Tuesday..silence... a rare thing.

 The view from my front door this afternoon

We are having ac issues today in our little farm "shack"(what I call this place when something goes wrong)

I think its cooling off now.  Not sure what its malfunction was but it does this about 3 times a year... Either when I am sick(like today of course) or it is a bazillion degrees outside.   So the man and his trusty sidekick went to town to get something for said malfunctioning unit of comfort.   

The only sound I hear is turkey poults peeping.  All 5 of the suicide clan are still kicking... saw one eat this morning...  hope hope...

I drug my hacking sneezing self outside and divvied up chickens for the billionth time... Im trying to find the right combo of hens and roos and pens and chaos to keep the extra banty mutt roos from muddying my breeding plans.   Hubby wont let me GET RID OF THE MUTTS... so I am stuck juggling roos.   I decided my production red and black sexlink hens are going in with the Buff Orphingtons.  The white leghorn hens went in with the Americaunas.  

Now I have an empty pen... 

with plans to hopefully convince my friend to let me borrow her pretty Paquito... 

 a littly fluffy manly black cochin roo... since  I am cochin rooless and want cochin chicklets... 

and my little bitty baby cochin roo is just getting his crow...  and earned himself the name Squeaky(eee..Eeeee.EEEE says Squeaky!.)  

Got that done.. moved the chicklets that were in the house in a rubbermaid brooder out to the barn to the "brooder/rabbit cage"...  yay! no more stink for now...  the turkey brooder box is still inside... but for some reason they dont stink...    So I accomplished a little bit today.   I am patting my icky sick self on the back for that..... 

It is a gloriously beautiful evening so far and sucks to not feel good enough to be working outside.  

Parsley, Oregano and Mints.

Our little fish pond is full of lilypads and goldfish.

Walking (topsetting) Onions 

saved from an old homestead a few miles from us 

that was about to be plowed under.

The place was a field of these growing wild 

 The first tomato of the season.  

A "Black" heirloom variety. 

I need to remember to save the seeds! 

Tragedy almost....

Sure enough....

I got excited about my new baby turkeys.

Yes #5 hatched... 

BUT!!!!

When I got home today I walked in the door to the most horrible peeping.

from the turkey brooder with my newest babies.

I dont know if they wallowed in the water dish or if it leaked some how.

But my new babies were soaked, chilled and writhing like they were dieing.

I stuffed them back in the incubator and waiting and hoped......

.........

......

4 hours in the incubator and they are back to normal somewhat.  

I changed waterers just in case. 

new dry bedding in the brooder and

the older turkey babies transfered for warmth and teaching.

They are now back in their brooder and I am holding my breath.

Hopeing they will be ok.

Turkey babies sure are determined to DIE....

:-(

Mondays incubator scoop....

This weekends chick count:

1 duckling

4 turkeys!

now swoon from the cuteness i'll wait for you.....

I sold off ALL yes ALL of the chicks and ducklings that were in the brooder cages in the barn yesterday.

14 ducklings

23 Chicks.

I was excited and sad at the same time. Room was needed for the hatches do in the next few weeks and my evening chores were becoming life consuming and I needed a break.

Now I only have the silkies, cochins, frizzles, frankenchickens and the Wyandottes underfoot

I did keep the youngest crew that included more silkieXfrizzles, some Americaunas and some Leghorn X Americaunas, 2 ducklings and 4 turkey poults(cant sell them of course)

We welcomed the cuties above this weekend and this morning. Two more eggs left. 1 duck 1 turkey. When I checked last the turkey was pipping and maybe starting to zip open and the duck hadnt pipped yet.
I was working on easing back on my incubating... but have had tons of inquiries about chicks after selling off all of those this weekend so may keep setting some.

Now to other things...

The garden is coming along. Demon grass seems to have started dieing off... Chickens are knocking the rest of it out I think. Got one more bed reclaimed, onion sets planted(late..) the tomatoes and peppers have been planted for a while. Need to plant squash, cantalope, luffa, and a few other things I am trying this year. Mike wants to plant corn and Watermelon again... I need to tell him to get moving on that haha.

Im working on blogging more.... some days I get it all typed up and the computer spazzes and looses what I've typed... slow internet and slow wore out laptop are not a good combo. I am planning on trying to replace it next spring.

But... thats all for now. I will work on being a better blogger!

Peeps peeping.... by the dozens

That incubator I talked about last time...
AWESOME.
Full...
Noisy....
Aproximate hatch count this morning was 40ish... yeah I cant quite keep track...
I love it.
I have a gallon bucket with a soft little liner that I pull them out and plunk them into to transport to the brooder. Each time the bottom is solid chickfluff... 10-15 at a time.
Its a blast.
I put an add up today for chicks for sale. Hoping for takers.
I have 10 reserved for my bestes girlfriend.
Shes crazy like me
The ducklings were hatching this morning.
Im hoping for a decent turkey hatch this time too.

It sure is crazy busy around here!
Yes pics will be posted when time allows!

Ill explain later...... Updated Rambling....

Updated... 4/12 The above pics were of the inside of my new freebee score.... a cabinet style incubator with about a 180 egg capacity, turner, hatching tray etc.... FREE! I am delerious... Easter Sunday I had posted pics of the hatching chicks to facebook and a little while later my cellphone rings... My old buddy Chris from the high school era had seen the pics.... He asks me " can you use another incubator? " Heck YEAH! I figured it was a styrophome one like I already have... nope he says.. you need your truck! He didnt know if it worked or anything but told me he figured if it didnt I was handy enough to get it going... Plugged it in the next day and voila it worked.... now the reason for the pictures above? I had no clue how to adjust the temps and once it fired up it shot up to 117°... I was linking those pics to the Backyard Chickens Forum asking for input. With their help It is now adjusted up to temp and FULL of eggs...... I transfered my turkey and duck eggs due to hatch 4/18 into it so the styrophome incubator could be locked down (out of hte turner and no more opening the incubator until hatch to preserve the humidity.) for the chicks and single duck egg about to hatch. Once this batch is complete and the other styro incubator hatch is complete I am going to start working on a schedule to hatch on so I dont have two different hatch dates in the same incubator to give me fits. There are about 25 eggs currently in hatch mode, 3 chicks out this morning, 5 eggs pipped, the duck egg was pipped and rocking(hurry up little ducky!) . The East sunday hatch was 8 babies of 13 eggs to start - 3 duds, 1 stopped developing early and 1 failed to hatch, when cracked open it looked like that one expired about 2 days before hatch. Not counting what is currently hatching here is the chicken count on our farm:

Americaunas 2 hens 1 roo

Buff Orphingtons 2 hens 2 roos

White leghorn -2 hens

Black unknown - 1 hen

Red unknown -1 hen

Frizzle cochin - 1 hen

Cochin- 1 hen

White Silkies - 1 hen 1 roo

Mutt roos - 2

Chicks:

Buff Silkies (8 )

AmericaunaXBuff (3)

White leghornXBuff (3?)

BUFF(2)

Cochin X Silkie(1)

Cochin(2)

Gold laced Wyndottes (6 of unknown sex)

4- Freebie Meeties off craigslist ("the mutants")

Then

1 pair of Narraganset turkeys

3 ducks(2 drakes 1 hen)

It sure is a full house around here. I got the Americaunas seperated and have the White leghorns in with them for crosses. The silkies and cochins are seperated together, This week we are putting wire on tops of the last run to seperate the buffs. Its been a busy spring so far.

Whew....

Happy Easter!

I know I havent blogged much,  but I am going to try to do more. 

21 days ago I put eggs in the incubator not looking at the calender....  Today for Easter Wyatt went to church with his grandparents and right before he got home I heard chirping!   Within about 10 minutes of him arriving and seeing the cracked egg our first easter chick pushed its way into the world.  A BLUE AMERICAUNA EGG!   3 more are pipped but are not in as big a hurry to come out it seems.  

there are 5 more pipped but they arent chirping or hurrying like this little guy.  He was out of the egg within about 30 minutes of pipping.  I have a second incubator with 42 eggs in it.  a nice batch of turkey eggs,  some duck eggs and a hoard of chicks...  I cant wait....  

2009 Winding down. Merry Christmas y'all!

So i realized I havent said much lately. LIfe has been keeping me busy busy busy.
We had our first litter of baby bunnies. They are now 7 weeks old. In a cage in my living room.... spoiled rotten of course. My intention is to make them nice and friendly so they are easy to handle and show. I also have another cage in my living room with a hand me down chick... Tame, cuddly and too little to go outside soo... you guessed it... inside for now. Life has been busy. We are getting eggs from 3 hens including one blue one! Im delighted, thought he leghorn is the only reliable layer. I was tickled to crack their eggs to cook something and see them deep dark redorange yolks. We also have gotten 3 duck eggs! I plan to pull out the incubator tonight and get it up to temp and try hatching me some ducklings. Since we only have one hen I shouldnt be overrun with ducks too quick! Christmas is just a few days away. We didnt do much in the way of gifts this year. Funds are low and our hearts just werent into aimless gifting just to give. I asked for useful gifts.... except a dress I fell in love with... haha. Not to often I ask for a dress for Christmas! But I had a certain style I wanted and I wanted to wear it with boots... If I get it I will have to get the boots next haha. Christmas always seems to stress me out... seems everyone buys gifts just to have something to give... and it seems like such a waste... To me a gift should be something that will make the recipients eyes light up in delight and joy. It should be something the recipient would love to have but could never make themselves buy... because life gets in the way. Even Wyatts gifts this year. His main gifts are usefull or will make his eyes light up. Theres not a glut of toys to overwhelm him so many get forgotten. I want to stay away from that. Soon Christmas will be over and we will have to figure out where the new stuff will go in our little house. I want to start the new year off right... 2010 is coming... I hope things will change for the better. I am hoping for a good garden year, fruit on the trees. I hope to can more food this year, raise some turkeys, and a few chickens and ducks and bunnies.