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Help! We're moving to a farm!
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I have been absent from the forum for a few months due to a major life change we are being led to do. We are slowly starting the process to form a youth ministry for disadvantaged youth. It’s similar to crystal peaks youth ranch in Oregon. The concept is to mentor the child through rescued horses, basic farm chores, and One-on-one attention from a leader. Sharing Jesus and giving hope and love will allow the hurting child to feel wanted/needed. Crystal Peaks offers an information clinic so we will attend that in June.
Anyway, we just sold our house and are in the process of purchasing a 10 acre farm! It has pasture, ponds (spring fed and stocked), woods, and a bank barn. We are going to grow into this ministry in phases and the actual youth ranch will open for business in 3-4 years. We want to start with chickens and then horses. We need wisdom on any of the above! How to protect chickens from predators especially! Any thoughts? Thank you.Enjoy this adventure!
Chickens… It has been a few years since we lost any chickens to predators. No matter how secure you make their enclosure, snakes will envariably get in and eat eggs. We are not anti-snake people, but snakes at the chicken coop are not permitted (yes, we kill them). We had a hawk a time or two, but the chickens learned to run into the bushes and hide whenever they saw a large bird flying above (vultures are common in our part of the country, but only eat carrion). We have cats and dogs that roam about so perhaps they keep predators at bay. Also, our chickens are only out during the day. Ours is a working farm so there’s always something going on which will keep most wild animals at bay. We have had trouble with someone else’s dog a time or two, but again, the chickens learned to run and hide. Also, when we know that dog will be at the farm, we do not let the chickens roam free. Chickens are fun. However, I will warn you that one or two typically die each year so be prepared. We get new chicks each spring to keep our flock going. Also, roosters can be rough on those poor hens. I would not recommend more than one rooster unless you are raising them for meat. We only harvest the eggs from our chickens.
I don’t have any experience with horses, but my daughter sure wishes we had one or two or ten!
In MN owls can be an issue with chickens and they are not nice. We also let ours roam free during the day and then at night they just mingle their way back to the coop and we shut them up. I 2nd Backyardchickens.com Also, finding a local mill/farm store will be of great help as they will or should have staff who can help you with all of the questions you will have. Chickens are fun but are addictive (for me at least). We buy new chicks in the spring and ducks almost yearly. Duck eggs are also edible and they are amazing even better than chickens for baking! Duck eggs are also about another 1/2 size bigger than chickens.
I am excited for you! I wish our 10 acres had a pond, but no such luck. You’ll love it, it’s so freeing for the kids. Congrats!
Wow, that is so wonderful, Mrs. McCardell! Your youth ministry will be such a blessing.
I second Misty that chickens are addictive. When the coop was closer to our house we called it “Chicken TV” because we would sit on the swing and watch them forever. I picked up a few books from the library and went to the site mentioned but got most of my help from a local farmer. Oh, I was militant about everything – the fence for the run being deep in the ground, pavers surrounding those, etc., as I didn’t want anything to get one of my hens.
Now that we are at a different place our barn and coop are about 60 yards from the house and I’m a lot more relaxed. With this flock, predators have not gotten them but they have, in two years, killed two themselves. If they see blood they go nuts and will peck a hen to death. It’s horrifying to me. If I see a hen who has a spot of blood from a peck I’m sure to get it cleaned right away or separate it until it has healed fully.
Many blessings on this new adventure!
Richele
Backwoods Home Magazine – and their website – is very informative. It comes at things from a “prepper” point of view (preparedness / survival – type stuff), so it sort of focuses on you doing all the manual labor yourself. But it’s such good info and good for spurring ideas.
Best wishes! Life on a farm is like no other — hard work, not always convenient, but so rewarding and so close to nature and God’s handiwork.
Yay!! We love our farm. We have a livestock guardian dog and he has been valuable in keeping the animals safe. We have found that white chickens are like a bright light to birds flying overhead… Whereas the darker chickens can had among the trees and bushes. Like the other posters, Backyardchickens is a great place to start. I learned lots form them. Our girls have a 1/4 acre yard that is there’s alone, although hubby and middle boy are enclosing the adjoining woods for their foraging. I do let them out into the main yard during the fall and winter when their yard has slim pickens, this also allows them to forage in the soon to be dormant garden. They love it when I let them loose in the garden (don’t do it until you have picked all you plan on picking).
I also like to visit homesteadingtoday.com Lots of info on everything to do with living on a farm
You are going to have fun. We love our farm
Rachel, what type of dog do you have?
Also, what type of coop do you suggest/like? Chickens are a very small piece to the overall picture but we love fresh eggs so they are worth learning how to do correctly.
Does anyone have advice on ponds? Keeping them free from green stuff, fish to help clean…?
And lastly, any tips on electric fencing for horses?
Thank you so much!
A fountain works well in a pond to keep the green slime down.
We have farmer friends, and my boys work for them.
Blessings,
Retrofam
We stock our pond with grass carp. We live on 12 acres with a one-acre pond. We have chickens, ducks, Jersey cows we milk and sheep. I know nothing about horses. My husband and I grew up in subdivisions in our small town and neither of us had ANY experience on a farm when we got our first chickens and milk cow six years ago. Trust me…if we can do it, ANYONE can. Enjoy your adventure.
Our situation is very similar to RobinP and the others above. We moved 11 years ago to 14 acres. We both grew up in the burbs so we learned as we went. We have a family milk cow with a few steers added in for extra meat here and there, chickens, a dog, a couple of barn cats and have had angora rabbits before.
We LOVE our farm life and can’t imagine ever moving back to the city!
We’ve subscribed to Backwoods Home magazine and done a TON of surfing on the net!! Your family will be blessed by your adventure!
And we just had three lambs born. 🙂 So, so sweet!
(Just to let you know how homeschool families do things…one of the lambs was born yesterday, 3/14/15, Pi day. We named her Cutie-Pi.) The other two were literally just born so who knows what we’ll name them. 🙂
Update…two more born! Total cute overdose around here.
The farming life is the greatest! Those young people will blossom, especially if they get a chance to experience baby animals.
We have chickens. We have less than 1/4 acre and the kids are always in the back yard. Our first coop was fancy and had a built in run, but they are all the grass in about 2 weeks. We ended up just letting the roam the yard which meant poop every where.
We have a small section in our yard that is fenced in (20’x20′) so this time around our coop is strictlynfor roosting and laying. No run! We seeded that whole section with cover crops and they will be in that area. Right now the 4 chicks are in a tub in the garage until they are a little bigger.
We lost 3 of our first 4 because we forgot to close the coop at night. We are not in the country. Our predators are possum, raccoon, and Hawks. Just make sure they hve somewhere to run for cover and not just a big open field.
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