Fall is approaching, and pullets are laying!

It has been a very eventful past few weeks on the farm, from earthquakes to hurricanes to, well, anything in-between. SLF came through the earthquake and the hurricane relatively unscathed, with only minor damage. All chickens, cats and horses are safe and uninjured. During the height of the storm I went out to check on everyone, and moved a few birds that got wet into the horse trailer, which became a temporary hotel for some chickens. Sunday was clean-up day and we were very lucky overall to not have more damage, and only a 24-hour power outage. I know some folks have not fared as well, so we wish them all the best for a quick power restoration and things to get back to normal.

The spring pullets are starting to lay, which must have been due to the wonderful new nesting boxes that each pen received, courtesy of Nina's Hideaway Farm and Steve Kroger's amazing wood-working skills. Steve does amazing work, if anyone is looking for something to be built. I have about 30-40 birds right now that are 5-6 months old, so we should be seeing lots of pullet eggs soon.

And more wonderful news: Gilmanor is fast approaching! September 17th is the day, and we will be there with approximately 30 birds for sale. I will list the birds we will be bringing early that week, but it will include some Buff Orpingtons, Silver Penciled and Partridge rocks, and Easter eggers.

And of note, we have decided to venture into Quail! The first hatch is in the incubator now, a coturnix group of various varieties. The next hatch will be Jumbo coturnix. I will keep some breeders of the jumbo coturnix, but the rest will be raised and processed in November and December. If you would like to be notified when we have some quail ready, please shoot us an email and let me know.

Best wishes to all for a wonderful fall!

Summer heat and building coops

For the first time in two years, I took an entire week off work. What a joy! I drove down to see family in North Carolina, and enjoyed some time on the beach, excellent seafood, and sleeping in past 9am! I was only gone 5 days, but I could tell a difference in some of the younger birds' sizes upon my return. Quite amazing how quickly they can change. I'm absolutely thrilled with the 3 month old lavender orpingtons, and the buffs (albeit only 8 weeks old) are feathering out very nicely and are going to be beautiful birds. I am also quite impressed with some of the partridge rocks.. even just at 8 weeks some of them are already showing nice feather patterning, especially the stock I obtained from Joel Gilman. I'm still waiting anxiously for the silver penciled rocks to feather out. I've been complimented a few times now on the Welsummers, which have some of the best leg coloring I've seen in this breed. I'm very excited to be getting a roo from Gibson/Barber lines, which I think will compliment my birds nicely.

As the chickens population on SLF is expanding (not in numbers at the moment, but size of the birds!) a most important order of business is additional coop building. I've added 2 new coops in the last month, and another will be added this week. I'm also working on a design for breeding pens, and hopefully will be able to build a few of these in the fall. There's only so much work I can do in the extreme heat.. we can run to air conditioning, the birds can't! Each coop built will have anywhere from 50-100% shade. Along with fresh, cool water and some chilled watermelon, all the birds seem to be doing just fine.

I do have a few birds available for sale right now: a 10 week old Cochin cockerel with excellent size, a very sweet bird and outstanding leg feathering; an 8 week old Exchequer leghorn cockerel, and an 8 week old black pullet (maran cross). Roo's are $5, and the pullet is $10. Please contact me if you're interested.

Hatching is done, babies are everywhere!

As of last weekend the hatching season has ended for us for 2011. The last hatches included lavender orpingtons, barred olive eggers, and the eggs I literally stood over talking nicely to them hoping I'd have a great hatch: the silver penciled rocks, of which I was blessed with 13 babies. The SPR's will all be retained for a breeding flock for next year. Overall it was a great hatching year. I was really pleased with the performance of the Brinsea and the HB 2362. We had an interesting spring in central VA, so watching the humidity levels was a task in itself. I much prefer a more 'dry' incubation method, keeping humidity between 30 and 40%, and then bumping up to around 75% for lockdown.

My beautiful 1 year old layers all went to a fantastic home in Goochland County this past weekend in preparation for the rapidly growing youngsters. I have one more coop to finish, and will have chicks in the house for another month or so, but it's amazing to see the chicks that hatched early the spring in their 'teenage' glory right now. I don't expect eggs out of anyone for a few more months, but can't wait to see what graces the nesting boxes!

SLF has swaps on June 25th and July 2nd, and then will be taking a break until the Gilmanor sale in September.

The Gilmanor Farm Sale and information on our 2012 breeds

Whew, it has certainly been a busy spring! We've attended 3 swaps so far this year, and have had a fantastic time. One the biggest sales was the Gilmanor Farm sale, which took place on May 7th under beautiful blue skies. My sister and her husband came down for the event, and by 7am we were set up and selling. I was pleasantly surprised to see the volume of sellers there, some with goats, mini horses, kittens, and of course some amazing and rare breeds of chickens. Luckily I was able to restrain myself and only came home with 2 3-week old stunning partridge cochin chicks (although some beautiful seal-point siamese kittens called to me most of the day!) I sold most of what I brought to sell and really enjoyed telling people about my birds and the fun qualities of some of the breeds I had available. I also brought some of my handmade egg ornaments, blown from my own chicken's eggs. They were a hit! I will certainly continue to bring these to future swaps. At the sale I was able to have a few minutes with Joel Gilman, who raises some of the best Partridge Rocks in the country. I was able to get a few chicks from him, which will be added to my 2 other lines to hopefully have a great group of birds for the 2012 season.

I have only 2 hatches left in the incubators, the first will be some lovely silver penciled rocks and lavender orpingtons, and a week later more of the fabulous barred olive eggers. The breeds we plan to develop and work on over the 2011 to 2012 season are:

• Barred Olive Eggers

• Welsummers (Whitmore, Barber lines)

• Silver Penciled Rocks (Adamson Acres)

• Partridge Rocks (Joel Gilman and others)

• Buff Orpingtons (Hink JC, Green Family Farms, and Clevenger/Coulter)

• Lavender Orpingtons (Hink JC)

• Wheaten/Blue Wheaten Ameraucanas (Hodges Farms, Gary Ramey, John Blehm)

• Black Copper Marans (Davis, Jeane, and Presley lines)

• Exchequer Leghorn (Kat LaDue)

• Marraduna Basque (Skyline Farms)

I have a lovely Silver Ameraucana pullet from John Blehm's line that I may be finding a cockerel for later this fall in hopes to add to my silver numbers, but this is yet to be determined.

It has been a lot of hard work finding the right breeders around the country to obtain the eggs I was wanting, but it was well worth it. I am very proud of my stock and can't wait to see how they grow into adults.

The next swap we will be attending is the CFC Farm Store in Caroline on July 2nd.

Spring has sprung!

Spring is a fabulous time to live on a farm. The trees are blooming, horses are shedding, and chicks are peeping! I've taken a short siesta from horse showing to dedicate time to the growing flock here, as well as putting up new coops. (Plus with the price of gas, I'm content to enjoy riding the trails on our 50 acres for the time being!) The excitement is growing for the sale at Gilmanor Farm on May 7th, where I will be bringing some Welsummer hens, barred olive egger chicks, mottled java chicks, and maran varieties, my egg ornaments, as well as painted wine glasses. Please stop by and say hello! We'll be under the blue tent with the Shady Lane Farm banner.

My first hatch of EE's are now 6 weeks old, and are looking beautiful. These girls will stay with the SLF flock.

After the terrible storms raged in Virginia last Saturday, I let the girls out on Sunday for a romp. They all enjoyed some fresh spring grass as well as various patches of clover. I have a few red production hens that found it necessary to follow me around like puppies, so I took a book out while they scoured around for fun things to play with.

The chicks are hatching!

With only a week into spring, the chicks have made their presence known. Hatch rates have been fantastic, and the chicks are growing like weeds. So far we have Easter Eggers, a few mixed brown layers, some stunning blue and black copper marans (some clean legged, some feather legged), blue and black ameraucanas, and the latest hatch this weekend was some beautiful blue and black barred olive eggers and mottled javas! (I have another very large hatch of both these breeds due towards the end of April, if anyone is interested). I will post pics very soon. The next hatch will be this weekend, of F2 olive eggers and some more black copper marans, plus some show-quality mottled cochins and porcelain d'uccles. These will be offered for sale. The next few hatches I will be doing this year will be some black ameraucanas (from a very nice show line), silver ameraucanas (John Blehm's line), wheaten and blue wheaten ameraucanas, a mixed maran group (including some golden salmon and golden cuckoo marans), lavender orpingtons, buff leghorns, plus more olive eggers, blue copper marans (Davis), and blue ameraucanas (Cree Farms line).

I do have chicks arriving from Whitman Farm soon (welsummers, delawares, and ameraucanas).

I will have some chicks available at the Gilman swap on 5/7. Happy hatching!

Linus returns with big wins from the TB Celebration Show!

Linus, Leo and I traveled to the Thoroughbred Celebration Show in Lexington, VA from March 17th-20th. This show would keep Linus very busy. Shown as 'Tinsel Town', he definitely turned some heads at the show. Although it's hard to miss a 17h grey horse, especially one as cute as he is. He took 5th place in our first 2 3" jumping class out of 15, which I was very proud of him for. He has tons of scope and shows so much promise; we still have work to do but I'm very pleased with his progress, with his confidence ever increasing. We rode in 4 hunter pleasure classes, 2 on Friday and 2 on Saturday. Linus won BOTH of his classes on Friday, and on Saturday he took a 2nd (out of approximately 24 entries) and a 5th. He was Champion in his first division and Reserve Champion in the second division. Leo was shown in-hand in the model class, and while he didn't pin, he certainly showed himself to have the aptitude to be a well-behaved hunter.

This show was mostly a spectating event for Leo, to get him used to the show scene. I'm proud to say he handled everything in stride, and was a perfectly behaved gentleman. He received lots of compliments on his good looks and cute head, and I even found time to hop on him a few times in the evenings. He is showing great promise, and will be taken to a few more shows to spectate before his debut in some pleasure classes later this spring.

The chicks keep coming! As of right now I have 6 Easter Eggers, 1 buff orpington, 1 olive egger, and 4 'mixes' that will eventually lay a brown egg. Expected this week are blue and black copper marans as well as some stunning blue and black ameraucanas from Chicken Scratch Poultry in IL. Next week will be very busy with 2 hatches, including barred olive eggers and mottled javas from a breeder in TX, and olive eggers plus black copper marans from a breeder in WA. While I'm not much of a bantam fan, I saw some show-quality birds from a breeder in GA and couldn't say no to eggs from her mottled cochins and porcelain d'uccles. Those will be out on 4/2. I will have a limited number of chicks for sale from these hatches. Later in April and early may I will have hatches with more barred olive eggers (these produce a speckled green egg!) and mottled javas, and I am expecting live chicks from Whitmore Farm in MD.