The warm up was short lived, by Thursday noontime it was snowing. Thursday is our busiest day most weeks with homeschool co-op and shopping. I didn't have as much time with the animals or other farm chores. I quickly fed and watered the flock and switched over some maple sap bucks before co-op. and that's about it. I did a few more chores and spent a little time with the flock when we got home but soon it was time to close everything up for the night.
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| And again we are covered in snow. |
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| Ducks were here. |
Today we woke to a couple inches of new snow. Maple sap was still running though and we added some more taps today. It turned out that I may not have collected all the eggs after co-op and shopping yesterday and two silkies have taken advantage of this. I can't take them away now that they've had them for quite a few hours so we officially have two silkies sitting. I was going to have them wait a couple more weeks to time any hatching chicks to arrive about the same time as the six chicks we've ordered. We did that last year and it worked so well giving each silkie who had hatched chicks a couple more purchased chicks. Oh well it's likely we'll have yet another broody silkie by then anyway! Between the two silkies they have around 7 eggs most of which are blue, probably from our Easter Eggers & Cream Legbars. I guess they chose selectively this time! Our only large fowl rooster is a white egg laying breed so I guess we will get lighter or maybe brighter blue egg layers should any eggs hatch and should they be females. I still don't think our fertility levels are very high in the eggs. There has been more activity among the birds with that warm up we had so maybe. I guess we'll try candleing in 5 days or so and see if any eggs are growing chicks.
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| The morning rush in the egg laying business. All lined up for the favorite boxes while others are empty. |
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| KitKat on duty, keeping birds in line and warding off vermin. |
The new ducks and old ducks are already one flock so nothing to worry about there. They have bonded, a group of 10 now not 7 and 3. For some reason they were following KitKat around today! It's wonderful to see how the ducks have bonded. I have been given more information about the three ducks we adopted. The "mama" is not the mother of the one younger duck, the one she was guarding the first two days. She had other ducklings of her own which didn't make it. Also this mama duck survived a raccoon attack and has a small hole in her beak as the only scar. Goodness this explains why she was so defensive and nervous her first couple days with us. All three seem to be doing very well now and looking at the group you would never know they didn't all grow up together. We've had the adopted ducks 1 week today!
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| 10 ducks following KitKat! |
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| The ducks are interested in the new taps and buckets which happen to be in their yard. |
The indoor baby chicks are growing so fast and I am pleased that the bare spots on their backs which they had when we purchased them have all but gone. New feathers coming in and the birds don't seem to be pecking each other there anymore. We've had to move them to the bigger brooder now, formerly the play cage. They are already too big for the brooder cage we started them in. They're almost 5 weeks old now and we've had them a week tomorrow.
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| Big Baby Chicks |
I had quite a scare at coop shut up time. One of the younger silkies, Mr. Baby Paint (one of Mr. Paint's sons) fell from a low height but seemed to be very hurt and disoriented. I thought he had somehow broken his neck, he was all listless and floppy and making strange movements. I carried him into the house and though it took a few minutes he perked up and was soon back to normal. I have noticed that his hair (crest) is very much blocking his eyesight so we will give him a trim before he goes back to the flock in the morning. For now he is camping out in the chicks smaller brooder since I hadn't taken it down yet and it was handy.
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| Mr. Baby Paint injured due to a bad hair day? |
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| KitKat at the end of a long day doing his duty as farm cat. |
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