Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Ducks Have No Lips Part One
Good Morning!
We have added a new facet to our diamond-in-the-rough farm: ducks!
I wish I could say that we decided to add ducks because it was a prudent and reasonable thing to do, something we had researched thoroughly and wrote out a plan for, knowing it was going to contribute income and to our farm, etc, etc, etc.
Eh...the truth is that I have a pond and the pond looked like it needed ducks on it. A pond with no ducks is pretty. A pond with ducks is pretty AND happy. I'm greedy; I wanted both :D.
Thankfully The Wonder Sweetie wastoo distracted to think it through swayed by my brilliant idea and ordered ducklings for me for my birthday. Originally it was going to be about 3 ducks. But then you need spares (farm life realities) which makes it 6. Then you have minimum orders which brings you up to 10. But then that is just an awkward number for some reason, so it became 14, which became 16 for reasons I am not sure of. So, 16 ducks are now on order.
However, my ordered ducklings would not arrive until May and this was sometime in February/March. That is a REALLY long time. Like, WEEKS.
So I thought "Hmm....ok how about we get a couple of local, feed store ducklings, y'know, just to practice with, to make sure we know what we are doing (we don't, btw).". So we pestered our favorite locally owned feed and seed for a few weeks, but they didn't get any in. Our local Tractor Supply Co store had had Rouens, but they were sold out. Another TSC nearby did not carry any, and another one only had Mallards (which migrate. I wanted "all year round" ducks). Eventually we found a TSC that had Pekins (PekIN, not PekING--Peking Duck is the meal you make with Pekin Ducks :) ). After a lovely drive in the country to a town we had not visited before, we came home with four itty bitty, cute as a button Pekin ducklings that all fit in a little box.
Can I tell you how thankful to the Lord I am that we decided to do a trial run with just four ducklings??? Holy Moley what a learning curve! Some things we learned:
-Ducks grow FAST
-Ducks don't get feathers as fast as they grow. This means that they can be as large as a relatively well proportioned housecat who may on occasion terrorize a certain dog, but STILL can't regulate their own temps enough to be outside without heat.
-Housecat sized ducks do not fit in a homemade chicken brooder for very long.
-Ducks smell. Ok, the ducks themselves do not smell, and actually their poo is not too bad. What DOES smell is the water and poo soaked shavings around the waterer. Ducks make a HUGE mess of water. They have to drink water when they have a mouth of food or they can choke.
-Ducks have no lips. When they drink water, it literally squirts out of both sides of the back of their bills. This means they get water EVERYWHERE, including on the shavings. We have to refill their waterer several times a day. The water/food/shaving/poo mixture really starts to smell. This means cleaning out the brooder (when they were in it all day) at least once, sometimes twice a day as they grew.
Thank the Good Lord our weather is changing to actual spring. We have passed the blueberry winter and the dogwood winter, and hopefully will skip the blackberry winter this year (These are names of cold snaps that seem to hit when the blueberries, dogwoods, and blackberries bloom). The huge ducklings spend their days outside in a wire dog pen, and just come into the brooder, which is now on the screened porch, to sleep.
In fact, today we are going to move them to one of the chicken runs today that has a plug for the brooder (which is now on blocks so they can sort of fit under it). More pics to come!
Part Two coming soon!....
We have added a new facet to our diamond-in-the-rough farm: ducks!
I wish I could say that we decided to add ducks because it was a prudent and reasonable thing to do, something we had researched thoroughly and wrote out a plan for, knowing it was going to contribute income and to our farm, etc, etc, etc.
Eh...the truth is that I have a pond and the pond looked like it needed ducks on it. A pond with no ducks is pretty. A pond with ducks is pretty AND happy. I'm greedy; I wanted both :D.
Thankfully The Wonder Sweetie was
However, my ordered ducklings would not arrive until May and this was sometime in February/March. That is a REALLY long time. Like, WEEKS.
So I thought "Hmm....ok how about we get a couple of local, feed store ducklings, y'know, just to practice with, to make sure we know what we are doing (we don't, btw).". So we pestered our favorite locally owned feed and seed for a few weeks, but they didn't get any in. Our local Tractor Supply Co store had had Rouens, but they were sold out. Another TSC nearby did not carry any, and another one only had Mallards (which migrate. I wanted "all year round" ducks). Eventually we found a TSC that had Pekins (PekIN, not PekING--Peking Duck is the meal you make with Pekin Ducks :) ). After a lovely drive in the country to a town we had not visited before, we came home with four itty bitty, cute as a button Pekin ducklings that all fit in a little box.
Can I tell you how thankful to the Lord I am that we decided to do a trial run with just four ducklings??? Holy Moley what a learning curve! Some things we learned:
-Ducks grow FAST
-Ducks don't get feathers as fast as they grow. This means that they can be as large as a relatively well proportioned housecat who may on occasion terrorize a certain dog, but STILL can't regulate their own temps enough to be outside without heat.
-Housecat sized ducks do not fit in a homemade chicken brooder for very long.
-Ducks smell. Ok, the ducks themselves do not smell, and actually their poo is not too bad. What DOES smell is the water and poo soaked shavings around the waterer. Ducks make a HUGE mess of water. They have to drink water when they have a mouth of food or they can choke.
-Ducks have no lips. When they drink water, it literally squirts out of both sides of the back of their bills. This means they get water EVERYWHERE, including on the shavings. We have to refill their waterer several times a day. The water/food/shaving/poo mixture really starts to smell. This means cleaning out the brooder (when they were in it all day) at least once, sometimes twice a day as they grew.
Thank the Good Lord our weather is changing to actual spring. We have passed the blueberry winter and the dogwood winter, and hopefully will skip the blackberry winter this year (These are names of cold snaps that seem to hit when the blueberries, dogwoods, and blackberries bloom). The huge ducklings spend their days outside in a wire dog pen, and just come into the brooder, which is now on the screened porch, to sleep.
In fact, today we are going to move them to one of the chicken runs today that has a plug for the brooder (which is now on blocks so they can sort of fit under it). More pics to come!
Part Two coming soon!....
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Mayhaws!
Good morning! Spring is just a month away and that means that we need to get busy on the tasks that have to be done before it arrives. This year one of our projects will be expanding our mayhaw orchard.
Mayhaws are a type of hawthorn with an incredible little red fruit. They are predominately found in Louisiana in the bayous and swamps. Families would get together for mayhaw gathering, floating down the bayou and shaking the trees, scooping the fruit that fell off the top of the water. It makes the most wonderfully beautiful jelly and in fact one of the best tasting jellies ever.
My wonderful father gave me some birthday money, and I am using that to buy mayhaw trees. I have four already that I bought a year or two ago from an online store, but this time I bought from a mayhaw developer. I am going to start planting and see if the Lord has in mind for me to have a mayhaw orchard/breeding program. I picked two cultivars that bloom late in hopes of avoiding any frost loss. The trees themselves are hardy to zone 4, but the blooms can be destroyed by frost.
I also am planning to dip my finger into the world of grafting (which will need to be done if I am going to develop mayhaws). I found a wonderful tutorial for grafting trees here. Plus my father in law has a great deal of experience grafting ans he and my sweet late MIL grew champion hibiscus.
The good thing about mayhaws is that they are fine in wet, boggy areas that other plants might balk at. We have a great deal of soggy soils on our land, so I am hoping that the trees will be happy here.
What about you? What are you planning for your garden/yard/balcony this year?
Mayhaws are a type of hawthorn with an incredible little red fruit. They are predominately found in Louisiana in the bayous and swamps. Families would get together for mayhaw gathering, floating down the bayou and shaking the trees, scooping the fruit that fell off the top of the water. It makes the most wonderfully beautiful jelly and in fact one of the best tasting jellies ever.
My wonderful father gave me some birthday money, and I am using that to buy mayhaw trees. I have four already that I bought a year or two ago from an online store, but this time I bought from a mayhaw developer. I am going to start planting and see if the Lord has in mind for me to have a mayhaw orchard/breeding program. I picked two cultivars that bloom late in hopes of avoiding any frost loss. The trees themselves are hardy to zone 4, but the blooms can be destroyed by frost.
I also am planning to dip my finger into the world of grafting (which will need to be done if I am going to develop mayhaws). I found a wonderful tutorial for grafting trees here. Plus my father in law has a great deal of experience grafting ans he and my sweet late MIL grew champion hibiscus.
The good thing about mayhaws is that they are fine in wet, boggy areas that other plants might balk at. We have a great deal of soggy soils on our land, so I am hoping that the trees will be happy here.
What about you? What are you planning for your garden/yard/balcony this year?
Monday, January 19, 2015
Struggling With Faith When Others Seem To Get It
My dear one,
I was thinking today about my faith walk. My faith is so much stronger than it used to be. I have endured much through the grace of God and He has made me better than I ever could be alone. I have known joy in trial, how to forgive, and even occasionally (perhaps rarely :) ), patience.
However, it has not always been this way. I remember feeling like a fake at church. I remember praying and my prayers seeming to get stuck in the popcorn ceiling. I remember doubts and even a fair bit of grouchiness to the Lord. I have felt far and sinful, and sometimes I even deliberately WENT far and sinful. When I saw people with such deep sincere faith--their voice filled with hope, their faces filled with peace and their days filled with joy--it made me feel like a phony. I yearned for the Lord, but could not figure out how to find what they had.
Read that last sentence, my sweet one, because the start of the secret to finding what I was seeking lies in there--I yearned for the Lord. That is all I needed to do! I desired Him and eagerly, if imperfectly, sought Him.
So where did I go wrong and why didn't I feel close to Him? Because I kept trying to make faith instead of accept what He gave. I kept trying to earn His love instead of just letting Him love me. I kept trying to MAKE and to DO and to FORCE when I needed to TRUST and REST and BE.
You see, He already loves you. He already has taken care of you. You would not desire Him if He had not put that there in you....so your very longing for Him is proof for you that you have Him. Truly, let me say that again: your desiring Him means that He is there for you. He will never leave you--even when you are doubtful or concerned or grouchy.
(Now, if you do not long for Him, all is not lost. People come to Him at different times. But I encourage you strongly to start looking for Him and He will be right there for you. )
I discovered that my problem is that I was striving because I did not really accept and understand His love. Once I started resting in His love, suddenly faith and a faithful life became a lot easier. Suddenly there was no condemnation of old sins....or new sins! Suddenly my prayers went farther than the roof and church went from "have to" to "want to".
In fact, I found that my prayers became more real and fulfilling when I stopped only saying "God I love You" and instead started sometimes saying "God You love me"! We love Him because he first loved us....but we forget that last part and sometimes never understood it at all. So if you love Him then you KNOW that He loves you. You can rest in that. The Bible declares it.
So if you are like I was (and honestly, still am from time to time) intimidated because you don't weep at church or glow with supernatural joy, just be patient my love. Draw closer to Him and He WILL draw closer to you--He never lies and He said this very thing. Start with the basics: accepting in your heart His love for you. Everything else will fall into place, I promise.
I was thinking today about my faith walk. My faith is so much stronger than it used to be. I have endured much through the grace of God and He has made me better than I ever could be alone. I have known joy in trial, how to forgive, and even occasionally (perhaps rarely :) ), patience.
However, it has not always been this way. I remember feeling like a fake at church. I remember praying and my prayers seeming to get stuck in the popcorn ceiling. I remember doubts and even a fair bit of grouchiness to the Lord. I have felt far and sinful, and sometimes I even deliberately WENT far and sinful. When I saw people with such deep sincere faith--their voice filled with hope, their faces filled with peace and their days filled with joy--it made me feel like a phony. I yearned for the Lord, but could not figure out how to find what they had.
Read that last sentence, my sweet one, because the start of the secret to finding what I was seeking lies in there--I yearned for the Lord. That is all I needed to do! I desired Him and eagerly, if imperfectly, sought Him.
So where did I go wrong and why didn't I feel close to Him? Because I kept trying to make faith instead of accept what He gave. I kept trying to earn His love instead of just letting Him love me. I kept trying to MAKE and to DO and to FORCE when I needed to TRUST and REST and BE.
You see, He already loves you. He already has taken care of you. You would not desire Him if He had not put that there in you....so your very longing for Him is proof for you that you have Him. Truly, let me say that again: your desiring Him means that He is there for you. He will never leave you--even when you are doubtful or concerned or grouchy.
(Now, if you do not long for Him, all is not lost. People come to Him at different times. But I encourage you strongly to start looking for Him and He will be right there for you. )
I discovered that my problem is that I was striving because I did not really accept and understand His love. Once I started resting in His love, suddenly faith and a faithful life became a lot easier. Suddenly there was no condemnation of old sins....or new sins! Suddenly my prayers went farther than the roof and church went from "have to" to "want to".
In fact, I found that my prayers became more real and fulfilling when I stopped only saying "God I love You" and instead started sometimes saying "God You love me"! We love Him because he first loved us....but we forget that last part and sometimes never understood it at all. So if you love Him then you KNOW that He loves you. You can rest in that. The Bible declares it.
So if you are like I was (and honestly, still am from time to time) intimidated because you don't weep at church or glow with supernatural joy, just be patient my love. Draw closer to Him and He WILL draw closer to you--He never lies and He said this very thing. Start with the basics: accepting in your heart His love for you. Everything else will fall into place, I promise.
The Great Chicken Shuffle
My dear one,
My how time flies! Yesterday it was time for the Itty Biddies to go to the coop with the grown chickens. It seemed just a couple of weeks ago we were beside ourselves with excitement as the first pips of our first chicks from our first chickens had begun!
It has been a (rather dusty) pleasure to have them in our living room. We practiced good care of the brooder so the only odor was fresh pine shavings. It was fun to watch them "battle" and play and bicker and try to peck through the walls of the brooder.
However, we needed to integrate them with the big flock soon. I want Chandler to be the head rooster, as his temperament is just too wonderful for words. I am hoping that he can establish his authority since the Itty Biddies are not fully grown.
TWS put a wire corral in the floor of the coop and covered it with wood for them to go in. This allows the grown chickens and the biddies to get used to each other before they are fully integrated. We also banded them.
Then the two Micro Biddies got to be in the big brooder! They moved from the tiny starter brooder to the large brooder that the Itty Biddies had been in. They have so much room! Too much, in fact-- TWS came in this morning and found them huddling in a corner beside their heating plate. We had to move the heating plate to where they were so they did not get cold.
They are still in my kitchen, in the big brooder, but my living room is currently chicken free and much more quiet.
I have also decided on meat/egg chickens and duck breeds. For we will use Buff Orps and Naked Neck Turkens for meat and eggs. Those with great personalities and are good layers get to stay. Those who are aggressive or have DQ faults will get et.
We will be jump starting our meat chicken harvest with Cornish Cross. These are the "production chickens" your mother warned you about :). However a)proper management will keep them from being blobs of feathers with leg and heart problems and b)we plan to harvest early, before they can get those problems. This will give us time to let our heritage breeds get to eating size.
Instead of Cornish Cross, we might try Red Rangers. That is still a bit up in the air.
I have been desiring ducks for the pond. I would just love to walk out and feed ducks stale bread like I did when I was in college. We had a bayou running through the center of the school and the ducks were always such fun to watch. I am thinking about getting a few Pekins (they are called Pekins rather than Pekings :) Peking duck is the cooked, Pekin duck is still on the wing :)).
Additionally, ducks apparently eat wasps and we have many of those around here. Those and hornets are the two of God's creatures that I just cannot seem to live calmly with.
Today's task list: some business, establishing a walking trail in the back 40.
My how time flies! Yesterday it was time for the Itty Biddies to go to the coop with the grown chickens. It seemed just a couple of weeks ago we were beside ourselves with excitement as the first pips of our first chicks from our first chickens had begun!
It has been a (rather dusty) pleasure to have them in our living room. We practiced good care of the brooder so the only odor was fresh pine shavings. It was fun to watch them "battle" and play and bicker and try to peck through the walls of the brooder.
However, we needed to integrate them with the big flock soon. I want Chandler to be the head rooster, as his temperament is just too wonderful for words. I am hoping that he can establish his authority since the Itty Biddies are not fully grown.
TWS put a wire corral in the floor of the coop and covered it with wood for them to go in. This allows the grown chickens and the biddies to get used to each other before they are fully integrated. We also banded them.
The Itty Biddies a few days ago. Look how beautiful their tails are coming in!!
A closer shot. They loved playing king of the roost when we first put it in.
Then the two Micro Biddies got to be in the big brooder! They moved from the tiny starter brooder to the large brooder that the Itty Biddies had been in. They have so much room! Too much, in fact-- TWS came in this morning and found them huddling in a corner beside their heating plate. We had to move the heating plate to where they were so they did not get cold.
They are still in my kitchen, in the big brooder, but my living room is currently chicken free and much more quiet.
You can see the difference between the two Micro Biddies. One has long legs (a DQ fault in the breed, but necessary to keep in genetically as two short legged genes will cause death in the egg). The one on the right has short legs and also sits perfectly for the breed--chest out, a U shaped back, etc.
Love this picture :)
Our long legged hen.
I have also decided on meat/egg chickens and duck breeds. For we will use Buff Orps and Naked Neck Turkens for meat and eggs. Those with great personalities and are good layers get to stay. Those who are aggressive or have DQ faults will get et.
We will be jump starting our meat chicken harvest with Cornish Cross. These are the "production chickens" your mother warned you about :). However a)proper management will keep them from being blobs of feathers with leg and heart problems and b)we plan to harvest early, before they can get those problems. This will give us time to let our heritage breeds get to eating size.
Instead of Cornish Cross, we might try Red Rangers. That is still a bit up in the air.
I have been desiring ducks for the pond. I would just love to walk out and feed ducks stale bread like I did when I was in college. We had a bayou running through the center of the school and the ducks were always such fun to watch. I am thinking about getting a few Pekins (they are called Pekins rather than Pekings :) Peking duck is the cooked, Pekin duck is still on the wing :)).
Additionally, ducks apparently eat wasps and we have many of those around here. Those and hornets are the two of God's creatures that I just cannot seem to live calmly with.
Today's task list: some business, establishing a walking trail in the back 40.
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