Birds & Bees
Chickens
Picking up the live package.
Our chicken-raising adventure began in March, 2010. A phone call from the Capon Bridge Postmaster announced the news – “Your chicks have arrived!” Two-day old “peeps” arrived by mail from our supplier, Ideal Poultry of Cameron, Texas. Imagine being a country postmaster and receiving boxes that chirp!
Brooder box with warming lamp.
We specified “all pullets” — all female – as we are initially only interested in egg production.
Our order included Barred Plymouth Rocks (brown eggs), Leghorns (white eggs) and Americaunas – of Chilean origin (blue and green eggs). Dr. Zeus was right!
The Coope D'Ville
Chicks are raised in a brooder pen until they are big enough to be moved into the mobile coop. The hand-built coop utilizes some old cart wheels Tim salvaged off a neighboring farm and allows our hens to “free range” for insects, etc while fertilizing the pasture – all inside a movable fence. Our friends at Church View Farm are showing us the ropes. With luck peeps grow into layers in 5 months. The “Coop de Ville” houses our laying staff and their, hopefully, 6 dozen eggs a week. Got a good omelet recipe?
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Bees
We started with two hives of Italian honey bees. Each of the two 3-pound packages of bees sent from our West Virginia supplier came complete with 10,200 worker (female) bees, 300 drones (male) and 1 lucky queen.
Worker bees with their queen
These bees were immediately placed in our 2 hives, so that the workers could begin building the laying cells, cleaning the hive, feeding the queen, protecting the hive, gathering pollen and nectar… you get the idea – they work! A successful hive will grow to 40,000 bees and produce excess honey for harvest in September.
The worker bees exhaust themselves after only 6 weeks and so the queen must continually lay new eggs. She will be productive for 2 or 3 years. The drone’s only purpose is to await the 1 in 10,000 chance to mate with a free queen… and they are driven out of the hive in the autumn since they are a burden to the hive in the winter. Girls Rule!
There is much to be learned about bees, their social habits, diseases and care. We are lucky to have a supportive group nearby – the Hampshire Beekeepers Club - to help us ramp up on the subject. Our West Virginia Apiary Registration arrived from the Department of Agriculture so we are official!
Click here to read any blog posts we’ve written about the birds & bees!