Late spring excitement

Its late spring and the weather is cool. The moon is just rising over the farm.

The hunter is on the prowl for any lurking predator.

When out of nowhere the mommy hen let out a call. The babies ran for cover.

A local chicken hawk comes swooping in for a baby snack. Trying hard to catch one of the babies, they scurry around trying to escape when...
Sugar comes to the rescue, mouth open and hunger in her eyes. She trys to catch up to the chicken hawk, but alas the hawk escapes barely, fleeing from the certain jaws of death of a vigilant Sugar the guard dog.

Sorry no pictures of the hawk as it happened very fast and i didn't have the camera ready. But Sugar instantly identified the the target when i hollered to get it. She went straight for the hawk and not the chickens.
Today she gets a big atagirl.  :)

This dramatisation brought to you by life on the farm, happens regular. Ain't life grand

babies

The babies are 1 week old now and doing fine. As you can see they are growing like weeds. Soon the sounds of teenage chicks will be heard all around the year.

They grow up so fast!  :)

spring babies

So, ... how many chicks can you fit in a box?

 Well, 25 of course

and here is a small sampling of them

And here we are practiceing are drinking skills

We need lots more practice!

In case you haven't figured out. The baby chicks have arrived by post today happy and noisy.  Tonight they will get transferred to the mommy hens to start there new lives. Isn't spring grand?

I said   Isn't spring grand!!

Balls are Sheep too

Well, we have embarked on a new training mission. Teaching Sugar to play with a ball and maybe one day herd it around the yard.

The big ball herding is a newish sport from Germany and involve the dog moving the balls one at a time into a goal. All the videos make it look like fun so we are going the try this out.

So far, she has started to push the ball a small distance. theres a whole list of things to learn so this will take some time, especially with her attention span being a little short.

Stay tuned for more ball herding!

Just Things

Well the new year is here and some things are happening on the farm.

First theres a new hot spot so I can get faster internet access. Woohoo! I have a virgin mobile hot spot and it seems to be working good. It's not blazing but it's better then dialup by 25 times or so. I can do upgrades and all.

The bees have had a hard winter. 1 hive is gone, I was worried about it all thru the fall, as it was struggling and then last week I checked it and no bees. This happens but it's annoying. The other hives are doing well so maybe there will be a nice bucket of honey this spring.

I've also decided to reconfigure the farm. The dirt farming with organic principles is not working. So, i will convert the fields to grapes vines and some fruit trees, and add a green house when I can. I will put in some raised beds to contain the soil and so bypass the loss of nutrients the I struggle with now in the sand.

All big stuff but I need to adapt to the realities of farming in the sand.

I took these pics late at night about 11 pm. This is called bearding and is quite common on warm days and nights. It means the hives are healthy and full of bees.

This is the healthiest hive I have. the top box is empty and the bees hang out in it. I didn't get a picture of it this morning but I under-supered this hive so the bees can start making comb. Later this fall I will split it.

I lost a small hive to wax moths this morning also. Very upsetting, it was the Russian hive and it never really took off. I think it had several problems that they didn't recover from.

1. the package arrived in may well after the flow here in Florida.

2. all natural comb so they had a lot of building to do.

3. I feed them honey but maybe should have added sugar water also. the honey was in comb.

So, I learned a few things, feed more and less room may have fixed the problem.

I have a nuc that I split out earlier so I put it in the dead hive. The few bees left in it were smoked and added back in, they should do ok with the strength of the nuc, it was a full 5 frames of bees and brood so they should finish cleaning up the hive and do ok from there.

Not the best of days but things happen and around here things happen continuously!

Well, its been a long time since I did any updates, so I thought I would get to it.

Sugar has come a long way from a chicken catcher to a decent watch dog. She watches the chickens closely, maybe a little to close sometimes, but mostly watches. She likes to sit in the morning and watch for squirrels, which she will terrorize if they set foot on her ground. She has settled down some, minds fairly well and has even learned to play in the water some. A long road for us from rescued to chicken protector. She hates the crows, if a crow comes near she stalks them and rushes in for the kill, misses them but tries so hard. Yep a long road but well worth it.

This is one of the mommies, we have had several this spring, but she has taken them outside for the day. Sugar likes the babies way more then the mommy likes, but so far no chicken nuggets for her.

Here some of the chickens are getting a drink, its been hot here so they group up around the water.
The bee yard is expanding. I now have a hive of Russians, they seem to get on well with the Italians. several hives have gotten hot this year. They boil out when you open the top, it can be startling the first time you experience it.
More chickens, here the Americana rooster and a hen are walking around.

I'll post more later.