Listen to the farm dog

This morning Rialey gave me another lesson in trusting the wisdom of my farm dog. I'd run out to the poultry pens to gather some baby turkeys for sale and heading back I noticed Ry wasn't with me. She was running up and down the pasture fence trying to get my attention.

Turns out that stupid turkey hen who jumps the fence every day to lay her egg had decided to go broody overnight on her nest on the other side of the fence. Judging by the pile of feathers, looks like something tried to take a chomp out of her. Luckily our hen was fine, if short a bit of fluff, but kudos to Ry for alerting me very clearly to the sight of a predator attack. Once I'd been made aware, she happily followed me and the turkey poults back to the house.

Bucket o'ducklings

Our ducks are getting old. We keep ducks here on the farm to sell their eggs. Unfortunately, our lady ducks are getting up there in the years and going though what I can only assume is the equivalent of ducky menopause. Despite the fact that we have many lady ducks out there and spring is the perfect time for a lady duck to do her ducky thing, we are only getting 1-2 eggs per day.

With that in mind, we set a couple dozen duck eggs in the incubator and waited the 28 days it takes to cook up baby ducklings. We didn't have the greatest hatch rate (again, old lady ducks), but we did get enough ducklings that we were able to sell a few and keep the bucket full you see above.

Originally, we were keeping them in the brooder with the baby turkey poults that hatched at the same time, but ducklings and other birds just don't mix well at that age. They have very different protein requirements, and baby ducks are just disgusting. They get food and water and poop just everywhere. Hence the duckling bucket. These little ladies moved out and are now living and doing their best to destroy one of the poultry pens until they get old enough to move in with the flock and start laying us some eggs!