A Population Explosion( both wanted and unwanted)

 When we first moved to the farm we purchased an incubator and a brooder with the intention of always raising our own laying and table poultry, but slowly we put it on the back burner and a few times purchased the laying hens from a local supplier, which worked quite well for a few years.

The last two lots of hens we purchased at point of lay failed to meet our expectations miserably , laying much later than normal and  nowhere near  reaching the laying totals that our earlier birds had done, even though they were all the same breed( Isa Browns). The prices had also dramatically increased.

One of our hens had gone clucky with a few eggs under her, so we decided to let her sit and she hatched out 3 sweet chicks.

The seed was sown !, So we decided to dust off the incubator, sourced some fertile Speckled Sussex eggs from a nearby breeder and added some of our Isa Brown eggs X with a Rode Island Red rooster.

We had a go at candling the eggs( as novices, had no real idea of what we were looking for, but took pictures to learn from)

They began to hatch, what sweet  fluffy little darlings they were, I had forgotten how much that we love baby chicks.

It was also at about this time a friend offered us a free rooster from some new ones she had bred,  so meet young  Barney !

He settled in immediately with our girls and eventually we will turn our  flocks into two breeds, Barnvelders(like Barney) and Speckled Sussex. The plan is to build some new hen yards.

After 24 hours in the incubator to fluff up we transferred our babies to the brooder.

We moved the brooder onto the back verandah for ease of care, where  there is power, and we were able to help protect it from the mice and rat plague we were also dealing with. We had  purchased this brooder from overseas many years ago  and it is a brilliant set up that makes care of the birds  really easy.

There are little adjustable slides on the side that as the chicks grow you can increase their "windows" to reach the feed and water trays that are attached on the outside.They can also be attached on the inside but are messy.

The chickens grow and change rapidly day to day,

We traveled to the coast for a few days  to see our daughter and her family, Brian's brother looked after our chicks and we were  really surprised to see  the changes  in them on our return. They are so funny to watch and they are such inquisitive birds.

The chicks are now not far off moving to the next stage, where we will put them in a big cage  out on the grass with a heat lamp for the cold nights  to keep them warm.

Meanwhile Mumma hen has been doing a great job with her babies, we now let them out of their cage on the lawn of a day to scavenge and she automatically  heads back to bed each evening and we lock her in.

They will soon move up into the big hen yard with the other girls.

When we feed our cats, any left over food on the plate( and occasionally like in this video we place the plate into the brooder and the chickens go crazy over it. they love it.

NOW !!!

 

IF YOU ARE  SQUEAMISH ABOUT SEEING LIVE OR DEAD MICE, LOOK AWAY OR GO NO FURTHER.!!!!!

Here in central NSW we have been suffering from a mouse plague,  some people to a greater degree than us, but we still have WAY TOO MANY MICE.

When it all started we though that the cats were  so  cute how each night they would kill and bring inside some  mice, carefully laying them as a gift  along Brian's side of the bed,

Now the novelty has worn off a little, the numbers have  increased.

Very soon it was evident to us that we needed to purchase some more traps, but these were not to be found, all our attempts to source locally and afar failed, so when Brian's brother said they were coming for a visit from Brisbane and asked "Was there anything we wanted", we immediately  responded with "Mouse Traps"

He arrived with a box of 21 rat  traps instead of mouse traps and baits for us( which we are a bit  hesitant to use due to the pets) We thought that the rat traps would be useless but they are absolutely  brilliant.

So we run the traps, baiting them with peanut butter,any brand ,any kind , all day long about every hour until we head to bed. Sometimes we lay in bed hearing the traps snapping and get back up to do one more or even two more rounds to collect the mice.

This is our average  catch  every day. No less than 150 rotten little mice.

We have various traps of different styles place all around in our sheds and it takes up a major part of the day just routinely emptying them.

I have to admit we are a bit over it, but I am grateful that  we are enduring a smaller plague to many other farmers, there are people out there ( including some  family)  dealing with thousands upon thousands of the little rodents and are seeing their lively hood disappear before their eyes, and all this after many  years of dealing with ongoing drought conditions.. Some of the videos we have seen are horrendous .

Hopefully this will pass soon, we are thinking that as winter moves in hopefully the numbers will decrease, but so far they show no signs of slowing down.

So, until we catch up again( hopefully mouse free)  we wish everyone well,

Stay happy and safe.

Cheers

Jane and Brian.

Busy Bees and Liquid Gold

 We have had bees at the farm for a few years now.

We originally purchased a box for Brian's 60th birthday and after a few years  a friend in town who has bees supplied our first nuc of bees to us. We gradually added a few more hives and Brian and our friend Rob have been caring for them.

Our main reason to have bees originally was to increase the pollination of plants here at the farm as there had been a decline in bees in our area. We agreed  with Rob that if he helped look after our hives and  harvest the honey he could take it and sell  at our local craft shop and just give us some to use personally.

So, Rob has been a regular visitor over the recent years, sharing his long earned knowledge and expertise passed down to him from 2 generations of bee keepers prior to him, and sharing many, many cups of coffee and conversations on our back verandah.

The  photos in this post  show  randomly some of his and Brian's work with the bees.

When we were going through the drought we had to feed  our bees a sugar and water syrup and sometimes honey  to help them make it through.We used these bird water containers, and after removing them the bees came and cleaned up any remaining honey.

Forgive my fascination with photographing these amazing little creatures but I just love them These pictures were taken while they were cleaning up the remaining sugar water and some honey we had fed to them.

Our son gave us a Flow Hive  that Brian painted up ready to put into action.

One day we were sitting out on the back verandah having coffee and  Brian suddenly noticed a swarm of bees flying by, we immediately rushed out banging spoons on  saucepans, as we had been told  that it may help the swarm land and gather together.... well guess what !! it worked.

We made a phone call to Rob and he came out with a box to collect them.

Once the queen was in the box the rest of the bees flock to follow her.

Over the next few hours the swarm  slowly marched itself into the box.

We relocated them later that night to  the Brother in Law's farm down the road,

Unfortunately a couple of days later they were gone, swarmed again, but we did learn some valuable lessons.

A few days later Rob managed to catch another swarm in town and brought them here,

He  merged them with an existing hive here, by using an old method of placing a couple of sheets of newspaper between the old and the new hive and by the time they eat through the newspaper  they know and accept each other rather than fighting and become one.

 It has now resulted in a big healthy hive and we have since added a new hive beside  it.

One day Rob came to check the hives and take frames to spin,

The bees had built a pile of honeycomb on the  top of the frames, so he passed me some to eat,

It was delicious.

He inspected the frames and took 2 full boxes away to spin.

Rob's hive numbers have grown and he is a busy man, so he has encouraged us to have a go on our own, so we bought a few pieces of equipment including a spinner and we harvested a few frames ourselves.

We were very impressed with our results, What lovely light clear honey those frames produced.

We did a quick trip to Newcastle to purchase, some new preserving jars, hive boxes, honey containers and we decided to buy a new suit for me that can be shared if we get visitors that want to help Brian or just have a look.I feel much more protected now.

We also decided to purchase a new nuc of bees and have a go completely on our own, to see if we could do it, so we brought it home and placed it on a nearby farm away from our other bees.We had placed an empty box there first ready for the swap.

The new hive settled in really well and went ahead in leaps and bounds.

My brother came to visit from Sydney and got to have a close look at the bees.

The Flow Hive took a fair while to get established, but eventually got to the point where we could take some honey from it.

The beauty of the Flow Hive is that the honey doesn't have to be spun from the frames in the traditional way but instead a 'key' is inserted to 'split' the frames and the honey just pours out through tubes. after extraction the frames are reset again with the key.

We did another small extraction on another hive.

This has been such an amazing season, the rain came and the flowers bloomed and the bees have multiplied over and over, our new box  now has 2 top boxes and along with the other hives were full of honey.

We had no choice but to harvest again in no time at all.

We were totally  gobsmacked at the sheer quantity of beautiful raw honey that we have obtained this season( well over 50 litres)  At this point we are not selling the honey but maybe next spring we may look at sorting out  where to sell as we have assured  Rob from the beginning  that we will not sell against him.

Rob is a  great help to us and has a vault of expertise and information that he shares with us for which we are eternally grateful.

What a learning curve this season has been, the bees are now slowing down and getting ready for the cooler months ahead, we will not harvest again until next spring all being well.

So, until we  catch up again soon a little further down the track,

take care and stay safe.

Cheers

Jane and Brian.