We have a girl!

We have had the guinea for a year now and I have never been able to figure out which of them were girls or which of them are boys.

About a month ago I started finding guinea eggs in the chicken run on the ground or in the chicken coop.  I knew I had at least one girl.

The three small eggs on the right are guinea eggs

A few nights ago there were only two guinea in the guinea coop.


One was with the chickens.  I have no idea why because they seem to instigate fights with the chickens all day when they are free ranging in the yard.

The guinea is sitting next to these two, they aren't happy

I just thought this picture was funny

The next morning there was an egg.

Yesterday this happen again and there was another egg.

So today, I decided if there was an egg, I would know the guinea in the chicken coop was a female and I should mark her somehow.  So before I let it out of the chicken coop today, I caught her and put a pink zip tie around her ankle.  I kept wishing I had someone with me to take pictures of me doing this.





Tonight, one guinea is in the coop with the chickens, and I'm sure it's the girl again.  She wouldn't stand up so I could confirm the pink band was on her ankle.

I'm so excited for summer

I'm only excited because I am hoping my garden will produce as much as I'd like it to.

I got all of the April produce in the ground this weekend.  There were nine rows/areas that were prepared and I got 7 of them done.

I even got 6 potato cages made and started.

I read an article today that said the cages don't produce as much as traditional mounds, so I may end up doing some mounds as well.


I even got a triangular section of Sunflower seeds planted.

Next weekend will be another busy weekend but I will find time to get a few more things into the ground and I will have to paint some more rocks for labels because I have multiple rows of tomatoes and will have repeating rows of other veggies as well.

Chick Updates

Today was the first day my chicks were able to walk around outside.  I pushed them all out of the coop because they didn't seem to want to go out on their own.

Of course when I went to put them back in at night, they didn't want to go back in.

You want me to go where?

Meanwhile, in the basement, the students' chicks and my five Buff Orpington chicks are growing wings.  This is the awkward teenage years.

I grabbed a couple to get some more detailed pictures.

If all goes well, I think these chicks can go outside in a few more weeks and I'll have to do another rotation with the birds.  Or build another coop.  Yikes!

Just a little higher

Carrie is a determined girl.  When she wants something, she finds a way to get it.  Even if that means head butting another goat out of the way, pawing at a pack of roof shingles until the wrapper comes off and she can chew on it, or walking on her hind legs for 30 second intervals to reach a higher branch.

She sees what she wants

She circles as she plans her attack

And she goes for the grab

4 hours in the garden

I'm a week behind on my garden, and since most of the plants I started inside have died, that means I'm even more behind than that.

Today I finally got outside, put the screen netting up to keep the chickens out of the garden, and then got four rows planted.

I got two rows of tomato plants, a row of broccoli and cauliflower (20 plants each) and calendulas (flowers for the chickens), and a row of onions (all kinds.)  There is still some space at the end of the rows to add a few more plants.

I also got all of the herbs planted in my stacked pots.

Today I will get back out there to plant more herbs in the garden as well as all of the other veggies, sunflowers, etc.  I also plan to build the potato cages and get those going.  Hopefully I'm not too far behind and I will still have the ridiculously insane amounts of produce that I was planning to have.

Goat Play

Rucker and Cash have been climbing and playing constantly.  I was able to snag this video to share.

And finally, someone other than Kelly was able to get up on the playground set.

That's a beautiful egg

I love it when I find an egg in the nest boxes that looks like this one.

We must be famous

We had another visitor yesterday afternoon.  It seems like the neighborhood birds are spreading the word about what our chickens have going on around here.

There were actually two birds, this rooster and his matching hen girlfriend that ran off into the trees to hide.  I tossed food out for them and the rooster stuck around all evening, the girlfriend I never saw again.

I'm sure the birds came over from the neighbor's barn and I still caught myself telling him "You better go home Rooster, or you'll be the fox's dinner tonight.... Oh wait, if you go home you'll be a person's dinner next week..." and then I didn't know what to say so I went inside.  :/

It is farm life

Last night Faith was barking at about 12:45.  My natural reaction is telling her to shut up but I suddenly sat up straight in bed and remembered that I hadn't closed the door to the guinea coop. 

When I left it open, my thinking was that the goats would be around, I hadn't seen evidence of a fox in awhile, and the door was inside the run so a fox would have to go inside the run to get into that coop.

At 12:45, with a fox barking, none of those reasons mattered and I went to the window to look outside.  I kept seeing the light in the original coop moving, where the month old chicks are, so I pulled on my boots and jacket and went outside.

The fox was still barking off to the North of our property and I hurried out to the coops. The three guinea were alive in the coop so I closed that door and then I checked on the chicks with the light.

The chicks were walking back and forth under the light, knocking the safety cage around.  Darn birds.

I hurried back inside and jumped back into my bed.

When the alarm went off at 4, all I could think was "farm life problems"...

Moving Day

Although the coop isn't completely done, it was done enough to move the birds in.  So last night once all the birds were in the old coop, I took each of them and moved them into the new coop.  They were a bit shocked and stayed huddled by the door.  Half way through the move, I went inside and put them on the roost bars.

Apparently the other half of the birds didn't understand they could follow suit, so they got up in the nesting boxes.

I moved them around, making sure the rooster got a higher perch.  Then I was able to clean out the old coop and move the hatched chicks into it.

They too stayed huddled near the door in confusion

By morning they had moved to the other corner of the coop and because of the cold temperatures I put a lamp in for them.  I'm not sure that they have figured out the hanging food as I saw them scratching around in the shavings.

Clyde and the hens were all still perched and happy.  They'll be locked in there for a couple days so that they learn it is their new home.  Luckily there is a lot of space.  I need to do some more work, but I think it will do for now.

My amazing students

Last week I was so excited to see my former students share their Science Project at the school Science Fair that I hurried past all of the other projects just to find them and their presentation.  

I blocked their faces out since I didn't ask if it was okay to share their pretty faces :)  How amazing is this?  They even had a video that was constantly sharing the eggs and the chicks.

Last night I finally got the birds moved into the basement brooder.  They were so darn cute and kept trying to climb over or under each other to get to better hiding spots.

Welcome to the flock

Today I picked up the 12 chicks that my former students hatched.  The mom of one of the girls told me I should count the chicks and then the younger sister counted them out loud.  There were 9.  I chuckled and thought maybe they were stashing a couple in the house to keep a little longer.

A few minutes later I saw them pull the chicks out of their sweatshirt pockets and I laughed.  The girls have been caring for the chicks very well since they hatched last week and I've seen pictures of the chicks in the sleeves of their robes and now I've seen them tucked in pockets.  They've named them all and know all of their personalities.  Meanwhile I will need pictures and notes to keep the names straight.

I got them all home and into a temporary brooder with the five buff orpingtons that I bought two days ago.

Everyone is doing well and tonight when I went to go check on them, they were almost all passed out.  

Mystery Visitors

I came home from the gym this morning and I saw something in the yard.  I backed up to use my headlights to see it and this is what I saw.  

I had no idea what this thing was so I took a few pictures and then hurried inside to research it.

I headed back outside to get some better pictures with my camera, and while the bird walked away from me and tried to hide behind a tree, it wasn't moving very fast.

I finally found out that it was a Red Golden Pheasant.  In the United States, people keep these for pets, sort of like chickens or peacocks.  They're apparently very fast, so if I had tried to catch it, I probably wouldn't have had much luck.

I threw a bunch of bird seed and treats out for it and went to work.

I decided that if I came home and saw the bird again I would try to catch it, but I haven't seen it since.

It sure was pretty.