New Beginnings 12 days old!

Leghorn 12 day old chick









These little chicks are growing so fast.  I forgot that they change everyday.  I am busy preparing a larger area for them as soon as they have all their feathers.  When they are 3 weeks old they will be moved into a less warm more fresh air spot where they can stretch their wings and GROW.   Everything being at a brand new fresh start around here feels really good.  Aren't they sweet.

Buff Orpington 12 days old







Rhode Island Whites 12 days old

Easter Egger chicks 12 days old

With the chicks changing and growing so quickly I realized that I was soon going to be loosing the hatchery markings on the RIWs.  I needed to mark them now!  What better time for a quick photo shoot?

61 Babies in a BOX

Growing Ducklings

According to my calendar, and my memory, my four Muscovy ducklings range in age from about 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 weeks.    I'm having a great time watching them grow and learning about these ducks  by observation.  The way their feathers come in is especially fascinating to me, as i watch them go from fuzzy, to spotted, to more solidly feathered.  I've also learned that these ducks definitely LOVE water, deeply LOATHE being handled by humans such as myself, and grow very very quickly.  Also, everyone who ever said that ducks are messy was telling the truth in understatement.  Chickens are clean freaks compared to these guys.  

Here are some cute pictures of them in their little pool, taken this morning.

They can't just drink water, they have to get in the water and then drink it.

They're very curious about "outside," but they haven't dared check it out yet.

 Here, you can see how big they are.  This "pool" is about 15 inches wide and about 3-4 inches deep.

 Here, the statuesque duckling on the right is showing us his/her developing chest feathers.  This is one of the younger ducklings, and he or she is on the way to having the solidly colored feathers like the duckling on the left.

 I was just telling my husband that the ducks were getting awfully big and would need to be moving soon.

And then this afternoon i noticed that the brooder was dark.  Upon investigation, i discovered that the heat lamp bulb had apparently exploded all over the brooder.  There is broken glass everywhere!

So i decided to start the process of integration with the chickens.  I put the ducklings in a large bird cage with cardboard and pine shavings on the bottom, in the chicken coop.  I hope this works.  And i hope they'll be warm enough.  They're pretty well feathered, and they cuddle well, and had to get them out of all that broken glass.

Roger's Country DUCKS

ANCONA-The Beautiful low maintenance BIRD..

IT IS SO HOT in this TEXAS HEAT WAVE that................

babies are sharing puppy pools, and goats are asking to be milked randomly all day long and white dogs are rolling in the mud and the chickens have all but stopped laying

We now have fans blowing thru each coop and lots of extra water.

The Ancona Chickens are the birds that we are currently focussing on.

9 new little chicks just hatched out of the incubator TODAY. We plan on setting one more batch of ANCONA eggs before September.

Anyone who wants to have plenty of eggs and keep chickens on a budget should consider the Ancona. They would rather eat grass and bugs than anything else. We fill their feeder half as much as the rest of the flocks. They just keep on laying.

These birds eat very little and lay more eggs than any of my other breeds. But even the ANCONA finally had enough of this heat and called it quits when we reached a whoppin 108 degrees.

We have since increased our protein and artificial wind and now we are back in production. These birds are hyper and lightweight, and before the heat wave these four girls layed 4 nice size WHITE eggs a day and sometimes even 6. I still don't understand that one.... but it has happened more than once. How can 4 hens lay 6 eggs?

How to stop a KID from CRYING!!

I have a very unconventional method of breaking broody hens. I have several coops of different breeds who are all very familiar with each other. Usually I can place a broody hen in a new coop, and the excitement of being in a new place with other hens, usually breaks the brood. I keep the broody in there for a couple of days, and then place her back where she belongs.

All of the chickens have been raised together from hatch so they are very familiar and friendly with each other. But in this case for some reason, before I knew it, the other hens had pulled out all of the broody hens head feathers. She looked like she was so uncomfortable and her head was all raw. I did not have any "blu kote" so I doctored her with bacitracin and put her in a very quiet place to heal.

This little KID has been missing his two sisters who left two days ago. On top of that, he is also being weaned from his mama. Have you ever heard a baby goat cry? OMG he sounds like a really sad baby. He gets to free range with his mom for a couple hours after she has been milked out, so I placed the bald ex-broody in the Kids empty little yard. She was so happy and relaxed and the KID, Jeffery Charles aka "STAR" is not so lonely any more!