Lots going on at the farm

Hi all!  Our farm has been very busy lately!  I have sold many extra birds and roosters.  I ended up selling my golden laced polish girls and found a home for Maestro the mottled houdan roo.  I had too many pens and needed to consolidate, but when I added my glp girls to my other polish, they picked on them badly. 

I must've accidentally left the quail cage latch undone because they all got out.  The kids recovered two females and I sold them and the two doves left as I just feel overwhelmed with animal care.  It was worth a try.  Here are some pics of the doves.

Our last batch of bunnies (7) are getting big quickly.  They are 1 month old now and very cute and active.  I moved them and mama to a bigger cage so they have some room to play.  Here are a couple.

I bred both the other American Chinchilla does and one had her litter today!  There are 12 babies!!!  I forget how little they are!  The other mom should be kitting shortly.

I have also decided that I don't like the buttercups as much as I thought I did.  They are quite flighty and high strung.  I prefer more laid back and friendly birds.  So they are for sale.


After much thought, some anguish,  trying to pen different birds together and much fighting between the ganders I have decided to sell a trio of my Sebastopol geese.  So I will keep Baby Nibbles, Glad (her mate) and their gosling (Izzie).   They just wont stop fighting, even the girls were fighting each other and I can't see keeping them in separate pens all the time.  Here is a recent pic of Izzie.  She is growing very quickly and is very friendly.

Well today I had my first sale to a store!  Agnew farm and feed store ordered 25 of my cochin chicks to sell.  Only 16 hatched, but I delivered them today and traded bird feed for them.  Good deal!  He is also interested in bunnies and ducklings for Easter.  Very exciting!

The big thing coming up right now is the Oregon Swap.  I have about 30 birds already reserved by people and I am bringing many more.  My kids are making up organic chicken treat baggies to sell, beaded keychains and maybe chocolate eggs.  We are all excited!  The van will be packed, my friend Celia and I will make it a day trip, get up early head to Portland, OR, do the swap, then head home.  Hopefully I will be coming home with less birds than going down. =}

I will have lots of ducklings and a few misc chicken eggs hatching this weekend.    Well I better go clean some coops!  Have a happy Easter if I don't talk you before then!

From Benji to Izzie

Well we decided to keep our first little gosling.  We believe she is a girl, so we had to change her name!  We chose Izzie.  She is growing like a weed!  Here is a better pic of her when little.

She makes a different sounds than the ducklings or chicks, so is very unique.  She loves attention and will peep for it if she is feeling like a snuggle.  I have two ducklings in with her for company.  She is very active and loves different foods.  Her favorite is lettuce!  I was sitting in my lazy boy chair about 3 feet away from her and she flung lettuce at me! te he  I will wait a little longer before taking pics so you can see her growing!

Our little bunnies are getting big very quickly!  They are now the size of two fists!  They are coming out of the box and roaming around the cage.  Here is a cute pic.

A few of my silkie hens have started laying and so I of course put them in the incubator.  =}  Look at the cuties I got out after 21 days!

Meet Benjamin Button!

This is Benjamin Button!  We named it that because when it was first hatched it looked like a wrinkly old man baby!  te he  Gary suggested naming it Benjamin Button.  We aren't sure of the sex yet, so if it is a girl, the name may have to change.  My friend Pat is waiting to meet this little one!  I helped it out of the shell last night.  Boy that is a big baby!  We are so excited to hatch our first sebastopol gosling!  I hope the other eggs hatch too!  Keep your fingers crossed!  I was telling the parents this am that they are parents, but it didn't seem to mean anything. =}

Is Spring Here?

Hi everyone!  The days are getting longer and warmer; we have baby bunnies, chicks and ducklings hatching; I think Spring has finally sprung! 
Well I finally got pictures of the growing bunnies and then they have changed very quickly!  These pics are from when they were 1 week old and still had their eyes closed.  When they were born, they were the size of a mouse and looked like naked mole-rats!  At one week they fit in the palm of my hand.

They are now 2 weeks old and the size of a big fist.  They have their eyes open and are hopping around the box.  They will soon be venturing out of the box.  Here are some more recent pics.

That last one cracked me up!  He looks like a chinchilla or something, not really a bunny!
In about 1 1/2 weeks our lion head doe is due with her babies.  I bet they will be really small!

This week I sold about 12 birds and culled about 12 more. (mostly roosters)  This made it possible for me to consolidate some pens together and thus reduce my watering and feeding chores.  I had a crazy amount of birds in my garage!  So now I am down to 2 pens in there.  My garage has about one inch of bird dust and is getting kinda grodey.  My plan is to get them all out soon and clean out the garage.  In order to do this we had to build a pen for the youngsters to live in.  We hope to finish this today and move the active chicks in my living room into it.  They are getting too big for their Rubbermaid bins and once in a while there is one running around the house.  te he  Last week we also added a run on to one end of the silkie pen.  It is so nice to see them playing in the sunshine!

Well as many of you know, my Farwest chick order fell through due to their difficulties.  I ended up finding 26 buff brahma chicks at clallam co-op during chick day.  That was handy!  The chicken swap in Oregon is coming up fast.  It is on April 23rd.  I am already planning which birds I will take.  I already have several reserved for people.  I plan to take all my extra silkies.  I have a lot of extra boys.  They are just getting to where I can tell if they are boys or girls, so it is perfect timing. 

A couple of weeks ago I bought 6 laying hens from a friend.  There are 3 blue and 1 splash New Jersey Giants that lay brown/pinkish eggs and 2 blue Ameracaunas that lay blue/green eggs.  They are already laying and very nice hens.  They fit in my laying flock very easily.  Here they are.

The darkest hen is my favorite.  Her name is Mary and she lets me pet her while she eats out of my hand!

We have a broody hen setting on 3 eggs in the coop.  They are a special order for a customer.  I also have 3 ducklings and 2 of our own silkies in the hatcher, due today!  Then the goose eggs go into the hatcher today too!!  Keep your fingers crossed for me!  I also have the order for 25 eggs (I put in 40) for the local feed store that requested them near Easter.

I am getting tons of eating eggs now!  If you know of anyone that would like to buy farm fresh eggs, please give them my number!  I have so many surplus I am having to cook them and feed them back to the chickens!

Farmy News

It has been so busy at our little postage stamp farm that I have hardly had time to write! Well the 6 sebbie eggs are still growing in the incubator.  Keep your fingers crossed.  We may have some goslings soon!  Nibbles has stopped laying and another of the girl geese has started to lay.  That is great!  I had to get some more kennels for extra nesting spots because one day I found nibbles with egg yolk all over her!  The girls must have fought over Nibbles' nest and broken an egg.

I hatched a total of 4 more runner ducklings last weekend.  They are now friends with the single duckling from the week before.   I already have the 4 sold too!  Here are some pics of those adorable babies in my bathtub!  (that is where I brood yucklings....oops I meant ducklings)  =} 

 Here is the chocolate duckling that is 1 week older than the others.

 There are two blues (gray) and one buff/white (the yellow one) and one brown one in the younger batch.

 Isn't that adorable?  Like it stuck it's finger in the light socket! te he

They have so much fun playing in the water!  I give them little pieces of lettuce and green peas and they go crazy!

Well I just didn't have enough ducklings so yesterday I bought some more!  I bought 5 buff call ducklings.  They are 2 weeks old, but a banty sized duck, so they went right in with my runners.  They are so cute and different than my runners.  They are a little skittish of us, but this will change.  So 10 ducklings in the tub!  I will get pics of the new ones soon.  Meanwhile, here is a pic of what they should look like when adults.

I have to go now....more later!

Duckling and Gosling News

We have our first duckling from our indian runner flock hatched!  YAY!  They are so adorable and so active!

Unfortunately the second duck egg didn't hatch, so this one will have to wait a week for more company.  Currently she has a couple of giant cochin chicks in the bin with her.  She hopped the 6 inch tall wall of the brooder box into the next one with about 10 giant cochins who don't know her.  They chased her around and made lots of noise.  I had to put up a cardboard divider to keep the duckling in the correct box. =}  The duck antics are already in play!  I watched a video on vent sexing waterfowl.  It is much easier than chickens!  So I tried it on this little one and it looks to be a girl!  We shall see how accurate I am in about 3 wks.

I have about 10-15 more duck eggs in the incubator and I candled my sebbie eggs last night and at least 6 of 7 were fertile!!  YIPEEE!!  The last one was dirty on the outside, so hard to see through, but it looked infertile.  I will wait a while longer and check it again.  Today I am putting in 3 more sebbie eggs and 5 ducks eggs!  I will now start collecting giant cochin eggs for the store hatch.

I found a nice home for our mini-lop rabbit and gave one of the lion heads to my friend.  So now we just have the 4 American Chinchillas and a pair of lion heads.  The 2 does are due this Friday to kindle (have babies).  We have put the kindling (nesting) boxes in their cages and are watching carefully.  So exciting!  I plan to breed the lion heads in the next few days too.  There has been LOTS of cage, box and kennel washing at our house.  We had to repair some of the cages and put tarps on top and sides for weather protection.  We even got two large cages for when the babies grow bigger.  So I think we are all set in the rabbit area.  I even picked up a few extra small carry cages that would work for rabbits or chickens. 

We had one dove that was aggressively picking on the other two, chasing them from perch to perch, relentlessly.  I accidentally, on purpose let him out.  Now there are two left and they seem pretty content.  I love their cooing sounds.  Hopefully the two loose ones can find each other.

Sadly, I lost one female duck.  She couldn't walk and I brought her in the garage.  After asking advice and putting her on antibiotics and vitamins she seemed to be getting better, but then one morning we found her passed away.  Poor girl!  Most people I talk to think she ate something strange that she couldn't digest.

I decided to sell Turkey Butt this week.  She was such a quirky bird!  She was on top of the rabbit cages, then on the greenhouse, then finally she jumped on the netting of the chicken run and ripped a big hole in it.  I guess they like to roost really high up.  She also talks alllllllll the time, you can't have a conversation anywhere near her!  Silly bird!  So I figured since I didn't want more chaos at my house (getting more turkeys) then she needs to be with some birds as crazy as she is.  I sold her to a friend who has a flock of midget white turkeys and she is as happy as a clam with them!

Lion Head Bunnies

Here are a few pics of the lion head rabbits we got.  We got 3 but I think I am only going to keep one pair.  Aren't they cute with their lion's ruff around the neck?