Ducklings!!!

Hannah and I have been doing a lot of research about ducks and ducklings lately and finally made the decision to get some ducks! We are so excited! So we went to the feed store today and purchased 6 new baby Mallards. We are trying to let them settle in since they just arrived today from the hatchery after being mailed out Monday! So we don't want to do too much too soon. We can't wait to see them swim for the first time! Fun!!!

Pictures of our new ducklings....

There will be many more photos of our new ducks as they grow and play! :~D

Christmas is Approaching

I can't believe Christmas is almost here! We just finished up buying for the kids and what a relief it is to have it done. There's still a lot to do before Christmas is here though.

Our Thanksgiving was great. We spent most of the day at my parent's house. We then spent the evening at Stevie's family gathering. It was a great day. We all had way too much to eat and had a blast. Matthew did have a little oops moment at Grandma and Grandpa's. He went head first off the deck and landed on the small concrete sidewalk. Luckily their deck is only a foot off the ground. He did manage to find the only pebble and cut his head a little. He had forgotten about it in less than a minute and was back to playing. Other than that it was a great day.

Our herd reduction is complete. We sold quite a few animals. The herd is so much nicer. We have also bred nearly everyone we had planned to breed this fall. Blessing was bred to Larkspur before he was sold. Minuet to Cruiser as well as Meg too. She will have our first Mini-Mancha kids. Anna, Fuchsia and Cha-Cha are bred to Revelation. Hallelujah, Faith, Secrets and Olympia are bred to River. I need to breed Birdie soon to one of the boys. Probably will be Revelation.

We have really taken off with chickens lately. We have been hatching lots of chicks. I do have some birds for sale right now to make room for hatchlings and to manage better for the winter. We're under construction with the chicken barn.

Well that about recaps what's happening here. Blessing has been naughty lately getting in the backyard repeatidly. Guess I need to go fix that. More updates coming soon!

Mottled Cochin & Goat Herd Reduction

Well didn't I just luck out! Look at the oh so handsome new Mottled Cochin rooster we brought home with us over the weekend. Yes I was thrilled. Wish he'd had some hens to go with him though. Oh well. He's a good start to our Mottled lines. Since I don't have any Cochins laying or close to laying age yet, I've decided to pen him with the Easter Egger/Silkie cross pullet. Too pretty a roo not to have a girl!

New Mottled Cochin rooster!

We also ordered more chicks. This time I ordered 8 Gold Laced Cochin bantams. I received my 8 Cochins but also 9 Barred Rock or Black Sex-Link roosters too! What will I do with them? LOL At the same time my second clutch of eggs has started hatching. All 8 of my eggs (4 green, 1 blue, 2 EE/RIR & 1 Blue hen eggs) have hatched. The 5 bantam eggs left from 18 are still quiet. One has pipped. They're due tomorrow. I hope they hatch!

I'm doing a MASSIVE herd reduction. I've listed 2 bred does, 1 open doe, 2 mature bucks, 1 buckling and several doelings for sale. See my sales page at www.sweetgumminis.com/sales.html for prices, photos and pedigrees. I need to downsize. I've even listed for trades considering I need hay, building materials for coops and hay storage, fencing, etc. Just ask. Well that's about it for now. Wish us luck on our last clutch of eggs. I set a dozen last week and only 2 appear to be developing. :-(

Homemade Incubator a Success!!!

Our first batch of eggs have made it to the hatcher and we have our first hatchlings! Here is our Hovabator Genesis with egg turner. This is what we incubate the eggs in till day 18 when we move them to the hatcher (our homemade incubator).

Hovabator Genesis 1588!

This is our second clutch of eggs due next weekend!

I couldn't be more pleased with our homemad hatcher! We used an old transport chest to prevent spills of chemicals. My husband had gotten it while working for a pool company. It has sat in the building for a long time so we found a use for it! We took a wafer thermastat we'd purchased for a different homemade wood bator a few years ago. Put a light bulb (25w) and wire cage in the incubator. Here it is from the outside.

Homemade Hatcher Incubator

We set our first clutch of eggs. Started with 17 but with poor firtility we wound up with 7 to set to hatch. We had 6 of the 7 hatch from Thursday through Friday! I am so happy with the hatcher's success in hatching our first eggs! We have more due next weekend so it'll get yet another round of testing.

Inside the homemade incubator with our first hatch.

Here is our new chicks! I hatched a couple from my Blue hens x our Silver Laced Wyandotte rooster. We got a black chick and a yellow with some colors mixed in. I think the yellow will be laced! We also got two yellow Seramas and 2 black Silkies.

Our new chicks!

Hope we have more chicks to report next weekend as well as another success story for the hatcher! I have plans to set more of my Blue hen eggs this weekend in order to work towards my project of creating a Blue-Laced-Red mutt.

Eggs!

Eggs, eggs and more eggs! No seriously we should be getting a lot more than what we are but I am thrilled they've started laying! Here's a photo of some of the eggs we're getting.

Eggs last week. Beautiful blue and green from Amreaucanas, back row brown/pink are the Blue hen's eggs and the front brown is the RIR in the chicken tractor with Ameraucanas.

My incubator is full of eggs now too. We have Silkies, Seramas, some of my own cross eggs, Ameraucanas, and some purebred bantams as well. I can't wait! Won't be long now!

Here are the eggs we've collect this week. The darker brown are RIRs as well as the tiny brown. The paler brown are the Blue hen's and the green are the Buff Ameraucana's.

Here is Revelation. Isn't he looking absolutely fabulous!?!?!

SGM S Faith's Revelation at 6 months old. He'll be servicing does soon!

I will be posting more about our chicks and chickens soon. The weather is cooling and the chicks are nearly fully feathered so its almost time to move outside. They've been hanging out in small pens during the day outside. They love it!

Back Online

We were offline for a while due to changing from AT&T to cable. Had no idea it would take so long to get it installed. Still don't have a phone yet, but at least the nets back up and running.

The new Ameraucana rooster. I'm calling him Roger so far.

We've received the incubator and egg turner! They're working beautifully. No eggs though to incubate. My newest hens are Blue Andalusian/RIR crosses and I do get an egg a day from them (there are 3 hens and a Silver Laced Wyandotte rooster). But that's not a lot to report. No eggs still from the RIRs and they're now 19 weeks old. Nor from the Silver Sebrights or Ameraucanas. They all are just waiting for something. I don't know what.

One of the new Blue Andalusian/RIR cross hens.

Chicks are shooting up like weeds! The Cochins are almost all feathered. The bantam assortment is 22 clean legs and 14 feather footed. The feather footed looks like 3 White Frizzle Cochins, 3 Mille Fleur D'Uccles, 2 Buff Cochins, 3 White Cochins and 3 White D'Uccles. The Clean legged group has 2 Gold Sebrights, 6 Ameraucanas, 4 White Laced Red Cornish, a Self Blue Japanese I think, an unknown white with black spots chick, some White OE and some White Japanese, 3 black chicks which I'm not sure what they are.

The big group of goats left last weekend. That was a chore, but glad its over. Its remarkable how different the herd is with 5 less does and 1 less buck. I'm glad the herd is a bit smaller. Still have 3 more kids to leave and 2 bucks. Then we'll be set.

Well that's a sum up of the happenings so far. I'll get more photos of the chickens and updates again soon.

Chicken Tractor

We purchased 3 Ameraucana/Easter Egger chickens at the flea market over the weekend. I am excited. I can't wait to see if we get blue or green eggs. We believe 2 are hens and one is a rooster. They told us all 3 were hens but we'll see soon enough.

They've in a cage right now so we decided they needed something bigger. So we started a chicken tractor yesterday. We drew out plans first for an 5'L x 4'W x 2'H tractor with a coop that adjoins. The coop is 3'D x 4'W x 4'H with a sloped roof reduced to 2' in the back. We purchased 12 2'x105", 3 pieces of OSB, 4 hinges, 2 hook latches and got busy! Here it is in the rough, bottom and the top done.

Here is the base and run top together. The back is the coop in the works.

This is the coop started. We will put a small chicken door in the front.

Enclosing the coop. We were going to put a hinged roof on and a hinged door on the back for egg collection. However the back seemed a bit low for a door so we opted to use the roof instead. But the whole roof seemd a bit big just for egg collection so we decided to make half the roof as a door.

This is where we stopped Sunday. 3 1/2 hours and we were wore out. Its been pouring all day today so we haven't had a chance to continue. We're going to paint it with exterior paint when we're done too.

We're downsizing the goat herd more. I put up 3 more goats for sale. Julie, Bushfire and SunShine. I'm trying to get under 20 does right now. No fun downsizing though.

Chicks will be hatching Wednesday. I do hope they arrive again on Thursday. That would be ideal. Ha! That's the hatchery we ordered from. We picked up another brooder today and are going to get busy prepping that on Wednesday for the chicks arrival. I need to set-up a new space for them too.

That about does it for us today. Always lots of fun going on on a mini-farm!