As always there were many great looking animals out there, and there has been some great improvement to the barn since i last showed. I really like the new turkey/ goose pens in particular, its great that they can move around and display in there now.
Well my first year back in the show ring was better then i expected! 11 first place, 4 second place and 2 third place. Best of all my young blue slate turkey tom won RESERVE CHAMPION Turkey! Couldn't be prouder. I was very surprised at how competitive the quail section was! Unfortunately the Coturnix are all listed under any colour so there were like 20 pairs! Hopefully i can petition to get some colour categories added.
As always there were many great looking animals out there, and there has been some great improvement to the barn since i last showed. I really like the new turkey/ goose pens in particular, its great that they can move around and display in there now.
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the gang drying up before getting loaded and heading out Here we go again! Its been several years since I've shown poultry, i kind of fizzled out and went to rabbits, then life got hectic and i had to take a break... Well the breaks over and I'm giving it a go again. My friend Julianna cam over and helped get everyone ready to go. She was nice enough to come over on the weekend also to do trimmings and pre show prep too! I didn't enter too many birds. Unfortunately most are not in the condition i might like them to be, and i would love it if they were just a bit older for most, but work with what ya got! I've entered 4 silver laced wyandottes, 4 orpingtons, 3 turkeys, a pair of marans, a pair of ameracaunas, and 4 pairs of coturnix quail. I was pretty surprised by how big my marans roo has gotten, hes small turkey size lol. We'll see how i place tomorrow. I hope to hit the fair around 3 or 4, judging should be long done by then. Perhaps I was a bit optimistic about the time line of my project? Thursday night at work i hurt my back so things haven't been proceeding quite as planned... The good news is that I'm not building it alone, so we are still making progress! So today i played the foreman and gopher, and he did all the heavy lifting and bending, and yet somehow i'm still incredibly sore! We did make some good progress today, we framed the end wall, put the 2x4 headers in and finished putting in the hoops and securing everything into place. We also cut the inside corner braces and had those painted up today ready to install tomorrow. The 2x4 top rails are there for 2 reasons, first to add strength and stability to the hoops as winds and storms are a concern, but also as a place to hang the feeder and waterer. This will keep them off the ground which should keep them cleaner but also make for less work when moving the tractor as we wont have to dink around with tripod stands or the like. All in all it was a good day, its really shaping up now, and I'm still hopeful to get them in there by Monday now lol. Next thing to be done is to add the inside corner braces and a wider set of braces for pulling, and hopefully the door. Also need to add the nailing strips on both sides then just finish it off with fencing and a tarp... Oh and a coat of paint somewhere in there too lol.
My dad cannot decide on a name for it. He likes turkopolis, but that just got his pun factory spining... Turkistan was suggested as well as turg-mahall, there were even worse ones, but i cant remember the reasoning for them... Graceland, Turkopia, gobbleville.... list goes on, we worked on it all day haha. In the spring of 2011 I started off with hatching out some heritage turkeys. The first batch was Beltsville Small Whites Crossed with blue slate and royal palm. My previous turkey experience had been only with the lazy dumb commercial broad breasted whites... not the best experience and as a result i had nothing to do with turkeys for many years after lol. Well heritage turkeys are as different as different can be! They are curious, possess a bit of problem solving smarts (particularly when it involves getting to food or into trouble!), and did i mention they can fly? They like to roost high and on anything, if its elevated, they want on it, even if its just to be the highest up turkey throughout the day. This has made containing them quite difficult in my current set up. Given that i have about 25 or so, it makes it very hard to alter their premises to fix that too. The solution? Turkopolis! Turkopolis will be a mobile grazing and outdoor shelter for the turkeys to live in... In other words a turkey tractor, but i like turkopolis better lol. This is our first tractor of the hoop style. The foot print is 12' x 16' and about 6'+ tall. Sounds sizable but i'm sure the turkeys will fill it up fast enough. The general principal for the hoop tractors have been around for a while, i didn't invent them, just put our own spin on it. People have been using old hoop house green house frames, carports, and their own devices often made out of bent PVC or electrical conduit. The concept is simple, make a hoop house, cover it with wire and a tarp and trick it out based on what your keeping. If your raising meat birds, no need for a roost, but turkeys prefer a roost for example. The nice thing about it is that you can keep your birds outside for all the sun and fresh air they could possibly want while at the same time getting them greens and bugs to supplement their diet. This in theory helps with feed costs, as well as produces the healthiest birds possible. and because its mobile, you move them to a new plot when they've picked over the current one. Another bonus? No need to deal with bedding, move them on and its considered fertilizer ;) So we've built the base, and painted it up, and last night we put the first hoop on and the door frame and secured everything together. Good thing we tied it all together, as we ended up with bad storms over night, but Turkopolis made it through safe and sound! Our next step will be to make the other end wall. It will be frames identical to the front to accommodate 2 2x4 runners along the top. They will act both as a place to hang the feeder and waterer, but also as a place to secure the inner hoops. Then we will add the other hoops and the strapping that will serve as a nailing point of the fence as well as an anchor point for the hoops. A bit of paint, then the fence, then the tarp and door and we're done! If all works out well we'll have the turkeys out there by the end of the weekend! Fingers crossed lol
And so i branch off to blogging in my new site. I found i needed a "left overs/extras" section to round out my site. Here i will write about specific projects like my assorted tractors and coops, shows and results, breeding projects, incubation (lets face it who doesn't like chick pictures lol), and anything else that doesn't fit into any of the other sections.
If there is anything anyone wants me to write about, please send me a message and i'll see what i can do ;) |
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News from the Rene Farm, all our projects, shows and points of interest. Keep up to date on our breeding progress as well as animal sales. Archives
March 2014
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