Rhode Island Red chicks and Pekin ducks for sale. We can keep them for you until they feather out at six weeks old if you don't want to mess with heat lamps inside as they grow. The cost at that age would be $10 per chick to cover the feed and heat cost. These peeps are being hatched here on our farm from our beautiful roosters, hens and ducks in the photos on our blog. All our hens have been on an organic feed diet and always free ranging. All are straight run. Pekin ducks are limited and go fast so please keep checking in on our farm store page. The Pekin ducks are great egg layers even in the winter and also double as a meat bird, they are very quiet and friendly. If you would like to just stop buy please contact us for availability. We also may be able to meet in the Springs. If you would like to reserve some please visit our Farm Store Page and leave a deposit of half the cost for 1 to 2 week old chicks, 3 to 5 week, or six week old feathered hens and leave your contact info so we can contact you when they are ready to go. We don't know how to sex them as doing so is an art form that will take some time to master so we are willing to offer a refund if you end up with a rooster that you would like to return. Must be returned by 3 months old. (Possibly an exchange if we have more hens on hand if that is preferred) We can help you in anyway if you ever have questions on how to care for your new chicks with advice on supplies that work best and any rare health issues if they should arise. We are always willing to take care of our customers and you can email or phone with any questions. In the city of Colorado Springs, homeowners are allowed to have up to 10 hens at your home unless you live in a deed restricted neighborhood that won't allow it. Roosters are not allowed in the city due to the early morning crows that could bring up neighbor conflicts. Here is some additional info on the Rhode Island breed. They lay different shades of brown eggs. They are our hens of choice due to their great qualities and being a dual purpose bird. They make great farm friends and pets for children. Why should you consider this breed? Well, for one, they're prolific brown egg layers. Probably the best, actually, for large, brown egg laying hens. They consistently win egg laying contests for their ability to produce. If you're after good quality, brown eggs, this is the breed for you. This breed was developed in New England in the 1900's to be both layers and meat birds (they generally get up to 6.5 pounds). These days, though, they're rarely used for meat because of their superior ability to lay eggs.They're also tolerant of both heat and cold, and of less than ideal living spaces. If you want to avoid the issues of broodiness, this breed is a better than average choice. Although they can go broody, it doesn't happen very often. Rhode Island Red chicks are rusty colored and the adults are auburn colored birds. (The roosters are beautiful with green neck feathers.)
We bought this last winter from home depot and I thought I would share an energy saving tip. Instead of blowing that hot air from the dryer outside this thing holds water in the bottom to catch the lint. It does add some humidity to the area but that's not such a bad thing here. It works and we really can feel it adding some extra heat. Can't remember what it cost but I know it was pretty cheap.
Our fireplace has been horrible this year and the only thing I can think of is that we sealed our house up too good by caulking all the windows when we painted and put in a new sliding glass door. Being in a modular home our furnace is in the worst place at the end of our house inside. Not only is it loud when it's on it sucks the air from the fireplace if its not burning hot enough to send the smoke up. This has always been a problem but this winter it got worse and if the wind was blowing at all it would blow down and in sending embers flying in while dusting and smoking out the entire house. We had a chimney sweep come out to clean it hoping it would help and it did no good. Our next step was to buy a fancy $300 wind cap to put on top of our chimney stack. With everything that could break already having broke all in one winter we are pretty fed up with spending anymore money. I decided to try an experiment by pulling a ladder up on the roof, climbing up the stack and strapping this piece of tin on the windy north west side. Its been two days of horrible wind and not once has the smoke sent us yanking the fire alarms out and opening every window. Not even the furnace effects it anymore either. Later I will go back up and paint it with black heat resistant paint so it don't look so funny. Were so glad to have our fireplace back.
We usually don't put anything outside without strapping it down or planning for it to blow away but these winds really made a mess of things. I only took one picture of the broken glass we had to clean up and we spent some time hunting trash cans and a number of things down in the field. Their is a repair list to do on the next nice day.
I moved from Denver to spend 10 years living in Florida before moving to Ellicott and been through a number of hurricanes plus tons of tropical storms. I was there the year of Charlie and Katrina where every two weeks there was a new hurricane moving through and Charlie knocked our power out for five days. We were lucky to get it back that soon. I have to say that Florida weather seemed easier to deal with than the weather here if you can believe that. It seems farming is a constant battle against weather. Thankfully we were not one of the unlucky ones to have their house wiped out or I might say different.
~Ken~
Well were still not having any good luck with our breeding and things are looking bleak. Our girls Margie and Mallory went into heat again yesterday. We been on baby watch for Mallory and being 2 days over due she decided she's not even pregnant. We made so many trips to the breeders we can't even count now. I don't know why were not getting the job done and we even tried different bucks. We dried Mallory off thinking she was pregnant and Lamanchas are harder to get pregnant this late in the game. We may end up with goats out of milk for a year the way things are looking. We planned for Diana to do milk deliveries while I did more baby proofing but the day kept falling apart. With the threat of 4 to 5 dollar gas coming and a hay shortage more than doubling the cost of a bale this could be a rough summer. We bought $1,000 worth of hay thinking it should be enough to get us through the winter. Watching the pile get smaller we asked Falcon Feed when the first cutting should come in, we were caught off guard not knowing it wouldn't be until July. Lesson learned : ( We may have to buy more goats in milk to make up for the ones that wouldn't freshen, something we didn't want to do. We left the girls with their boyfriend while we did deliveries so all we can do now is hope this last chance takes. I had no idea it was this hard to get a goat pregnant. Were talking now of making a buck pen for next year so we don't have to go through all this again. Then to top the day off as you know if you live close to here the winds picked up shaking the water in the toilets and throwing bunnies across the yard. On that note.. here is some feel good pictures before we head out in the wind to clean and milk. We have some challenges to get through for sure. ~Ken~
I just noticed that I must have missed putting this video up when they were just weeks old. They were so cute and full of energy whenever water time came into play. Hopefully we will be hatching some Pekins in the next few months.
We're currently on day 11 of our 21 day egg incubation with the new Hova Bator. We've been candling our eggs periodically to make sure we don't have any failed eggs so they don't end up making a mess and I gotta say it's a pretty cool thing to see life being created. At only 6 days of incubation you can see blood veins inside the egg that feed off the yoke and also the embryo moving around. The dark spots are the eyes and heart as it moves around in there. We just use a high powered flashlight to see whats going on. Out of our 40 Rhode Island red hen eggs we have only had to remove 2 so far. The Hova Bator was working wonderfully until the small computer fan that keeps the air circulating started making noise and rattling around. I was getting worried because we're half way through the incubation period and we don't want it too poop out on us now. So with some bolt-tweaking and the use of a rubber band, we got it to run smooth again for now. Before we start another batch were gonna need a new fan. I cheated and found a youtube video of what we see as we are candling so this isn't our own video. We may have some baby peeps for sale soon ; )
I'm going to run a campaign to have this month removed from being a recognized month on our calendars. Some may say I'm a visionary and some (probably just single digit numbers :p) may call me an idiot. I'ts too cold, too windy and I've reached my snow threshold already for the winter. Of course if I could just call up the goats and say I'm not going to be in today due to being sicker than sick it would make February a little easier and not such a bucket of suck. So... in short I propose to due away with it since it's the only month without 30 or more days ----- Were Lilbitfarms and we approve this message.
~Ken~
I Copied this from Washingtontimes.com so you wouldn't have to go through the barrage of advertisements. We saw the story on Fox News channel that led us to look into it further. It drives us CRAZY! The way they treat raw milk with unfounded arguments and demonize it as if it was an illegal drug. They even mention marijuana in the article which gives you the feel they treat milk like illegal drugs. This is what the Feds are wasting our tax dollars on and shutting down good farmers trying to make a living as Americans did when this country was founded. At some point the government decided we don't know whats best for us and believes they can police everything we do. What they are really doing is killing jobs, opportunities for people to innovate and create an income other than unemployment checks and creating a food supply with unpronounceable ingredients under unsustainable filthy conditions. I just had to rant a Lil. I feel a little better now :p Here is the article.
A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stopRainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.
The product in question: unpasteurized milk.
It’s a battle that’s been going on behind the scenes for years, with natural foods advocates arguing that raw milk, as it’s also known, is healthier than the pasteurized product, while the Food and Drug Administration says raw milk can carry harmful bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria.
“It is the FDA’s position that raw milk should never be consumed,” saidTamara N. Ward, spokeswoman for the FDA, whose investigators have been looking into Rainbow Acres for months, and who finally last week filed a 10-page complaint in federal court in Pennsylvania seeking an order to stop the farm from shipping across state lines any more raw milk or dairy products made from it.
The farm’s owner, Dan Allgyer, didn’t respond to a message seeking comment, but his customers in the District of Columbia and Maryland were furious at what they said was government overreach.
“I look at this as the FDA is in cahoots with the large milk producers,” said Karin Edgett, a D.C. resident who buys directly from Rainbow Acres. “I don’t want the FDA and my tax dollars to go to shut down a farm that hasn’t had any complaints against it. They’re producing good food, and the consumers are extremely happy with it.”
The FDA’s actions stand in contrast to other areas where the Obama administration has said it will take a hands-off approach to violations of the law, including the use of medical marijuana in states that have approved it, and illegal-immigrant students and youths, whom theadministration said recently will not be targets of their enforcement efforts.
Raw-milk devotees say pasteurization, the process of heating food to kill harmful organisms, eliminates good bacteria as well, and changes the taste and health benefits of the milk. Many raw-milk drinkers say they feel much healthier after changing over to it, and insist they should have the freedom of choice regarding their food.
One defense group says there are as many as 10 million raw-milk consumers in the country. Sales are perfectly legal in 10 states but illegal in 11 states and the District, with the other states having varying restrictions on purchase or consumption.
Many food safety researchers say pasteurization, which became widespread in the 1920s and 1930s, dramatically reduced instances of milk-transmitted diseases such as typhoid fever and diphtheria. TheCenters for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no health benefit from raw milk that cannot be obtained from pasteurized milk.
Acting on those conclusions, the FDA uses its regulatory powers over food safety to ban interstate sales of raw milk and has warned several farms to change their practices.
According to the complaint the FDA filed in court, the agency began to look into Mr. Allgyer’s farm in late 2009, when an investigator in their Baltimore office used aliases to sign up for a Yahoo user group forRainbow Acres‘ customers, and began to place orders under the assumed names for unpasteurized milk.
The orders were delivered to private residences in Maryland, where the investigator, whose name was not disclosed in the documents, would pick them up. By crossing state lines the milk became part of interstate commerce, thus subject to the FDA’s ban on interstate sales of raw milk. The court papers note that the jugs of milk were not labeled - another violation of FDAregulations.
Armed with that information, investigators visited the farm in February 2010, but Mr. Allgyer turned them away. They returned two months later with a warrant, U.S. marshals and a state police trooper, arriving at 5 a.m. for what Mr. Allgyer’s backers called a “raid,” but the FDA said was a lawful inspection.
The investigators said they saw coolers labeled with Maryland town names, and the coolers appeared to contain dairy products. The inspection led to an April 20, 2010, letter from FDA telling Mr. Allgyerto stop selling across state lines.
He instead formed a club and had customers sign an agreement stating they supported his operation, weren’t trying to entrap the owners, and that they would be shareholders in the farm’s produce, paying only for the farmer’s labor.
Customers hoped that would get around the FDA’s definition of “commerce,” putting the exchange outside of the federal government’s purview.
The FDA investigators continued to take shipments, though, and last week went to court to stop the operation.
Ms. Ward, the FDA spokeswoman, didn’t say exactly why they targeted Mr. Allgyer’s farm, but that violations generally are determined either by FDA investigations or by state-obtained evidence.
Pete Kennedy, president of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, said undercover stings are not unheard of.
“It happens quite a bit. It’s almost like they treat raw milk as crack. It’s happened in a number of states, and at the federal level,” he said.
His organization has sued to try to halt FDA enforcement, and the case is pending in federal court in Iowa.
Mr. Allgyer’s customers declined to talk about the operations, and when asked whether they knew what would happen to the farm’s distribution, they said they would have to wait and see.
One of those customers, Liz Reitzig, president of the Maryland Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, said she started looking for raw milk when her oldest daughter began to show signs of not being able to tolerate pasteurized milk.
She first did what’s called cow sharing, which is when a group of people buy shares in owning a cow, and pay a farmer to board and milk the cow. But Maryland outlawed that practice and she was forced to look elsewhere for raw milk, and turned to Mr. Allgyer’s farm.
“We like the way they farm, we love their product, it’s super-high-quality, they’re wonderful. It’s just a wonderful arrangement,” she said.
“FDA really has no idea what they’re talking about when they’re talking about fresh milk. They have no concept - they really don’t understand what it’s like for people like me who have friends and family who can’t drink conventional milk,” Ms. Reitzig said.
Yesterday was a crazy day that neither of us saw coming. We started the day out normal cleaning coops and the goat barns with only planning to go to the Calhan post office, being sick as a dog. It seems that bigger things were on the horizon for us and we were the last to know what was coming.
While taking care of the goats, my favorite doe "Margie" decided she wasn't pregnant AGAIN : ( going into heat for a third time. Both of us were pretty upset, frustrated thinking of throwing in the towel by how this first breeding year has been going. We then got the horse trailer ready once again and made a call to our breeder (who has been wonderful to us) and hit the road to get Margie some more man love. I made a conscious decision not to bring our digital camera not expecting anything new which I now regret, so please excuse the not so great camera phone pictures.
We always get put to work by our "goat lady" as we call her. We don't mind at all and like to help her out with all the heavy lifting plus chores that we can while were there since she has been so kind to share with us her 30 years of experiences.
While I was making the "love connection" with Margie and Odie (Were now pros at the dating game and deal with the contestants on our own) I heard some loud screams that I knew wasn't normal. It sounded like a cow yelling in trouble but the cow was on the other side of the farm. After tracking down where it was coming from I saw a goat with a baby half way hanging out. I immediately ran to Mary Sue and Diana to let her know a situation was about to go down.
Had we been an hour earlier or an hour later we would have missed out on a great learning experience while expecting baby goats of our own due any day now. And as usual just when we think we thought of everything we end up learning new things. It was a pretty nasty mess the doe made as you can imagine if you ever been in labor or witness to it. We learned to clear their nose right away so they can breathe and what tools to have on hand since you don't always have a warning. The afterbirth hung out on a long intestinal looking cord for the longest time. My first instinct was to pull it out since it was driving me nuts but being with our goat lady we learned to let it fall off naturally or you could cause the doe to bleed internally creating a problem.
The doe had two kids (a boy and a girl) The girl was all white and you can see me feeding the boy colostrum from a bottle while he was about 20 minutes old. If you try to research bottle feeding versus natural feeding to prevent CAE (Caprine arthritic encephalitis) you won't get a straight and definite answer. It seems to be fifty fifty. Mary Sue takes the babies away pasteurizing and bottle feeds all her babies but were going to go the other route letting them stay with and nurse off mom. We did have our whole herd test CAE free but your really never safe from it. (It's nothing harmful to humans) One thing we have learned is that there is no one way and many different ways of doing things and it's up to the farmer to decide what works best for them and the animals.
Everything seems to happen for a reason. While Marge is going to take longer to kid, if it wasn't for her we wouldn't have had on the job training for when our does start popping out ankle biters.
~Ken~
The oldest tractor in the picture is a 1946 steel wheel, made just at the end of the world war. there was a rubber shortage during the war sending all the rubber to the military. I don't mind at all because you cant get this beast stuck even if y0u tried. It runs perfect. Now..... I have a 1999 Dodge Durango that is falling apart and is a turd mobile. In my opinion this is why our car manufacturers have been failing. Why cant us Americans have the pride and quality that came out of that era. It blows my mind. I work on my truck more than I do my tractor. We Love anything old. There's a reason the products lasted this long. We even have a working 1930's era dairy cream separator that we found at a farm auction. We just haven't put it to use yet.
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