Animal Updates

I started out writing a general farm update but then decided that it was getting too long. I needed to break it up into smaller segments and add them to the blog a little at a time.

Today we'll talk animals!

Our newest addition to the farm arrived just a week ago yesterday...5 Khaki Campbell ducklings.

In one week they have almost doubled in size! It's amazing!!

These ducks are Kelsey's. She will raise them and try to earn some money from them selling their eggs. They will make GREAT garden protection against slugs. Sometime soon I'll show you my great slug traps that I am using until the ducks can go outside, in another week or so.



With just a little help from me, Kelsey is building a duck house out in the goat yard. We choose the goat yard because it's already fenced in and they'll be protected from the dog. We hope to train them to go to the garden a couple hours before sunset when the slugs are just coming out of hiding. Ducks don't need much in the way of shelter just protection from predators. In fact, we read, that they prefer to just be outside. But we thought that if they would meet a masked bandit in the night they'll be happy to have the shelter.


The goats are doing great. Butter is doing much better and seems very healthy now after her feed mistake and illness. She back to giving over a gallon a day. My mom (she's here visiting while James is in Uganda) and I have been fine tuning my cheese press and hope to get to making cheese soon. I'll have pictures of that when we get to it. I did make yogurt in my crockpot like Arielle talked about on her website. I pretty much did it like her, even bought myself a digital thermometer. I've been meaning to do that anyway because it will be very handy when making cheese! We made the Thienes Family Power Smoothie for breakfast. I used frozen blueberries.
Singeli and Pepperjack are 3 1/2 weeks old now, or maybe it's 4! wow! Time flies. Before I know it they'll be ready to ship out. Anyone want a pair of goats...Singeli will make an excellent milker some day. The picture below was taken by Kelsey and is awesome!!! Pepperjack is on top and Singeli below.


The chickens continue to lay an amazing number of eggs. My customers are very happy that they are. I'm constantly trying to device ways of making it possible to add more.