mentioned having to get some replacement Isabel chicks. Let me give you the story;
I originally purchased legbars from this breeder, who also happened to be a breeder of several rare breeds I'm looking into establishing flocks in. I really love her legbars. They're great. I have a pair of them left from the initial purchase and 5 from a later purchase and they're *amazing*. Anyways, back to the Isabels. I purchased a set of Isbars and Isabel English Orpington started chicks from her and once I got them in their brooder room (a modified section of our garage that they can grow in safely without the constriction of a normal brooder!) I noticed two chicks acting funny... they seemed to be lost in space or walking in circles. But otherwise healthy. No signs of paralysis, no discharge, nothing. Born blind. Of course, I'm keeping them both so long as they continue to thrive and don't show signs of poor health. A boy and a girl. We're naming them Stevie and Toph. The breeder was great and apologetic and gave us 3 healthy replacements!

The chicks from Ohio that arrived on the 3rd have only had one casualty, a Blue Copper Maran. A shame, as we only received two in this order. We determined some sort of chick stampede/dog-pile during sleep time was the cause of death, unfortunately. We adjusted the temps in our brooder accordingly, just in case. It's crop also appeared to be completely empty, so perhaps it just never thrived. We cremated the body for security purposes. These things happen and while we take all losses seriously, any level of poultry enthusiast should never take a loss personally. Sometimes, they happen. And that's okay. Learn from your mistakes!


Here's a tally on ALL of our birds;
3 Turkeys
9 Isabel Orpingtons
5 CCLB (Crested Cream Legbars)
6 Sulmtalers
5 Naked Necks
1 Blue Copper Maran
1 Patridge Wyandotte
5 Silver-Laced Wyandottes
8 Isbars
15 Silver Penciled Rocks
21 Heritage Barred Rocks
5 Welsummer LF x Bantams
6 Black / Mottled English Orpingtons
1 Showgirl Red Pyle Cockerel


Starting next week we'll hopefully be getting our breeding pens officiallyset up and up and running!

Cheers to a productive week!

 

[Ballerina Bird]

Update from the FARM!


And oh boy, it's a big one...

This update made my day. It cheered me up so much to get this engaging and detailed report and imagine your beautiful coop and see your adorable birds. I'm sorry you lost a chick but glad everyone else is doing so well. Hope the two blind ones rally. The English Mottled are so sweet; they look sort of like my pita pintas. Anyway, all best wishes for your continued success, and looking forward to your next installment.

 

[Kev]

Hey you have your own thread! Sorry I am bad at checking messages/notifications. You're gonna have a sweet set up.

Quote:

The orps will massively improve on type and size. Nava has some NN mixed with English orps(blue black and splash) and folks just love their stock- I think because they also have a pleasing outline.

Blacks can have random white tips especially when young or from mixed color stock, it may not be actual sign of mottle carrier but you never know.. At the very least, all the crosses will be mottle carriers.

 

[GabrielBane]

Hey guys!

Sorry for the lack of updates, we've been so incredibly busy with the start of spring it's been hard to find the time/energy to write a full blog post. I'll try my hardest to update tonight!


Thank you for that input @Kev ! I have been just itching to get something comparable to Nava's stock, while also focusing on colored barring/mottling in the end goal. My dream would be to create a large fowl english orpington type NN with showgirl feathering. The workings of a mad man. LOL.

 

[IamDavesWife]

Just found your thread and thoroughly enjoyed it..............but no updates? LOL. I know, you have better things to do than entertain me. Makes me really, really miss FL. Spent 11 years in Lakeland....