As promised, the duck run finally went up today. It was only me and the boy home, but we got the job done in half a day. It's bigger than any of our other runs, giving it the nickname of the Duck Park. And runs parellel to the horse pasture. Even though Chase hates ducks, he'll appreciate their fly elimination abilties. Of course there are a few things to finish/change...like the size of their swimming hole. A wash tub just won't do it. And first thing tomorrow, the boy has insisted we go out and buy this to hang on the gate.
1 Comment
No, this is not what we had for supper. It's what I found in my cat's water bowl. And even more gross, they were still alive. Not sure how they ended up here, but I moved the bowl as far from my back door as possible. I love all baby critters, but these fellows are just creepy. Even the cats turned their noses away from them.
Say you move into a property that has far too many flowerbeds filled with overrun plants and you wonder what surprises you may find amongst them. Say you then come across this huge exotic looking plant. Here's another shot of it. This baby is huge! It towers above you and is found all over the property. Some the size of a tree. With leaves this big and the promise of flowers about to bloom, you may think you have some kind of unique tropical plant. Lifting those huge heart-shaped leaves at the bottom, you peer beneath and are excited to discover rubarb growing wild beneath. But I am here to burst your bubble. This is not rubarb. This is rubarb. Which, happily, does grow wild on our property. This is a weed. A very nasty weed. Which if left alone as 90% of the ones on our property have been, will grow to 2 and even 3 metres tall. Now there may be some who would sing the praises of this weed, but those people are lunatics. This weed is no good. If you have it, get rid of it. Fast. If not, it will eventually sprout little flowers that when finished blooming, will go to seed and then drop and spread. Everywhere. Exhibit A once again. The same flowerbed but opposite side. (This is my front flowerbed that I have yet to touch...can you blame me?) Exhibit B No, that is not a lovely garden center piece amongst my bamboo grass...it is a weed. A no good useless weed. Which if you do let grow tall or find them tall on your new property, are impossible to dig up unless you have a backhoe. Seriously, those roots are something like three feet down. The best thing you can do is cut the stem as close to the earth as you can and dispose of the plant. I suggest burning. At the least remove the flowers and burn them. I've been told to poor Javex on the root, so am going to give that a try. Because they will grow back if you don't kill the root. Exhibit C I hacked and pretty much butchered this root to death about a month ago and look how nice and lovely it's grown back . Get rid of them. I am. With axe in hand along with a bottle of Javex, I will concur these good for nothing plants.
I'm barn hopping this week. Want to join me? The henhouse now has a run door! And the girls appreciate the freedom to come and go. Inside view. I put the chickens in the house before I began work on the run door for two nights, enough time for them to know where "home" was and where to return to roost. I thought I might have fried them it was so hot in there with the huge plexiglass providing so much sunlight. It also really smelled, but once I cut open the run door, air began to flow and the heat and smell vanished, thank goodness. The keeping them locked in for two nights worked though and sure enough when the sun went down last night, they all went inside and huddled in the corners. Well, accept for Sue Ellen. I had kept Sue Ellen and Minnie Mae in the horse barn during those two nights because Sue Ellen has a permanent limp from an injury she sustained the first day they were set free into the run. Minnie Mae's head had gotten badly picked at by The Vampire Diaries Chicks when I left her in their brooder for whatever reason a few weeks back. Both girls are very quiet and docile and at the bottom of the pecking order, so I didn't want any further injuries to them if the other chicks started getting squirrly and attacking each other in those two nights/three days of confinement. So when the sun came down, all the chicks went inside accept Sue Ellen who stood at the corner of the run staring at the horse barn and crying. It took some of her pals to come out and get her before she finally limped up the ramp and went inside for the night.
All that is left on the henhouse now is roosts and nesting boxes. We planned the henhouse to house the brooder but since everyone has pretty much outgrown it, we are keeping it in the horse barn for the new ducklings. That gives the girls more room in the coop. And since I don't plan on receiving any eggs from them anytime soon, I think I'll take a break on the henhouse and finally, finally, get to work on the duck house and run. My boy's nagging to get it done is finally starting to irritate me. Oh, and I think perhaps another feeder might be good idea. Last week I reported that Lacey had given birth to her litter of kits. Well, sadly, they have been dying off one by one ever since. Since we are newbies at this, we were unsure what could be the problem. It took the death of 4 in one day, that my daughters finally stepped in and interfered. They weren't sure how Lacey would react. For one thing, she barely knew us and secondly you are suppose to leave mom and babies alone for the first two weeks. But with only three babies left, the girls took action. The first thing they did was to check that Lacey had no infections in her nipples. When everthing looked good down there, they determined that she simply did not know what to do as a first time mother. We'd see her nursing and then hop off while the kit was still clinging to her. It was like she didn't know what they were and why they were in her cage. So the girls decided to force feed them. This required placing Lacey on her back. This is a very uncomfortable position for a rabbit and could have them kicking out in fear or anger. However, Lacey simply laid placid in my daughter's arms. It amazes me to see those large feet suspended above her and she didn't attempt to kick out once. Next they placed a kit against her nipple and waited for it to latch on. When it did, they added the second baby. They look like the cutiest little rats at this age. The little black one was fed alone since he is smaller than his siblings and the girls wanted to make sure he got all the milk he needed. This is all that's left from Lacey's litter. I love the diverse colours. What's our chances they are all females?! After she was done, Lacey cuddled into my daughter for reassurance before hoping happily back into her cage. With so little kits left from Lacey's litter, the girls decided to breed Odette. Odette is 9 months old and you should really breed them before they turn one if you plan on breeding because of something to do with their bones and causing difficulty in pregnacy. So we put Odette in the run with Snickers. Snickers is her dad but it is acceptable to breed father to daughter or mother to son, just not sister to brother. I taped the incident to share but nearly missed it their first round because it happened so fast. However, Snickers kept coming back to Odette to make sure the job got done. Please keep children's innocent eyes aware from this video as it contains explicit scenes!! Haha! Some may call me a quack but that would hardly stop me from bringing home more of these today. They are the promised replacement ducks for my son. And yes I'm fully aware there is more than four. But I'm just as much of a sucker as my boy when it comes to adorable little ducklings.
I realized I haven't posted about our turkey's since bringing them home last month. Well that's because there really is nothing to report. They haven't changed a whole lot. Maybe a little bit bigger and with feathers. The most interesting update about them is this. One of them has started puffing itself out, strutting around and fanning it's tails. We're hoping that means we have a tom turkey. But not to be outdone, the other surprised me today when he too puffed out and fanned his feathers. So we may have two tom tom's which I think is fantastic but farm girl wanted to breed so wasn't so thrilled at the idea. But it is still early and I've heard young pullets may strut and fan their feathers like their male counterparts, so only time will tell. We worked more on the henhouse today. The floor got painted. He did a fantastic job...with a little bit of help from his sister. Then we lined chicken wire along the top of the coop, just in case someone tried to make a break for it out that way. The only left now is the chicken door and some roosts and finally they can move in! The weather was wonky today, one minute it would downpour and the next the sun would try to come out. The poor chickens were free ranging and tried to take cover wherever possible. Excuse the fogginess of the photo, I took it from the safety of the barn. However, not everyone was offended by the rain. The ducks were basking in it. Particularly the downspout which was emptying water from the eavestrough like it was the Niagara Falls. Last week farm girl stepped off our backporch into a patch of this plant that was growing wild there. She immediately started complaining about how painful the plant had left her leg, then shortly after her knee began to swell from where it made contact with it. Looking at the plant at closer inspection and with my very little knowledge about plants, I determined that the plant was poison ivy. It fell into the "3 leaf" description and from images over the internet, I figured that was what it was. Not to be correct. While visiting over father's day, my mother-in-law informed me that they were raspberry plants. Which she pointed out a huge batch growing wild in the front flowerbed (I have yet to even touch that flowerbed so have no idea what is in there. My MIL, however, likes to browse my property to see all the different plants.) Sure enough, there were dozens of young raspberries growing. We love raspberries so were thrilled at this discovery. Not only had my MIL discovered raspberries for us, she also uncovered strawberries...but sadly I had mowed over the majority of them not knowing they were there. So with this loss and the loss of my own strawberries that I had bought, I took a day off and pulled all the weeds/grass that had grown so tall they nearly camouflaged our blueberry bushes....okay, it didn't take all day but we also began weeding out the flowerbed next to it and behind the pond, which hid a beautiful rose garden. When I'm done, I'll post photos. The berries are growing nice and big and hopefully we'll get a nice load off them. Lastly, I wanted to share how we entertain ourselves here on the farm when we have a few minutes to spare. Thought I'd share some updates from around the farm. First, as I mentioned briefly in the previous post, our dark snowy call duck who was to be named Daphe if a boy or Daphne if a girl, has been renamed Ben. My son wanted to name him since everyone else was naming animals and when he said Ben, I liked it and agreed. We are 99% sure Ben is indeed a boy. He has grown some beautiful and colourful feathers. I haven't got a photo, but will try and post one when I do. Another name change around the farm was June's, one of our stray barn cats. Initially, we had thought June and May were mother and son, then May got pregnant so that corrected that. However, June is a late bloomer and her testicles have finally dropped. Yes, testicles. June is a boy. Very disappointing, since she/he was so much friendlier and prettier than May, which really should have been the first sign. Anyway, not to confuse us too much we changed his name to Juno. Me and my hardworking crew have been working steadily on the henhouse. Haha, they are such jokers! Actually, I'm pretty proud of my crew...3 females and a 7 year old boy and we've nearly completed a henhouse entirely on our own. Second wall goes up. All the walls are now up, I haven't taken a photo yet. I just need to add the door for humans and a door to the run and the girls are moving over. Which I can't hardly wait since they've been free ranging in the barn at night because they have become just too big for the brooder. There is poop everywhere in the barn. As soon as I can lock them up at night, they are moving in. My daughter finished her rabbit house and began work on the rabbit run. The completed house and run. She is raising the house about a foot off the ground, however, to create a shaded spot for the rabbits. The rabbits cannot all go in at once so they rotate in the house/run on a daily basis. They love it and it gives them lots of exercise. The tarp is there because we discovered after a rainfall that there was too much space between boards, so she will need to insultate the inside eventually as well. She also wants to add shutters over the windows to lock the rabbits in even more securely at night and place a flower box under the window to pimp up the place.
The ducks have been holed up in the run during the day with the rabbit ever since last night's incident. I didn't want another accident and chance of loosing another bird. Don't think the boy could handle it. Anyway, as soon as I'm done the henhouse, the duck's run and house are on the agenda next. We had our first casuality today. Well, technically, Duke's mother was our first and one of May's babies died making this actually our third death. But this was the first real serious death in several months at the new farm. I had to drive into town to take my daughters to work and left all the ducks out to free range. I saw them before leaving and thought briefly about putting them away, but since I was leaving Dakota, our GS on duty, I thought everything would be fine. Dakota has gotten along with our call ducks and I would often find them sunbathing on the deck together after leaving them alone for several hours. But when we came home we discovered a dead muscovy (so grateful it wasn't one of our beautiful snowy call ducks) and an excited Emma. Emma is our golden retriever who is the sweetest dog and wouldn't harm a fly. However, we concluded from the evidence in the pond, that she thought she had gained a playmate in the water and initiated a chase. Dakota may be a good guard dog but she is also a very competitive dog when it comes to the golden retrievers. So she would have wanted to up Emma and take whatever she had. And using her mouth is no issue with Dakota, so would have taken over the chase and taken the duck down. My boy was pretty upset, though very relieved that his duck Ben hadn't been the dead bird. (Ben is the re-christened name of Daphe the duck.) Then while there was death occuring outside, at the exact moment inside the barn, life was happening. Our new rabbit, Lacey, was giving birth to her litter. We came home to find a dead duck and 9 newborn bunnies. We had even checked on Lacey before leaving and she hadn't even begun building her nest. So we were quite pleased with this sight. They did ease the blow some for my boy, but he took the death of the duck harder than I thought he would have since we've only had them for a couple days. I made the mistake of putting the dead duck in a bag and tossing it into the swamp for vultures, however, it triggered an emotional reaction from my boy. It might have been the wrong thing to do, but I didn't want to make a big deal of the death. I figured there would be more death to face in the future, some at my own hands, so tried to take the emotion out of the event. Perhaps I should have discussed it more with him, given the bird a proper burial, but I don't want to have to hold a ceremony every time a critter dies on our property. I did however promise to replace the duck with four new ducklings so that he could have a total of 9 ducks (not sure why that number, but that was what he wanted). Perhaps a ceremony would have been easier. Probably not, I was ready to promise him anything just as long as he stopped hurting.
|