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.

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.

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.

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!

Things I have learned living and working on a farm

You can’t sneak up on a goose.

When a turkey ‘bites’ you, it hurts.  And you get a bruise.

Pigs are really amazingly smart animals.

If you want to play with pigs, you’re going to stink.

Birds of a feather flock together.

Get your work done while the sun shines.

Never ever carry an egg in your pocket.

Do not put off things you see need to be done. 

Prepare for the worst.

If your water tank is half full, fill it up.

If it’s going to freeze overnight, fill up extra water buckets just in case.

You can’t keep a duck out of water.

Geese make great watch dogs.

The biggest dogs are often the gentlest.

Animals are smarter than we think.

A rooster takes care of his hens.

There is a hierarchy of being in any animal group.

Most farm animals aren’t real cuddly.

Animals recognize their families and you!

A change from your usual clothing makes you appear as an unknown intruder.

You can see alot more than you think in the dark.

Turkeys have a very large vocabulary.  

Any 'mother' has an intense attachment to her babies and innate mothering skills.

Pigs show emotions.

One of the pleasures of being a farm bird is the morning wing flapping ritual.

Are farm animals cold outside?

We are in the middle of a snow storm here in Virginia and it's going to be about 4 degrees tonight.  Cold!

I always worry about my animals outside when it is especially cold.  Do you think the farm dogs, horses, pigs and birds are cold outside?  How do they stay warm?

If an animal lives outside all the time, it grows a coat that is suitable for cold weather.

Let's talk about dogs first.
Here is Gandolf, our Great Pyrenees puppy who is now 11 months old:

This guy doesn't even know it's cold out.  He is playing with a chunk of ice in one of the pictures.  Can you see how think his coat is?  That is his winter coat.  It is so thick and heavy!  You can see some snow sitting on his coat.  This is because there is so much insulation between his skin and snow that his body heat is not melting the snow.  When the weather starts to get warm, he'll lose some of his coat which is called shedding.  Gandolf does have a dog house outside in the field he lives in with his chickens.  The house has alot of hay inside and only a small door so he will be toasty warm tonight!

We see the same type of insulation with the horses outside.  See the snow sitting on their backs?  It's because their coat is keeping the heat close to their bodies to keep them warm even when it's really cold out.

Lastly, animals are really smart.  Horses will position themselves so that they are hidden from the wind or so the wind can only reach a small part of their bodies.  Other animals will curl up in a little ball or seek shelter.

We gave our pigs a new bale of straw in their houses but you can see Max and Sassy really don't want to come outside today!  They are smart enough to arrange the straw as bedding inside their house and stay inside where it's warm and dry!

Stay warm everybody!!

Farm Friends

Did you ever think a pig and horse could be friends?  Most animals on the farm are very curious about each other, enjoy each others company and will sometimes take a walk across a field just to say hi.  Does that surprise you?   In this picture, Buttercup, our baby Haflinger, is saying hi to Max, our Mulefoot Hog.  They are both really friends animals.

Autumn Leaves

Why do leave fall from trees each fall? 

Last night we had a big freeze and all the leave are falling like snow! Click the link to watch!
 ginkgo leaves falling

In the fall, the tree prepares to sleep or go into dormancy for the winter by saving nutrients in its trunk.  When you see the leaves turn colors and start to fall, the tree is preparing to sleep for the winter.  The leaves on some trees such as our Ginkgo trees fall off right after the first very cold night we have.  It's really beautiful to watch!

Yes, chickens take baths!

It's true..chickens take baths.  In the afternoon on a warm day you can often see chickens in a sunny place rolling and resting in the dirt.

 

Chickens and roosters will loosen the dirt and then roll around flapping their wings and sometimes resting.  I always say the chickens are having a spa day!  In fact, they try to get the dirt between their feathers.  It helps to keep the feathers healthy and to get rid of parasites on the chicken.  When they are finished they ruffle their feathers and flap their wings again to get the dirt off of their feathers. 

Chickens take baths?

Sometimes when people come to our house, they see chickens next to the driveway and worry they are dead.  They lie still in odd positions covered in dirt.  In fact there is nothing to worry about!  The chickens - like all birds- are taking dirt baths.

Why do you think chickens take baths? Come back tomorrow and we'll answer the question!

Autumn leaves falling

On our farm, we have many trees that are over 100 years old.  Do you know what tree these leaves are from: 

These leaves are from the Gingko tree.  The shape of the leaves can vary a bit but they often have a fan shape.  Once you recognize the leaves, you will notice this tree all over.  In the fall, the leaves turn a bright yellow color and, my favorite thing, often the leaves all fall off the tree in a very short time period.  Look at my video below and you can see the leaves falling like snow flakes.  If you listen to the sound, you can hear them as they hit the ground.  This often happens just after the first frost of the season.  They call the Gingko tree a living fossil because fossil records of the Gingko tree date back 270 million years.  They trees are native to China.

The dogs you see in this video include our lab, Belle, and our two Briards, Costaud and Clara.

Love of animals- This is how it started

I have always loved animals and laugh at some of the early pictures of me.  Here I am with my first dog, Muffy, a minature poodle.  Muffy put up with alot. 

 That brings us to today.  I had to pick up dog food and a walking harness for our newly adopted dog, Dicky.  I can't resist browsing at all the birds and animals at the pet store.  I think I could spend hours looking at the hamsters running on their wheels, rats, fish... Check out this Parakeet.  I've never seen one that was robin egg blue.  Such pretty birds.