2010 wrap up

It has been a year since I took over our little farm. We have had lots of fun and sadness. I was thinking about the hens that hatched chicks and I came up with... we had 8 hatching's alone just with my hens. That comes to about 50 chicks, add the 6 I hatched in our incubator and the 24 that hatched in a friends and that's a total of 80 chicks! That is not counting the ones we brought home from the feed store! I have seen a whole life cycle happen before my very eyes and it amazes me. Last year in January I bought 11 chicks and only 3 of them ended up being hens. Each of those hens started laying in July, just barely 6 months old! Then they all hatched their first chicks by August! Amazing!

The quails I feel were a failure. They needed a better pen to be in. They have all died or got out of their cages. The heat in summer and cold in winter was just to much for them. They were fun, but I don't think I will do them again unless I have a nice atrium built for them.

Ducks are sooo much fun! We started this year with 7 Muscovies. again only ending up with 2 girls out of the bunch. We also bought 2 Indian Runners, 2 Khaki Campbells, and pair of Geese. We lost 2 of the Muscovie boys, 1 Runner and Khaki, then the female goose. We also bought 3 black runners, 4 gray (I still don't know what they are?) and 3 black Cayugas. Lost 3 of the gray ones but we still have all the others. They are all loving all this rain, at least something is!

We started the year of with 5 new baby bunnies. A mix between or Chocolate Dutch boy and our Holland Lop girl. They were the cutest thing in the world, and so fun to have. I thought we would have no trouble selling them but we did and ended up keeping them all. It took me months to sex them, Phill kept saying "quit looking down there!". How did I finally know what they were you may ask??? Their little testes came in and it was obvious that they were all boys!!!! When they came into adulthood they would try to mate to each other then they started fighting. I've always had 1 or 2 in the house with some kind of something that needed to be cleaned every day. We are now down to 3, One got hurt outside somewhere and died in my arms, one got out of the pen and made it all the way to the road and got hit by a car. Our fave of the babies that we were gonna keep was named Spot and he has been missing for a couple weeks now. I'm still hoping I find him ok but my hopes are not very high. We still have 2 of the babies left and their daddy Benny who we will be keeping forever.

Phill has said that he has never buried so many animals in his life than he has done this past year. We've had cats die on the road too. That is farm life, both new life and death happen. I think it's been good for the kids to see it happen, help them understand that life has a beginning and an end. It's been really hard for me and I have decided that I am pretty much done. I have started to downsize the chickens and have no plans to buy any more ducks this spring. I had my year to experiment and now I'm just ready for it to be simple again.

Our water fowl

We have 16 ducks and 2 geese here on the farm. They have been so much fun so far. They sleep right next to our house and keep one eye on the living room window waiting to see if we are headed out side to feed them. We have Muscovys, Runners, Campells, Blue Swedish and a Wild Mallard. The geese are Toulouse which I was told are a good pet goose, so far yes they are.

7 Muscovys
Here is one of the 5 drakes, Daddy calls him baldy because of his white head. You can also see our Indian runner and 1 of the hen muscovys on the left.

Here you can see our 2 hen muscovys and our hen Indian runner is right there in the middle looking pretty at the camera. I think she started laying this week I found a shell less egg in the yard and she was the only duck not sleeping.

This is a good picture of our pack leaders the Toulouse Geese. They are fun to watch when the dogs come around them. They put there heads down and charge at them scaring the dogs away from the group. We have a pair so a boy and a girl, I can't wait till she starts to lay and we will have babies!

My proud boy, so handsome.

Here are the babies 3 Black Runners and 2 I think are Blue Swedish. They are about 2 months old. The Runners are so funny they always look like they are trying to walk on their tippy toes.

Daddy let them out in the yard for the first time yesterday, they loved swimming in the pool!
and sleeping in the grass!
Miss duckie is our Wild Mallard. We saved her and 3 other siblings from being eaten by crows, and being chased by children. The 3 others died on the way home, the chasing was to much for them. The same day we bought some chicks from the feed store so duckie went into the brooder with them. She thinks she is a chicken so she lives in the pen next to our house with my banties.

We also have 2 Khaki Campbells, I'm not quite sure if they are hens or drakes. I'm hoping either hens or 1 of both! (pictures soon to come)

Not everyone has a name yet, I like French and Saunders for the geese. So that is still a work in progress.

Chicks, chicks and more chicks

So my January babies started laying the last week of June! That was just about the age of 21 weeks old (5 months), pretty early, they must be happy! On the 4Th of July we noticed that 1 of the hens seamed like she was going broody (going to sit and hatch eggs). Sure enough she was in the same spot on the 5Th so I put 6 more eggs under her for a total of 7. Around the same time I noticed that miracle baby had been missing for most of the day. We would see her about once a day out eating and drinking water. So I counted out the days till the hatch was due... the 25Th! Sure enough there was a cute little brown chick under my banty hen. Then the next day she had 3 more and the last day 1 more 5 total. Then they day after that I caught sight of miracle baby and a Bunch of little chicks running around her feet. There were 14 all together! We caught her and she screamed as we caught the chicks. Then we put her into our playhouse coop so they could move around with out being bothered. Our friend gave us a huge metal outdoor dog kennel and we put the play house in there giving everyone lots of room to roam. So so so much fun!

Miracle baby and her chicks





My Banty Hen and her chicks

It all started...

I was looking on Craigslist for some chickens for my lonely rooster. I saw an ad for chicks so I e-maild and asked what breed they were. When I found out they were Bantoms I was very happy, little did I know at the time that Bantom was the size not breed. They were mixed cochin and feathered legged bantoms and non feathered legged. Anyways, I called the lady and got her address, then on the way from school that day we went to get our baby chicks. We had a lot of fun seeing all the chickens, geese and turkeys at her house and meeting her kids. We took our new babies home and got them all nice and situated in their new cage. It feels like forever now lol.