My friends, in case you are reading this with the hopes of having your own family/hobby/mini farm, I promise to stay true to life in this blog so you know what you are getting yourself into. 99% of the time, I couldn’t be happier with any other lifestyle. Today is part of the other 1%. Today I am sicker than a dog and would love to just stay in under warm blankets with a cup of coffee and knit a sweater. Even going to an office job where you pop into the car and then into a nice office doesn’t sound too bad today. Only today. Treading out in 39 degrees and rain and working in it about 2 hours this morning when sick is not fun. But the animals need water, feed, and turned out to pasture. This picture is looking out my back door, getting up the nerve to go out. The horse barn is directly ahead. It’s more often a chicken and cat hang out. The horses prefer the pasture. On the right are 2 10X12 buildings painted red and white with window boxes. The far one is the goat barn for Crescent Moon and Sunshine. I’m sure they are in there bleating for me to get out there right now. Of course when I do, then they will be telling me to make the rain go away so they don’t get their tootsies wet. The near one was meant to be little dairy barn when we built it, now houses 7 bunnies that are awaiting their hutch to be built, and then will be home to my new Alpacas, Theodore and Buckeye. Okay, here I go outside…
Ah… back in the house and with a few pics for you.
Here’s my favorite rooster. I haven’t named him yet. My permanent hens are all named after first ladies. I figured that was the only way I would come up with enough names. Even then, I had to use middle names for some of them. So, what should I call this sweet boy? If you have an idea, please leave a comment or message me. That fence around the coop is just extra protection for night. I open it up in the morning. This rooster wandered over from his coop which I had already opened. He’s looking to add to his harem.
Here’s my beehive with a Winnie The Poo theme. How should I decorate the two new ones? I’d like to stay with this theme, so maybe one of Tigger and one of the Owl? Not sure of the saying, though. This one says “Give Thanks for Sweet Blessings” on the front of the door to the observation window. The first pic has the observation window lowered to see in and the second pic is looking in it. I see that they have been busy building new comb just since yesterday morning.
Here’s Edith sitting on eggs. We switched out her eggs and gave her Rhode Island Red/Barred Plymouth Rock eggs to hatch. She’s a good, happy mommy. You can see the cut out which goes into her private courtyard. The courtyard is all open air hardware cloth so she can see her friends while in it. To the right of her is another nursery, so she can also talk to other hens that are sitting on eggs. But while she is sitting on unhatched eggs through the time the babies are about three days old, she has her private loft that other birds cannot enter. Otherwise the other birds will come in to steal her food and lay more eggs in her nest. Then she will have so many eggs that she won’t be able to cover all of them to keep them warm. And they would not hatch at the same time. I have her door open to take this picture. Usually it is darker in here, with light coming in from a vent above and from the side cut-out.
Here is a picture farther back of her private space. You can see that she gets her own water and feed tray. Right now it has layer food in it which has the calcium she needs. But after her chicks hatch, it will be switched to crumbles for baby chicks. They can eat that easier. More importantly, it is important not to feed chicks layer food because that can cause deformities in their legs from too much calcium.
Here’s a before picture of our rabbit hutches. The 7 baby bunnies are not here. They are in a separate barn awaiting their own hutch to be built. It will be in the middle of these two. You can see that each rabbit has quite a large area. They can stand up on their hind legs and still have about 6 inches to go to reach the top. Several of them can hop around in each one, although mature rabbits each get their own hutch. Roger, our current buck is in the one on the far left. The other two hutches in his condo each have a doe which is related to him. As soon as another condo of three hutches is built these does will be moved into that and Roger will be next to hutches with unrelated does. Those three new girlfriends are in the far right of this pic. We may keep only 2 of them. On left side of the right condo are the two young bucks which we just purchased. One of them will be the buck for the current for the two does that are now next to Roger. We keep the trios which we will mate together because its easier to not have to carry them far. We always move the doe to the buck’s pen and not the other way around. The does can get territorial of their own space and could attack a buck moving into their space. The buck, on the other hand, is more than willing to welcome in any doe I give him.
As I had said this was the before picture. We hope to soon have another hutch between these which will be a nursery for young bunnies which have already been weaned but not yet mature. Then we have room on either side of the condos for more condos, each having two or three hutches a piece. I say have room because that is the neighbor’s barn behind them and we want to keep our hutches in front of it. That direction faces North so the barn is blocking the cold wind coming from that direction. We do have screens that can fall down to block it even more and you can see that on the hutch on the right with the young rabbits. We just purchased the 5 rabbits in the right condo this past weekend in order to bring in a new bloodline. That’s why we are in a transition with the hutches right now. We did have our own seven bunnies in the hutches on the right. But we had to give the new rabbits these hutches instead because they are older than our bunnies. Even though these new young bucks are only just over 3 months old, they are old enough to try to mate. But we don’t want to mate does that young accidentally. So we needed to put the three new does on the right separated from the two new bucks on the left. Hopefully we will have Roger’s grand babies in a new center hutch by the end of this weekend. And maybe even another condo for another trio. Stay tuned…
If anyone is interested in a trio of New Zealands, contact me quick. We couldn’t take them, but the breeder (Vera out of Waller) whom we bought these new California Whites has the New Zealand trio to give away free. She sold them to an FFA child and then had them returned to her. She’s going to have them slaughtered for meat if no one takes them. But they would be nice breeders. We obviously just don’t have the room right now.
Sweet Bleats Farm 