The sound of drums is one of the most impressive elements of this fiesta.
Spain is very much a catholic country and as such, they really celebrate “semana santa” - Easter week. This Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are holidays in Spain. Here is a shot of one of the streets in the city as we were out for a walk. People were out enjoying the nice weather and the parades throughout the city.
One of my favorite things to do is go to Calamar Brava to eat calamaries and drink a beer…(0r two)!
The calamari comes with a special garlic sauce that is out of this world. Calamari, bread and beer…. what more could a chicken farmer from Virginia ask for!
We went to see a church today that is over a thousand years old…. It’s so wierd to see these places that were standing way before anyone but the natives were in the United States!
The Cathedral of the Savior is located on the Plaza de la Seo and is commonly known as La Seo (Spanish for “see”) . It was originally built in 718 as a mosque. It underwent two additions, one in the 9th century and one in the 11th century, under the Taifa king of Zaragoza, Mundir I.
The arrival in Zaragoza in 1118 of Alfonso I, the Battler did not lead to the immediate demolition of the mosque. He gave the Muslims one year to move out of the town, and on October 4, 1121, the building was consecrated under the name San Salvador, and the necessary renovations were made to allow the building to be used for Christian purposes.
Construction began in the 12th century in the Romanesque style, and underwent many alterations and expansions until 1704, when the Baroque spire completed the tower.
Those are the pictures I got before I was told you can’t take pictures! There were no signs saying pictures were not allowed. The church walls have been cleaned but most of the paintings were very dark from age. The details in the walls and ceiling are incredible. It’s hard to believe that it was constructed so long ago.
Well today was a great day. After traveling all day yesterday we finally got about 12 hours of sleep!
My daughter and her boyfriend came on the trip with us and today we all walked to the Pilar, (which is a huge catholic church). This is the church my wife and I got married in - over 25 years ago.
This is Tricia and Adam in front of the church.
We went inside and took them to the alter in the church where we got married. Adam had been waiting for this moment for months and pulled out a beautiful ring and proposed to her in the same spot we got married. It was so cool. Here is the happy couple….notice the ring!
She did real good until she saw me and ran up to tell me all about it. Then she started crying. I knew Adam was going to propose because he asked for my blessing the night before we left for Spain.
My baby girl is all grown up!
Temperatures were in the upper 70’s yesterday so I decided to take advantage of the warmth and conduct my first hive inspection of the year.
It was time to get the winterized hives ready for spring. I could tell that the hives were doing pretty good because there were a lot of bees waiting to enter through the mouse guard and small opening. We removed the mouse guards and changed the opening to a larger hole. All seven of the hives were full of bees and actually appeared to be honey bound with the exception of one hive. It was full of bees but very little to no honey at all.
I added honey supers to six of the hives and a feeder with sugar syrup to the hive that was dry. I am amazed at the activity and strength of all of the hives and am looking forward to a very good honey crop this year. I just hope we don’t get another hard freeze late in the spring like last year.
We have been working day and night trying to get the new coops and runs ready for our new birds. One thing that all future chicken keepers should understand going in is “you NEVER have enough”! Seems like I have been building constantly trying to keep up with what new breed I have coming in. But we sure do enjoy watching them in their new homes!
We have a couple of projects this weekend that should get me caught up just in time for our trip to Spain! We have to put a door on the pen for egg layer birds and then move them to their new home. Then I have to separate the RIR’s from one pen into two groups of 10 hens. One group will have the one rooster I currently have and the other will have a new rooster from Margaret’s (Mermet) farm…. I’ll be picking up the RIR rooster, a couple of RIR hens and a BR rooster and a few hens from her.
Today we also are working on the nursery coop which is currently a pretty good sized room in the main building. We are going to split the room in half by putting up a wall with a door. This way we’ll have a nursery coop for the very little chicks with a heat lamp and then in the other half will be the junior chicks with access to the outdoor run. As chicks are fully feathered they will move to the junior coop…. then on to their main coops, be sold, …….or…… to the meat bird coop..
Last week I bought a pair and a trio of Millie FLeur d’Uccles from the Crosstimbers Ranch in Texas. We selected Monday of this week to ship since our weather was going to be exceptionally warm Monday, Tuesday and, today.
My son called our post office yesterday and they tried to help us locate the birds at the Richmond post office so they wouldn’t have to spend the night there. However, our post office couldn’t get anyone at the Richmond post office to return their call…. so, we had to wait until today.
At 730 my son was on the phone again and the lady at the post office told him the truck had just arrived and she could hear the chickens! We live about one minute from the post office so he went immediately to get them. When he got them home he put the trio in a brooder cage and the pair in a travel cage with our little Millie rooster right next to them. (We only had one Millie and the poor guy need friends his size!)
These Millie’s are SO perfect! What sweet beautiful little birds. We just came in from spending the entire evening with them. They were so calm I put them all together and no fights or anything. They accepted my little rooster right away. Their neighbor in the coop and run next to them is a Partrige Rock pair. One of the mille roosters immediately started dancing for the hen and fighting the rooster through the fence! It was so cute to see such a little rooster taking on the big roo. Kind of reminds me of my little chihuahua who thinks he is huge.
Anyways, when my son opened the box containing the pair there was an egg! The hen had laid an egg during the trip! When I got home and moved the trio from the brooder cage there was an egg there as well! Then as soon as I put them in their new pen the third hen laid an egg! That is just too cool.
The birds seem so happy and were very well taken care of. They are crowing, eating and drinking up a storm, and seem very content in their new home.
Hmmm, what address should I put on this package? 
The hatch is over and what a great hatch it was! There are 34 healthy chicks out of the 36 eggs that made it to hatch! That is an incredible 94.4% hatch rate!
I feel real good about the process since I actually intended to do something to increase my hatch rate and it succeeded. I am going to have to follow the exact same process again to see if I can duplicate the results. After a few successful trials THEN I will say it is the best thing since sliced bread!
Eggs are sitting here ready to go in as soon as I clean the incubator…. The experiment continues…
The main reason I decided to put 40 of my mixed breed eggs in the incubator was to learn more about hatching. Something between day 18 and 21 was ruining my hatch rate.
Details of the experiment:
- When I set the eggs I added water to one slot in the bottom tray.
- Eggs were put in the automatic turner with air sack up
- Every three days or so I would add two tablespoons of water to the tray. Humidity stayed at around 20%.
- Temperature was maintained at 99.5 - 100.5 (using a probe in a water weasel)
- Left the eggs in the turner until the end of day 19 (actually this was by accident)
- End of day 19 removed turner, filled bottom tray (all slots) with hot water, added bowl of hot water with paper towels as wicks
- Added egg carton bottoms (just ripped off the lid) and put eggs straight up in egg cartons with air sack up.
- Reduced incubator temperature to 98.5 - 99.5 (using a probe in a water weasel)
- Humidity stayed at 76% during entire hatch.
When I moved the eggs to the egg carton I decided to put a control group on their sides just to see what would happen. I took two of the pipped eggs and added them to the control group. So far, only one has hatched. I think the other died.
The eggs that are in the carton….. every egg that pips is hatching….. and quick.
I’ll have to put another 40 in as soon as this hatch is over and try it again to see if the results are the same.
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