09/02/2026
We’re back on the farm! We took a well deserved break from farm life this past month and did a bit of exploring in the PNW including a voyage to Alaska. I can’t tell you how enjoyable it was just getting out of the heat for a month!!
But we had to come home eventually. Conor was stressing with having to take care of the farm all on his own. Unfortunately, he’s not perfect and we did have a few losses. With this heat, I’m surprised it wasn’t worse.
I’ll be working on moving birds into breeding pens over the next week or so and for now I’m looking at numbers and capacities for the coops/pens. Some of my plans will have to change though as we lost our two breeding male Russian Orloff. I had hoped that maybe there would be one in the grow out pen or with the hens that had chicks, but even those were lost. 😞 I am on the hunt for a replacement though, so maybe late in the season this next spring I’ll have those again.
It’s hard when the last hatch of the season - which I dedicated as my personal birds- are all gone. I will probably have to hold back a lot this winter as personal stock.
Show season is just around the corner as well. I do plan to have a dedicated “show” pen this year for my show hens/pullets. But I’m also thinking of only showing APA breeds. So the number of birds I take to shows may be less than my usual number.
Anyway, it’s still screaming hot outside, so it’s really hard to get motivated to do any cleaning of coops and moving of birds.
I’m looking at new options for egg varieties this year as well, so keep looking for those updates. I’m hoping to get back into having individual birds photographed into a group breeding pen info graphic again like I’ve done before. The hard part- getting the individual bird photos.
Here’s a “water chicken” from our adventures this past month. It reminds me of those glorious 60° days 🥰