A Day at the Funny Farm

Ooops!  Did I say that?  I meant a funny day at the farm!  te he  Well, this morning my duckies were roaming the place and having fun in the sun; guess what I see when I look out the window?  They are running around like something is spooking them.  Well I look around and find it is one of their own scaring them!  Recently the geese pulled the plastic label off of our propane tank on the BBQ.  I couldn't find it and thought the wind blew it away.  But here one of my ducks had gotten her head through a small hole in the label and and the rest was trailing behind her like a cape.  Superwoman was running as fast as she could to get away from it, but it wouldn't give her any space!  And then all the other ducks were running away from her!  It was a pitiful site, but I tell you I was laughing pretty hard!  We tracked down superwoman and took off her cape.  I think she was much happier being a normal duck again! =}

We now have 2 ducks laying eggs daily!  That means Luca and one of my blue hens are laying.  Or the two blue hens are alternating days.  Either way I am getting lots of duck eggs to put into the incubator!  YAY!  Fuzzy Easter ducklings here we come!

BABY NIBBLES GOES THROUGH A SEX CHANGE!  YES, YOU HEARD IT HERE!
If you all remember back a while I bought two sebbie geese and thought they were both boys.  Well it turns out that Baby Nibbles is a girl!  She is laying eggs!  She has laid 4 eggs now and 3 are on standby to go into the incubator!  I left one in her nest.  Very exciting!  I have 3 girls and 2 boys in my sebbie flock now. That makes a much better ratio of boys to girls.

Today I was changing coops in the rain, so I have one wheelbarrow with the dirty stuff in it and one with clean.  The bale of hay in the clean one was going to get wet, so I covered it with a blue tarp.  So here I go from coop to coop with my wheelbarrow in the blue wedding dress and the geese are chasing me every step.  It is mating season so these 2 boys are on high alert for any funny business!  They nibbled on the wheelbarrow and tarp and hissed at it when it moved and Glad even tried to bite the wheel once. =}  Silly geese!

I currently have 35 eggs in the hatcher and some are hatching as we speak.  2 olive eggers out so far.  These are all my eggs, so there are olive eggers, polish, giant cochins, cuckoo marans, frizzles etc. 

I have done some research about being a reputable breeder/seller and want to introduce some new practices to my farm.  The first will be to start vaccinating my chicks for Mareks.  I lost a few birds to this in the past and it is a nasty chick disease.  If I vaccinate the chicks, they should be safe.   The other change is that I am going to try to get NPIP certified.  This is a disease testing done by the state once a year.  It proves that your birds do not have pullorum, which is nasty disease that I have not experienced.  Having this certification will let others know I have a clean flock and may open some doors to more buyers. 

This week has been very busy with selling and shipping hatching eggs and selling chicks locally.  Have a great week!