2019 Think Spring: Plants, Poultry and more…
Think Spring
Mr. Groundhog says spring will be here sooner rather than later.
This is a cute kids craft that popped up today. Turning egg cartons into cute spring chick treat boxes.
I’ve been seeing seed and poultry advertisements start popping up. To have a successful spring with my poultry and plants I guess I need to make a plan.
I had not planned to hatch this year but my husband and I plan to buy turkey poults and focus on turkeys this year. We decided that this would be the year I put more focus on turkeys instead of chickens. Then a family member brought up the discussion of maybe hatching some of our duck eggs this year. Hmmmm tempted.
Meanwhile I’ve been googling and researching to figure out if I DO get new chicks or hatch chick eggs what breeds would I really want to focus on. I’d like to try all the breeds but I think that would be a bit too many chickens. LOL.
I like to have all kinds of egg colors in my egg basket. My goal since starting has been to get a variety of egg colors in my basket. So far I have had a great variety. I am still missing the coveted Dark Chocolate Brown egg. Maybe this year will be the year I hit that goal.
Using info from Lisa Steele Fresh Eggs Daily and My Pet Chicken I’ve made a list. I looked at all the qualities, best layer, cold tolerant and heat tolerant, broody vs non broody, docile, etc.. and made a list fitting the qualities desired for my area.
My wish list is to someday add to my flock to have Australorp . Ameraucanas , Olive Egger , Faverolle, Cochin, and Marans for the coveted chocolate colored egg and for fun I've wanted to have some Lavendar Orpingtons. I started seeing ads for turkey eggs and decided to give hatching turkey eggs another try. I guess those Marans and Lavendar Orpingtons will likely wait another year so I can give the turkeys my full attention. We picked up some eggs from a few local farms the other day for Turkeys.
They were put in the incubator Feb 17th so I am crossing my fingers.
What do you have for goals for spring. Will you hope to garden or raise poultry or other barnyard critters? Do you have any spring landscaping projects planned? Tell me in the comments what you are looking forward to doing in the spring.
Edited to update: I candled the eggs on day 7 and it looks like quite a few of the eggs are actually developing. They are expected to hatch just before St. Patrick’s Day.
I have a page on my flock that you can follow at Backyardchickens.com.