It’s always so exciting when chicks arrive at the farm - I hope you saw the video on my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48.
I’ve been raising chickens for many years. Not only do I love keeping them for their fresh, delicious eggs, but I also enjoy learning about the different breeds and varieties. As part of good animal husbandry practices, and in order to maintain strong egg laying production, it’s very important to regenerate the chicken population from time to time. Yesterday, 54 cute, fluffy, and very healthy chicks arrived from Murray McMurray Hatchery, a 104 year old company in Webster City, Iowa. I got Whiting True Blue, Whiting True Green, French Black Copper Marans, and Silver Laced Wyandottes. The chicks are just days old, but they will start laying eggs in about five or six months. For now, they’re nothing less than absolutely adorable.
Enjoy these photos.
The chicks arrive at the post office in a well-ventilated cardboard box. They’re quickly picked up and driven to my Bedford, New York farm.
They arrive wide awake and peeping. Because they are so young and fragile, it’s important to be well-prepared for their arrival at the farm.
Once they arrive, they are all brought down to the stable feed room, where we set up three brooders – heated enclosures that provide warmth and protection which the chicks would otherwise get from the mother hen.
Each chick is closely inspected one by one and then placed into the brooder. It is important to make sure they are clean and alert.
Each breed is kept in a separate brooder lined with newspapers, and equipped with feeders readied with chick starter. The waterers are all filled, and the heat lamps are on. The temperature should be 90 to 95 degrees for the first week.
The heat lamps are suspended above the brooders. Raising and lowering them will help adjust the temperature. The heat lamps cast a very warm, reddish glow.
The chicks are very eager to explore their new surroundings – a sign of good health.
They are also very curious about all their visitors. This chick looked straight up at the camera.
Whiting True Blue and Whiting True Green chicks display a variety of colors from golden to chestnut to a darker reddish brown. Some chick starter crumbles are put down on the newspaper to help introduce the birds to their food and direct them to the feeders.
As soon as they’re in the brooder, each chick is also introduced to the waterer and feeder, so they know where to eat and drink. They are all familiar with waterers and feeders, but it is still a good practice to show them when they’re moved to new surroundings.
Usually after one chick finds the water source, the others will follow. Chicks are very thirsty after their day of travel.
A good chick starter feed will contain protein for weight gain and muscle development, plus vitamins and minerals to keep them healthy and to build their immune systems. The chicks will be fed organic chick starter feed for the first six to eight weeks.
These chicks have several feeders and several waterers in the brooder. A chick should never have to “wait in line”. On average, about 10-chicks can consume approximately one-pound of chick starter feed per day. For 53-chicks, that adds up to more than five-pounds of chick starter feed per day.
These are French Black Copper Marans. These hens will grow to be tall, elegant birds that lay the darkest eggs.
These chicks all have clear eyes and are very alert.
Silver Laced Wyandottes is a breed known for good disposition. Silver Laced Wyandottes are colorful, hardy, and hens are productive layers. Their broad-feathered, smooth fitting silver-white plumage is sharply marked with lustrous greenish black edging.
Chickens have their own personalities – some are more active or more curious than others.
It’s amazing how fast the chicks adapt to their home as they dart about so quickly. We also include a toy in each brooder – the chicks love to peck at these toys and roost on them.
Baby chicks need constant monitoring until they are at least a month old. They’ll stay in this feed room until they are big enough to move into the chicken yard.
If you could only hear how much noise these little chirpers make – they have lots to say.
It’s hard not to notice the large feet, but it won’t take long before these birds grow into them.
This peep looks like she’s ready for a nap.
And this one is already sleeping – it’s been a long day for these babies. I am so happy with this group of chicks – they are all strong good eaters, and will be great additions to my flock.
Here in the Northeast, autumn is a wonderful time to enjoy the changing foliage, but it's also a good opportunity to appreciate the many seeds, berries, and cones that grow on the trees and shrubs.
Many birds and small animals rely on the fall harvest of berries and seeds. They provide calories and crucial nutrients that help them thrive during the colder months when other natural food sources are nonexistent or buried in the snow. They also add beauty to the landscape when most flowers are already gone. Here is a sampling of some of the many seed pods, berries, and cones that are around my Bedford, New York farm.
Enjoy these photos, and look back at another blog I posted last month on saving flower seeds.
Have you ever heard about the beautyberry, Callicarpa? Tiny spring flowers produce clusters of these magenta colored bird berries that remain on these spreading shrubs after the leaves drop.
These shrubs are outside my guest guest house and show off beautiful color this time of year. The fruits become a good food source for many different birds, including mockingbirds, robins, and brown thrashers.
If you follow this blog regularly, you may recall learning about the bur oak, Quercus macrocarpa. We planted two rows along the outsides of the boxwood allee, one on the left and one on the right. The leaves of the bur oak are easy to identify. They are alternate, simple, six to 12 inches long, roughly obovate in shape, with many lobes. When mature, the two middle sinuses nearly reach the midrib dividing the leaf nearly in half.
This is the acorn of the bur oak. The bur oak acorn is very large – macrocarpa is Latin for “big fruit”. The cap of the acorn is called the involuchre and nearly covers the entire nut and is very hairy. As the acorns mature, the cap and seed will turn brownish tan.
This is called a Chinese Scholar tree. The Scholar tree is a deciduous, round-headed tree growing up to 50 feet or taller with a somewhat open look while young.
It has compound leaves with seven to 17 two-inch-long leaflets.
The pods of Scholar trees appear in the fall and look similar to dangling beads.
This tree is an Atlas cedar. I have several planted down behind my chicken coops not far from a stand of tall white pines. Cedrus atlantica, the Atlas cedar, is a distinctive evergreen. Its silvery blue to bluish-green needles are eye-catching in any landscape.
All members of the genus Cedrus produce upright, barrel-shaped cones. These are male cones, which are smaller than the female cones and don’t stay on the tree for very long.
Cornus kousa is a small deciduous tree that can grow up to 40 feet tall. It is in the flowering plant family Cornaceae. Common names include kousa, kousa dogwood, Chinese dogwood, Korean dogwood, and Japanese dogwood. It is native to East Asia including Korea, China and Japan.
This is a fruit of the kousa which is edible. The soft pulp is sweet with a similar flavor to a ripe persimmon but it also has hard seeds inside.
These are the seeds of the magnolia tree. In the fall after the flowers are long gone, Magnolia seed pods, which resemble exotic-looking cones, spread open to reveal bright red berries. Birds, squirrels, and other wildlife love these tasty fruits. Inside the berries are the magnolia seeds.
I am sure many of you recognize the leaves of the ginkgo. The leaves are unusually fan-shaped, up to three inches long, with a petiole that is also up to three inches long. This shape and the elongated petiole cause the foliage to flutter in the slightest breeze.
Here are fallen ginkgo tree fruits. The most noticeable thing about these is their smell. Have you ever smelled one? It is hard to miss, and the stench is quite disagreeable. The outer, nasty smelling pulp is known botanically as sarcotesta. The ginkgo seeds inside contain urushiol, which is the same chemical that causes poison oak, ivy, and sumac, so always wear gloves and protect your skin whenever handling the fruit.
Here is one seed separated from its fruity encasement. It is a single hard-shelled seed enclosing an edible kernel. The kernels are often roasted and used in Asian cuisines.
Catalpa, Catalpa speciosa, is another tree I love – this one located just outside my carport. Mature catalpas can reach heights of 50 feet or more. They are very showy with their white orchid-like flowers in June, huge leaves, and cigar-shaped fruit.
In autumn, mature catalpa seed pods turn brown and often hang on the tree through late fall and into winter.
This is one of my many Stewartia trees. Stewartia is a species of flowering plant in the family Theaceae, native to Japan and Korea. All varieties are slow-growing, all-season performers that show off fresh bright green leaves in spring. Do you know why I love Stewartia trees? Well, Stewart is my last name after all. However, there is no relation. “Stewartia” is named for Scottish nobleman and botanist, John Stuart, who had imported the plant to his personal London garden. He later served as British prime minister from 1762 to 1763.
Stewartias feature stunning bark that exfoliates in strips of gray, orange, and reddish brown once the trunk attains a diameter of two to three inches.
Stewartias produce woody ovoid capsules of seeds each of which has five seed chambers containing up to four seeds.
And here is a rose bush laden with hips. The rose hip or rosehip, is also called the rose haw and rose hep.
Rose hips are the seed pods of roses. They look like small crab apples and are typically red to orange, but ranges from dark purple to black in some species. Rose hips remain on the plant long after rose blooms fade. I hope these photos help you appreciate the seeds, berries, and cones of the trees and shrubs in your own backyards. They are all beautiful in their own right and important food sources for our woodland friends.
If you live in an area where foliage changes with the seasons, you know how exciting and beautiful this time of year can be.
I love autumn and although the season hasn't yet hit its peak here in Bedford, New York, the changing leaves are providing lots of fall color. I've planted hundreds of trees at my farm, so it's a fantastic place to take in the season's changes and enjoy all it has to offer.
Enjoy these photos.
Here, the changing leaves haven’t quite peaked yet, but the fall foliage is already looking so pretty around the farm. Some trees change early, others late – usually from October to November in the Northeast.
Because of changes in the length of daylight and changes in temperature, leaves stop their food-making process. The chlorophyll breaks down, the green color disappears, and the yellow to gold and orange colors come out and give the leaves part of their fall splendor. London plane trees are among the first to change color in fall from a deep green to yellow brown.
The perimeter around my paddocks displays such wonderful shades of orange, yellow, amber, brown, and green. I love the layers of color created by the changing leaves. Although some autumn coloration occurs wherever deciduous trees are found, the most brightly colored foliage is seen in Canada, the northern United States, Scandinavia, northern and western Europe, the Caucasus region near the Black Sea, Russia, eastern Asia, Argentina, Chile, southern Brazil, Korea, Japan, and New Zealand’s South Island. Here is my grove of American beech trees.
The American beech, Fagus grandifolia, is native to eastern North America and turns a pretty golden-bronze in fall.
Persian parrotia or Persian ironwood is a small upright tree or large, rounded, multi-stemmed shrub. It is related to witch-hazel. The oblong green leaves turn various shades of red, orange and yellow in the fall, often persisting into the winter months.
Here are the weeping hornbeams, Carpinus betulus Pendula, on one side of my “soccer field” where my grandson plays whenever he visits. I love these weeping hornbeams – the branches of these trees gracefully weep creating an umbrella of foliage that reaches the ground. Look closely, the leaves are changing – the foliage turns a bright yellow color in fall.
Up close, one can see the seed catkins hanging from the branches, holding about 10 to 30 seeds each.
Cotinus, the smoke bush, has large round leaves and spectacular autumn color. These leaves are turning scarlet red.
For fall color, the sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua, is hard to beat. Its glossy green, star-shaped leaves turn fiery shades of red, orange, yellow and purple in the fall.
Here’s a view through the woodland. Many of these trees are deciduous, meaning they tend to seasonally shed their leaves after showing off their brilliant fall colors.
These sugar maples above my tree peony garden bed also display gorgeous color in fall – the leaves turn vibrant shades of yellow, burnt orange, and red.
These lindens are already turning too. This linden allee runs from the old corn crib to my allée of boxwood.
I extended the allee in 2017. I loved the linden tree allee so much, I decided to extend it all the way down to the chicken coops – I am so pleased with how well it is growing. In time, this section will be as full as the original half.
Here is one of many Japanese maple trees at my farm and one of the two I planted in 2019 after taking down six large evergreens from this area.
My pin oaks, Quercus palustris, have done so well. They are so easy to grow and maintain – they are popular landscape trees.
Looking up, these pin oaks are just starting to turn color. The leaves are changing to yellow and reddish bronze. Once its fall color display is done, pin oaks often retain brown leaves, which persist on the trees through winter.
The pin oak also has an interesting growth habit, with pendulous lower branches, horizontal middle branches, and upright upper branches. Pin oaks normally reach 60 to 70 feet tall but can reach heights of 100 feet.
Here are more maples outside my main greenhouse. Maple fall colors range from yellow to orange to red.
Not far is this striking burning bush shrub with fiery scarlet foliage just starting to show. This bush is as low-maintenance as it is dazzling, making it exceptionally easy to grow as either a single specimen plant or in a grouping.
My Stewartia garden across from the long pergola is bordered on one side by a stand of distinguished bald cypress trees, Taxodium distichum. From this angle, one can see the slight tinge of brown in the center tree – this one is always the first to turn. The fall colors are tan, cinnamon, and fiery orange. Bald cypress shed needlelike leaves. In fact, they get the name “bald” cypress because they drop their leaves so early in the season.
Outside my Winter House, I have three tall weeping katsura trees. These trees also change color – its blue-green foliage turns bright yellow in fall.
Soon, my outdoor grounds crew will be busy blowing all the leaves. I’ll share more photos of the trees in their peak fall colors. What autumn changes are happening where you live? Please share your comments with me in the section below.
Martha Pins
Martha Tweets
