Duck, Geese, Gardens, Growth!

Ducks!

Here is one of our brown ducks! The girl duckling wasn't walking so well on day 1 but I read that their cartilege needs to firm up and she is walking much better on day 3--they are 3 days old! SO tiny!

Geese!

Here are the kids holding the baby goslings. They are SO soft and they webbed feet are so much fun!

Here is my son petting the gosling--he is so sweet and gentle!

A month ago we ordered a pair of geese, ducks and turkeys. The geese are Embden Geese (the all white ones--they are good for eating and taking care of the weeds), and the ducks are Indian Runner ducks (chocolate colored--they are as good as any hen at laying, also eat weeds, and don't fly away--they stand straight upright--they run really fast and are so funny looking!), and the turkeys are standard bronze turkeys (bronze and white are the two turkey most usually eaten at Thanksgiving--however I got the "standard" bronze. Here is a picture of the day-old poults:The turkeys eaten at thanksgiving are bred to be huge, so huge they can't mate naturally anymore without human assistance! So I got the standard bronze so they could breed naturally. I also liked their coloring. Their brown feathers will become irradescant. The white poults (baby turkeys) we already have are the non-standard huge ones...but they are thanksgiving dinner so they arn't needed for breeding. Speaking of them--that brings me to the next topic--

Growth!

Turkeys are the fastest growing bird--already they are the size of small hens! This picture was taken days ago and they are much bigger now!

The baby chicks are getting SO big! They almost have all their feathers! We have to start serioulsy thinking about building their chicken coop.

We let them run around when we are outside--its a lot of fun.

This is my turkey getting ready to peck the camera!

Gardens!

I am getting ready to start my first garden. The first big step was to creat a compost heap. We pay $45 to the trash people every month to have them come pick up our trash. It would be nice to burn, recycle, and compost the rest to save that money every month! So this is the start. Compost is the best thing for any garden. When it done "aging" (1 year or so) a garden needs no other fertilizer. The "recipe" I'm using is:

a layer of straw (3 inches), then a layer of manure, they a layer of kitchen scraps/weeds/leaves, etc, then a layer of straw and keep going. The straw keeps air going through the compost. The heap doesn't smell because there is air in it and the chemicals (nitrogen, etc) are properly balanced. Here is a picture of the work in progress--this is day 1 but it's certainly not done--I had to stir it all together too--which is hard work but I'm glad for the purposeful exercise (am I the only one who can't stand running on a treadmill? I like to know I am going somewhere and getting something done... :)

And for once I am really appreciative of the horse! For the longest time I've felt the horse is just too expensive of an animal to keep (we're talking $150 alone in food each month! Not to mention shoes, vet bills--thank God none yet!--etc). But now I have serious "poop appreciation!" Her pen, which we will be turning into my garden once we build her new pen, has the most fertile ground! It is unlike any other plot of land on the property! Underneath the soil is a rich deep dark brown--moist and crumbly to touch (basically looks and feels like potting soil!) anything would grow there in a heartbeat! The problem will be beating the heat...I may not be able to get anything in the ground before the heat sets in. But that's ok-- the ground will only get better for fall!