Love Thy Fowl

Oh I love my ducks! They just make me so happy!

Last weekend we had our friends, the Adams' come for a visit all the way from Ohio. Mike, Beth, Lexi, Ella, and Linc made the weekend extra fun and special. Our parents were also able to come out and spend the day. It was grand. I have to say how impressed I was with the Adams children- such well behaved children are a delight! They were polite, helpful and so good around all the different animals. They listened patiently and politely while I took the whole family on a tour around the farm. They thanked me for the pool toys I got for them without a parent reminding them! I look forward to them all coming back for another visit as soon as they are able.

One of the funny stories to come out of that weekend is as we adults were sitting on the pool deck and the children were playing in the pool, Beth and I were talking about the ducks. Their pool is not far from where we were sitting and they were doing their ducky thing around it. I was telling Beth that we had hoped we got a pair of ducks but it seems that we ended up with two girls, which was fine with me since I loved them no matter what. She asked how could I tell, since the Swedish Blues are not sex-linked; meaning the drakes and ducks have the same coloring. I told her about the drake feather, which is a small feather on the tail of a drake that curls up back towards the head. I pointed out that both my ducks had straight feathers on their tails.

Fast forward to that evening- everyone had gone home (Mike and Beth and the children stayed over at my parent's house for the night) and I'm going around cleaning up and doing my evening chores. I see the ducks and watch them for a bit until I realize.... one of them has a drake feather! It was almost as if he heard me talking to Beth and said, "HEY! I'm not a girl! Check this out!" and promptly started puberty.

They are getting close to the time when the duck will lay her first eggs. Within the next month. So I've put dummy eggs in their nest box and started offering a bit of oyster shells along with adding a bit of layer pellets to their feed. not too much at first. Mike and Beth are the ones who clued me in to the dummy eggs. They said that if I want to encourage the chickens to lay in the nest boxes I made for them, I should either put real eggs or dummy eggs in them. Ducks are the same! I got a few wooden eggs and placed them there while the ducks were in the yard. I didn't want them to see me and become suspicious.

I cannot decide weather or not I will let them have a brood of chicks or collect the eggs are they are laid. A bunch of baby chicks running around would be wonderful, but I'm not sure if we're ready for all that.

Also, the ducks need new names. I have decided that the drake should be named Peter. He just... looks like he should be called that. The duck... I'm still thinking about it.

Here are a few photos of the Adams' visit:

Where to begin?

This is the longest I've gone without posting some sort of update. I'm sure I've lost some, if not most, of my readers. Well, it's my own fault.

For those of you still interested, there has been a lot of new additions and updates around Three Oaks Farm.

I'll start with the aquapoinics system. The bush beans are being ravaged by a variety of bugs, but it hasn't effected the crop of beans all that much. I've done what I could to try and control the bugs. I can't use any insecticides since it would contaminate the water and poison the fish. But I've set out traps and purchased a package of ladybugs that have taken up residence and do what they can to help.  I leave the spiders alone and wish them luck- and that's really all I can do. The plants are all growing, but not as quickly as we'd like and not producing as much as we'd like either. The system is a balancing act and we are still figuring it all out. The fish went through a rash of suicides recently- 4 jumped out of the tank. There are a number of reasons for this, and we've tried to do what we can to prevent it from happening in the future.

We have decided that in the next phase, we would like to have a lot more control over the environment we are growing in. So Aaron has found a system that we both like very much and can incorporate into an aquaponics system. It's a geothermal greenhouse style and it will allow us to grow year round without using much, if any, electricity and keep it relatively free of pests. It will be dug partially into the ground, which is why it's called geothermal.

We are still working out the details of when to start construction, but it begin this year for sure.

The chicks and ducklings that I last wrote about are now happy members of the farm. The chicks are now pullets. Pullets are chickens that are no longer chicks but under a year of age and not yet laying eggs. The ducklings look like adults but haven't yet started laying eggs and though the lady at Poultry Hollow tried to get me a pair- male and female- it seems I've got two girls! I'm happy to have them no matter what their sex. They are a constant delight and always put a smile on my face. I just think they're hysterical- from the way they walk to the way they pause, tilt their heads and regard me with one eye. They are not terrified of me anymore, but they get out of my way if I move towards them. I'm sure over time that will lessen even more. Since they are girls, I've decided to re-name them after two of my dear friends: Lori and Alyse. I've decided I'll have to get two more ducks to name my friends Josh and Sharon after, since we were a tight group of friends from way back in my NYC days.

The pullets have gone through a lot of changes. They look like adults until you see them next to an actual adult chicken and realize they are still pretty small. They don't grow as fast as the ducks, or live as long, which is odd to me. My ducks can live up to 14 years max, but the chickens (I have been told) will only live for 6 or 7 years max. Anyway, the pullets started getting out of their pen and I decided that they needed to be moved up the hill to the main chicken coop. I had been rearing them in Wanda's coop, next to the cat's place. So with some help from Aaron we caught all six pullets and put them in two boxes and tromped up the hill with them. I released them inside the coop where the adult chickens were and in the beginning all went as I assumed it would. The pullets are very curious and adventurous and ran around checking everything out. The adults were flabbergasted and watched as a group from afar. But soon they started letting the pullets know who was boss and pecking at them. That's totally normal and I was expecting it. So after a while of watching them, I had to get to doing yard work and thought they'd all be ok. There was plenty of food, water and lots of space to run around in.

But.... (you knew there was one, right?) While I was mowing the grass near the coop I saw that two of the adults had cornered one of the pullets and were beating her up. I had to step in and stop it. This is where I went wrong: I got so mad at the adults that I kicked them all out of the coop. I told them they could be stew or food for the coyotes. The adult chickens were happy about this because they love to free range and they don't understand English, so they weren't disturbed by my threats. That first night of all adult chickens being outside (Wanda and her companions were securely roosting in her coop as usual) didn't result in any deaths. All it did was get a lot of chicken poop on my porch and eggs randomly laid all over the farm. Another side effect was that the pullets didn't know where to roost because I had removed all the adults who would have shown them by example where to sleep at night. So they were all clustering together in the run, which is not healthy or safe. This scenario lasted for two more days until finally, after coming home from Knoxville at 9 PM, I found 3 of the pullets had flown over the fence, run down the hill, flew over the duck's fence and were back in Wanda's coop. I threw my hands up and decided to undo what I had done because obviously I had done it wrong. So I went around and found all the chickens and grabbed each that belonged in the main coop up the hill and, one by one, I put them back where they came from. Then I scooped up the remaining three pullets and brought them back down to Wanda's coop to be with their sisters.