Winter Farm update : Rare breed Hatching Eggs and Day Old Chicks now available now.
Hey there, folks.
The flock at Graywhale Farms remains happy and healthy through early and mid winter months. Each of our species continue to lay fertile eggs. We also expanded our day old chick and hatching egg lineup.
We keep it simple at Graywhale Farms. Healthy living starts with quality nutrition.
Focus on chicken nutrition year round for a happy and healthy flock
Like all species, nutrition is the bedrock of healthy and happy living. During the winter we don’t have the benefit of our organic farm and wild growth. Still, we focus on ensuring our chickens have a quality diet.
In 22’ Summer, our growing flock was receiving organic greens, beets, chard, turnips, carrots and apples. Apples and haruki turnips were the most popular with our chickens. All in all, we froze/stored about 800 lbs of carrots, greens, apples and turnips – which lasted about the first 35 days of winter.
We were not able to store any wild growth for the winter. One of our most prolific growers is Queen Anne’s Lace.
Queen Anns lace is an invasive species on our farm. Still, it provides good chicken nutrition and boosts the respiratory system. Our chickens, especially our Indio Gigante’s and Black Copper Marans love Queen Annes Lace.
Work with local restaurants to find winter chicken nutrients
With only a 35 day supply of veggie for our chickens we got nimble and worked with one of the local restaurants in town, Scaturos Bakery .
Those cut carrots didn’t end up in the trash — and we took steps together to continue making our community more sustainable while also improving our flocks nutrition.
Also, Scaturos has the best family meals – we often eat there after a long day with the flock.
Improving for next winter
We are not out of winter yet in Wisconsin, but we have already identified a couple things to improve upon
- Harvest Queen Annes lakeland freeze all summer
- Plant more carrot and harvest—- good storage option
- Increase storage capacity
We are also considering building a cricket and larva grow house to supplement the complex proteins received from foraging during the spring, summer and fall months.
Graywhale Farms — From our farm to your homestead, backyard and kitchen.