Updates/changes on the farm! New birds, fluffy goat and sheep...

A few changes over the last 6 months or so.

We have increased our muscovy flock.  Merle now has two more girls in addition to Maggie and Frieda.  They're young, and I expect they'll hit 1 year in late summer.  Man, can these ducks fly.  We had to clip wings, as they enjoyed flying all around the backyard and over in the chicken yard.

New girl

Of the scovys hatched last year, we butchered all but one drake.  We also butchered our goose Broccoli, Beefy's girl/boy friend.  Pretty sure Broccoli was a boy, and low boy on the totem pole to Beefy.  Beefy was entirely uninterested in Broccoli, and would mount the ducks instead.  We never saw Broccoli mount the ducks, but I'm guessing because Beefy was so dominant.  Anyhow, the crazy thing was that the two <1yr old scovy drakes that we butchered dressed out at nearly the exact same weight as that goose!  Nuts!

We ended up getting a pilgrim female for Beefy, and named her Abigail. Great thing about a pilgrim is that we KNOW it's a girl, due to the sex-linked color.  Yay!  Crusty is in LUUUURVE with Abigail (Crusty has a goose fetish, having grown up with geese) and likes to follow Abigail around while doing her sexy duck dance.  It's highly amusing, but Abby doesn't care much for it.  Added plus, the gal I got Abby from has pied guineas.  She's supposed to give me a call this summer when she has keets, and we'll be able to get Deputy Guinea some friends.  Ah, I can already hear the guinea chorus.  Sigh.

Abigail

We kept one chocolate drake from last year's hatches, Choco Taco, and got him two girls as well.  Only one of the 4 total new girls has a name.  Chad named her Hennifer Grey.  :)  She's a pretty gray/brown, and a really calm and petite little girl.

 Hennifer Grey

Choco, the muscovy drake we kept, is a big beautiful boy.  He was attacked by our trio of turkey toms a few months ago and they just about scalped and blinded him.  Time in a crate and treatment with bluekote, and he's growing his feathers back on his head, and still has both eyes, though his beak is a little gnarly on top.  He was really a mess for a while, but is back out there terrorizing the roosters and lovin his girlfriends.  We also only have ONE tom left... his brothers were very tasty (seasoned with "these damn turkeys attacked my Choco").

Choco

What else, what else... Traeger and Weber, boer goat and katahdin sheep, are fat and sassy and slated for slaughter on the 19th.  We'll kill/gut/skin here at the house, and then take the carcasses to the butcher for further processing.  Very ready for them to go, as it's almost time for pigs!  We're debating taking the hides down to a guy in Clackamas to be processed, as they're really nice and fluffy from the unusually cold weather we've experienced over the last few months.  We could try to do it at home, but their coats are so nice... I think we'll practice on the next deer we get, and just have these professionally done.

Fat, Sassy, and headed for the freezer.

So, that's about it for the moment.  Not too much else exciting.

More soon!

New 'scovy hens!

As the weather turns colder, I'll slowly get back into blogging. For now, we added four new young muscovy hens to the farm this afternoon. The two larger girls went out with Merle, Maggie, Frieda, Olga/Sven, Crusty, and the geese. The two younger are going in the chicken yard with the chickens, turkeys, Choco Taco (Chocolate 'scovy drake hatched here this spring), and 4 scovys from a later hatch. I sure do like these ducks!

Critter musical chairs

We played a little musical chairs this weekend with the birds, as the meaties had enough feathers to go out, and were reaching the 3-week old "omg, they stink, I can't keep up with the volume of poop" stage. But before the meaties could go outside, their chicken conestoga had to be vacated.

So, the 11 pullets were rudely snatched from their chicken tractor and thrown to the wolves moved to the chicken yard. Miss Speckles was extremely mean, and a couple lost some feathers, but the other hens pretty much just ignored the new additions. Deputy Guinea dictated the rules of the barnyard (go to bed promptly at dusk, stay in the yard, no fighting) and herded them around for a while. Other than that, not a whole lot of excitement there. The Fayoumis kill me. They're so tiny, they just run in and out of the fencing, like it wasn't there. Ugh.  The Fayoumis are the ones with the white heads.  They're roughly the size of a Stellar's Jay.  No joke.






The meaties were hauled out to the chicken tractor, where they'll live til Memorial Day weekend, at which point they'll transition to freezer camp.  Can't wait for the day.  Grody birds.  Tasty grody birds. On Tues, 4 BBW turkey poults took over the newly vacated brooder in the shop.  Love turkeys.  Love love love.  Wish I could keep a BBW tom.  They're great.

(pics from last year)

We installed two nucs last Saturday, and the new bees seem to be very happy (knock on wood). They're very local bees, as there's a big bee place about 2 miles away as the crow flies.  I did totally biff it while carrying a frame, and it was nearly a disaster.  But I did my best to control the fall and didn't jar the frame much (but did land on my left arm and totally torqued my shoulder).  Anyhoo, two hives are up and running, and LJ is copying the design of the cardboard nuc boxes to make some swarmcatchers to put around the property.  They'd also double as a catch kit to keep in the car.  If they work out well, I'll post an entry on how he made them.

Hm... what else.  None of the 17 duck eggs in the incubator were fertile, so I chucked em and put 7 of Maggie Muscovy's eggs in there.  We'll see how that goes.  She's currently filling up a nest out in the duck hut as well.  I want cute little waterfowl babies! (that turn into fat tasty freezerbirds).  :)