Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Love these photo's of our farm animals!
I love this colorful collection of our farm animals, Gandolf, and some of the other beings that share this world with us! The howling sled dogs are from a trip to Alaska last winter and the parakeets are from a pet shop. Thanks for enjoying our farm friends!
Just click this link!
Ivandale Farm's Animal Friends!
Just click this link!
Ivandale Farm's Animal Friends!
Monday, September 29, 2014
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Last week on the farm!
There is always so much happening on the farm. Here are a few shots from last week!
Cherokee, 1 year, 4 months old Narragansett Tom Turkey
My little chipmunk, Seneca.
A pile of piglets. They're Mulefoot Hogs about 7 weeks old.
A pile of ducklings! Warming up after their swim.
Spiderweb!
Fall color hydrangeas!
The duckling with a mohawk. I thought this would go away but it seems to be the first spot he has feathers growing in so maybe it will always be there!
Cute little duckling!
Julie and Buttercup!
Gandolf (aka: The Big G, Gandyman), our Great Pyrenees, checking what's on the other side of the fence.
Special thanks to Allison Jenkins whose talented eye caught some great photos!
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Pigs and Mud
Today my eight piglets had their first experience with mud. I can only tell you that they didn't mind! Fun was had by all! Live these little piggies!
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Saturday, September 6, 2014
You can't take a duck out of water!
Our six ducklings are only three days old but we can't keep them out of their water! We're still waiting and hoping that two more eggs will hatch!
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Ducklings!
In spite of my policy of 'no more mouths to feed', my turkey hens surprised me but incubating a collection of duck eggs. The two turkey hens did a great job sitting on the eggs and helping the baby chicks inside develop. Do you know how long a hen must sit on duck eggs before the ducklings are ready to hatch?
Twenty eight days.
That is a long time to sit if you ask me. When the first egg hatched, they were not excited to find a duckling. Our Narragansett turkeys lay eggs with light brown spots so when I investigated their cache of eggs and noticed all the smooth white ones, I knew more ducklings were bound to hatch and I confiscated all of them. Here are the turkey hens.
I put the eggs into our incubator making certain the temperature was set at about 101F degrees and that there was enough humidity which should be around 65%. The humidity makes the eggs a bit easier to crack for the duckling. It didn't take long for the ducklings to start emerging! The hens had done the hard work of sitting on them and keeping them warm for son long. In the first twelve hours, four hatched.
I still had one more egg that was going to hatch. You can see the first cracks in the egg in the picture below. This little guy took a long time to come out. After about 24 hours I became worried and did some research to try to determine if he was OK inside the egg. It can take up to 48 hours for a chick to hatch but there is a way to 'see' if the chick is OK. Can you guess what it is?
You carefully pick up the egg and hold it to your ear. If they chick is doing well and trying to hatch, you'll hear the tap, tap, tap of it's beak against the shell. I tried it and it was true! I could hear this little guy tapping away.
Twenty eight days.
That is a long time to sit if you ask me. When the first egg hatched, they were not excited to find a duckling. Our Narragansett turkeys lay eggs with light brown spots so when I investigated their cache of eggs and noticed all the smooth white ones, I knew more ducklings were bound to hatch and I confiscated all of them. Here are the turkey hens.
I put the eggs into our incubator making certain the temperature was set at about 101F degrees and that there was enough humidity which should be around 65%. The humidity makes the eggs a bit easier to crack for the duckling. It didn't take long for the ducklings to start emerging! The hens had done the hard work of sitting on them and keeping them warm for son long. In the first twelve hours, four hatched.
They aren't pretty when they are coming out. The duckling will be wet when he or she comes out and very tired. It will spend time in the heated incubator drying off and resting before being moved to another box with a heat lamp to keep it warm, food, water and other ducklings.
You carefully pick up the egg and hold it to your ear. If they chick is doing well and trying to hatch, you'll hear the tap, tap, tap of it's beak against the shell. I tried it and it was true! I could hear this little guy tapping away.
I decided to video tape the final hatching and set up my video camera to wait.
But I made the mistake of leaving to do an errand. When I came back thirty minutes later, this is what I saw!
Just out of the egg!
And so cute just twelve hours later!
The little family of FIVE!
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