02/08/2026
Hi all, long time without a post! Hereās a small update!
May Update: we have sold our easter eggers as the load became too much for me to keep up with post surgery and during pregnancy. I will make a new post when we have eggs to offer again.
While our farm is still chugging along with more chickens than weāve ever had at once, we havenāt been able to commit to future projects as much as weād hoped for due to us still living offsite from the animals.
While carrying my third baby (due in August 2026) I found out that my umbilical hernia iāve been dealing with the past 5 years is giving me more complications than I originally planned on. This immediately set me back mentally and physically with moving forward on several planned projects for our 2026 year. I will be having surgery in the next month or two, recovering from that with my two little ones running around, and also maintaining a healthy pregnancy until August, where I will again have to recover from birth.
We have the animals for so many projects to finally get going, but with me being off my feet for a while, and also bringing a new member of the family into this world, itās just near impossible to get them going at all right now. Maybe towards the end of this year we will be better equipped and suited to start, but the main things I would love to focus on is the quality of all of our breeding programs.
Project 1: Ayam Cemaniās. While I have cemaniās penned together, they arenāt good quality and def need bloodlines to help us get to the SOP goal of the breed. This project has been going on for 3 years already with still no turn-around sadly. This is a high-cull breed, and I very much want to commit to quality of the birds before selling any offspring. While I know of a few locals with different bloodlines, weāve chosen not to add to our already existing flock until we have moved onto the farm with them.
Project 2: Zombieās. Even though low quality cemaniās are good for zombie projects, and we have the leghorns on the farm to begin ā integrating them and being able to watch for discourse and other potential issues, as well as fertilization, hasnāt been in the cards for us either. Hatching Zombie eggs and selling sexed chicks is the overall goal, but with us living offsite planning incubation/hatches and brooding is proving to be too challenging to begin at the moment. This is another project Iāve waited 3 years to begin. Weād finally obtained our leghorns last summer and they just started laying about 2 months ago. Sadly, I see us needing more in the future to even begin this project once again.
Project 3: Fibro Easter Eggers. Just as the name sounds and the google search shows, they are beautiful, fibromelanistic birds that lay standard easter egger colors (blue/green/pink) instead of the standard cream/white that ayam cemaniās and zombieās lay on their own. While I have plenty of ACās, Amerucanaās and EEās to launch this project, penning them together, observing behaviors, and quality checking hatches is again just not doable for the better part of this year for us.
Project 4: Olive Eggers. This would be a new endeavor for us to take on, as we have a range of Olive layers but no dark/chocolate layers/roos to pair with them. This is a project we arenāt yet fully set up for, as I would need to add Marans to our flock, and good quality Marans are a pretty penny we just canāt spare at the moment.
Project 5: Amerucanaās. We have one single breeding pair for this project, which seems like the only ādoableā project for us as collecting and hatching could move quickly with staggered hatches and planned buyers. But, again, quality is an issue we will have controlling until we are able add more hens to our already existing pair.
Project 6: Meat Rabbits. While we already offer āmeat muttsā as many refer to mixed breed rabbits, I am not satisfied with the poundage at the age of culling. We get some amazing colors and fur types from our experimenting, but weāre ready to move away from the surprises and be more planned.
āWe would like to expand our Rex program, and not just expand, but we would have to completely start from scratch. Our pioneer doe to all of our meat mutts, G, is turning 4 this year. While she is a fantastic mother, I learned not long after purchasing her from someone local, that she is indeed a Mini Rex and not a Standard Rex. She would be retired and new Standard Rexās brought in.
āFlemish Giants are my favorite breed, not only for their warm personalities, but for the obvious reason of how big they get and how much meat they can produce. We have 1 sterile male also turning 4 this year, and what I am assuming *is* a breeding pair but again ā they arenāt pedigreed, so I have no clue if they are truly 100% Flemish or mixed with another larger breed. Not knowing this limits my control on quality and doesnāt give others the confidence to buy. So this is another project we in turn would have to start from scratch, just like with the Rexās.
^buying āpure bredā rabbits from backyard breeders who do not pedigree has ended up hurting us more than helping us continue to grow. And that is our own fault.
With all that being said, we are going to be on the back burner even longer for the next half year at least. I will always have easter egger hatching eggs available, as there is constantly a consistent pen of them year round with 2 roos watching over the hens. But as far as any hatching eggs from any of the other listed projects ā itās a no go from us until we do test hatches and sell to our buyers with confidence.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far! ššŖ¶šŖŗ
