Spring - for real this time!

I'm sure hoping this beautiful weather is here to stay. I'm on the front porch as I type this, watching the antics of the various animals. Perfect! The field is freshly plowed with red bud trees blooming in the background; crops are coming up in the raised beds- peas, strawberries, beets, and lettuce are coming up nicely.Peking Ducks hanging out under the redbud trees. The picture below is one of our black giants that has moved into the duck pen to (fingers crossed) hatch some more Peking eggs so we don't have to purchase ducklings this year.

On the Mcmurray Hatchery order we lost a total of 12 chickies in the 1st 3 days. Mcmurray is a great hatchery though with awesome customer service, we received our replacement chicks on March 29th. They're doing great- the postoffice called as soon as they arrived this time- 6:00 am, and they were home and warm shortly after.

This little peep is 4 weeks old. I'm really looking forward to the Polish growing up- so funny looking! Below is all the older ones in the brooder coop.

Also in the coop, a guinea has been laying her eggs. She may start trying to sit them- she had her male marching back and forth across the coop today while she set.

Here are our 3 Ancona Ducks, neat pets but definitely not the size of the Pekings. Hard to justify using them for meat.

The goat situation is mostly under control. I'm still not able to rotate grazing as I would like, but we'll get there. Hopefully the weather will be more cooperative now.

Here's Roscoe, chilling as usual-just wishing he had someone to play head-butt with. His new partner is below, Flash. As soon as he's big enough, they'll get to hang out together.

Here is the rest of the herd. Chipper has gone to his new home and one of Scarlet's went there as well. We're keeping what we have left. Rosemary will get a year off of breeding, we'll breed her doe, Sage, to Flash for Nigerian kids and Ebony (Scarlet's doeling). Scarlet and Petunia will be bred to Roscoe. We should have PLENTY of milk next year and I'm hoping to start making soap and such with it.

And of course, there's Dinkey. He's getting some out-of-paddock-time to help BeepBeep keep the grass mowed. He comes running when he hears me come out- just in case I have nibbles for him.

We suffered another disappointment with the rabbits. Foxy delivered 3 kits that were dead when I found them the next morning, She didn't even put them in the nest box. I'm really not sure how to convince rabbits to be good moms. We're trying again with Cleo, but may be out of the Silver Fox business if it doesn't go any better. For rabbits- they don't reproduce like rabbits.

So that gets us up to date- time to enjoy more of this sunshine!