Muscovy Moms, Ducklings and their Dad

Park Falls Thorburn, Nova Scotia

Muscovy Ducklings Eating

Muscovy Ducklings Two weeks old

Silkie Chicks

Since all the chicks died, but the one little black and white one, I had to go out and buy two chicks. Sigh ... this whole buying chick thing is really counterproductive to my whole saving money by breeding my own thing. Unfortunately, i cannot have just one chick. Once the chick hits around two months old, mom will leave it and then it will be all alone with no close friends/siblings. It would get picked on and be horribly lonely.So, I got two silkie chicks to go with it. Silkies are an adorable, small, very tame breed. Honestly, it's not a breed I wanted to add to my flock, I prefer larger more aggressive chickens as they aren't preyed upon as much, but pickings are slim this time of year and it was a choice of drive 40 minutes and buy silkie chicks for $8 each or drive 2 hours and pay $7 a chick for barnyard mixes. 

They are ridiculously cute! They make wonderful friends for my black and white chick and hopefully they are both female and will become part of my Frizzle Fonzi's flock. If you cross a Silkie and a frizzle you get a Sizzle (It's like a designer dog breed )

Hugs and love!

Hatchling Update

Sadly, the little yellow chick that was born yesterday morning died and I found another chick this morning that died halfway out of the shell :( Thankfully, the little black chick is doing fantastic and Heckle still has three viable eggs. Maybe one of the other eggs will hatch! I really need one more chick so the little black one has a friend. If I have to, I'll go out and purchase one.

We also have a Saxony duck sitting on eggs. Went through her eggs this morning and she only had three incubating, so took away all the others. It would be nice if a couple of Saxony would hatch as I have people wanting to purchase some.

It's really not the right time of year for hatching, so not going to allow anyone else to go broody. We'll try again next year. At least we ended up with some hatchlings this summer.

The six little Muscovy hatchlings are 7-9 days old now and doing fantastic.

Wishing you all a wonderful Tuesday! Hugs and love!

Two Chicks

Yesterday, I shared a pic with y'all of the adorable black chick that was born. Today we have a yellowish chick! We now have two chicks! Not sure if anymore will be born, but overjoyed to have the two!

Honestly, it's a horrible time for all these young to be born. They should of been born late spring/early summer. However, I'd rather be late to the dance than not at all! As a newbie poultry farmer these first births are important and get us moving in the right direction.

I'll update later on how everyone is doing! LOVE!

Muscovy Ducklings

Muscovy Mamas and their Ducklings.

Chicks, Jam and Homemade Soup

Heckle (chicken) sat eggs for 30 days. Nothing hatched. We took her eggs away and gave her all new ones. She sat the new eggs three weeks and look what finally happened for her!! She has a baby! :) YAY! After 50 days of sitting on eggs she finally has a baby and we have our first chicken hatchling!

Not sure if more eggs will hatch. We'll have to wait and see. We've been having some fertility problems as we've only got one rooster that is actually having sex and trying to service over 20 ladies himself is really hard. Fingers crossed a couple more of the eggs are fertile!

During the weekend, i started my jam making. Choke cherry jam complete! In a day or two, I'll make the blueberry (than blackberry, raspberry and than lastly hawthorn berry)

I also made a big pot of delicious homemade veggie soup on the weekend! It's got tomatoes, beans, peas, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, mushrooms, corn, carrots, zucchini and sweet potatoes. I made some delicious egg salad sandwiches to go with it :)

I also did some wildcrafting during the weekend. I went to the lovely pond in the photo below. Found a few bird feathers and lots of freshwater clam shells (which are already listed on my Etsy store). I also found a small bird nest, but when I got home, I left it on the kitchen table and one of the cats sat in it and crushed it :( Damn cat, good thing he's cute!

Check out my Etsy store to see all the cool stuff I've found wildcrafting. 

https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/TheHappyHippieHaven?ref=profile_shopname

Wishing you all a great day! LOVE!

Duckling Update

Good morning friends! Hope you all had a fantastic week!

Sadly, the wee duckling that hatched yesterday passed on last night :( So sad. Poor little sweetheart fought so hard. We also had one of the other ducklings pass away. However, there are now six very healthy ducklings at the pond with their two mamas. 

These pics were from yesterday. We has a bit of a rain/wind day, but nothing that bothered our new family.

The chicks are heart melting cute!

The yellow in the ducklings will become white once they lose their baby fuzz and get actually feathers.

Wishing you all a fabulous weekend! hugs and love!! 

And sending out some extra love to those in the path of Hurricane Irma, and those still recovering from Hurricane Harvey, and those affected by all the wild fires all over North America, and everyone in Mexico that got hit by the earthquake this morning. My deepest sympathies for your losses.

Hatchling

The egg that the Mamas left behind yesterday hatched this morning. It was a bit of a hair raising 24 hours as the little chick got stuck and we ended up having to help. Ducks require a certain about of humidity/moisture to hatch and it's real hard for us humans to get that perfect. 

So this pic is from yesterday around 5pmish As you can see the duckling has her beak out and is breathing air. the red membrane you see was our biggest problem as it dried up and basically locked her in the egg. We misted the egg with warm water every hour.

This photo is from around 7am this morning. With help from us she made it about 80% out of her egg.

And this photo is from around 8am; she's out! However, her food sack was not absorbed properly, so now we have a new problem. She's also very weak. Google tells me that the food sack should dry up and fall off on it's own or we may have to cut it off. Poor little sweetheart is exhausted. 

This last photo isn't mine. I saw it this morning and just wanted to share it. It comes from "Just Ducky" Facebook group I'm on. These are Florida hens being evacuated. The owner was quite inventive (I've never seen wrapped hens before!), but damn, it works and the hens aren't being left behind! Respect for the person who left no one behind!

Wishing you all a wonderful day! I'll keep you updated on the new hatchling. Hugs and love!

Duckling Update

So far 11 ducklings have been born and 4 have died, so we are sitting at 7 ducklings and we still have one egg in the midst of hatching. Two of the ducklings and the hatching egg are in the house with me, while the other five ducklings are at the pond with their mamas.

Yesterday morning we had to run into New Glasgow. We were gone maybe two hours and when we came home we found three dead ducklings in the kiddie pool (plus one almost drowned that we managed to save). The ducklings that drowned were all born on Monday so simply didn't have the dexterity to get back out of the pool :(

This morning (Wednesday), the two Muscovy moms decided that they were going to the pond. We walked them down to the pond and noticed a couple of the newly hatched babes couldn't keep up and were weak. We were worried they would drown so kidnapped them. We also found an egg in the midst of hatching in their nest at the house, so we stole it too. Sadly, when we went to check on them at the pond about 30 minutes later, one duckling was missing (assumed drowned). So sad.

Google tells me that generally ducks (and chickens) wait 48 hours from when the first baby hatches till the time they leave the nest. The first baby hatched early Sunday, so today they are strong and have no problems walking and swimming. However, the poor little late hatchers are only a day old (or less!) and just can't keep up. For a baby duck a day is a long time!

The two ducklings I have in the house hatched yesterday, in a day or two when they are stronger I will hopefully be able to give them back to their moms. However, if I can't I'll raise them myself. I have them in the turkey room at the moment and the turkeys don't mind the company. they are very sweet tempered birds.

Here's some pics of the Muscovys. You can see a video on my previous post.

Muscovy babies - Day 4

Muscovy babies

Muscovy Moms

It's just after 6am here in Nova Scotia. I've been up for a few hours as I've been doing yard patrols to help keep my new Muscovy moms and babes safe. Unfortunately when the Muscovys set up their nest they picked a bad spot, one which I am unable to protect well. Right now, they are their most vulnerable; if a predator attacked they would be forced to fight to defend their young and they (and the babes) would probably end up dead. So, I've been doing walks around outside every 30 minutes or so. Being a loud annoying human to help scare any predators away.

Last that I saw, two ducklings had been born. More could of been born overnight in the dark, I'll know better once the sun rises.

It of course had to rain tonight. Sigh ... we've barely had any rain all summer, but of course the one night I would really like warm and dry, we get rain :( Ducks generally love rain, but ducklings chill easily. As the Muscovy nest was completely uncovered and would of gotten drenched, I put a lawnchair and tarp over them in an attempt to help keep them drier. (We were suppose to get 10mm of rain overnight)

I'm off to do a predator patrol! Once the sun is up, I'll try to get photos of the babes! Hugs and love!

Muscovys Hatching