Around the tiny farm: The animal pen

Here are just a few photos illustrating what's going on this time of year in the animal pen.

Delilah taking a bath. That water was clean not too long before I took the picture. Ducks have a way of getting water very dirty quickly. This shot is in between splashing like mad, they get everything within a several foot radius very wet, which is why I thought it would be smart to plant the sugar cane on the other side of the fence there. After the ducks take a bath, they hop out and run around the pen full speed with their wings flapping, it's hilarious to me, but I think the chickens would prefer to not have giant ducks zooming at them.


All of the older birds are now laying, the last one to start was Cosmo, the white-crested blue polish last week (at around 24 weeks). We're averaging 6-7 eggs a day between 9 birds that are currently laying. It's gotten noticeably louder, mostly with the "Get out, I want to be in that nestbox" noise, which is not my favorite thing to hear. Here's Pizazz (named after the Gem and the Holograms character), our australorp in one of the boxes. I leave the plastic 'training eggs' in the boxes in the nests even after the chickens begin laying just for fun, also, it can't hurt to remind the chickens...


The compost was in bad need of turning, and I was feeling lazy about doing it, so I opened the little gate to the compost bin and for the past few days the chickens have been doing the work for me. They love it and do a far superior job. Now I'll sift the finished compost into a separate container and shovel the rest back into the bin.


Finally, I decided to build a potato bed in the chicken pen. There isn't any grass in there, so I don't have to worry about sprouts of bermuda popping through the potato patch. The chicken wire has so far kept the chickens away from the sprouting potatoes and the newspaper lining has done a good job of keeping the soil in. For seed potatoes, I just went to the farmers market and got some organic red potatoes, yukon golds and fingerlings. This also gives me a good place to dump dirty water when I'm cleaning the waterers instead of having to haul it around the yard or wasting it.

Quick random updates

The new ducks got mixed in with the chickens today, it's interesting how differently it went than when we had the khaki campbells. The muscovies were a little hesitant to come out at first, but after they did they showed the 7 younger chickens who was boss, but were still bested by the older 3 hens. By mid-afternoon, the ducks were in charge. It's a little funny to watch those older hens that were giving the younger ones a hard time for the past few weeks be on the short end of the stick. Ahh payback.

After we integrated the chickens a few weeks ago, one of our older layers stopped laying, this isn't unusual, if you stir up the world of a chicken it will often keep them from laying for about 2 weeks. Now I'm afraid that I'm going to delay her even longer. We have some new egg customers now and we need all the eggs we can get! I'm very seriously considering getting some quail. I know of someone who will be selling some baby Pharoah quail for $1 each in a couple weeks, can anyone think of a reason NOT to get them? My plan was to tractor them and eat the eggs. Possibly for meat too, but we'll have to wait and see on that.

I have done a little trading and have now planted over 20 varieties of tomatoes, 3 kinds of peppers, 2 kinds of melons and 2 kinds of cucumbers. These are all under fluorescent lights and I'm pretty sure it looks like we're growing drugs. There are currently around 100 seedlings, which means I should have 50 or so extras to sell at the farmer's market in about a month. Tomorrow I will begin planting the 4 varieties of squash and 2 kinds of okra.

Stay tuned, tomorrow I'll post about the new 'tower of bird netting' I built today as well as post some pictures.

and then there were two!

Yesterday our second duckling was born. This one took its sweet time coming out of the shell, no more busting through the egg like the first one. The two are now great buddies and are having a good time making a mess together. I tried to take some pictures, but they're all blurry because they're always running around.

There is still one egg of the original four in the incubator (one egg had a duckling in it that died in the shell). I am not sure if the last one will hatch or not. I will wait patiently which is very hard to do.

I don't know what to name them yet because I don't know if they're boys or girls.

Jasper has been pretty curious about the ducklings, he likes to sit on the edge of their brooder box and watch the craziness.

I'll get some pictures soon!