Raising Guineas and Building Shelter

It is a little known fact that Guinea Fowl can be trained. People laugh at me when I tell them that I have my guineas trained to the sound of a dinner bell, then stare at me in disbelief when I demonstrate and 15 flying birds come at them! This was an experiment I created because the purpose of having guineas is to be outside eating ticks and other bugs. With this I had to devise a system where they could be free range during the day, but I could get them into the guinea house at night for protection from predators. So when they were about two months old every time I fed them I would ring a little cow bell. At approximately three months old I released them outside and the very first time I rang that bell they all came running to the feeder! Voila...Pavlov's Dogs works again! This system has really made it easier on me because now I do not have to wait for them to feel like roosting for the night and can put them up whenever it is convenient for me.
Would you believe me if I told you that we built our guinea house for $5.37? If you are willing to do some work and are handy with a few basic carpentry skills, you too can have an almost free guinea or chicken house. How we started is going to some of the local companies who throw away their wooden shipping pallets. If you do some exploring you can find pallets of various shapes and wood types, including hard woods like oak and soft woods like pine. Once you find a bunch the hard work begins. After some trial and error we discovered that the easiest way to dismantle these pallets into usable pieces was to use a reciprocating saw. We cut all of the nails flush with the board instead of trying to pull them out with a hammer.
Once we had dismantled about 20 pallets we separated all of the different sizes. We decided to save one large pallet as the base so it was raised off of the ground and it gave us a quick foundation. My husband quickly constructed 3 walls and attached them. We tried to make them as square as possible, but were not overly picky about it. Then he constructed the 4th wall with a large enough opening for a double dutch door. We had some old hinges for the doors and small pieces of really old metal roofing laying around that we pieced together. Then we cut one hole up high for a window that we covered with an old piece of screen for ventilation. That part of the framing construction went fairly quickly, the part of doing the siding felt like it took forever. Since all we had were tons of slat pieces from the pallets, we decided to do a clapboard type exterior. Ten million staples later (thank goodness we had an air gun) our guinea house was almost complete. The last necessary piece, which cost me $5.37, was the hardware cloth we purchased to staple to the floor. This allowed poop to fall through and kept the snakes out.
Four years later my guinea house is still standing tall and strong. We have made some modifications to it along the way due to adding chickens to the mix, like a nesting box on one side and a fenced paddock on the other.
If I had to do it all again, I might spend the money on a couple of sheets of plywood instead of spending so many hours doing the clapboards. You just have to decide at what point is your time worth more than the money you are saving. Overall, the experience embraced everything I love about farming...the ingenuity, the experimenting, the satisfaction of doing something yourself, and the time spent working hard with my husband as a team. That...as they say....was priceless!

Tricks to Raising Guinea Keets

Guinea fowl were the very first addition to my farm four years ago. I was complaining one day to my aunt that I couldn't even step out the door without getting ticks on me. She told me that guinea fowl were known for eating ticks. At that point, I had never heard of a guinea before so I checked them out on the Internet. They seemed easy enough to raise and care for so I called the local feed store. He gave me the name of a woman that raised guineas nearby and I called her. She was a very kind elderly woman and told me to stop by at my leisure.

My husband and I decided to go visit her the next day. As we pulled into driveway we saw guineas and chickens scattered everywhere! She gave us a tour of about an acre that had some old barns and lots of small nesting boxes set up everywhere. As we walked, my husband and I asked a lot of questions about feed, grit, housing, and other necessities. When it came time to purchase she told us she sells them for $2.50 a keet. I asked if it was possible to buy adult guineas and she said they would probably fly away and return to their original home. So I asked for just 3-4 keets and she said that I should get at least 10-12 due to the rate at which they get lost to predators. I agreed and we quickly boxed up 12 keets. The ride home was a noisy one!

The keets I bought were only about a week old so I set them up in the house with a heat lamp and regualr starter feed. They were so cute and fuzzy. My young daughter loved them! The next few weeks were full of lessons. First, once the keets get old enough to jump around, regular chick feeders and waterers will not work. Inevitably there was always a keet on top pooping into the feed or water. After a few unsuccessful attempts, we finally fashioned cardboard cones to duck tape to the top so they could not sit.

Second lesson, birds poop a lot! Changing the paper in the bottom of the box everyday was no small feat when you have 12 birds trying to escape. We finally figures out to put LOTS of paper in as layers. Then all we had to do everyday was roll up the top layer.

Third lesson, they always manage to spill their water so cardboard boxes are not the best option. Instead we purchased a $3.00 plastic tote and layered it with lots of paper. The bonus was that when we were done raising them, it could be disinfected and reused for the next batch of birds. This idea was then expanded upon when we taped two totes together in a T shape and cut a hole for them to get through. We then placed the water in one of the totes and the feeder in the other. This solved the problem of the water spilling and getting into the food that had fallen out of the feeder, thus creating much less waste. The keets actually preferred pecking for their food off the newspaper anyway.

Eventually the keets were large enough to be released outside. In the next posting I will give the details of that adventure and how we built a guinea house from pallets.

Sugar Is Safe For Hummingbirds

I learned something new today. As I gazed out my kitchen window watching two hummingbirds chase each other for the feeder, I suddenly wondered if the sugar solution I was making for them was actually safe. Often times animal lovers think they are doing something nice for wildlife and it can actually wind up harming them. I try not to do that so I hopped onto the handy dandy internet. I was delighted to learn that table sugar is perfectly safe for hummingsbids, but appalled to learn that the red dye that I have been using to attract them was not. I also learned that the general accepted ratio seems to be 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. There was some debate on whether or not to boil the water first...personally I vote for boiling because it certainly can't hurt. You can never tells what lives in your water these days.

Now time to go outside, get my hummingbird feeder and make a fresh batch of dye free solution.
Below I have attached a couple of the really good websites I looked at.
http://www.hummingbirds.net/feeders.html
http://www.asheville.wbu.com/content/show/11866

My Horse Has White Line Disease

My farrier told me at the last couple of visits that my horse has a mild case of White Line Disease (aka Fungal Onyochomycosis or Seedy Toe). By definition Equine White Line Disease is a fungal infection in the stratum medium. The infection sort of eats up the tissue. It can advance to the point where the hoof wall can no longer hold a shoe and the wall breaks down.

Since it was just a tiny little crack, my horse is barefoot and not getting ridden very often I had hoped after the first time she told me that it would sort of clear up on its own...but unfortunately it did not. Therefore, now I have started daily treatment. Everyday I clean out the infected hoof with a shoe nail (gladly provided by the farrier). Then I apply a topical gel prescribed specifically for White Line Disease. The intention is that if the anaerobic infection is cleaned out everyday then it will not have a habitat in which to thrive. Lets hope that my delay in treatment has not cost my horse his hoof!

Lost a Chick!

As I walked into the chicken house to look for eggs and fill the feeder, I noticed one lone chicken claw on the floor! My heart sank as I counted the remaining chicks and only saw 6 of the 11. Quickly I did a perimeter search and found that some of the chicks had squeezed through the fence and were hiding under the house. One, two, three, four....thank goodness I only lost one chick and not five. As I tried to catch them I spied the remains of the final chick in some tall grass. Poor thing was missing its head and most of its body. I concluded that it must have been something small like a weasel because there was no damage to the fence (so it must have fit through it) and it did not pluck any of the feathers off like a fox usually does. Time to get some fencing with smaller holes. I have had this fence up for the last three years and not had a problem until now (except for the occasional snake), but I think this is because I used to always have horses in this field keeping the grass short. I had decided this summer to give that field a break from grazing...good for the pasture ... bad for the chickens I guess!!!! Lessons learned...off to the store now!

My Perfect Chicken House Design

After raising guineas, chickens, and quails for the past few years, I have designed what I think would be the perfect chicken/bird house. This is my own personal design that would allow the different age groups to have exactly what they need and allow egg collecting, feeding, and watering without being mobbed by birds. Each room would include a large, fenced run and electricity. The feeder set up reduces spillage and makes cleanup easy. Having a mesh floor allows droppings to fall through into collection pans so they can be composted and keeps the inside clean and airy. I would also add some roosting posts...I have found old wooden ladders work great. The entire house would be tall so that a person could stand comfortably while collecting eggs and guineas can roost in their preferred high areas.

As of right now I do not have the talent or the funds to build this chicken/bird house so if any of you are interested in building it ...please let me know how it comes out. I would be excited to hear how different people would adapt it to fit their personal needs and the different materials used. One thing I know about people who build stuff for farm animals is they can be very creative using materials they have around already!

One of My Favorite Recipes

Now that I have accrued a sizable amount of green beans and potatoes it is time to make one of my favorite childhood recipes. When I was young I frequently spent summers with my grandparents in Maine. My grandmother and I would drive to a nearby produce stand to pick up the freshest green beans and potatoes. When we got home she would clean everything up and throw it all in a pot. Then she would add a good amount of cream, milk and some butter and let the whole thing simmer until the potatoes were done. To date, I have not been unable to recreate just the right taste of this recipe. I believe now that I have the freshest of ingredients myself, grown with love, I will be able to make my grandmother proud. Here's to good memories and good food!

More potatoes!

Now I know why so many people are returning to the homesteading life style. Growing your own food is sooo satisfying!!! Yesterday I harvested a bunch of potatoes and green beans and added them to my basket of chicken eggs I had just collected. As I walked into the house with my basket full of goodies I thought about how wonderful it was knowing that all of this organic food I had helped to create was going to be so healthy for our bodies. I did not have to worry about pesticides or hormones. I did not have to worry about how fresh it was or the expiration date. My only problem is that this makes it that much more difficult to go to the grocery store and buy produce. Hopefully someday I will have a great greenhouse so that I can make more of my own produce and extend my growing season. Here's to healthier living!!!

We actually grew something!!!!

I can't believe it....yesterday we actually harvested edible potatoes and a handful of string beans from our garden. This is probably not a big deal to most people, but after a miserable failure at last years attempt to garden I was starting to think it was hopeless.

Last year I attempted to make the garden by tilling up an area of the yard...that is how most people do it right...well the weeds took it over before I could blink and we had the worst drought Virginia had seen in a long time. This year we made a raised bed and filled it with bags of soil...no weeding was the plan. We also put it close to the house so we could use the rain barrels to water it if necessary. Very scientifically I plopped a few old potatoes in there and covered them up! I didn't really think they would grow because I had no idea what I was doing. To my surprise a plant actually came to the surface. An Internet search told me to cover around the base of the plant so I did, still not thinking actual potatoes would grow. When all of the leaves died I started digging...no potatoes...dig a little deeper...no potatoes...then my husband stuck both hands in like a scoop all the way to the bottom of the garden and came out with five glorious little potatoes. We were so excited you would have thought we just had a baby!

Upon further inspection of the garden we noticed that some of our green beans were growing too. We had planted them to grow up the corn stalks because I had heard about the three sisters....we just did two sisters because I don't like cabbage. I was skeptical at first but it is actually working...I even see some corn growing too. On the downside our carrots never made it past the little spiky stage and only one tomato plant is growing out of many seeds we planted. I don't really have high hopes for it either because it is kind of sickly looking. Either way we are proud of our accomplishments...who knew a girl like me could get a real garden to grow. I am really enjoying the experience and feel like I learn something new everyday.

My chicks are growing!

A few days ago I moved our 12 Rhode Island Red bantam chicks to the main chicken house. They are almost three months old now and I think I can tell which ones are going to be the roosters. They seem to be assimilating well. These 12 are a group we let one of the hens sit on and hatch. After they hatched I let her keep a couple of them and took the rest up to the barn to grow in a safer place. We decided this time instead of letting the hen raise them, that we wanted to do it so we could handle them a lot. We have spent the last three months holding them and letting them get used to my 4 year old daughter. The extra effort has really paid off because now most of them are very calm and don't mind us at all. The hope is that when this group starts laying eggs we won't risk getting pecked so much while collecting the eggs. If things really work out then the plan is to let the egg collecting go to my daughter every day. She will love it...even though she is still a little scared of the rooster!! If I can remember to take my camera with me when I leave the house I will try to take some pictures to post next time.

What I want my farm to be!

In my imagination this is what I want my future farm to be like... lets start with 100 acres to make the math easy. On 1 acre I want to have my house, greenhouse, and my husband's dream shop. On 5 acres I want a huge veggie/fruit garden surrounded by a strip of various flowers (gotta have those pollinators and make them happy). I will need a lot of help with this garden because as of right now I can't even get a stupid tomato plant to grow!!!! That's where you come in!

On the next five acres will be an apple orchard with a few beehives...again pollinators. I would like to grow these organically so I need your advice on pest control methods.

Approximately 25 acres would be dedicated to my dream horse barn and pastures. This is purely because I love horses. I riding ring would be included so that I could make money on boarding and lessons. This acreage is also where I would raise a few cows for the family as well as guinea fowl for ticks and chickens for eggs. I would probably throw in a couple of goats for pasture maintenance.

On another 25 acres I would like to grow bamboo. From my research it appears to be an easy crop to grow, it is a nice green product, and it doesn't take lots of money to start. Major problem I have run into is who do you sell it to??? Any ideas people???

Finally the remainder of my farm would be dedicated to natural woods for the wildlife and to give us a place to go hiking or horse-back riding.

Yes all of this is a dream farm ...not totally realistic at this point in my life...unless someone has an extra million dollars they want to give me...just kidding! :) Either way the point is how everything on the farm has a purpose and everything ties together. Throw in some windmills and solar panels and the picture is complete. Do any of your farms look like my dream farm? If so ...how did ya get there???

Welcome!

Thanks everyone for visiting my blog!! My blog is going to be a little different...what I want the most is advice from all of you on how to run a better farm! About 4 years ago I started a farm with one horse and twenty acres. As a stay at home mom, I decided to start a horse boarding business to help contribute to the family's income while still staying home with my child. Now, four years later, my farm has horses, goats, chickens, guinea fowl, cats, and of course a dog. The things I have learned over these last several years I will share with you in future writings, however, it is time for this farm to make money instead of being just for fun. I also want to do my part to live more self sufficiently and less energy dependent. I have lots of ideas that I will share with you and hopefully many of you will share great ideas with me too. I believe now is the time to integrate ideas of homesteading with innovative technology as well as integrate plants and animals to produce a full circle farm. If you agree, please write to me and tell me how you do things on your farm.