I had so many posts planned for summer and now summer is almost gone. Hopefully, as it goes it will take this heat with it. This post will be mostly to play catch up from the last couple of months, and hopefully I'll do better on the updates.
In poultry news, the biggest upset this summer was the loss of ALL our turkeys. We were growing out 5 Blue Slate for Thanksgiving and still had our pet Royal Palm tom. Because of the heat, which in itself is hard on turkeys, plus it causes rampant bacterial growth that their immune systems are not well equipped to deal with, we lost them all within a 1 week period around mid-July. I was feeding antibiotics and vitamins through their feed and water, plus syringe feeding them as they got worse but I couldn't save them. I am so very sad to lose my Royal Palm- he was getting very friendly and would always great me with a gobble. Lesson learned- we are now sticking to hardier fowl (at least until I convince Chuck to air condition the coops).
So that leaves the question was "What are we eating for Thanksgiving?" Well, since our chickens are heritage breeds and free range it would take at least 5 to feed our family, so we decided to go with duck. I have 10 white Peking ducks on order from McMurray Hatchery that will hit processing age the weekend prior to Thanksgiving. The other ducks are doing great thanks to their fabulous immune systems.
Happy ducks.
The chickens are doing well, also. We lost 2 of the Barred Rock to predators, but I fortified the coop and haven't had any recurrences. The Delawares and Araucanas are adding to the egg stash now and helping fill the egg orders. We have another broody black hen that is setting 4 eggs that were left under her while we were out of town. I'm not sure if they're viable, but time will tell. The Barred Rocks will be fulfilling their destiny in a few more weeks.
Rainbow eggs
Moving on, the does have slowly been decreasing their milk yield. As the days get shorter and cooler we will start to dry them off and get them bred to Roscoe. He is eagerly awaiting this, since Merry seems to have gone through a heat cycle recently and he definitely noticed.
Dinkey Donkey is doing great! He gets to come out and graze down the yard and field most days, offering up a bray when you walk outside or drive up. I still LOVE that sound!
Whatcha got?
The rabbits are well. We have put Foxy with Isaac to try to get her bred- hopefully it took as we already have someone interested in buying some of the babies. We'll be putting Cleopatra with him soon, as well.
The crops were, for the most part, a bust. We did get 1 pumpkin, a handful of beans, a couple of meals with corn on the cob and we're still getting a few tomatoes. On our to do list is getting the soil tested and then if we can keep the goat out of the garden we should do much better with our fall crops and next years.
My summer, other than wrangling the children and basic animal care has been spent getting ready for Christmas at the gallery (check out their link to the right!). I have completed 25 stockings, and about 75 ornaments to sell there. Fingers crossed because that's going toward our Disney vacation in January! I still have some special order stockings to complete and of course gifts for family but that should be a breeze after all that other knitting!
New Ornaments this year! The tall ones hold Hershey miniatures and will also hold a gift card nicely, and the ones on their belly will hold small jewelry or a Hershey kiss.
The Christmas tree design is new also
The standard ornaments
