The magic began on Friday morning. One after another, monarch butterflies pushed their way out of their chrysalis and dangled as their crumpled wings slowly unfurled. By the end of the day, we had 11 monarchs in various containers between the kitchen and the mudroom.
Saturday morning, we released them, and the magic began again. Fifteen butterflies hatched.
Our annual monarch tradition has reached a new level this year. We collected more than 80 caterpillars. It’s insane.
Last year we raised a record 32 monarch butterflies, which was phenomenal. This year, after walking through two fields one afternoon, we collected 70 caterpillars. We added to that number every time we went to get more milkweed to feed everyone. Invariably we found more caterpillars.
We added more bowls to the kitchen counter, collected more milkweed, and cleaned habitats every day. Eventually caterpillars crawled up to the screens that cap the bowls, dangled in Js for awhile and then writhed and wriggled out of their skins and into chrysalis. We kept adding more caterpillars and the process kept repeating.
Things have been crowded and chaotic. But also magical. Watching them eat, grow and transform does not get old.
We’ve had to expand our simple bowls and screen (and zucchini) set up to accommodate everyone.
We set up a separate butterfly container, where we could move them after they hatch and once their wings flatten fully. Butterflies are pretty quiet for 24 hours after they hatch, but they still walk about a little bit. We have so many chrysalis it was hard for the butterflies to move around.
We also built a chrysalis frame and moved some of the chrysalis into it. Moving chrysalis is nerve-wracking, but the frame worked really well for hatching. The butterflies had good space to hang, and if they wanted to move around the screens walls and wood rails gave them lots to hang on to.
Raising monarchs is so magical. From caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly, the process is amazing. Watching them flutter away year after year is special every single time.
Most mornings, we start our days with breakfast with the animals. I bring the food out to the patio while Ellie walks across to the coop and lets the chickens and ducks out. They follow her back to the house and spend the meal under the table or circling around us begging for nibbles. They know Ellie will oblige. If she doesn’t, the hens don’t hesitate to jump up and peck a bite from her hand or try to perch on the arm of her chair.
Cigo is always there and often Cedar comes down from the barn too. It’s a hilarious and idyllic way to begin the day.
After breakfast, we all move on to whatever it is we’re doing for the day, and as long as Ellie and I are home, we leave the birds to free range.
Letting the birds run has been working well.
They stay close to the house and the barn, so we’re not worried about them wandering away. When they need to lay an egg, they go back to the coop. They enjoy dust bathing where the grass doesn’t grow around the garage. They scratch and eat on the lawn and into the meadow.
I think free ranging is healthier for them. The dust baths are definitely good for their feathers. They have a more varied diet. They have more stimulation and space.
If we’re going out or at the end of the day, I call, “Here chick, chick, chick!” and they come running from wherever they are and follow me to the coop. (There’s usually some treats involved, hence their enthusiasm to return.)
But there are more dangers when the chickens are out of the run and a couple of weeks ago we lost our first chicken.
I’m not sure exactly what happened, since I had gone in the house after breakfast and didn’t hear anything. When I came out to mow the grass, I found a suspicious amount of white feathers by the treehouse. The location was also suspicious, as the chickens don’t tend to spend much time near the treehouse. I searched around but found no other signs of a chicken or violence. I rounded up the other chickens for a count and found 9, not our usual 10.
I questioned Cedar (our very active hunter) and searched his usual hideouts in the barn. There was no sign of a chicken or feathers, and I determined he was innocent.
My best guess is a hawk may have come through, spotted the hen on her own in the more open area between the barn and the driveshed, and carried her away.
It’s disappointing, but not inevitable. Caring for animals means facing death sometimes. Ellie and I both feel the benefits of free ranging outweigh the risks, so we’re going to continue. (This has very much been a family decision.) The birds certainly want to be out and seem happier when they’re roaming.
So for breakfast time and beyond, the birds will be out.
We have returned from our annual cottage holiday. And we have come home to a broody hen. Our third broody this summer.
Broodiness happens when a hen’s hormones tell her it’s time to hatch eggs. Even if there are no eggs under her (the case with our three broodies), she will stay on the nest day and night.
Hair-Do started us off this summer. (Broodiness is often triggered in the summer when the weather is hot.) She sat in the nesting box, puffed up her feathers, made a distinctive grumpy rumble when we disturbed her, and stopped laying eggs (counterintuitive, I know). We would pick her up and move her (broodies can be aggressive, but ours haven’t) and she would be so focused on sitting she wouldn’t stand up when we set her down.
Sometimes, farmers want a broody hen. For example, if you have eggs to hatch. Other times, a broody hen is not a good thing. For one, they’re not laying eggs. The lack of eggs was less of a problem for me than Hair-Do’s overall health. Broodiness elevates a chicken’s temperature–not a good thing in the summer heat. Plus I worried she wasn’t eating and drinking as she needed to.
Thinking about Hair-Do having a fever helped me understand some of the techniques to break the broodiness. Broodiness will eventually go away on its own, but it can continue for up to 7 weeks, so there are lots of techniques to try to break a broody hen.
First I took away the nesting boxes. Hair-Do and one other hen were the only ones using the boxes, so it wasn’t a big sacrifice. Everyone else lays on the floor in the exact same corner. For Hair-Do, that was a dream come true. A ready-made nest full of eggs. So that didn’t work.
Before having my own broody, I had read that one of the solutions was to soak the hen in a bucket of cold water. That sounded terrible to me, and I couldn’t imagine doing it. But thinking of ways to lower her temperature, I hauled out the hose. Poor Hair-Do had several baths over a couple of days.
We also put her in isolation. We have a vacant pen in the coop, so we moved her in there. We gave her food and water, but no straw or other bedding (nesting) materials. Most of the advice online recommends using a wire cage for this isolation stage. You can elevate the cage on some bricks or hang it so that the hen gets full air circulation all the way around. I don’t have a wire cage so I just used the empty pen.
For awhile, she sat in the corner, still fluffed up, still growling at us. After a few days, she was back on her feet and pecking around. So we put her back with the flock and all was well.
Until Boss-Boss went broody.
Boss-Boss is our big barred rock, and she is, as you might guess, bossy. While she wasn’t aggressive, she was madder than Hair-Do at being disturbed. So with Boss-Boss, we skipped the baths and went right to isolation. After a few days of an angry hen yelling at everyone through the walls, she was no longer broody.
Within a week or so, we had a few 10 egg days, which was a great sign that everyone was feeling good.
Then we went away. A few days in, I had a text from Matt’s Dad (who was sharing egg duty with a friend of mine) that we had a hen who wouldn’t get off the nest. When we returned home we found Hair-Do back in the corner sitting on everyone’s eggs. As with Boss-Boss, we spared Hair-Do the baths and tucked her into the vacant pen.
This time around, Hair-Do is very committed to her broodiness. After a week in isolation, there’s been no change, so yesterday I gave her a bath.
After her bath, she stayed outside with the other hens and even had a dust bath. With her wet feathers, things were a bit more muddy than dusty, but I was pleased to see more normal behaviour from her.
But by the end of the day, she was back in the coop, huddled in the corner, sitting.
So, Hair-Do is back in isolation and back on a regimen of baths.
Here are some sources that helped me with broodiness
We have not had water in the barn for the whole time we’ve lived here. (By water, I’m meaning running water flowing from a tap. Not a leak. We have some of those.)
It has not been a big deal because for 13 of those years, we had no need for water in the barn.
When the chickens and turkeys arrived, they needed water, but I could easily keep them supplied with a small bucket. I filled it from the hose on the patio and carried it out to the barn. Even their big waterers weren’t a big deal to carry back and forth a few times a week. In the winter, I had a clean bucket that I filled at the kitchen sink and dumped into a barn bucket.
But ducklings are another matter. Ducks need water.
We started the ducklings with a small barrel in their run. It took a 5 gallon pail to fill even this small tub. Hauling a full 5 gallon pail out to the barn every morning was more of a workout than I wanted.
I made it a week and then I called the plumber.
We had water in the barn, kind of. The issue was to figure out if it worked.
When we first moved to the farm, all the water was in the barn. The well flowed to the barn, where the pump then sent it to the house. Everything was in an insulated box, heated by a lightbulb. The equipment was old and some was not working properly.
The set up was questionable, so we drilled a new well and installed a new pump and treatment system in the house. Then we ignored all of the equipment in the barn, figuring it was a problem for another day.
Well, the ducklings moved to the coop and another day arrived.
When we installed the new well, our contractors connected to the old pipe that ran from the barn. The idea was we could reverse the flow and push water from the new well back to the barn. So my question to my plumber was, “Can we do that?”
The first step was to figure out which pipe was the right pipe. The pump, tank and pipes in the barn were a mess. Four pipes disappeared into the ground. Which one was connected to the house? The plumber took a guess, cut a pipe, and I ran back to the house to open the valve labelled “barn.” (At least I knew which pipe was which at one end.) The plumber was able to see where the water came out, so that told us what pipe to use.
Then we had to get from the end of the pipe to the coop. Completely on the other side of the barn. I bought 100 feet of waterline and strung it across the barn, screwing it into the beams as I went.
Gratuitous picture of my cute work crew. Note, the ducklings, the instigators of this work, are not present.
The plumber came back and tied into my new waterline. He gave me a tap at the coop side, where I could install a hose that would fill tubs outside in the run or buckets in the pens. Back at the old pump box, he gave me a new shut off valve and two clean out taps, so I can drain the line for the winter.
It has been so nice to have water at the barn.
It also enables me to upgrade the ducklings’ tub. I’m on the hunt for a bathtub. If you hear of anyone getting rid of an old tub, please let me know.
The ducklings have made the move to the coop. This week, they will turn 5 weeks old. They still don’t have their full feathers, but they have grown so much.
We brooded in the house for just over 3 weeks. The challenge with ducklings–which I knew–is water. Even the littlest ducklings want to be in water, need to be in water, love to be in water. I set things up as best as I could in the brooder to limit the splashing, but everything was still very wet.
When I felt like the temperatures were warm enough and the birds were big enough, they moved out.
The ducklings have their own section of the coop separate from the chickens. They have an indoor pen with an attached outdoor run.
When I first put them in the run, they were pretty unsure. I sat with them, and they stayed close. Very close.
Ellie and I had found a section of an old plastic barrel, so we put that in the run so that they had a small tub for swimming. They quickly discovered the tub and happily hopped in, so that made them more comfortable. They loved nibbling on all the weeds and grasses in the run, so that helped too.
The drama came at night when it was time to go in the coop. They had no idea what to do. I lifted them one by one and passed them through the small door to Ellie who was inside. Then I locked them in. When I came out in the morning and opened the door, I was able to talk them into coming out on their own, though they had no idea how navigate the ramp and tumbled off the side (it’s a very short fall, and ducklings bounce pretty well).
The second day, we repeated the ritual. The third evening they were able to walk up the ramp into the coop by themselves with us herding them from behind, and they were confident enough to come out by themselves in the morning. They have now figured out that the coop is a good place and they go in and out on their own. I still lock them in at night, though the run is very secure and I don’t really think they’re at risk.
We’ve also started letting them free range a bit during the day. If we’re outside, we tend to let the chickens out. So we’ve included the ducklings. Again, it took them awhile to build their confidence. Walking through the gate was hard. But they feel safest with us, so they will come to where we are (usually at top speed). They also know their baby pool is across the yard, so that’s additional motivation.
The other day the chickens were between the ducks and us, and the ducklings blasted right through the flock. They did not care that anyone was in their path. Our big barred rock, Boss-Boss, didn’t know what to do when all four ducklings were coming straight at her.
And that’s why I got ducklings. They are hilarious and fun and we love having them.
Our family is expanding again. Last week, we brought home four ducklings.
Ducklings have been in our plans since I built the coop. You may remember Ellie made a sign for one of the pens saying “where the waddles live.”
Well, the waddles now live with us!
Like with our chickens, we chose day old birds. When we went to the Feathered Acres hatchery to pick them up, they were probably less than a day old. They were so small.
We chose two Cayuga and two White Crested. Ellie picked the White Crested for their hair dos and the Cayugas for their colour. I picked the Cayugas for (hopefully) their eggs–grey or black shells!
Regardless of their looks, we love them all. They are currently brooding under a heat lamp in the living room. They spend their days making a mess with their water–typical duckling behaviour–and peeping. They get lots of cuddles too.
They are pets, so we’re working to make sure they’re comfortable with us and used to being handled. They are energetic and silly little babies.
We’re already starting to see their personalities. Ellie chose the name Wonder for our most curious duck. Poufy is the other White Crested, so named for her hair do. Our working names for the Cayugas are Midnight (all black) and Starlight (a little splash of yellow on her breast). We don’t know yet whether they’re males or females. We’re hoping for mostly females.
Ducks are such fun birds. I’m so happy to add their little flock to our family.
One year ago we brought 10 fluffy little chicks home. Adding chickens to the farm was my dream long before we moved here, and I’m so happy it came true.
To celebrate one year with the chickens, I’m looking back at some of the highlights.
The benefits of day-old birds
We chose to get day-old birds, rather than ready-to-lay, hatching our own, or adopting someone else’s flock. Because we’ve been with them since they hatched, holding them, feeding them, caring for them, our chickens are extremely used to us and super easy to manage. They are calm (as chickens go), comfortable being handled and want to be with us.
Hair-Do (a favourite hen) will ride on Ellie’s lap on her saucer sing. Clucker (extremely opinionated and food motivated) comes running anytime we’re out. All of the birds come to the fence when they see us drive in the driveway or heading for the coop.
Chickens are fun on their own, but the real reason we got them was eggs. Our first egg arrived mid-August when the hens were about 16 1/2 weeks old. We’ve not had a day without eggs since. Laying decreased a bit in the winter and when the birds molted (more on this below), but now we have many days where everyone lays.
An extra bit of fun with our chickens is their different coloured eggs. We have 3 barred rocks (brown eggs), 3 azure blues (blue eggs) and 4 olives (green eggs). I’ve not noticed a difference in production between the breeds.
On the topic of eggs, all of our ladies lay on the floor. All in the same corner. Meaning there are frequently line-ups and pile-ups. For a human to access the corner and collect the eggs requires ducking and contortions. The eggs get stepped on and sat on and are usually quite dirty. It’s awkward for everyone. I installed 3 nesting boxes when I built the coop, but the hens don’t care.
We’ve tried plastic eggs in the boxes to demonstrate what they’re for. We occasionally stuff a hen in the box. They usually hop out.
But we have recently had some success. One day I showed up during a contentious competition for the favoured corner. I scooped up Hair-Do, one of the combatants, and popped her into a nesting box. She stayed in and laid an egg. Since then, she’s been laying in the box every day. Another hen has recently followed Hair-Do’s example.
I’m thinking I might try adding some herb cuttings to the straw in the nesting boxes to see if this encourages any other hens to check them out.
The magic of the poop board
A part of the coop that’s been working exactly as intended is the poop board. This is a wide shelf or floor that I installed under the roosts. The idea is to catch the poop that the chickens make when they’re roosting–and they make a lot. Once a week I scrape the poop into a large bucket and dump it on the manure pile. The poop board keeps a ton of manure out of the straw and helps me keep the coop much cleaner.
The unending thirst for water
I’ve been surprised by how much the chickens drink. In the warmer weather, they have a large waterer in the run along with a bucket in the coop. In the winter, they had just their indoor bucket, and I had to refill it at least once a day. I bring a large bucket of water out every morning and top up their drinking water as needed. We don’t have a tap at the coop (yet), but it hasn’t been onerous to carry buckets from the house.
The worst timing to molt
Molting is the process where chickens renew their feathers. Usually it happens about once a year around the end of summer. Our chickens started molting after Christmas. Terrible timing as temperatures were very cold. Along with losing a lot of feathers, one hen’s comb and wattle shrunk dramatically and turned a very pale pink. We started calling her the pale hen. We added a daily ration of meal worms to increase their protein and waited. Pretty much everyone bounced back really well, and our pale hen is back to normal.
The problem with picking
One side effect of the molt seems to be some picking, where hens pick on certain birds and pull out feathers. Anything that’s different will cause chickens to peck. We watch out for wounds or spots that might inspire curiosity. Picking happens for several reasons, including lack of space, protein and boredom. We have a couple of hens who have lost some feathers around their rear ends. The worst case is a hen (Cinnamon) who is missing a lot of feathers on her back. I think she may have been mounted by another hen and bullied.
We’ve been letting the chickens free range when we’re outside to keep an eye on them. This helps to relieve boredom and give them something else to pay attention to. Unfortunately, our bare naked ladies are not likely to grow new feathers until they go through another molt.
I’m planning to make a cape (official chicken term is saddle or apron) to cover Cinnamon’s back to protect her until then.
Space constraints
Overall, the coop and run are working well and I’m really proud of what I built. During the winter, the hens spent a lot of time in the coop. While technically the coop has enough space for 10 birds, it feels small when they’re all inside for multiple days. This could be another reason for the picking. We’ve given the chickens a double run, but even it feels tight sometimes. In addition to free ranging occasionally, we’ve talked about using poultry netting to expand the run.
I also want to add some features to their existing run to make it more interesting. Right now the run is flat, bare dirt (or mud thanks to all the rain we’ve had). We built a swing when we moved the chickens outside, but no one has been interested in it. I’m going to try some other perches or structures to give them some other things to do.
I also have some changes in mind before next winter, so they can be outside more easily.
We have hung vegetables and even a small container of scratch mix from the roof of the run as a kind of chicken pinata. These have provided some entertainment for all of us.
(There are holes cut in the bottle, so the scratch falls out when they peck it.)
The past year with our chickens has been fun. I love seeing Ellie’s confidence, care and responsibility with the birds. It’s not been too much work to add them to our family, and the joy we get from them is worth it.
Caring for anything is an ongoing process of learning and adjusting. We are continuing to do that with our chickens.
I tackled the biggest projects we’ve done in a while here at the farm–maybe ever when I think of the birds who are now a fixture of the farm.
When I laid out my home goals a year ago, I was very excited by what was ahead. As I look back, I’m very excited and proud of what I accomplished.
Here’s my look back at Home Goals 2025.
Coop
The coop was a big construction project and it turned out so well. The barn, pens, storage, and runs all work very well and have kept our birds comfortable and safe. Adding birds to our family has been a very special, fun experience–even the turkeys.
While it’s not directly for the coop, there was another big barn task I completed last year: eavestrough. I’ll be sharing more details about this project in an upcoming post.
My office
My office was the first project of the year. It is a comfortable, personal room. Having this space for working, writing, crafting, sewing, whatevering has been so nice.
It’s also helped me to be more focused with my worktime. I still bring my computer to the couch occasionally, but having the desk, a place for my laptop and a dedicated spot for work has helped me leave work on my desk a bit more.
Ellie’s playroom
Ellie’s playroom makeover did not happen. As fall arrived, I really wanted to tackle it, but the reality of everything I was already doing and the number of hours in a day meant that another project would have been too much. I’m glad I decided to postpone the makeover, and I’m eager to start this room this year.
Main bathroom
The novelty of our renovated bathroom has not worn off. Every day I am grateful for how beautiful it is, how well it works, that I did so much of the work myself and that after living here for 13 years it is finally done.
Checking off three out of four home goals feels pretty good, especially since these were big projects for us. And, I need to say it one more time, they all turned out so well. I love the changes we’ve made to the house and the farm, and I’m really proud of what we accomplished.
Did you have any big home accomplishments in 2025?
Our little orange kitten has become a champion barn cat, a much-loved family member and so much fun.
Cedar has been with us for six months. You may recall we adopted him and his brother Maple at the same time as the chickens and turkeys arrived in the spring.
We kept the kittens confined in the coop for several weeks so we could get to know each other and get through their neuter surgeries. (The birds were still in their brooders in the house.) After we let Cedar and Maple out to have free range, Maple disappeared just a couple of days later. We’ve never found any sign of Maple, but Cedar has stayed safe and stayed home.
He is a very social little cat and loves to be with us.
He’s usually waiting outside the mudroom door for Cigo and me in the morning and then runs to the barn for his breakfast. If we’re inside and he feels left out, he will sit on the steps outside the living room door or on the kitchen windowsill and meow. He hasn’t figured out how to break through the screen on the kitchen window, but he keeps trying.
Occasionally he comes into the mudroom if the door is open and one rainy night he made it as far as the living room until he decided he was ready to go back outside.
He’s gone on the trampoline, the saucer swing and the treehouse, loves belly rubs and tolerates being carried around by Ellie. He’s accompanied us down the driveway to the school bus and gone with Cigo for a walk to the back field.
The biggest adjustment has been Cigo. Cigo has always been super excited by cats, so it took a while for him to get used to Cedar. He chased Cedar several times and got dragged back to the house for a timeout. Cedar learned climbing trees was a good escape–a good lesson for predators beyond Cigo.
But Cedar is an easy going, tolerant, confident cat. So he kept venturing out of the barn even though he knew Cigo was around. We kept doing supervised visits with Cigo and Cedar and lots of treats for everyone. Eventually, they got used to each other and now we all–including the chickens–can be together with no issues.
Cedar can sprint past Cigo or walk through Cigo’s legs, and Cigo doesn’t blink. In fact, sometimes he seems to say, “Little dude, can you give me a break?” They occasionally try to play together, but haven’t figured out how to manage the size difference yet.
Beyond the fun, Cedar is also doing his job. He is a prolific hunter, and we find dead bodies in the barn and on the lawn regularly.
For winter, we’ve added a cat house full of straw outside the mudroom door. He also has the barn with lots of straw filled spots.
Cedar has added to the love and joy in our little family, and I’m very glad he’s with us.
The teeny tiny caterpillars who depend completely on their leaves of milkweed. The big fat caterpillars who munch through their milkweed so loudly I can hear it. The chrysalis inside the caterpillar. The glimpse of black and orange wings through the clear walls of the chrysalis. The butterflies’ first flutter, first flight. Their migration.
That was 9 years ago, with Matt. Matt had raised monarchs before as a child. He was just as enthused to raise them as an adult here at the farm.
Since then, there have been more seasons, more butterflies. Ellie was born. Matt died. The cycle of life has continued.
This year, Ellie and I continued our monarch tradition.
We collected caterpillars and milkweed. We even collected two eggs and successfully hatched them. We found more caterpillars and added them to our nursery. We released butterflies. Found more caterpillars. We started in July and finally released our last butterflies at the end of September.
The number is phenomenal. We have never had so many monarchs. Part of me fears this flurry reflects a last gasp before the population truly collapses. A larger part of me hopes that this is a sign of resilience and strength. Or maybe it doesn’t have meaning, and it’s just life.
Life is a cycle. It is amazing and hard and magical and special. Seeing it up close through the monarchs is powerful. It reminds me to fully appreciate my life. Not take my time for granted. Do my part to support those around me. That I am part of something bigger.
Home on 129 Acres 