Hot Hens!! Temperatures are rising Keep those animals cooled off in the summer heat!

Record high temperatures are not a good thing for you backyard herd! Your chickens will be particularly affected by the heat. Be prepared with a few tricks to beat the heat and keep your hens laying you beautiful homegrown eggs. You definitely do not have to do ALL these thing to ensure you do not loose your whole flock, but rotate it up and see what you and your animals prefer.

• Fresh Water!!! First and foremost is WATER!! You will be surprised how much water your animals will consume on those hot days! Keep their water fresh and cool. I even toss in ice cubes and it will have my animals complete attention! Curiosity will bring them to the water bucket and everyone will get a fresh cool drink! Freeze ice blocks to help keep the water cooler longer. 
• Chilled fruit and veggies! Cut up veggies and fruit, toss them in the freezer and have a lovely afternoon treat for your animals. Focus on fruit and veggies that are high in water content. My girls love frozen or chilled tomatoes and watermelon. On the crazy hot summer days I collect any damaged or dropped tomatoes from the garden first thing in the morning and instead of tossing them to the compost pile, I take them inside to chill for a few hours. 
• Water frozen in pop bottles and milk jugs. Lay the bottles outside in your animals favorite afternoon shade tree spot and you will find their popular location will become even more popular as the bottles will help cool the area! Clean off your bottles at night and refreeze them...keep a good rotation of clean bottles! 
• Shade! Make sure they have plenty of shade access!! If you are concerned about them having enough shade, try covering an area with a tarp to provide more shade...just don't make it a blanket that cuts off their air circulation!
• Misters. We do not have misters for our girls (yet) but this is one way to cool the air by several degrees. Our hens do not run for cover when it rains so I think they would enjoy the misters. We want to set up some misters on a timer so we don't end up with a mud pit. Also we need to rotate the mist so our goats can still enjoy the yard...goats hate rain and hate being sprayed with water!! 
• Fans. Place a fan right outside their fence and help get air circulation!
• Ice packs! Those little nest boxes can get extremely hot...especially if your coop is in the sun part of the day. Chickens LOVE to dust bath and this will help cool them as well. If your flock are big fans of this, try tucking a few ice packs in the sand where they dust bath...just keep an eye on them and make sure they don't try to peck away and tear open the ice packs. Clean off your ice packs at night and refreeze them...keep a good rotation of clean packs! 
• Flat bucket of water for them to walk through to cool their feet and legs...some chickens may walk, some may lay down, and other might just think its for drinking. 

These are just a few ideas of what you can try. Let me know what works for you and your animals!

First Planting

My seedlings tables are overflowing with plants and I love it!! However, it is time for those seedlings to be planted. We started on Saturday by doing the final preparations on the beds and aerating (digging up to loosen) the soil one last time. On Saturday, We were able to plant 1 bed of tomatoes and planted 46 tomato plants. Then last night (Monday) we were able to plant our second bed of tomatoes and planted another 45 tomato plants! We still have a lot to plant, but I am moving quite slow...seeing as I'm over 8 months pregnant now.

I plant my tomatoes 2 feet apart on the drip of the dripper line...so they get water placed right at the roots. Some people say that this is too close to plant heirloom tomatoes, but this is the way I did it last year and they were extremely productive all the way to the last frost of the season!

We are also going to do the "wall of tomatoes" like we did last year instead of using tomato cages. (more info and pictures once we get our "wall" up). 

I have a tendency to obsess over the layout of the garden and waste a lot of time trying to decide exactly how and where to plant everything so it will be "perfect"...but the fact of the matter is that it always changes and it will never be "perfect". I was focused on the tomatoes on Saturday and wanted to get as many in the ground as I could.  I have 13 tomato varieties and well over 100 seedlings. I wasn't planning on using all these tomato plants but will sell the extras that we don't have space for in the garden. The varieties I planted are: Orange Kentucky Beefsteak, Red Beefsteak, Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge, Red Zebra, Big Zebra, Gold Medal, Mini Orange, Black Cherry, Violet Jasper, Red Fig, Egg Yolk, Besser, and Porter. All these will present a wide variety of colors and sizes! 

I couldn't decide which order to plant them in or which bed to put each variety. After Bryan and I sat laughing at how ridiculously obsessive I was being (I wasted well over an hour just staring at the plants)...we decided to have a "random wall of tomatoes". So we rotated the entire bed and didn't plant any varieties together! It will still be easy to identify which plant is which (based on the size and color of the fruit and it will be fun to pick  from all the random color and variety along the wall! This will help with disease prevention as well. 

Having drip irrigation really saves on time as well as water consumption. It places a drip of water at an exact root system for a designated amount of time. Bryan even installed shut off valves on each dripper line so we can only use water on the beds that are planted as well as regulate the amount of water that each bed receives.

My New Toy!!!

Yes, mommies deserve new toys too! 

I started all my seeds and got into watering them daily and I am realizing how sore my hand is going to get using a spray bottle to "mist" all these seedlings twice a day! I did it last year, but I sure don't remember it being this frustrating. Bryan came home from work today with this delightful pump sprayer!! It was $7 at Lowes.  "GardenPlus Garden Sprayer". I am excited to water tomorrow!! It is so extremely easy to give these tiny seeds a good misting of water without disturbing the soil or making 10 trips to the sink to refill my water bottle while trying to avoid hand cramps!

I hate spending money, but this is $7 WELL spent! 

Christmas for Farm Animals

This post is a little late, but I wanted to share with everyone how excited I am about this past winters watering situation! For Christmas, we got the chickens and goats a heated waterer! They loved it...and so did I!! It is a 9 quart heated bucket that we picked up from Tractor Supply. Extremely easy, and well worth the $25! 

I put this off because I didn't want to spend the money, but last year I was constantly chipping the ice away and bringing out warm water. If you have outdoor animals or are planning on getting outdoor animals, I definitely recommend spending the extra money and making sure you have a heated dish for winter!! Since the weather is warming back up we have replaced their heated blue dish with the standard black water pail and the heated dish is safely stored in the garage and wont be needed for quite some time!!