Friday, February 12, 2016

Early Spring, a busy time of year!

Spring on a small farm is a busy time of year, and ours is no exception! We have baby chickens hatching, and our dairy goats are delivering kids and milking season has begun. This year we are preparing to produce cheese and butter with our milk.  We are starting with simple cheeses such as ricotta and mozzarella. Next will be brie and chèvre, and then more aged cheeses as we get more comfortable with the process.

We will have chicks for sale after Valentines Day, all the way through May. Large Orpingtons, which are an amazing fryer chicken, pretty much the size of a small turkey, and are beautiful as a backyard chicken.We will have mostly blue and black chicks for sale but we have 5 different colored roosters. We still haven't decided what colors we are going to focus on.
Blue Orpington Rooster
 Orpingtons are very sweet and the roosters are surprisingly gentle considering their size. These birds are huge! The hens are heavy layers which is great for our egg selling business!

Buckeye Rooster
 We also have buckeye chicks! These rare birds are considered threatened by the Livestock Conservancy. Breeding them back to larger population is our goal. They are a great multipurpose bird. Large enough for eating, a rooster's average weight is 8 lbs. Buckeye hens also lay very well, ours lay about every 26 hours. These birds are extremely cold hardy, originating from Ohio.  We took our Buckeyes to the Boise state fair and they all placed very well in the American breed class.