Well Spring has finally sprung on the FamilyPlusHomestead and we’re in full swing.  Every year we come out of the gate ready to hit the road hard and fast.  I’m hoping we can maintain the momentum this year.  We’ve already done our trash pickup, stick pickup and general toy pickup.  In addition, we’ve made the preparation for our chickens and turkeys to arrive.   As I mentioned in a previous post, we had some issues with some high flying chickens and a curious dog.  We’ve decided to restock the layer and meat chickne base as well as add some turkeys to the mix.   Recently, we were staying with friends on the way back from a trip out East.  He mentioned that old refrigerators make great storage for animal feed and why don’t I use them for putting the baby chickens in.  They are already insulated and are quite large so that’s what we did.  Here’s his idea in action.

We removed the doors off of each Fridge or Freezer and then laid them down.   You may be asking yourself, where did you get all those Freezers?  We have been frequent contributors/shoppers on Freecycle.   Those appliances usually only have a little life left in them.  When they died, we moved them our to our machine shed….until now.  Rather than paying $40 per appliance to have them hauled away, we’ve been able to use them for a good purpose.  

Our chickens are doing great! 

Rhode Island Reds

Buff Orpingtons

And last but not least our Broad-Breasted Bronze Turkeys

Broad Breasted Bronze Turkey

Glad to report all are doing well and we haven’t lost any of them 2 weeks into it.   I’m also keeping a log book this year so I can keep better track of food/water consumption as well as growth and production.   We have about 4 meat chickens that never made it to the butcher block last year as well as 4 layers.  These are continuing to produce good eggs, pictured here with some happy egg harvesters.