Baby photos

The chicks are starting to grow in wing and tail feathers already. That's Griffin's "Spiderman" in the stripes.

This is Hanna with "Gigi".


Kira with her chick lovingly named "Vulture".



Campbell's "Moneyman" is huge compared to his "siblings".



And "O.J." is still endearing him/herself to everybody.



It is so funny the way they all move together as a family unit.

Hatched!

6 out of 6 eggs hatched! The chicks are beautiful. We were all delighted with the black chick, we've never had a black chick before. The kids fought over naming rights for that one, Damon won. I am guessing that he/she is half barred rock.

O.J.

Gigi

Spiderman pecking Mama Jill's beak.

Baby Jesus

I don't know this one's name yet.

Hatch countdown!

Only 8 days to go! Jill is being a very good broody hen. She gets up off her eggs when I feed the chickens in the morning, she eats, drinks, poops, and then settles back on the nest for another 24 hours.

Another hen, Ginger, has been broody for a couple of months. I have had a hard time with my Buff Catalana hens going broody, and in the past when I have tried to take them up on their offer to hatch eggs, something always went wrong. They would get nasty and throw a tantrum and accidentally break a nest full of eggs, or they would refuse to sit on the eggs and would try to brood an empty nest. I told our chicken loving friends about my broody hens and told them they could borrow one to hatch their own eggs. Ginger volunteered for the job and a week ago, I set 4 of their eggs and 4 of my green ones under her.

We will probably send Ginger to their house so she can raise the babies for them and either join their flock when she is done or come back home.

And apparently broodiness is contagious. If anybody wants to borrow a broody hen, you know who to ask.

Turkey update

We still have 11 turkeys. Here they are a week before I left for the cottage, they were quickly getting too big for the small enclosure next to the turkeys, so I moved them to the large turkey coop (aka temporary goat birthing room).

It seemed like within days of moving them, they doubled in size. Now they are HUGE, and they make that wonderful gobbling sound (they are ready to speak to Carrie, the turkey whisperer).

Once I got home from the cottage, I set up their outside enslosure using old calf panels held together with ties. They LOVE being outside and they love eating grass and weeds, and in no time they had devoured everything green in their small yard. A week earlier, that area was full of uncut grass, dandelions, clover and plantain weeds.


We are going to have to extend their yard, in the meantime, they are enjoying garden clippings and table scraps.

Memorial

Over a month ago, Wicket was killed on the road in front of our house. It was horrible as he was very important member of our homestead. He was very loved and he knew it. And he was still a very good hunter and we all knew it. It happened when Matt and the 2 oldest boys were away. The 4 youngest kids and I buried him at the back of our property next to a lilac and a young willow. The children and I stood around and retold our favourite memory of Wicket. Then we walked back to the patio and the girls wanted to draw Wicket, so I remembered that I had canvases and I encouraged them to paint a picture of Wicket or a memory of Wicket. This is what they painted:
Griffin

Hanna

Kira

Campbell

Damon selected a stone to mark Wicket's grave.



We have wonderful memories of our short time with Wicket, but we still miss him terribly.

Hatch countdown!

I have been a negligent blogger lately. I'm going to blame going to the cottage, even though that's not the whole story. I will try to catch up with a few posts this week.

When I got home from the cottage, I discovered that my Silkie hen, Jill, had laid eggs. Jill doesn't lay them too often. She is 3 years old and I think in the past 3 years, she had laid up to 20 eggs in total. In the week following my return, she laid an egg a day and then decided to sit on them. I replaced her 8 little white unfertilized eggs with 5 big blue and 2 big brown fertilized ones. She threw one egg out of the nest and has decided to sit on 6.

Jill has hatched 3 babies for me before and was a very good momma to Goldie, Miss T and poor little Chris.

It takes 21 days for chicken eggs to hatch. Jill started 5 days ago, so we should see some new chicks in 16 days (give or take a day).

Apple thinning

For those following the apple trees, I should mention that I spent a couple of hours last week thinning the apples. At first it seems counterintuitive, but when you lose a whole limb of a mature apple tree because there were too many apples for the branch to hold, it starts to make sense. Also, thinning helps to improve fruit size and increases the number of blossoms for next year, and to prevent tree breakage. Where the apple blooms once were there are now 4 or more apples. They are tightly pressed against each other and there is no more room for them to get bigger.

I get picky about which fruit I leave on the branch, aiming for them to be spaced about 4 inches apart.

Some apples don't develop well or have scabs and I get rid of these.


At this time, I also find branches that have been damaged by the sprayer or with brown leaves. I cut these off.

I put the thinned apples into buckets, with the hope of feeding a few of them to the animals every day. Too many at once would give the goats bloat, and diarrhea to the chickens. But later that day, Damon and his friend found the buckets of thinned apples and decided that it would be more fun to whip them at each other.



Damon may have been holding the bucket, but Damon's sisters were both supplying his friend with apples to throw.
Fun times. Now the apples are composting on the lawn.

Were you raised in a barn?

The boys had their cousin sleeping over so they decided to camp out in the boy's club, formerly known as the much underused goat birthing room or the turkey coop.


Bella was assigned to be guard dog, but my favourite part of this photo is the disgusted look of the big sister.

And to think I said he couldn't act.


They didn't forget the essentials though. Fan, ipod dock, laptop with internet access with dvd player and a cooler full of rootbeer.

Strawberry picking 2011

The neighbour had told my kids that he was closing his PYO strawberry patch up and they were welcome to pick whatever they wanted before he plows it all in this week. So they waited until their cousins arrived and took them strawberry picking.

"The biggest strawberry."

"See the shiniest strawberry."

"Wow your neighbour sure knows how to grow strawberries!"

"The smallest strawberry."
Perfect berries for jam, too bad the kitchen is just too hot right now.

Turkeys 4 weeks later.

The turkeys are 4 weeks older. A few days after we got them, the runty-looking one died. We knew on day 1 that it was likely and we were surprised that he made it for 4 days more. So at 4 weeks old, we have 11 healthy turkeys left.

Here they are a week ago, already filling up their second home.

And taking flight!

Looks like time to move! So I fixed a hinge and put them in the small temporary pen next to the goats.
(just for clarification, those are wet woodchips in the bottom of the water)

They have more room to move around, room to test their wings, and room for the really big tube feeder! They seem very happy there, very peaceful.

Turkey day

My turkeys arrived at the feed store today. I ordered 10 but ended up with 12. With our large family attitude, we just shrugged and said, "what's two more?" Notice the little hornlike thing on the end of this one's beak. This is to help him peck his way out of the egg. They shed these in the first day.We put them in a box with the red heat lamp, water, thermometer and a pie plate full of food. When they are put in the box, we dip their beaks in the water to teach them to drink. Then we teach them to eat, tapping the pie plate to encourage them to peck at it. The temperature needs to be approximately 95 F for the first few days. They will stay in here for the first couple of days to stay warm. Then I will move the set up somewhere bigger.

Weird effect.
Every year we have to remind the girls to stop playing with their food!