Spring Babies Bigger!!

All the spring babies have gotten so much bigger! The tiny little puppies are already 10 weeks old, the chickens and ducks look like a giant yard of chickens and ducks instead of a yard of chicken nuggents for hawks.

And yes, that one on the far side, it is a sheep. 

George is still doing well. We've moved him to the Rabbitry for now until we can figure out how to help him get around better (if that's possible). But with him out there, he gets a morning jaunt out in the grass every day when I clean his cage and refill his food and water. He can't walk along for more than about an hour, but he seems to enjoy it.

Happily, my 1 handed typing has somewhat (and occasionally) returned to 2 handed typing. And the peasants rejoiced! Hopefully, this may mean I can update more frequently than once every 3-4 months.

These are 2 of our 2 Flemish Giant babies! These are from the first litter we had ever with Hugo and Bernadette. If we don't sell them, then yes, they will be snackums.

The Girl and her doggie Rupert.

My Magpie boy.

My pretty girl.

George!

Posting has been a little slow lately - I tore a tendon in my left wrist when one of our guineas got out and I can only type 1 handed. I keep hoping it's going to magically get better, but it hasn't improved in the last month at all. So 1 handed it is.

We hand a misfortune hatch of a duck, George. His legs are backwards and so are his feet. We keep promising ourselves we'll do the humane thing if he can't act duck-like anymore, but so far he's doing good!

We like us some George.

Fuzzy watching George

We've also decided to refine the bunny program a little bit. Instead of Netherland Dwarfs and meat rabbits - have Netherland Dwarfs and Flemish. We've already gotten our doe. She's gorgeous! And super friendly, she sticks her little nose up to be petted. We're going to try to go this weekend to pick up a new Flemish buck, but then we'll get rid of all the meat bunnies. It's been a year and still none of us has any want or desire to eat a bunny. It seems like a bad reason to raise them. People love those Netherland Dwarfs though. Those sell fast!

The Flemish Doe

Wickedly Warped Wednesday..

Well, we had a hatch. I have to admit I'm somewhat disappointed with the outcome, even though it IS better than the last attempts and we did increase the variables. So, a success in that aspect - but I had higher hopes for it.

We started off with 16 duck eggs and 14 chicken egg (our eggs for the first time). We refrigerated them for 7 days at 55 degrees with no rotation while in refrigeration. We culled 3 chicken eggs because non-viablity at candling at various times. Of the chicken, we had 5 hatch with 1 dying because one of the big chickens umm.. well.. Pecked it's head open. Of the ducks, we had a higher viability rate - only 1 was culled. We only had 5 hatch. All 5 had to be helped hatching though, as they couldn't get out of the shell on their own. There are 2 that have 1 sided blindness. (The same thing happened to the Buff Orpingtons we hatched out last time. We don't know what's happening. We suspect the flies are biting their eye, but I put fly netting over them so it would be a super sneaky fly and the ducks don't have the little pecky beaks like little chicks. I'm going to have to research this more because this is the second batch of hatch outs we've had with this problem.)

Conversely, we gave Matilda - one of our Dark Cornish hens 6 random eggs just as we were collecting them to sit on and she hatched them with with a 100% success rate. We also gave someone else 24 chicken eggs out of this same refrigerated batch and they had to cull 1 and had a success rate of 16/23.  I think I am most disappointed about the ducks. I was hoping for more of those to hatch out cause they are so darned cute. I kind of wanted a little army of them.

 This is the only light colored one of the bunch. It's also one of the one sided blind ones. It's laying in the warm spot taking a nap.

This little guy has figured out how to take a little bath in the water. The water is right in the warm spot too, just so they won't get to cold until they get their little feathers all grown in. 

For our fall breeding we also have 2 does (bunnies) due soon too! Our little grey bunny and White rabbit are both due to have their second litters one Monday the (28th). For a short period of time, we're going to have 3 litters of babies with their mommies. We planned it this way - sort of. We poorly planned Black Bunny's litter. But. We wanted to have litters available for pets and food the right size near Christmas, and in order for THAT to happen we needed them to be born.. nowish. See, I can plan. Sort of. 

Black Rabbit has had a litter of 6. She turned out to be our 1 animal so far that is a horrible, miserable mother and the second day - 3 of the 6 died. For the first 10 days we would have to go and keep checking to make sure the remaining 3 were warm (as they were frequently out of the nesting box and super cold) and put them with her for her to feed. Now the 3 babies are 3 weeks old and usually way too young to be eating or away from her - have started eating hay and pellets and lettuce. 

They are HUGE. Well over a pound already. They are our biggest babies by far. This little guy has the best coloring EVER - it's a mottled brown/red with grey. He has the same dad and Dopey. I can't WAIT to breed Dopey and see what he has. But, since this Black Doe is such a horrid mom, we're going to give her one more try once these 3 are fully weaned and see if she's figured it out. Otherwise, we'll have to sell her and pick up another doe. We can't even use any of THESE babies to replace her - as they'd most likely be bad too.

We're also getting a new - GIANT - barn built! We need the extra room in the house, so we're going to move the stuff that's in the *shed* now into the new barn and make the *shed* into the full fledged rabbitry! It's pretty big so it'll be for storing the animal foods (and the big extra freezer and fridge) and bunnies! The new barn will be for big animals when it's cold - the goats and dogs - and the lawn mowers, wood, tools, stuff that normally goes in a garage. Then we'll transform the garage into a MIL suite type thing for my mother. It's already got a little sink out there and eventually put a little bathroom out there. It already has it's own entrance, and we can make a little cabinet, microwave, mini-fridge area for her. The barn should be built by the end of next week! Then we can move the kids into their own rooms. Hopefully, they'll sleep better - at least maybe they'll stop - heck it probably won't stop or change anything. They probably won't be able to sleep for the first 2 weeks because they're *afraid* to be alone..

Fall Breeding is HERE!

Well, sort of.

 Eggs are in the incubator: 16 random duck and 14 random chicken. We know the possible combinations are possible just not which male *dated* which female. This particular batch of eggs was supposed to go to a guy who didn't care and just wanted eggs to hatch out. Since we hadn't tested fertility, I was going to sell them to him at the same price as eating eggs and just have him basically do our test hatch. BUT the day he was supposed to come get 60 eggs, his barn and incubator burned. So, 30 egg went into our incubator, 24 into someone else's that my mom knows and we had to throw the rest away. (Oy, that's hard to do..) I checked them today - it's day 5 - and all but 3 of the 30 have distinct veining so far!! We are so excited since we weren't even really sure they were fertile! A whole flock of little ducklings would be SOOO cute!

Our Black doe (I can't remember that poor rabbit's name for the life of me.. I currently call her Fat Black Rabbit or Rabbit with a Giant Dunlap) is due to have her litter Monday! She is working on her nest, but not pulling fur yet.. We probably shouldn't all be so excited by a rabbit having babies, but we are. Unabashedly so. Me, mostly for the genetics of it (we used Sausage - who is black but together with Hazel had 3 albino babies in their first litter ) The kids think it's fascinating to watch the Momma with the babies when they are tiny and are still trying to figure out how the Momma's take care of the babies.

We also got to talking about which rabbit(s) we wanted to breed. We figured having a rabbit or two to sell around Christmas time would be ideal and did the whole count backward thing. Then realized that we would need to breed NOW(ish) to make THAT happen. So we bred Sausage to White Rabbit and Anna (the Grey Netherland Dwarf) to Domino (the speckled Netherland Dwarf). It'll be really interesting to see what colors White Rabbit and Sausage have a second time and what Anna and Domino have. *Looks slightly ashamed* I'm a dork.

Although. Of all the babies so far, we are getting them all settled before the next litters are being born.  We aren't being like some of the freakish breeders with 650 babies who have to go to auction and sell the babies at 4 weeks for $3 because of poor planning. All of our litters are purposeful and planned and we wait until we KNOW where all the babies are going before we put 2 bunnies together. We have 1 bunny left from this last litter that we aren't keeping, but it's to feed up for someone - so even it is spoken for.

We went to the Fair today too! We saw a kind of duck we hadn't seen before and plan on trying to find a pair of :) They have the shiny dark green shimmery feathers. I guess some people go to the Fair for food or things to buy. We went to look at birds..  C saw the baby sheep and decided he wanted one, but I suggested that we slow down and actually *research* first BEFORE we acquire something else we have no idea anything about.

Hopefully, I will be posting pictures in the next day or so of baby bunnies!! Squee! 

Bunnies!! Updated..

The baby bunnies are about 5 1/2 weeks old now - in about 2 more weeks we'll start selling them. They've all grown exponentially! We've all chosen an favorite and decided to keep him.

Oddly, this little guy, Dopey, was the runt of the litter BY FAR and is now the biggest by several ounces. Not that we were all sneaking him extra food at all.. Nope. We've never done that. But this is also the only one of the bunch that has a *real* name and that the kids actually play with.   They pet the others to tame and pet friendly them, but they aren't attached to them. This was the plan - so it's good they got it. We let Dopey run around the house for short periods of time with the cats too - he's still a little small to be left alone with a clawed 13 pound cat so we keep the visits short.

These are the 3 white Demon Bunnies:

 Flop - the Demon Bunny with 1 flopped ear.

 Tubby - the Fattest of the 3 Demon Bunnies

 Tiny - the Smallest of the litter when we weighed them tonight. 

We only named these 3 because they ARE so identical so we named them by identifying features to make selling them easier when referring to them with the kids. (You know, so we aren't going "Can you grab that one bunny, you know the white one with red demon eyes?" and getting brought 3 bunnies by giggling children.) 

These are the 2 black bunnies: 

 Black Bunny # 1 

 Black Bunny #2

We named them SUPER creatively: 1 and 2. These two black bunnies aren't nearly as identical as the whites. 

And then the lone dark brown:

It IS named "You Know, The Dark Brown One". We're awesome, I know.

C is taking a BIG batch of roosters and drakes to bring home in dinner sized packages tomorrow. Well, 6 roosters and 3 drakes - so about 1/4 to 1/3 of our total flock. The drakes have been completely mauling the females and they are almost bald from it. They look so pathetic from it.

THIS:

Is Steve! There's a lot of random Cloudy with a Chance of Meatball jokes floating around continuously now. Not gonna lie, I start most of them. Steve came pre - shot, health tested,  friendly with other animals, neutered paid for, and litter box trained. He's fitting in pretty well. He's about 10ish weeks old maybe? The vet was pretty unsure exactly how old he is, but it's not like a week or 2 either way matters. He weighs 3.9 pounds today. 

Baby Update!

I took new pictures of the babies today at day 12! They are stinkin' adorable! Their eyes have just opened and they are slinking around the cage chasing their Momma around trying to get more food almost continuously.

The 3 white rabbits. 

The 2 brown bunnies.

The 2 black bunnies.

All 7 together in the same basket as the first pictures. The growth is just exponential! The little light brown guy is just the most adorable of them all. 

I also have 7 Orpington eggs in the incubator right now.  We're on day 19 so I've stopped turning them and I'm doing experiments on ways to get and keep the humidity higher. We've had several hatching probelms in the past because the humidity hasn't been high enough. *RIGHT NOW* (because I just checked it) it's sitting at 99.5 and 81% so perfect. Hopefully it'll stay good all night. I really want to figure out what our hatching issues were. We'll find out soon I guess.

Not So Patiently Waiting

This whole *farm* thing requires Patience. A lot of it. Waiting for this to grow, that to hatch, this to start laying.. It to get hotter, colder, drier, wetter. I am not a patient person. I want things to happen. Now.

White rabbit is DAYS away from having a litter. DAYS. She's a giant fat rabbit right now. HUGE. 3 chins, lays on her side and all possible times, growls if you go near her cage. White rabbit has always been our friendliest rabbit. Now she hisses and growls. She's due soon. She's been playing with building burrows and nests but has seemed dissatisfied with them all, so we put a big wooden (so she can chew it)nesting box in her cage for her to see if that makes her happy. She bit me twice getting it IN but she's been arranging IN it so I guess in bunny land that's a like? We're all so excited since this is our second attempt at baby bunnies. We've got a bet at how many she'll have - since it's her first litter. C has 6 or more - I took 5 or less. She's a flemish giant/lop so she *could* have 11 or more.

Soon the Netherland Dwarf babies will be ready to sell. We've decided to keep any that are female. Unless they're all female. We don't want that many. We'd breed that female back to Domino, the other Netherland Dwarf buck we've got. These bunnies are more costly to obtain because they are harder to breed so if we have a couple of sets of good breeders the bunnies may be able to at least pay for their own food. (White Rabbit and the other black doe, Jefferson, are for meat purposes or cheap pets primarily. We've found that it's actually very difficult to find Netherland Dwarfs. Aiming for a supply/demand thing.) But, the babies are too small still for me, at least, to tell gender. So I may have to see if I can hit up some of the rabbit people I've met and see if *they* can tell of if we just need to wait longer.  Won't that be an odd message "Hi, you don't know me. But can you tell me if this has a winky?" Yeah.

Then there's the chicken problem. The problem? The goat(s) have killed all the little fluffy ones from our hatches. Lambie stomped on the last remaining one last night..The ONLY good news is that it wasn't the puppies. They didn't even drag it around after the salsa lesson. Those fluffies were (particularly the orange flufflies), of course, the birds The Boy were attached to. So we're looking for a few Big birds that are orange and fluffy and full sized that would fit into the current flock we've got. I came across the buff orpington and so far that or the buff cochin seem like a good match. Right now is the *wrong* time of year to try to find laying aged birds. I have never seen either of these either. But, when has that stopped us? That's right. Never. We've been looking for a few weeks, but haven't struck the winning lotto on hens yet. I'm thinking there's some magic way to look for them and just don't know what it is.

But this all requires waiting. I hate waiting. I want it to be magical and POOF! Alas, it seems to not work that way. We have to wait for things to happen on their own.

The Zoo is Now a Farm!

The Family Zoo has now become a Farm! With our recent move to a place with land, we have acquired  some animals. Ok, several animals. The kids are LOVING it. We're just starting this little experiment at animal farming, but so far we've only had the loss of 1 chick. 

Our original small collection of random animals now has a defined purpose. The bunnies will be raised for pets and meat. The chickens for eggs and meat. The ducks for whatever purpose they dispose themselves for - if they are nice duckies then eggs, if they are mean duckies then meat. The goats are mostly pet animals but may branch out into milk.

Part of what I'm going to attempt to have the kids do before we have things ready to sell is sort the website out so it's organized better. Which, obviously, it's not.  Anyhow. There are pictures of all the new aquisitions because they're cute!


The Rabbits:

Thumper - A Netherland Dwarf buck - about a year old. Will be a breeder boy for the pet rabbits.

 Oreo - A Netherland Dwarf Buck - about a year old.Will be a breeder boy for the pet rabbits.

 Anne - A Netherland Dwarf Doe - about 8 weeks old. Will be the breeder female for the pet rabbits.

 Hazel - A Flemish Giant/Holland Lop mix. About 2 months old and already BIG. She will be the female for our meat rabbits.

I'm calling this one Sausage, the kids have him named something else - but I don't know what it is. He is a New Zealand/Lop mix and is about 2 months old. He will be the boy breeder for the meat rabbits. He's going to be a little smaller than Hazel (who he's going to be *umm* friends with, but we figured that the female being a smidge bigger can't all that bad).

The Goats:

 This is Lamby - She is almost 2 weeks old. She is bottle fed and freaking hilarious! She follows us around like a puppy and baaa's (which is how she got named Lamby - it sounds just like a lamb) when she's unhappy. 

This is Jack. He is about 3 months old and is quite a bit more shy than Lamby, but is warming up nicely. He's kind of into the quiet, stalker mode right now. He's definitely got his own personality. He and Lamby seem to be getting along pretty well though.  Hopefully, when they both get to a reasonable age we'll have some more baby goats because these 2 are fun. 

The Ducks:

 These are Goldie and Herbie. They are just starting to get good and feather-y. They are starting to get shy so they may turn into eating ducks or egg ducks depending on if they are male or female (don't let their names fool ya, we have no idea.) 

These 2 ducks are Wilbur and Blackfoot. I couldn't tell you which was which without looking at their chest and feet and well, I don't care that much. They fall into the same category as Goldie and Herbie. Eating or eggs if they don't straighten their act up. Heck, we don't even know what kind of duck these 2 even are. 

The Chickens Of Doom:

 Meet Doris of Doom. She is a hen of doomic epic amounts. She clucks and squacks and poops. She is a dark Cornish chicken and would be a tasty addition to someones Sunday Dinner. She will be one of the founding member of the meat breeders unless she keeps being evil, then she'll be dinner.

 This is Dark Meat. It's supposed to be a pullet - though we have no idea. We have a total of 5 Rhode Island Reds that are supposed to all be pullets - I'm guessing we probably have at least 1 that isn't but, ehh Dinner it will be. 

 These are our first 2 successful egg hatches!! They are Silkies. The kids like them because they're fluffy and fuzzy. I don't know why we have them other than that. Egg hatchers I guess if they are hens.

These are the 5 Rhode Island Reds. They are all feathering nicely and currently in the garage until the coop and fence get built. They don't really seem to mind their big dog crate so.. These 5 (assuming they are all hens) will be the founders of the egg layers group. Why this kind? Heck if I know. It's just what we ended up with I suppose. 

The Dogs:

 Rupert 5 months ago.

 Rupert Today. He is about 6 1/2 months old and over 80 pounds. He's such a good boy though! 

Here's Bear. I couldn't get him to look over at me, odd - I know - not being able to call the deaf dog to get his attention.. He's still right around 65 pounds and is probably full sized now that he's just over a year. 

The Cats:

 Fuzzy - the biggest and most congenial of them all. He lets the kids drag him ALL through the house. Literally. His real name is Jinx though.

 Squirtle - Named after a Pokemon character. One of my favorites after Merlin.

 Merlin - the grandpa of the group at 13. He is my all time favorite of all the cats ever.

 Toby. Garfield would have been a better name for him as we have him on a continuous diet.

 Vinny - the only girl of the cats. Yes, her name is Vinny. Wow, she's loud too.

Ulee - The most cat like of the group. 

Random Leftovers:

 The Hamster - I'm sure it has a name. I just can't remember it. 

 

 The fish tank. It DID have 19 frogs in it earlier today. The frogs are now helping the chickens grow stronger by being their dinner. So now there is 1 lone fish in the tank. 

The eggs in the incubator. I just candled them the other night and all but 2 (which I threw away because they looked nasty) are showing veining and positive growth signs this time! That's the highest count so far!! Hopefully we'll have a high hatch rate this time. The 2 little Silkies above are the first hatches and the kids were SOOOO excited, so if we can get a higher rate, that would be cool.

The Help:

 This little helper boy will be 7 in just 1 more month! He complains less about cleaning and helping with the animals than brushing his teeth. He likes the chickens and goats the most so far.

This little helper girl is almost 8 1/2 and loves the bunnies and goats. She is great and getting them all cleaned up and fed every morning!