All the Babies of Summer

This time of year is always really busy for us because there's always a lot of young animals. Right now the main thing we have is DUCKS! There are ducklings EVERYWHERE you look! They are mostly Muscovy crosses and are all different ages because they've just been hatched by random ducks in the barn.



There are also two ducklings with "shower caps" which make me laugh. Sadly they don't have much function. Whatever. As one (wise) farmer once said, "you have to have pets"!



We also ordered some chicks that we've had for a week or two now. There are some Ameraucana's and some Rhode Island Red's. Today we're putting some other (younger) chicks and quails into the same pen. Hopefully they'll get along okay because right now they live in my room which is not a good place for chicks.



The turkeys that were in our basement now live outside as well. The chickens are looking great! The latest thought is to try showing them for fun! It would definitely be interesting at least...

Spring Fur and Feathers Show

I can't believe I completely forgot to write about this! The spring fur and feathers show was last weekend. We got up at 5:30 to get there (ick) and brought a variety of birds to sell, including: Pompom (a black banty braham), Rusty (a orange-ish random rooster), 2 Araucana crosses, a dozen Ameraucana hatching eggs, 2 Ameraucana roosters, and a pair of Black Jersey Giants. Sadly, we only sold the eggs and one of the Ameraucana roosters. Hopefully we have better animals by the fall show!



Now onto the fun stuff; what we saw and bought!

The very first animals we got were a pair of buff ducks because we really like the one we got in the fall last year. They are very pretty ducks, although so far they don't seem to want to interact with the other buff duck which is a bit of a problem.

Next we got a Rhode Island Red chicken, mostly because it reminded us of a children's book called "Oliver's Chickens", which is a very cute book! She is a really pretty burgundy colour, and we've already named her Ruthy. Not the most original name, but it alliterates which I find amusing.

We also got another girl quail because Quincy (the boy quail we already have) is pulling all the feathers out of the 3 girls we have for him. Apparently 3 girls to 1 boy isn't a good ratio so he needs more!

The last thing we got was an American Buff goose. This was a bit of an adventure because they were un-sexed, and we really don't need another gander! Luckily we managed to guess which one was a girl. The only reason we know this is that when we brought her home and introduced her to the other animals, she immediately went over to Carter and they've been inseparable ever since! It was love at first sight for them... The only problem is that Carter is VERY protective of his new girl, and is being even more argumentative than ever!

More new birds

Yesterday morning (very, very early) we got some new animals! We got 18 turkey poults, 3 Jungle fowl chicks, and 3 Silver Splash Cochin's!

Birds have an uncanny ability to look dead when they are sleeping. I always have to check their still alive; they get me every time! Turkey poults are always really cute, then again, most baby animals are cute!

Jungle Fowl chicks always have a little bandit mask that makes them look like they're up to no good. They're relatively small chicks, mostly because they are relatively small chickens. We got these guys because we seem to be all out of Jungle fowl roosters... And surprisingly enough, it's hard to breed chickens if you only have hens! Hopefully these chicks will sort out our problems and soon we can hatch our own Jungle Fowls.

Cochin's are the newest variety of chickens at our farm! We saw some this year at the fur and feathers show, and decided we had to get some! We waited to get ours from an actual hatchery, instead of at the (slightly overpriced) show. These are some really funny chicks! They are going to be HUGE and have fluffy legs! Hopefully they work for us, and as soon as they're fully grown I'll put more pictures and information on here about them.

Roadtrip!

This Monday we undertook an epic road trip to get some pigs. It was more than 5 hours both ways! We got a pregnant sow (yes, we actually went through with this!) and 2 little boys (that we will be eating). They (especially the sow) did not want to come home with us. And they protested loudly about it. The next day (when we were getting them into their pen because we got home really late) the sow got to walk into the yard from her cozy pig transporter. The boys, however, had spent the night in the back of the truck and decided that they liked it there and didn't want to get out. Especially when they realized it meant them being carried. Now I know where the expression "squealing like a pig" came from! They were REALLY LOUD! Luckily we got them into the pen all right and they then decided that it definitely wasn't as bad as they thought it would be, so they started to eat some grass right away. The sow also started to turn up the soil (very pig like I must say...) We also (well, the farmer we bought them from) found out that the sow that he thought was a "maybe purebred big black pig" was actually a pig with papers! She is registered in the national breed registry, and her piglets are actually worth quite a bit of money! So instead of eating them, we may end up pre-selling them all to make some money off of this investment! For once! Anyway, back to the topic of the actual pigs, another one of those expressions "eating like a pig" is also true! These pigs are GROSS when they eat! They spew food everywhere and get covered in icky. I have some great pictures of them eating in the trough (legs in, completely covered in food!) and dripping food everywhere while they chew with their mouths open. I put some of the best on here.

On another topic, they need names. Well, some people would disagree with that. They say "why name something you'll eat?" What don't they understand about being able to bond with your pig (while it's alive...) And a name makes it much easier to talk to a pig. Not that you really need to... Hmm... I guess they have a point!

Anyway, we need names for the pigs (and preferably ones that have something to do with cuts of meat!) We're thinking of calling the sow Angelina (big celebrity, lots of kids!), and I have friends that want to call one of the piglets Wilbur... However the pigs are black and we're planning on eating them, which doesn't seem like the best thing to do to a famous children's character that ended up living happily ever after... So... Suggestions would be great!

The arrival of Kaslo

On Tuesday we brought home our new puppy, Kaslo. Aside from throwing up in the car, he's doing fine here! He's almost house trained, and doesn't have many accidents. He gets along really well with the other animals as well. I've been taking tonnes of pictures, as per usual, and most of the ones from the past few days are of him, and how he's interacting with the other animals.



Asha is slightly put off by not being the "baby" now. She is constantly trying to but in whenever we try to pat Kaslo, and jump on our laps to get the attention for herself. She treats Kaslo a bit like she treats the cats, by licking his head. She must thing that he's a cat because she gets very confused when he tries to jump on her and play with her. She tries to play "tag" with him, but he can't run as fast and gets really tired easily.


Kiri isn't quite sure what to think about about the puppy... She decided to ignore him for the most part, and occasionally steal his kennel (which used to be hers) and eat his food. She doesn't appreciate being played with, and will growl and grumble to us about him, although her bark is much worse than her bite!




The cats don't really seem to like him, although that's not surprising as they never really like dogs at all. They all have been making themselves scarce for the past couple days, and try to stay out of "bouncing distance" in which they are in danger of getting bowled over by the very energetic puppy!

A new puppy!

Very shortly we will be bringing the newest member of our family home... A chow-shepherd, shepherd-lab cross puppy! He is 8 weeks old, and a boy from a litter of 7(or so) puppies. These are some (not very good) pictures I took of him when I went to go meet him. I'm sure I'll take lots more pictures when he comes home later today! He is very "chewy" and was trying to eat our pants! Apparently the smell of chicken poo is very appetizing for him... He is very energetic, and loves to play "tag" with the other puppies by running around with a water bottle or a stick. This should make Asha happy, as that's her favourite game too. We're really hoping that he is well received by the other animals. Kiri, however, is very reclusive and doesn't really like any other dogs. Asha likes to gently nibble on the cat's heads, so hopefully she won't think that the puppy is her new chew toy... We don't think the cats will be very thrilled at us, as they're not that fond of small jumpy things that try to chase them. The only problem with getting a puppy now is that it was really short notice, so we're barely ready to bring him home! There's still very chewable objects laying around the whole house which will need to get squirreled away to unreachable places before he gets here and decides that he wishes to teeth on "the economist". Another problem is that we don't have a name for him! So far the names we've come up with and sort of like are Tarak, Adair, Stoke, and Kazlo. And puddles... but that doesn't really count. We're pretty sure that we're going to call him Kazlo (because you have to admit, Kazlo and Kiri sounds really cute! I'm not sure where Asha fits into that... Asha, Kiri, and Kazlo just doesn't have the same ring!)

Snik the Snake

A couple days ago we found a snake in our basement. It isn't very long (probably about 20cm) and only a centimeter wide at its longest. Since it's winter, and it should have been hibernating, we thought that we would have to keep it and take care of it or it would starve to death. We put it into an aquarium and gave it a piece of pipe to hide in and went to the nearest pet store to get some food for it. They told us that we should get a mouse to feed it so it didn't learn to hunt and wouldn't bite us (I think we may have forgotten to mention that it was wild to begin with). The mouse was tiny, dead and frozen. They told us to heat it up in a warm pot of water before we fed it to the snake. First of all, ICK and second of all, it probably wouldn't even eat it because it is used to live animals. Instead we got some crickets, which is much more like the food it would get here in the summer. It was really cool watching the snake hunt because it gets really still and some people who saw it thought that it was dead. Except then it suddenly lunges forward and eats the cricket! Most people won't hold it, even when we assure them that even though it can hunt there's no way it's going to bite them. It feels really cool, almost like silk. I named the snake Snik, although so far the name isn't really catching and most people just call it "the snake".

More Ducklings!

Last night we found some ducklings wandering the barn, so we took them inside so they wouldn't freeze to death. They probably hatched from a nest under the hay bales, as we weren't expecting them to show up at all! It's amazing how fast ducklings grow, as the other ones (that we hatched in our incubator) already dwarf the new ones!

New Duckies!

We put some duck eggs in the incubator a while back, and we had a really good turnout! Now we have ducks to our ears in 2 dog kennels in the basement! There are roughly 27 ducklings, and they are mostly runner ducks, although there is one calico one that most definitely isn't! They go through tonnes of food and water (ducklings are very messy drinkers) and will have to be moved to a bigger house soon. Sorry I don't have a picture! I still haven't found my card reader...