Staying Maybe 1/2 Step Ahead, If That

Our First Sunflower

Things have been busy around here.  I seem to be staying maybe a half step in front of the critters if that much.  Building and maintaining seems to be all I can do lately.  Let's just say we are on hold with any new additions that are not already in progress.  I need some catch up time.


We did have a week and a half with our wonderful granddaughters.  They are great help around here for anything we might need.  Not to mention some of the best company.  It sure is quiet around here now that they have gone back home.  I hope they come again soon.


All the babies are doing good.  We didn't really have a good hatch rate or survival rate on the coturnix but that could be human error.  We do the best we can.  So far we are not happy with the A&M Coturnix.  They just seem to have the most problems.  Probably from all that inbreeding to get what they wanted.  The Pharaoh are our favorites so far followed by the Golden.  When you open the cage to feed or water it is like tribbles falling out of the ships compartment.  They are funny little creatures.

We have our momma hen raising the surviving guinea keets and we added 5 Muscovy ducklings.  She sure is a good momma.  She gets special treatment and is housed in the chicken tractor in the back yard.

We have some Peking duck eggs in the incubator that we are hatching for a friend.  We get half of the hatch.  We are also hatching out chickens for one of our neighbors and we are hatching out more guineas to sell.  I think that will about do it for me this year.  Although there were some geese at the sale barn last night I wanted really really bad.  They fell under the category of "we don't need them".

Here is our daughter and granddaughters with a baby bunny and a Muscovy duckling.

The New Males in Our Life

Meet Boudro. 

Meaning:  Boudro , boudro meaning , definition of boudro , what is boudro - Friend, Term used to describe a buddy or pal in lieu of their name. Particularly in Louisiana, Texas and surrounding states.
Some examples : Hey Boudro, let's go grab a beer after work.

He is a year old, Nigerian Dwarf / 12.5 % Lamancha buck.

Ratz - Lionhead buck

We look forward to breeding him with our Tara.  They are going to make some pretty babies.

 
This big buy doesn't have a name yet.  We have been throwing around the idea of Bucky.  He is 1/2 Dutch & New Zealand.

We are going to mate this big guy with our big girls.  We are planning on eating the offspring of the large rabbits.

I am to soft to kill them but the neighbor kid said he would do that.  We can clean them after that.

Homestead General Update

Looky what hatched a few days ago.  Now it takes us about a year to tell the sex of the Muscovy Ducks so we'll have to get back with you on this one.








We also have 11 guinea chicks down at the neighbor's house.  They were nice enough to let us slide eggs under their broody hens.  There are still a few more eggs we are waiting to see if they will hatch.

We also have 8 eggs under our single broody Australorp hen and & eggs under a Muscovy hen in the coop.  If we can keep the snakes out we should be good to go.  We have quite a few guinea eggs in at least one nest that I can find.  I wish those girls would go ahead and go broody.

Other than that I have cut, dried, and stored some hay in the barn.  Some of you may not know but I do this by hand with a scythe.

We also purchase 25 square bales at $4.00 a bale from the field just to our south as our land is leased out for hay production.

We finally went down in the back to see the results of the logging.  Let's just say we no longer have woods.  We have some trees.  There were many areas my father had clear cut.  There are piles of debri in several places and what once was beautiful is just ugly now.  All I keep thinking is that is was a rape.  The area I considered by sacred place is pretty much destroyed.  It is sad and I am not sure when I'll go back there again.  I knew it wasn't going to be a pretty site.  I was right.

We have also been working in the garden some.  We got a late start which might hurt us this year but last year's early start hurt us too.  Sometimes you just got to do the best with what you got.

So now you guys are kinda caught up and I have to go work on a rabbit hutch.  After seeing Randy's hutches I am changing my design for the better.

Diane / Dyanne the Duckling

Well we had 2 our our duck eggs hatch.  One little duckling got squashed my the momma so we now only have one duckling.  We named it Diane after a friend of ours that is very sick and has wanted to get well enough to come spend some time with us up here and enjoy all our critters.  She now has brain damage from lack of oxygen for over 5 minutes so that probably won't be able to happen.  Anyway we will call it Diane if it is a female and Dyanne if it is a male.

We moved the momma a duckling into the chicken tractor at our back porch.  We are calling it duck TV.  We are easily entertained.  Our Great Pyrenees are fighting over who gets to protect it.  They no longer sleep in their "rooms" (two holes dug in the yard) rather they sleep against the chicken tractor.  It is amusing to watch.