April 10 Happy Hen Farms Newlsetter: Farm Update

Good Afternoon, 

This week, I will be coming to the school's parking lot from 2:00-2:30 pm. I will be parked on the left hand side of the parking lot (looking from the road) in a white Honda Civic. 

I would also like to say thank you for your patience the past few weeks as my response time to your emails may have been delayed or longer than usual. I have been trying to keep the chickens up and running on schedule to get the right amount of eggs, and so far they have been doing great at almost fulfilling their egg quota(s) for the week. 

Eggs: 

As of this afternoon, I will have about 15.5 dozen total (approximately 6 Lg dzn and about 9.5 Md dzn). By Thursday night, I hopefully will have 41 total dozen available. I have also started noticing that the amount of medium eggs is starting to equalize with the large eggs, which is good! 

Newsletter: 

The kale, lettuce, cilantro, and peas that I planted 2 weeks ago have just started sprouting! 

The grass has also started to grow exceptionally well with the mild temperatures combined with the rain as well. 

  

Everything that I have planted so far is in stainless steel water troughs that my dad found last year. They were used as watering troughs for the cows at a dairy farther south of my house in Nampa. Being water troughs, they were easy to hook drip lines up to, so now all four troughs run on drip irrigation. They are situated in a sunny corner on the backside of the garden. 

 (last summer) 

Another exciting event happening this week is that I am getting some more chicks, as well as a few ducks. I figured that since I have a little extra time, I could experiment with a few meat ducks and see if the outcome will be better than with meat chickens. The White Pekin ducks are commonly used for meat, and they are said to get bigger than the Cornish Cross broiler in 6 weeks. On average, the Cornish Cross take about 8 weeks to get to 4-4.5 lbs. Conversely, I read that the Pekin ducks average 5-6 lbs at 6 weeks of age. Both of those weights are numbers that represent the weight of the bird after the feathers, entrails, feet, ect... are taken off. Depending on how this experiment goes, you could (or could not) be seeing "Fresh Duck" available next year in small quantities. 

The wild Mallard ducks are probably what you mentally picture when you hear the word "duck." When you think of "duckling" you probably think of the fuzzy yellow ducklings, which are actually the White Pekin. 

 They are about 1.5 times the size of chickens, and are rather funny when they waddle around. I clean horse, duck and chicken pens on the weekends, so I have been familiarized with the funny habits of these ducks, and they typically never go anywhere without their friends. 

As always, any questions, comments, or concerns are always welcome! 

Thank you!