Took 20 turkey eggs out of the chicken coop and put them in the incubator. The Narragansett kept laying and sitting on them for a while during the day, but then she would get off at night and the geese would sleep on them. And poop on them. There is a Narragansett sitting on eggs in the front yard, about 8 I think and they should be hatching in the next 10 days or so. Redd just started sitting on a nest of eggs in the chicken yard the other day, so figure they should hatch about 25-27 May. There are 2 other nests in the Black Berry bushes, one has about 6 eggs and the other more. Not sure if any one is going to sit on them or not, but plan to just leave them be and see what happens.
Edith in the Peacock cage is sitting on several eggs also. There was a Narragansett in there also and it was getting crazy. There was one nest in the small house in there and one next to it. At first they each stayed on their own nest, but then they started switching and sometimes no one was on one nest, so I took some of the eggs and tried to separate them. Didn’t work. So this weekend did some major re-arranging of birds. We took the cage apart that had the Barred Rock babies in it. They are getting so big can’t really be called babies anymore, so we call them “Broilers”. We set up a new 4 foot fence in a new area, and moved them to it. The coop went with them. The cage got moved to a new area. We took the Narragansett from the peacock cage and put 4 new hatched poults under her to see if she would adopt them. Well, tonight she was out of the box and had at least 2 under her. I got in the cage and lifted her wing to make sure they were there and ok. And that was enough.
Trusting the birds to be good moms and know what to do is just a little new and rough for me. Because some of them have shown they don’t even know how to stop laying and sit on the eggs. As for babies, right now we have 4 babies that hatched a week ago, and 13 that hatched Saturday. It is 4 of the 13 that went under mom, so we still have 13 babies in the brooder in the house.
In the smaller cage outside are the 3 ducks we bought and 2 chickens that hatched about that time. Figure they will grow up together. Got their pen all set up and ready last night and then we had a thunder storm about 3am this morning and had to go bring them in. It was their first night out, but not the first time they’ve been in the cage, but instead of being under the light and warm and dry, they were in the opposite end of the cage, in the rain, wet and cold. And ducks are worse than geese when it comes to making messes with the water. So I’ve decided that we are going to make a special pen for the geese and ducks around one of the low spots out in the field. I’ll dig it out and put what is left of the old large plastic pool in the bottom of it to help keep water in it. I’ll plant some cat tails I think. Anyway, that is where the ducks and geese are going to be, and Next year I’ll let them sit on their own eggs and raise their own babies, and what ever we get is what we get for babies. Not sure I want to brood them any more; Let mom do it.
So I including the 20 eggs I just put in the incubator, there is probably about 70 eggs or so in them. So far this year think I have been averaging about 50% hatch rate. Not good, and I’m working on that. But that would still mean I have about 30 poults coming, plus what ever we get from the 3-5 nest birds are sitting on. So I’m placing my first ad on Craig’s List to sell the poults I have now. I mean, that has always been the plan, to sell as many as I can, and keep about 15-20 to raise and sell. And if we can get the birds to care for them as they grow up, why not? The thing we hadn’t counted on is where to put mom and babies after they hatch. How do you keep the separate and safe, but still together, you know?
Friday. We all had off and so the weekend seems out of whack. I had my first job interview for a teaching position in the morning, was nice. In the afternoon we went out in the field and used our new post hole Auger digger to make holes for the cedar posts we bought. There were a lot of rocks in the first one and it kept binding and didn’t do well. Then we broke the shear pin and had to stop. So we went to town and got new, bigger pins. Not just the one we broke but both pins. We also got some landscaping timbers to put around trees and stuff in the front yard. The rest of the day was too cold to do very much, so we took the afternoon off and watched TV.
Saturday. We had waffles for breakfast. Hopefully we had what was our last frost of the year last night. I think it only got down to 37 or so, what the forecast said anyway, but they warned of patchy frost. And when I went out this morning to let birds out I checked, and sure enough, there was frost on some of the grass and the top of the little chick’s cage. We covered up the roses, and the pups pulled the covers off. Think we did more damage trying to protect them than would have happened if we just left them alone. Oh well, live and learn.
Spent the day out in the field putting posts in the ground. Started with the hole where we broke the auger, did them by hand with a crow bar, and it went pretty fast. There were some huge rocks and glad we didn’t try the auger again. All total we dug 3 holes by hand. The corner post and 2 bracing posts. The rest of the posts were pretty rock free and the auger worked great. Dug the holes in just a few minutes, then we put rocks and dirt in and packed them down. Figure in a day or so when they have a chance to dry some they should be pretty solid. The ground was still kind of wet. A few days ago, or last weekend we had torrential rains and everything was flooded. So it is starting to dry out some. All total we put in 12 posts and laid out the field fencing for 2 sides. The other 2 sides will be 2 inch chicken wire that is 4 feet high. It is in the shed, and we’ll have to decide how soon to put it up. We got wire to do the bracing posts. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to use for the cross member for bracing, but it can wait just a little. Also started pulling the staples off the little coop so we can move it tomorrow to a new area, with more grass and such.
The first of our turkey poults for this year hatched today. Right now there are two in the hatcher and about seven more to go. And this is just the first week. I have been putting eggs in the incubator every week, so they will hatch every week. This is just the first batch. I haven’t opened the hatcher to take them out yet, but as soon as I do I’ll post some pictures.
What else? Came home one night and the geese were alone in the coop with their babies. So we took the baby ducks and the baby geese and put them out there. Mom and dad didn’t like the ducks, so we put them back in the house. But they accepted the geese, so now all 4 babies are with mom and dad, walking around the yard and such. So cool to see them all out there. Today two of the babies got in the one of the drinking pools. I think they are too young, but I’ll leave it up to them to decide.
Took the rototiller and tilled up the garden, hoping to get some stuff planted in it tomorrow. Have a bunch of plants on the deck that are started and ready to go. And it is still pretty early in the season. I’ll try to get some more pictures of things as I can and get them posted.
Been sunny out for 2 days now and the grass is getting dry, but the ground is still soggy. Been cleaning up around getting ready to put fences in around the field. It looks like the clover is growing good, but hard to say if it is actually the clover I planted or what. I have this Friday off and I’m hoping to get things ready for the fence. The new post hole auger takes 2 people, so I’ll have to wait until Saturday when Jeanne can help me, but I’m hoping to get things laid out and posts put up Saturday. Gotta get the fence up and get the birds out in the pasture.
I’m also hoping to get things planted in the garden. Have a lot of plants in containers out on the deck and they need to get in the ground as soon as I can work it. Got a good jump on the weeds by tilling up the garden area, and hoping I can keep ahead. Picked up several retread tires from the highway that are perfect for raised beds. Now we just need to get things organized.
And Edith appears to be still setting on the turkey eggs outside the little house, and the longer she sits there the stronger the urge will be for her to stay on that nest and not jump from nest to nest. Didn’t go inside and check on the turkey eggs in the box, so we’ll see how that goes. There are 2 turkey eggs in the chicken coop and I’m just leaving them there. See what happens when the numbers get bigger.
In no particular order and I'll try to get captions on them soon.
Spent $400 on tires a few weeks back for the van, and since then we have had 2 flats. Both the back tires, picked up something on the high way. So the last time I took Gavin with me to get it fixed. He loved the “Marshmallow Man” and checking out the new tires and such. Was a great time for both of us.
We have been doing a unit on Ponds at school, and so I have been using my resources here to help make things come alive for the kids. So I took 2 fish from our Molly tank and they are in a small aquarium on the counter. They are ok, the kids can’t see them as well as other things, but they like them. And we bought 3 ducks that we shared with another classroom and the kids got to hold and see and stuff and that was really cool for them. And Jeanne’s mom has a turtle named Golden that they picked up several years ago down by Golden City. So I took him and the kids went nuts over him. We let them touch him and he crawled around on the floor at first. Had the kids sit with their legs stretched out to form an area for him to crawl in and he kept crawling over one of the girls legs. It was so cool. Then we took him outside with us for recess and more kids got to see him. Let him crawl around in the grass and clover. He ate some of it. One of the other classes came and got him and played with him for a while. Then we did it again in the afternoon, letting him crawl around and the kids touched him, and out on the playground. He spent the night and on Tuesday the kids got to see him again. Wasn’t as big a deal the second day, and didn’t let the kids gang up on him quite as much. Some one was supposed to bring pollywogs to put in the fish tank, but so far, nothing.
I took Yaco to school one day when no kids were there, so we could check her out and I could see how she does. Later when we do the zoo unit or something I’ll take her again. She was there for just one day and didn’t talk much or make much noise. Of course as soon as we got her home, she made lots of noise. Go figure. Someone came to me and asked if I had baby ducks. I didn’t, so they asked where they might get some. They wanted them for a day or two to show the kids. I was going to keep them when they finished, and then decided that wasn’t right. So we bought 3 ducks, 1 male and 2 females. We were going to get the Khaki kind, but they didn’t have them, so we got Rouen Ducks. Actually, Jeanne got them on her break, the hatchery is just down the road from her work, and then she brought them to me at lunch. They are really cute. And we have them in the brooder at home now with the 2 geese that hatched in the house.
Put 28 turkey eggs in the incubator. Now I am really going to try to not collect eggs and let the hens set on them. There is a Narragansett hen in the front yard sitting on 8 eggs. Wish she had more but too late to do anything about it. In the peacock cage, there are 2 turkey hens, Brownie and a Narragansett, plus Edith. Well, there is a nest inside the little dog house thing and one on the outside. Both turkeys were laying eggs, sometimes in the nest outside, but sometimes the one inside. Edith was laying in the one inside. Sometimes a turkey would go inside the box and lay an egg, and in appears that at least one of Edith’s eggs were broken, I assume from being stepped on. So yesterday, Edith was on the nest inside and the Narragansett was on the outside one. It would appear she got off after laying an egg, because initially there were 6 eggs, but later in the day there were 8 eggs and no one was on it. So tonight I went out and Edith is on the 8 turkey eggs in the nest outside and the Narragansett hen was inside the box with 4 Edith eggs and 1 turkey egg. So I took the Edith eggs and brought them in the house, and left the single egg under the Narragansett. And it is all Edith can do to cover the 8 turkey eggs, but I’m leaving her there. I don’t really care who sits on which nest, as long as they don’t set on them and start he incubation process and then get off and let the eggs cool and die. So need to watch that. And I’m not sure how to separate them so they won’t be so tempted to swap nests.
Both goslings in the house are doing great. I attribute that mostly to the even temps under Emmy during incubation. The 2 chicks are also doing pretty good.
Took mom’s turtle, Golden, to school today and he was a big hit. The kids loved him and got to play with him and hold him and everything. We took him outside at recess and let him walk in the grass. He didn’t hide at all in his shell. The fish at school are still doing good, too.
The weather has been rainy all weekend, big thunderstorms and flash floods. So the ground in soaked again. Will be the end of the week before I can get into the garden to plant things. Speaking of which, repotted a lot of the plants and they are on the deck. Think I have gotten a better start on the garden this year, just need to keep up with things. Starting to get plans and ideas about how to fix things around here, the trees and the yard and the field. This winter I’ll need to do some landscaping and work out the drainage so that these spring rains don’t affect us quite so much each year. Need to make paths to walk on and get in fences, make the paddocks for animals and such.
Well seems I haven’t written in here in ages. Sorry. Life has been kind of busy. Seems we get home from work and take care of the animals and get dinner, then it’s time for bed. And with out going back and figuring out exactly where I last wrote, I’ll just kind of try to catch things up with the latest info.
Must be Easter Sunday I was out collecting eggs and thought I heard some peep noises coming from under Emmy. I had calculated she should hatch about the 15th, so that is about 5 days early. So Monday when I was collecting eggs, I peeked in and sure enough, there was a baby looking out over her shoulder. And something smelled bad, too. I set out a bowl of game starter and a small waterer, mostly for the chicks. See how that works. Well, tonight when we got home, I forced Emmy off the nest and collected all the eggs that were under her. And left the 2 goslings there with here. These are the first babies to hatch under a mom on the farm. All the rest have come from the incubators.
I didn’t want to just pitch the eggs, so Gavin and I took them out in the field and dug a hole. Think we had 1 turkey egg and about 2 goose eggs we had taken from the nest. The turkey egg looked like it probably wasn’t fertile, and was soupy nasty. 2 of the goose eggs had developed almost the whole way and died, for what ever reason. 2 more eggs popped I cracked them. They were the ones that stunk, and boy were they nasty! I had a small knife and would chip into the egg near the large end where the air pocket is, and these two just pooped like balloons. One goose egg when I cracked it started to bleed, and I noticed movement, so I stopped and saved it. The last one started chirping when I broke the shell, so I took both of them inside and put them in the hatcher with the other eggs. I have a handful of chicken eggs in there, one of which had started to pip. I think the last one I can save, but I wasn’t sure about the first one that bled. And I didn’t feel that putting them back under Emmy was the best thing to do right now. I also assumed that it had been 2 plus days since the first chicks had hatched and that all the eggs had hatched that were going to. Guess I was wrong. Still hoping I can save at least the one, maybe even both of them.
Of all the goose eggs I had in the incubator, only one hatched and I helped that too much. Ended up with a crocked neck and had to put it down. Sad day. But I have about 40 turkey eggs and several chicken eggs in the incubators and they should start hatching soon. Because chicken eggs take less time, I only have chicken eggs this week, but starting next week we should have both turkeys and chickens hatch every week. The group I put in last week had 26 eggs in it.
But now I have started to let the eggs collect in nests and plan to let the moms set on them and see how many hatch. The worst that can happen is we get no babies. I don’t plan to totally give up my incubators, but if I can have them share the burden of raising babies and still get more, then I will. I can still collect a full set of eggs for the incubators, and then let them lay enough to fill their nests. So we are starting a new era here. Another reason we feel confident in doing this is we put a couple of hens in the peacock cage and so they are well protected, and we have the dogs running around and they should help keep predators at bay. Unless they get the birds themselves.
Came home the other day and Bear was chewing on the wing of one of the red babies. I guess they are about 9 weeks old and getting pretty good sized by now, but still the babies here. Later we found the head and neck, guess he ate the rest. Tied it around his neck. The next day found him chewing on one of the Barred Rock babies. Put him in the pen we had used for the dog in the past. Then the next day we caught Nakita eating eggs out of the coop. We knew that eggs had been disappearing, sometimes almost right before our eyes. We just happened to catch her this time. So she got locked up too. So now the routine is Marshmallow is on her chain all day and the pups are penned up. After all the birds are put away for the night, some nights we let Marshmallow run free all night, like last night. Tonight, we let her run for a half hour or so, then chained her back up and let the pups out. They will stay near her and sleep in the dog house. This way they all get some free time to roam and we get dog coverage. Until we can spend more time to work with them, this is going to have to work.
Speaking of babies, they really like their new run. They had eaten the grass and such down to almost nothing, so we moved their fence to give them fresh grass. It looks like the clover seed I planted has gotten off to a good start. Could use some more rain to help it along, but so far it is looking good. Bought some cedar posts to start on the fence, and looking at a power auger for drilling fence post holes, so we can get that all put in. Then I need to build the field coop for the birds, and move the babies out of the mini-coop and into it. That way, I can get it ready for the next round of babies that will go into it, the turkeys and such that are in the incubators. Haven’t figured out exactly how to deal with momma’s and their babies after they hatch, to keep them separate from the rest of the birds, keep the babies safe and still make sure they have access to feed and water. Working on the plan.
And seems lots of classes at school are working on the “Pond” unit so I had several requests for babies. Since I don’t have any, they have decided to buy some. And since they don’t know what to do with them when they get done, I’m buying into it and then the birds will be mine. So the plan right now is to get 3 Rouen ducks, 2 females and 1 male. They will be the next breed of bird we raise here on the farm. They are a good egg laying breed and are also supposed to be a good meat duck.
And so far, the garden is rototilled, but not planted. Just a few items here and there, and some potatoes.
Weather real quick. We had the warmest March on record, with weeks in the upper 70s and even an 80 degree day I think. Well, those days appear to be over for a while, and we are back to spring weather. The low tonight is expected to be in upper 30s and they have issued a frost alert for several counties, so we brought in the tropical plants from the deck. Was in the 70’s yesterday, but only mod 60’s today. But all in all, think spring is here to stay. After this, as soon as I get the chance, the garden in going on full force. I have many plants started and ready to plant out. Have several trays hardening off on the back deck.
Also have plans for the yard and such, and going to build timber frames around the trees and a flower bed next to house using landscaping timbers. And we got a 12x12 foot pond liner and filter box, so we can build a small fish pond under/near the deck. I still have the old pool liner and will probably try to salvage a piece of that and make a bigger pool, then use the piece we bought to make a bigger filter unit.
|
RSS Feed