Freaking Awesome

Babies!!!  Go Fat Black!

Hard to see....

Easier to see....

Easiest to see...

Look at that baby!

Ok.....settling down.....

These little ones are 7 and 9 days old.  There are 4 Ameraucana eggs, 2 brown eggs of unknown origin, and one white egg.  The white egg took the best pictures, as you can probably figure.  That's the one seen in the last two shots here.  I could actually see the baby move and the heart beating, it was so easy to see.  So cool!

Let me show you a crappy picture of what the little ones look like now:

Here's a cool picture of a 9 day old chick-to-be.  Poor little chicken, though.

photo source

I don't know where I find these things.  The internet is just full of stuff.

I showed my daughter the series of these pictures back when Ginger was sitting on her nest.  She asked if they put the baby back in the egg when they are done, so they can take another picture the next day.  I told her yes, and that they just duct tape them back together again.

I am a BAD mother.

I did come clean later on.

If You've Ever Wondered...

What noise an African goose makes, this one is for you...

For me, I never understood what they were supposed to sound like.  I got interested when I was trying to determine whether Emmet was a she or a he, because he used to say "wonkawonka".  I thought that was the noise, but then I'd read they sounded like "doink" or "doiing" or "wonk", but that didn't really tell me anything.  So I offer up an actual recording of a female African goose and the really weird noise they make.

Spoiler alert:  It sounds like all of the above noises, as well as "woink".  You'll see...

Attack of the Chickens!

She wanted to give the chickens a treat.

So she went in for some scratch.

I said "Put it in the scooper.  You know how they are when they see scratch".

But she "couldn't find" the scooper, and she put it in her shirt instead.

And they found it.

I don't think she really minded, though.

Do you?

Persistent Chicken

Are you done YET?????

NOW are you done???? 

A girl can only wait so long. 

As soon as the kitten moved out of the bowl, the chicken moved on in.

Busy, Busy, Busy

What else is new?  This is a farm, y'all!  Life doesn't stop or take breaks!

Ok, I don't really say y'all.  But I wish I did.

Anyway, yep, it's been busy!  And what have I been doing, you ask?

Well....

"Hey flat bills!"  "Hee hee!  Your bills are flat!"  "What happened, did someone step on them?"

The geese have been busy heckling the new ducklings.

"Seriously.  Leave. Me. Alone."

Fat Black (aka Abigail) has been busy being broody and is setting on anything put under her--a plastic Easter egg, a golf ball, etc.  Finally I decided that she needs to put all the broody energy to good use and went to another local farm who has scads of chickens and picked her up 3 fertile eggs.  I'll let you know if anything comes of it.  At least she's working, though.

I've been busy building a new rabbit hutch for Bunnicula, who's been busy chasing Robert all around the world and beating him up.  Dopey.  I don't know what's gotten into him, but I think it has something to do with Petunia. 

The guinea keets have been busy escaping and not coming back.  One has returned, and I caught it to feed it and give it water because it was STARVING, and that caused it to eat and drink and then be busy screaming its fool head off, because it didn't want to be caught and was doing just fine on its own, don't ya know.

The kids have been busy going to half-day summer camp in town, which is great because then I can be busy playing my fiddle and they can be busy not hearing me do it.  By the way, I've kicked Home on the Range's butt, and am working on the next tune.  Woo hoo!

And the kittens?  They've been busy, too.  They've been-er-busy conserving energy.

I swear: they ARE alive.

I am proud to say, though, that they can catch flies out of mid air.  That's got to count for something.

That's not all, though.  The biggest, and most exciting news I have is that we built a chicken coop!  A HUGE one!  We went from this:

Which is lovely and built beautifully, but is really tight even for 9 chickens, to this:

A 64 square foot multi-colored (currently) behemoth!  It's beautiful!  I am calling it the Dream Coop, because I couldn't have asked for anything better.

This baby features a large chicken door that faces the wired run,

 a nice-sized person door on the opposite end that I can go in and out of,

And not one, not two, not three, but FOUR 8 foot perches! 

 

And one short, low perch for the Silkie and the roos, because they don't like to fly up high.

5 perches altogether!  Holy cow!  And still room to spare!  It will eventually also feature 12 nest boxes, but I'm still in the construction stages for that.  The rabbit hutch has to come first.  Stupid Bunnicula.

Can you believe it?  It is so wonderful, I can't even explain how happy I am with it.  It's as of yet unfinished, of course.  It's multicolored because I can't pick a color to go with.  And it's not trimmed, and the windows aren't on, but it will be done soon.  But it's workable so that everyone can live in it and not get rained on or eaten while I pretty it up.  Hurray!

Best part?  We built this with our friends and family.  My brother designed it (with very minimal input from me), and our family and friends came from all around to help build it.  It was a great day.  We talked, joked, laughed, ate, and worked like maniacs.  We never could have done it without everyone's help.  And I love the coop all the more because of it. 

There is something so satisfying about having a coop that you can comfortably fit your chickens in.  It's kind of like the relief I feel when I get the crops planted after having them juggling in small pots for so long.  You put them in the ground, and you feel like "Hey, there it is.  Finally.  Safe and sound"  Same thing here.  It gives me great pleasure to see all the little chicken butts on their perches in that house.  Safe and sound. 

Ahh.  Really, it doesn't get better than this.  It just doesn't.

Brooder Burnout

Ducks Take 2 arrived this morning, and I have to admit, it's become less exciting.  I guess it's the fact that this is the 5th or 6th batch of little ones that I've brooded this year.  I think I'm suffering from Brooder Burnout.  They are cute little bugs, though, aren't they?

Ducklings are always so cute.  Right now they are motorboating around in the waterer.  I'm sure I'm giving the good folks at Metzer Farms a fit, with my "one of these, one of those" ordering style.  This time around, we've got a Khaki Campbell female, a Cayuga female, a Blue Runner female, a Buff female, and a Welsh Harlequin pair.  I would have loaded up with more Runners, but I placed the order before the other Runners died--I was still hoping at the time they would make it.  As it is, we are left with only Suzie, a Fawn/White runner, and Charles, who still thinks he's a goose, though he does talk to Suzie more now than before.

They are in their initial residence of LaundryBasket Land until I clean out the brooder (again).  The keets have run off (again), so there's plenty of room for the ducks.  I just didn't get it cleaned out in time-I've been busy.  You'll see why as soon as I get a chance to post it.  Very exciting!

Anywho, back to the ducks.  I have different plans for a new, improved Ducky Fort Knox.  I don't want the same thing to happen to these little ones as happened to the last batch--it was just too heartbreaking.  Stay tuned!!

I Caught Me a Keet!

And he/she wasn't happy about it.

To sum up: two weeks ago I bought 4 Guinea keets to help with the Japanese Beetle/tick problem here.  They are annoying, to say the least.  They hop out of the brooder every chance they get, which makes me have to cover the damn thing with wire, which they get stuck in because they jump against it, causing me to change the wire type two times until I found a piece that they couldn't get stuck in.  But, of course, I have to change their water and feed them, so I have to pull up the wire, which causes the keets to jump out again.  And they are fast.  So, if they get out, they're pretty much gone. 

Twice I have gone in in the morning and found one missing, to be found later in the garage, screaming its fool head off.  Once I went in in the morning and found that I had been heating the empty brooder all night, because there was no one in it.   Again, they were in the garage, but when I looked, I could not find them anywhere, and they pretty much came out on their own.

Fast forward to yesterday.  I went to change their water, and they all jumped out.  I didn't even bother trying to catch them, because I never can.  Out they went, into the garage, and presumably, since the door was open, outside.  They were gone all night.  They were gone all morning.  They were not in the garage, anywhere in the gardens outside, in the chicken house, in the duck house---they were nowhere.  I figured that someone had a little meal of them, rolled my eyes, unplugged the heat lamp and went on with my life.  At about 3 o'clock, I hear loud keet screaming.  I come out of the woods where I am working, and hello!  there are four sad, bedraggled, slightly damp keets in the middle of the yard, screaming their heads off.

You'd think they'd be easy to catch after spending the night and day outside in the rain with nothing to eat or drink and in the cold, but no.  They ran like I was trying to eat them.  Which caused me to go to emergency measures--the butterfly net.  That's why the keet above looks SO happy--I scooped the damn thing up.  Ha!  Let me tell you, the day they gave brains out, keets were absent. 

Anyway, they've survived.  I unceremoniously shoved them back into the brooder box and put their lid on.  After they pigged out, this is how I found them:

They are alive, let me assure you.  They've simply passed out.  Dopes.