Florence Springs

11/18/2023

We're on course for a 75%ish hatch rate! 29 out of 41 eggs with movement! Come on, daddy needs a new pair of roos! Satin frizzle showgirl if possible please!

11/12/2023

RIP Gaston. 💐

11/12/2023

We lost our frizzle man Gaston to an unknown cause last night. No signs or evidence of anything. Mystery loses are the absolute worst. This guy was the variable I wanted to play with the most. On the hunt for a new unicorn I guess. 😔

11/09/2023

Who needs some?

AVAILABLE, today's harvest
10 🥚🥚🥚 black (bearded and bearded naked neck, silk only) - UPDATE GONE
8 🥚🥚🥚 red pyle / partridge (bearded and bearded naked neck, silk and satin frizzle)
4 🥚🥚🥚 buff (bearded and bearded naked neck silk only) - UPDATE buff GONE

Can ship priority mail in the morning. Build your dozen or get all for a special 🖤

Photo just for attention, I know you all wish you'd hatch one of these things 🤣

11/09/2023

My nerves are crazy right now posting a video where I have to speak. Please forgive my vocal blunders and poor setup as this is my first unboxing video or real video of any kind.

Our order of hatching eggs from the Good Witch Homestead, a Silkie - Serama Incanto arrived at the post office today! My wonderful wife and 3 of the kids went and picked them up while I was at work. So excited for another hatch! Send good vibes!

11/05/2023

What is Florence Springs? It's a home before a homestead. It's a family before a farm. It's where we live before it makes a living (it doesn't yet). It's where my heart stays when I leave for work. Welcome to my happy place.

My amazing wife and 4 kids aren't pictured to respect their privacy so you get 2 cats, a dog, and Tiny our puppy chicken.

11/03/2023

After list nights marsupial mishap I received some much needed good news this morning.

The head spellcaster at Good Witch Homestead, a Silkie - Serama Incanto reached out and asked if we'd be able to receive our order of hatching eggs early. 😲 The amount of consideration and kindness this lady has is magical! 😉

Her birds filling orders early helps, but I wouldn't have thought to ask if someone had incubator space available. I would have just been like "won't this be a pleasant surprise" until the time it wasn't. I would have been devastated when someone informed me their eggs showed up before they were ready and it impacted their hatch. Thank you for the lesson!

Remember, you don't need someone to teach you everything. You can learn a lot from paying attention to good examples.

Looking forward to making this unboxing video!

11/03/2023

I've been told it's good to have opossums around. They eat lots of bugs, aren't aggressive, and so on.

Cluck. That.

Had two terrorize the big coop last night. Trapped one for relocation and ran the other off till my trap is empty again.

We had the one I ran off back tonight along with two more! They were on our birds before the sun went down. Tore up a cream legbar and an Easter egger before we could get to them. Everything is locked down now and my fury had the dammed things running for their lives. Which at this point may be forfeit should they return again. My hands are stained with blu-kote.

10/27/2023

We had to say goodbye to one of our feline friends today. Smudge was 16 and sad. Her sister's health declined and we had to put her down a few weeks ago. Shortly there after Smudge decided she was done eating. No bad teeth, no infections, just sad. We tried every wet food at the store, tried heating it up, tried watering it down as sometimes she'd lick the juice off wet food, no interest.

She slept in our bed with us last night and didn't leave her spot till after she left this world. She waited for my wife, her main person, to get home from dropping our oldest off at school. Jennifer checked on her when she got home, smudge stretched and said goodbye.

It's weird how the best way for them to go, at home with their people, hurts more than doing what's necessary when it's necessary. Buried her next to her sister on my lunch break.

Hope your Friday finds you better than ours did.

10/16/2023

Oh goodness! The itty bitty littlest crow you've ever heard!

10/15/2023

Not "finished" but usable. They seem to enjoy having all the extra room.

10/12/2023

Good information for future generations. Having 2 daughters has made my wife and I understand how important that fire that burns within them really is. She has a tendency to tell me "I'll destroy anyone who tries to put that fire out". I wonder where they get it? Damn I'm lucky she picked me.

10/11/2023

New brooder coming along nicely. 6ft long, 29.5 inches deep, should be plenty of room for the older chicks to jump around and practice being chickens. I'm gonna rig it to take a divider as future proofing just in case. Gotta pick up some hinges and build the cage doors. You know, in my "free time"....

10/11/2023

This is Butterscotch and the three little BYM chicks she hatched on Sunday. This is about as close as she'd let me get unless she was squatting on them to get them warm. She seems to be an excellent chicken momma.

10/10/2023

10/10/2023

Unless the egg fairy stops by we're done hatching for the year. The holidays are approaching fast and we have to shift focus and budget toward making that magic happen. It'll be a slower start next year than I would have liked but that just means we should have more time to focus on infrastructure and keeping an eye on our grow outs. Good vibes only!

10/07/2023

Florence Springs is a poultry farm on a budget. Much of what we have is held together by the blood we dripped in there while making it and the Chuck Norris like threat of destruction if it should fail us. That being said this old vynil wrapped desk turned router table is now on its way to becoming a brooder for the next generation of Chaos Cluckers. Somewhat finished product will be posted in the comments, won't be today though! A four kid bedtime routine has to start early. Usually with a chair and whip in hand 😂

10/07/2023

Just got home from putting in some OT to a pleasant sight! We have 2 out of 4 BYM(barnyard mix) chicks so far! These are from a BCM roo(black copper marans) over a Barnvelder that lays the most beautiful speckled eggs. Hopping we have some future dark blotchy layers for next year! I'll get better pics tomorrow when they are hopefully all here and dried out.

10/04/2023

So fresh and so clean! And pretty stinking cute too!

10/01/2023

Our newest batch of babies! 11 cute little Fluff balls hatched out of eggs from Flossy #5 Silkies!

With these 11, and the 8 we hatched from Fontuna farm were coming up on full. But not quite yet 🤪. I'd really like to get one more hatch in before temps fall to far.

The plan is to try to save some scratch and place one last order from somewhere special. With the holidays on the horizon I don't know if we'll manage it but 🤞 Happy Saturday everyone!

09/26/2023

We're NPIP certified! And I'm a certified tester!

09/26/2023

Eggcellent deal!

09/26/2023

Up before the sun and the chickens getting them all in their holding cells so I don't have to chase them around trying to catch them for the NPIP appointment.

09/25/2023

Our current batch of 9 babies, not for sale. 8 of them are from Fontuna farm eggs, including two showgirls and a frizzle that I belive is a buff.

The last 1 is from an egg I received from a lady in southern Illinois. She's here for sentimental reasons. Her entrance to the world went sideways but with some help we got her here so here she'll stay. Her name is Tiny because she is. She's in here with chicks around 3 and a half weeks younger than her and she's not too much bigger than them. We'll see how they grow out.

Gonna finish this post and the cinnamon raisin bagel I'm eating then I'm putting 13 eggs in to lockdown. Also finishing my prep for tomorrow's NPIP certification! Can't wait to be able to offer my services as an NPIP tester in the area.

09/24/2023

The old dog and I enjoying some porch sitting. And puppy kisses. They're kind of a rarity from Monster anymore. Love that stoopid pooch.

09/24/2023

It's been a long time since we've updated the farm page. There have been some downs and ups over the last couple months. I don't want to dive in to the details so we'll hit some bullet points for semi transparency at the least.

I lost my gorgeous white roo Rhino to an unknown cause. Found him dead under the raised coop when I got home from work one day. Couple ideas of the cause but we'll never know definitively.

My mental health went wonky for a bit and I was mildly depressed for a while but we're pretty good now.

Picked up 2 gorgeous birds Central Peck Chickens!

Had a successful hatch from Fontuna farm!

Putting 13 eggs from Flossy #5 Silkies into lockdown tomorrow!

One of our big roos in the layer flock got over the pasture fence into the yard where our shorkie cornered him and plucked quite a bit of his back bald. He's doing OK now but dang. Poor guy.

Finally, this coming Tuesday the 26th of September we'll be getting NPIP certified and I'm getting certified as a tester. Here's hoping this is the start of something. I can't wait to get more active in the community and to learn and grow as a breeder. If I can help others along the way that would be the cherry on top.

Thank you to everyone for helping and inspiring me along my way and here's looking to a big year in 2024.

09/05/2023

08/11/2023

Heading up to Central Peck Chickens in the morning to pick up this guy. Super excited to watch him grow into the roo of our dreams!

08/06/2023

We can't even be trusted to run to the feed store. 🙄🙈

08/05/2023

Mama bird's chicks are getting big! She's such a good mama. Look at her checking me out to make sure her not-so-little babies are safe around me. Also, there's a picture of little Eve on her own. Eve is the only one that hatched from one of our eggs and it wasn't even mama's egg! The others were chicks that we tucked under mama in the night.

08/04/2023

Here's a quick updated picture of our little hatch here at Florence Springs.

08/03/2023

#4 hatched today and she's a dark little cutie. 😍

08/02/2023

Well, they made us wait all night long, but here are three new hatchlings! Hopefully, a few more decide to join them today, but for now we are very excited about our first little hatch.

08/02/2023

Good morning everyone! We would like to introduce you to someone. From the generous heart of Julie Irvin-Grenda, and the amazing breeding pens of Central Peck Chickens, we welcome home this short king! He graces us with all his floof tomorrow evening and we are extremely excited to have him! By next year we hope to have him surrounded with lovely ladies that will make him want to strut his stuff like we know he can! Can't wait to see the generations to come! This is the kind of stride we hoped to start this journey on. Thank you both so much!