Bucket o'ducklings

Our ducks are getting old. We keep ducks here on the farm to sell their eggs. Unfortunately, our lady ducks are getting up there in the years and going though what I can only assume is the equivalent of ducky menopause. Despite the fact that we have many lady ducks out there and spring is the perfect time for a lady duck to do her ducky thing, we are only getting 1-2 eggs per day.

With that in mind, we set a couple dozen duck eggs in the incubator and waited the 28 days it takes to cook up baby ducklings. We didn't have the greatest hatch rate (again, old lady ducks), but we did get enough ducklings that we were able to sell a few and keep the bucket full you see above.

Originally, we were keeping them in the brooder with the baby turkey poults that hatched at the same time, but ducklings and other birds just don't mix well at that age. They have very different protein requirements, and baby ducks are just disgusting. They get food and water and poop just everywhere. Hence the duckling bucket. These little ladies moved out and are now living and doing their best to destroy one of the poultry pens until they get old enough to move in with the flock and start laying us some eggs!

Outside duck processing

  A couple weeks ago we made the hard decision to give up our poultry exemption that allows us to legally butcher and sell our our processed birds here on the farm. It was a tough choice for us to make because around here we make every effort to assure the our animals have very happy lives to the very last moment possible. The idea of putting their deaths in the hands of others was one that we did not make lightly.

  Unfortunately, Big Onion and I only have so much time. We found that we were putting off and dreading processing days. They ate up hours of our rare and valuable weekends together. Time that could be spent on projects to improve the farm. They also left us drained both mentally and physically.

  We are very lucky to have a facility just the next town over that specializes in processing ducks and chickens. We have been buying some of our duck parts from there to make our raw ground duck pet food for over a year now. We have a very good relationship with the people who run this facility, and they were kind enough to give me a tour and walk me through every step of the process. The facility is immaculately clean and all processing is done under the constant supervision of a USDA inspector to ensure not only that proper procedure and food handling rules are enforced, but also that the welfare and safety of the animals is kept a high priority.

  With all of this in mind, we decided it was high time to part with some of the drakes (male ducks) in our flocks. The last batch of pekins that we raised was over half male. We also had a number of older boys that tended to be rough on the ladies come mating season. We sorted out all of these males using exercise pens and Luna and put them in Buzz and Bonnie's old pen over night.

  Bright and early the next morning I packed them up in crates and brought them over to the facility. I was lucky that I got there at just the right time. Everything was set up and ready to go and our birds ended up being processed as soon as I dropped them off.

  We were able to pick up beautifully packaged, vacuum sealed bird two days later that we didn't have to pluck ourselves (that's the best part!). We ate one ourselves, the dogs got the few older birds, and a some of our regular egg customers snapped up the rest!

~~~

Special thanks to all our customers who purchased these ducks from us! I hope you enjoyed them as much as we did ours!

Rialey and the ducks

 The rain is never ending. We get a couple days of sun then it pours and pours and pours again. I just keep reminding myself that we went through the same thing last year, and it eventually stopped raining.

The ducks are just loving all the wet, wet, wet everywhere. The "pond" I dug for them in the middle of the pasture is constantly full of water and splashing ducks. 

Rialey apparently thinks it's her job to act as the ducky fun police.

..and chase all the ducks out of the pond.

"I'm gonna get ya duckies!!"

"Woah, WOAH, it's so wet! I have made a terrible mistake!" 

Pretty sure that duck in the foreground is laughing at her. 

Underwater duck herding

  We have been having a problem with the ducks getting into the creek that crosses our property for quite a while now. We even tried putting up a fence to keep them out, but the holes in the fencing were big enough for the determined little waterfowl to slip through. Lately they have taken up the habit of swimming up the creek and getting into our neighbor's yard. It's not far from there to the very busy road in front of our houses so last weekend Big Onion put up a second layer of chicken wire in front of the existing fence.

  This seemed to work like a charm. All was going well until a couple of nights ago when we were putting the birds away for the night, and Big Onion noticed a couple chickens on the wrong side of the fence unable to come back thru. He went over to investigate and found not only the two Buff Orpingtons pacing the fence line but also about 7 ducks happily swimming back and forth in the creek. Apparently these birds had crossed the bridge and gone down to the creek from the other side. We knew from experience that if we left those birds out overnight, all we would find of them the next morning would be a pile of feathers.

  It was getting dark fast so I called over Luna, my right hand dog, and the three of us swung into action! Big Onion turned off the electric line that run over the top of the fence. I picked up Luna and tossed her over the fence (thank heavens for farm dogs in small packages) and hopped over it right behind her.

  First order of business was the two chickens. Luna employed a very handy skill the two of us recently discovered and took no time in herding each chicken right into my hands. I handed them over the fence to Big Onion and then the fun really began.

Duck, duck.....

If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. How much should I ask for this couple of ducklings? Can I charge extra for cute?

Monsoon season

The rain just keeps falling around here and more and more of the pasture is surrendered to water and mud.

The chickens are learning to adapt to their new partially aquatic life. I swear one of them is trying to grow gills!

The poor goats HATE getting wet. Josie and Jennie have stayed inside their room for 3 days straight. Here Thea takes advantage of a brief break in the weather to try and devour an entire pine tree.

Here's a picture of the creek from a couple days ago. It had topped its banks once and was threatening to do it again. 

For reference, this is what it normally looks like (though most of the trash and scrap metal have been cleared from the banks since this picture).

Big Onion's new fence has been under water more than once but is still standing, straight and strong. 

 As I've said before, the ducks (and geese) are the only ones really enjoying this crazy weather. The rest of us just feel like we are stuck in a Ray Bradbury story. 

 At some point I got fed up with all the water everywhere and decided to dig myself a drainage pond....with a shovel. I think all the water is going to my head.

Happy Holidays!

 For Christmas, we decided to give the birds a little treat....

 Peas!

 The bunnies got oranges, cauliflower leaves, and carrots. 

Could you just die of cute?!

We also decided to torture/embarrass the goats by making them pose for pictures with my santa hat....

It was slightly too large for Gwendolyn....

 and it totally didn't fit Josie.

 Thea is under there somewhere. 

But Jenni totally made it work for her!

Happy Holidays from the HighTail Farms crew!!

Like Ducks to Water

So this happened today.

After 10 months of living here, the ducks have finally found the creek. This is bad for a couple reasons. For one thing, the creek cuts through our property and is not fenced. If they come ashore in the wrong place, the ducks could easily find themselves in the neighbor's yard or even on the street. It's also bad news because, as you can see, this is no pristine mountain stream we are talking about here. At best, this creek is used as a drainage channel.

  We have been talking about fencing off access to the creek from the first pasture for a while now. The sheep love to run to the edge of it every time they see a herding dog, leaving me with palpitations and visions of my crazy butt diving in that ditchwater to saving a drowning sheep. Our original plan was just to put up a few strands of barbed wire, but it looks like now we will have to use something more poultry-proof.

Josie and Jenni know those ducks are in trouble!

Of ducks and sheep and farmdoggies

 Hey, Luna, what cha doin over there? 

 The sheep are due for another Famacha check and possible worming. With the Big Onion out of town, I turned to my right hand man...er...dog for help. Luna did an awesome job of tucking the sheep into this corner and holding them there while I checked everyone's eyes and feet. It's amazing how easy the sheep are to handle when my small, fuzzy, wolf beast is staring them down.

  It was nice to see that all our adult sheep were very pink and not in need of worming. A few of the "teenagers" will need another dose of cydectin so that will be tomorrow's job. I was also happy to find that despite the almost constant rain of the last week or two, no one had obvious foot rot.

After we finished with the sheep, Luna helped me relocate the adult ducks and geese. I know I've talked in the past about how Luna was learning to herd the birds without hurting them, but today I was especially proud of her for handling a large group of unhappy birds while keeping her cool.

The last couple weeks, I've been watching her test herself with the ducks. She'd pick out a small group and move them around without my prompting. If the birds got too flappy, or she got too excited, she would pull herself off and walk away. The other day I watched her round up a bunch of small groups into one bigger group on her own before going back to very carefully move a single straggler in with the rest.

The single bird has always been a problem for Luna in the past. Trying to move one duck means much more erratic and unpredictable movement and a much higher risk of Luna losing her cool and biting. I generally don't let her even try to move a single duck because the risk of ending up with an injured or dead bird was just too high.

Well, after watching her work on her own, today I let her herd two different singles that had gotten separated from the rest of the flock during the move, and she was wonderful. We got the whole flock moved in about half the time it would have taken me if I'd tried doing it on my own.

Thanks Lu!

Weathering Isaac - Pt 2

I woke with the dawn on Thursday morning and looked out our bedroom window. I didn't even recognize what I saw at first. Our bridge was under about 4ft of water, the creek that runs just behind the 1st pasture had topped its banks during the night and flooded our pasture! Even more alarming was realizing that the waters had reached our poultry pens. I shook Big Onion awake and we quickly threw on clothes and headed out back.

There was a good 1.5-2 ft of water flooding our pens closest to the creek. Big Onion came out of the silky pen with all four new chicks drowned. Bianca was such a good mother that she was trying to keep them warm even as the waters came up. Our poor little bantam chickens were barely able to keep their heads above water. We quickly bundled all three chickens in towels, dried them as best we could, and set them up in a raised cage in the poultry house.

The quail pen had some water, but I gave them some plastic pallets to climb on to get up out of the water and they seemed ok. When I went back to check on them later, the water had risen again and one quail had drowned. This was prompting enough for us to scoop up all 40+ birds and tuck them into another raised cage to dry off. Again there were a couple birds that seemed stiff and cold, but were soon back to normal once they got warm and dry. I have to hand it to those tiny birds, they never missed a stride through the whole thing. They stayed very calm, and many of the girls actually laid eggs while crammed into a rather tight space.

After losing one of the quail, we decided to just move all the rest of the birds out of the flooded pens. I think the chickens were happy to be on dry ground, but less than pleased that all 8 of them had to share one cage. They were also inexplicably terrified of the young Buff chicks in the next pen, all cowering in one corner of the cage behind their giant white rooster protector.

The adult turkeys and guineas were muddy and soggy, but their pens still had dry ground so they stayed put.

While all the other birds were doing their best to stay dry, the ducks and geese were pleased as punch with the pond we installed in their pen. They had 2 ft of water and were going to town splashing and playing in their new lake/pen.

In the morning, we tossed a wooden pallet in the pen just so they could get up and out of the water if they wanted. By afternoon when the waters just kept rising, we decided to move them to the relatively dry ground of the goat pen. Neither the ducks nor the goats were pleased with this decision.

Meanwhile, the wind kept blowing and the rain kept falling in waves. All day Wednesday we saw the poor sheep rushing out of their enclosed area whenever there was a break in the weather to get as much grazing as they could before the pouring rain would drive them back under cover. Thursday morning, their normal cover was under water so Big Onion walked them up near into goat pen, and we gave them some grain to eat.

 Well, after we moved the ducks up, we had to close the goat pen off to the sheep and just as we were headed back inside, it started to pour again. Pepper, our friendliest sheep, rain straight to us for help with the rest of the flock close at her heels. I did some fast thinking and with a call of "Sheep sheep!" led the girls into the nearby covered area where we keep the 4 wheeler. I was so amazed they followed me, even more amazed that they thought to turn to us for help in a time of crisis.

 Our second pasture beyond the trees under about 5-6ft of water. We would need a boat to get to the rest of our property.

You can actually see the current of water flowing into our pasture in some of these pictures.

One of the scariest things we saw checking out the flooding were these floating islands of red ants. They were also swarming all over the buildings. The surface of the water was also swarming with tiny little floating spiders. Big Onion and I came away with more insect bites than we could count every time we went out to check on everyone. We both ended up with angry red rings around our calves just at the point where our boots end.

Early in the afternoon we started hearing reports of a possible dam break in a major river that runs just a few miles from our house.  We had already spent the day plucking sodden distressed birds from the water and watching the water level in our pens go up and up. The radio was talking about mandatory evacuations and 17 ft of water. I'm not ashamed to admit I had more than one moment of panic that day. Big Onion and I talked about what we would do if we were forced to leave. Do we just open cages and pens and leave the birds and rabbits to fend for themselves? We talked about packing all the dogs and cats in his car and the goats into mine, moving the sheep to the higher ground of the backyard and just hoping we would have something to come back to.

I sat down with the handy deck of cards and started playing solitaire to keep myself busy while Big Onion tried to catch a little sleep. I kept telling myself if I could just win one game, just one game, everything would be ok. The power would come back and the water would go down. It took about 5 or 6 games, but I finally won one. I actually woke poor Big Onion up to say I had won at solitaire, everything would be ok! I kid you not, the words had barely come out of my mouth went the power blinked on! (Note from Big Onion: This is true. Creepy, but true!) We turned on the news and learned that we were too far away from the river for a dam break to effect us. Not long after that, the water levels started very slowly going down again.

By Friday morning, the creek was back within its banks and the bridge was miraculously still in place. We were left with a muddy, soggy mess of a barnyard. I actually had to go to work down in New Orleans, so poor Big Onion was left by himself to put new bedding down in all the pens and relocate the birds back where they belong. The last and biggest duck pen is still a mud pit so the waterfowl will be double bunking it for a while. We also have a lot of debris and fallen branches to clean up and some fences to repair. Unfortunately, my garden was all but destroyed. The corn, for sure, has seen much better days...

This picture was taken well after the storm had passed.

All in all I feel like we were extremely lucky. We lost a few young birds, but overall there was no major building damage, our house did not flood, and we came through unharmed with almost all of our animals healthy and safe. There is still a lot of work to do to get things back to normal, but I think we'll be ok.