January Garden

The garden is resting for the short winter, this is when I apply more compost to the beds and cedar sawdust for the paths getting ready for the early spring planting.
This is the 2nd winter.



















Blueberry bushes mulched.









I used cattle panels arched and attached to t-posts hammered into the ground for a pea, cucumber or whatever trellis .

Pigeon coop continued & baby Pigeons..

The pigeons are loving their new home , now that they don't have to share with the chickens.
Richard built their nest like a shelf with dividers so the dominant males don't run everyone off . The idea is to give each mated pair (pigeons mate for life) their own private area.
The white pigeons that look like doves are the racing homers. They will always go back to the place they were born. The original pairs that we bought will always need to be caged, they are called "captives". The babies will be trained to fly up to 75 miles from home. Not all will make it back , there are always unknowns along the way like hawks, weather and some just get lost.


















These blueish pigeons are called "french Mondaines", these pigeons were bred to be eaten, called production birds. For many centuries pigeons were raised as food (squabs) in pigeon farms and millions were wild and would cover the sky from sun-up to sundown flying in their flocks.














Day old pigeons



















One hatching out of the shell.









Richard is adding on two rooms so he can separate the captives from the babies. That way he has a breeding room of just mated pairs, a room of extras and a room of the babies. At some point we will build an out door flight area.

The chickens and Peafowl out and about.

We finished the pigeon coop just in time before we left for our Christmas break. Removing the pigeon nests from the chicken coop so the chickens did not have the option to lay their eggs up high. They did not like the change and refused to lay in their nests. So while we were gone for 2 weeks, our neighbors took care of the chickens and we kept them inside the yard so they would get used to the boxes and make a habit of laying in the nests.




It has been a very dry winter and there is no grass for them to eat and very few bugs. They do seem to find things to munch on out and about, for they are always scratching on something!


The peacocks at almost 6 months.








The roosters are coming of age. The first time they started mounting the hens we thought they were attacking them. The roosters are not very gentle when they grab the hens neck as they hop on their backs and flip their tale feathers up . They are so fast I have not been able to get a picture of this. They are very busy at their job! So much so they have worn the feathers off some of the hens backs.