Chicks part deux

Now that they're about a month old, I figured we should finally post something about our new chickens.  We lost our first batch of chickens to what we believe was a fox, and we're ready to look to the future of new, healthy chickens!

We ordered 8 new chickens from My Pet Chicken, and we decided to get all new varieties so as to start fresh.  The chickens arrived on a Tuesday at about noon (less than 24 hrs after they left the hatchery), and two of them were dead when we picked them up.  One of them didn't look too hot, and it died over night.  Then, a fourth one died on Thursday.  This hatchery refunds you for losses, but this was ridiculous...especially considering how quickly they arrived!  The woman on the phone was very nice, and they refunded our losses and paid for shipping us new chickens.  Because of order minimums, we ordered 8 more chickens -- these also arrived less than 24 hrs after leaving the hatchery.....and two of them were dead on arrival.  W.T.F.  According to the website and the customer service people, they only see deaths about 1% of the time -- hmmmm.

Despite our rough start, we have 10 happy healthy chickens....

Here's a group of 5 on the day they arrived. :)

They're a bit older now, though...

This is Freckles, a Barred Rock -- named by our nephew. :)

This is Nina, another Barred Rock.

Sheila -- she's a White Cochin.  She is the runt of the bunch, but she makes up for it with attitude. She has feathers on her feet and has stolen our hearts.

This is Chewy, aka Fluffy Butt, aka Miss Featherbottom, aka Dr. Featherbottom, Esq. She's a Light Brahma and obviously also has feathers on her feet.

This is Sal, a Speckled Sussex.  So beautiful as adults.

This is Amy, another Speckled Sussex.  She runs in circles....yeah.

This babe needs a name.  She's a Speckled Sussex as well.

This is Louis, another Speckled Sussex.  She was exploring from day 1.

This is Maren, a Silver Cuckoo Maran.  Her eggs could be dark chocolate brown!

Last, but certainly not least, this is DiDi.  She's a Speckled Sussex as well.

We're really happy with our new ladies, and they're starting to get really sassy.  They've been spending all day outside in the temporary (and newly reenforced) chicken pen, and they're loving it.  We spend every early evening having cocktails and chicken time -- we sit in the grass rehashing the day's work and catching bugs to feed to the chickens.  We are happy to report that they love green heads, ticks, slugs, and Japanese beetles.

We're anxious for them to grow into fully feathered adults so we can introduce them to the ducks and have all our birds living full time outside.  The introduction is sure to produce at least one blog post -- it could get interesting...

Slugs and swarms

Things have been quite busy as of late, but while Anna's making dinner, I figured I'd get something out there.

We started our seedlings for our garden inside in March/April -- perhaps a tad too early, but we were getting anxious.  Once they were big enough and the weather was warm enough (we thought), we put them in the garden.  About a week later, we had a hard frost over night and lost most of what we had planted.  We were super bummed, but we still had a bunch of seeds so we just direct sowed the plants that we lost.  Since losing our seedlings, our new plants have been under attack of a different sort...

We collected this lot an hour after a rain storm. It is definitely the most we've gotten at once, but we rarely get none.

I shake my fist at you, platter of slugs!

Lucky for us (and them) the ducks LOVE slugs.  So, every morning, we go to the garden, walk around and pick up slugs.  It's a pretty gross job, but our plants are still too small to let the ducks roam the garden freely.  We're hoping the toads and snakes will catch up to the slug population soon.  We are, however, continually amazed at the number of slugs we have.

YUM!  SLUGS!  The ducks come running at the sight of us with a jar 'o slugs.

Shifting gears a tad -- as we mentioned previously, we have two bee hives.  Anna has been doing most of the work for the bees, but I've been learning a lot too.  About a week ago, we were taking the dogs for a morning walk, and we noticed that there was a pretty constant stream of bees coming out of one of the hives.  We both instantly got nervous that they were going to swarm.

Bees swarm naturally when the hive gets too full or if there isn't enough food.  We know there is plenty of food around right now, but we weren't sure about the space issue.  Anna had checked the hives a few days prior, and there still seemed to be plenty of room. She wasn't concerned enough about space to put on more brood boxes or honey supers, but obviously the bees had other plans. When a hive decides to swarm, they start making a new queen.

How do they make a queen?

Well, all the while the bees are collecting pollen, they are increasing the number of bees in the hive.  They start feeding all babies what's called "royal jelly." Royal jelly is a super nutritious substance that the bees themselves produce. After a while, they stop feeding the babies royal jelly....unless they want her to be a queen.  The queen is always fed royal jelly until she's ready to hatch.  This super nutrient rich food allows her ovaries to develop while the other babies get other food and end up with undeveloped ovaries.

Just before the new queen is about to hatch, the old queen leaves with half the hive.  How do they decide who stays and who goes? The world may never know.

Back to our bees streaming out of the hive...after our walk, we saw it...they had swarmed.  Our bees had swarmed onto a branch high up in a pine tree.  If you're ever lucky enough to find a swarm, find a beekeeper!  This is great!  If you can collect the swarm, bam! Instant new hive.

Our ladies -- high up in a tree. :(

We didn't know what to do, and we didn't have a swarm trap to try to collect them ourselves.  First, we tried this...

Despite our best efforts, the bees stayed in the tree.

After that didn't work, we called a local beekeeper (there's a swarm hotline), and he came over to check it out.  He climbed the tree and put up a trap.  In theory, the bees will see the trap (just a box with old comb in it -- smells like honey) and think, "this is a GREAT spot to live." They will then enter the trap, and you've got 'em!  Our bees didn't get that memo.

Here, we're putting in the swarm trap.  They weren't fooled...

They were still in the tree the next morning, and after lunch, we were going to try to climb the tree.  The plan was to cut the branch out, lower it carefully, and put the bees in a new hive.  After we finished our leisurely lunch....they were gone.  Crap.

We now have a swarm trap and a few more skills.  Hopefully we can catch the next one should this happen again.  We still have two hives, one of them is just half as big as it used to be.  This is fine, but it pretty much guarantees we won't get any honey from that hive this year. :(