It was snacking on the necks of 8 ducklings and two chickens. It looked at her and stayed perfectly still. She ran to the house to alert me.

I accompanied her to the chicken coop where it still was happily munching the birds. “Hand me that board” I told her as I crept closer to whacking range. First I snapped a photo:

For a long while there was a stare down between me and the mink, then I went at it with the 4×4 board and failed. It still didn’t run off so I grabbed a kitty litter bin that was nearby and set it to catch the bugger. I managed to get it to walk in my bin and as I tried to close it in it jumped over my hand and took off. If I only had a hand gun…

Guess it’s time to bait some traps & clean up some dead birds before we take the girls to the town easter egg hunt. Then maybe we can buy a few more ducks while we are out and about…

Poor ducklings

The post Wildlife Encounters on the Homestead: The American Mink appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

This is probably why farmer Grover gives me an amused grin and remarks “you can’t believe everything you read” when we are discussing farm things. It’s true, I’m an information seeker and I tend to learn best when “in the throes” of something. It’s worked out well for me until recently.

Becoming the caretaker of baby lambs has thrown me right into the abyss of unfamiliar animal husbandry, so I googled and asked people about what could possibly be going on with the youngest lamb we’ve taken on. The verdict was grim… He’s probably septic from an umbilical infection or he’s got a white muscle disease or it’s pneumonia… or he didn’t get “first milk” aka colostrum so he’s destined to die… “oh their will to live is very weak” if they are depressed they just die…
I was seriously considering taking him to a vet to be put down based upon the grim outlook based upon my research. It was a hair pulling two weeks of us bottle feeding him, searching for answers and trying to figure out how I could help him- then it hit me.

I can’t control this.

Nobody likes to lose animals and nobody likes to find out they could have done something more to help after it’s too late… but running in circles grasping at straws isn’t doing anyone any good either. So, I told myself we would just go with our gut, really pay attention to the lamb’s cues and do our best.

For two weeks he was near death, he peed & pooped himself, he wouldn’t stand or walk but he would eat and was perky. I was torn- should he be put down, is he suffering? A knowledgeable friend came by and put me at ease, he wasn’t suffering and beyond help. He was alert and he was mostly normal, maybe lacking in key vitamins. He needed to build leg strength back up, he needed more time and he needed to decide if he had the fight in him or not. Here he was a week ago:

Two days ago I stood him up to have a pee and walked away for a moment and he just shuffled behind me. Weak legged shuffling but progress… and his little tail wag- so sweet!

So what Sam the lamb has reminded me is that control is a maddening illusion. Life and death plays out the way it is meant to regardless of how “in control” we might appear. All we can offer is our best effort, the rest is out of our hands.

The post What Sam the lamb taught me… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Me and the girls are really getting practice with recognizing when it’s time to take a break and to decompress. Being cooped up in a house full of boxes with moving day anxiety looming is getting the best of ALL of us. They are being allowed to watch the portable DVD player in their bed/ nest at will these last few days because, amazingly, it unwinds them enough to takes naps (which they never normally do). I’m eating lots of chocolate & sweets to decompress : /

I sat down to pay the bills this week and realized, we have no income to pay those bills with yet… Nathan’s last pay check comes this week and is basically spent already on the bills from the last two weeks. Grayson had his last insured doctors appointment this week too. My kids will soon be uninsured!  We didn’t sell our house, so we are still having to pay the mortgage and the utilities on the house until it sells. Things are getting real in terms of lack of security but I know the anxiety and minor panic will subside and that things will work themselves out soon. Just a few more days till all the fantastic parts begin.

The girls have next to nothing left out for playing with and they’ve already gotten bored of climbing and jumping off the stacks of boxes. Now they want constant attention and to be entertained which isn’t so easy when you are bouncing a teething baby on your hip (a 6 mo 19lb baby!) while packing up the house plus policing backyard turkeys and chickens. We are just doing chores, packing and kind of taking in the day-to-day happenings with the animals & with nature till moving day is here. Everly noticed something kind of cool while doing her plant watering chore today:

Our injured turkey is healing up nicely, we just discovered signs of a few more “first time” eggs from our new hens and our compost pile clutch of chicken eggs are still warm and possibly growing babies.

Can you believe I found a whopping 15 eggs in the compost bin yesterday? After candling them I came up with 5 that might be developing (they had resemblance of a shadow inside that moved when the egg was spun). In another few days we might be able to candle and check for forming blood vessels. The girls are kind of excited about the prospects of chicks hatching from our compost bin, though, I have no idea how we’ll move a clutch of eggs and a broody hen that are inside the compost bin without disruption. Ideas?

The post We’re leaving the suburbs for farm life next week! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Also, my new chicks are integrating to the main flock right now and we are preparing to move in just a few days so our chicken coop situation is in transition. I also figured the stress of the transition was possibly impacting the egg output from the hens.

Today there was quite a squawk fest out of the chicken coop and my girls anxiously ran out to collect the eggs. However, there were no eggs to be found. So we went about our garden and backyard chores. I opened the compost bin to get some fresh compost for one of the plants and I left it open for the chickens to scratch around in since were getting ready to move and we have no intention of taking cooking compost with us. I had the compost bin open earlier in the week for the same reason but husbands who work outside the homestead (he has just 3 work days left!) miss lots of strategic decision making and close the compost bin back up thinking they are being helpful.

Anyway, after a while we went back inside had some cold water ate breakfast and we heard the chickens squawking again. We went out to try to collect eggs and once again there were none to be found.

They always say if you’re missing eggs, go on an egg hunt.

All week we’ve been hunting around the yard in strange corners, under bushes and behind various things to see if we could find any hidden eggs, we found nothing. After the recent squawk fest we noticed the Rhode Island Red hanging out at the base of the open composter. Just out of curiosity I bent down and peeked my head in the composter…

I found two Rhode Island Reds and one of my Americauna hens sitting on what seems to be a pretty large clutch of eggs inside the composter, on top of the compost.

Now, assuming the eggs have been there for a while….

1. Are they cooked?

Compost bins are HOT, deathly hot. The hens laying in there were panting up a storm. I put a bowl of water in there for them because they didn’t seem interested in budging. The temperature read shows the air inside the compost bin at 85 degrees and the soil temperature is the same since it’s pretty dried out.

2. Are the hens broody and sensing they should be hatching these eggs?

Remember my 4 new roosters? They have been seen this week jumping then hens (as in sexing them up). Now I think their immediate success in mating is probably unlikely but on the off chance that they are successful and these hens are broody… should we let nature take its course and see if we get baby chicks?

Based upon the heat of the composter these eggs probably aren’t going to be edible, so if they are fertile I guess it’s less waste right? But we are moving in just a few days… Wont the move disrupt a broody hen’s hatching process, especially for a first time brooder?

What do you think?

The post Tales from the backyard flock: Are they cooked or do they have chicks in them? appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

1. I wasn’t prepared for how social they’d be towards people.
2. I didn’t believe that they were truly NOT smart creatures.
3. I hadn’t realized that they fight, like roosters do.
4. I didn’t expect to be treating the wounds and checking on them as vigilantly as I do with my kids.

Right now our turkeys are too large for their brooder, but too small to live out with the chickens… and we move in a week… so our current turkey run setup isn’t very high tech or secure. As a result the juvenile chickens keep getting in the turkey run and somehow the turkeys keep getting out and mixing with the chickens. This mean our turkeys are getting pecked each morning until we come out and separate them again.

This morning was particularly bad. One of our Bronze Broad-breasted Turkeys was quite bloody and is missing most of the skin on the top of her head! I came inside and told Nathan, “looks like I’ll be whipping up some kind of healing salve for the turkey’s head today in addition to packing up the house!”. It truly is NEVER a dull moment around here. 

So, the injured turkey is confined and I’ve rinsed her wound out. She’s not happy to have it rinsed, she’s rubbing it on her back feathers while also scratching it with her foot. It appears to be really bothering her. I’ve got to run Everly to school, then I can come home to rinse the turkey again and figure out how to make a wound dressing for her.

I’m thinking I’ll make a clay wound dressing with bentonite clay and some essential oils to keep it protected, though I doubt it will say on her head since she’s scratching so much.

In other turkey news, we are “tom watching”! Basically we are pondering the sex of the turkey poults. It’s getting to the point that through observation of appearance and behavior, you can begin to figure out which are male and which are female. This tiny tom is posing for you… Are you impressed?

Addie was impressed! Note: you can see the injured bronze’s head just in front of the tom in this photo.

I went ahead and let some of our neighbors on Facebook know that our roosters would be gone soon. I figured the unmistakable crowing from one rooster plus the somewhat mistakable crowing of the other three are getting some neighborly attention. What do you think? Please don’t mind the mess and the bald yard… 18 chickens & 6 turkeys will do that to a small space.

The post Updates on the massive poultry flock in the tiny suburban backyard. appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.