The fields are growing thick with grass and the weather is staying consistently warm. I am so very glad that Spring has finally decided to arrive! I know that the girls are loving it too, since we can go outside pretty regular now. They love playing outside and visiting the horses. A lot has been going on at the farm and I figured that I would give an update, since I can't remember the last time I did one.

We tore down the little red barn next to the house, it was a sad sad sight, but it had to come down before it fell down and hurt someone. The good news is that we salvaged some of the exterior red pieces of wood and decorated the office and med room in the main barn with it. It looks amazing and so rustic!

We still have several really nice horses that are looking for homes. We adopt anywhere in the US, so if you are looking for a horse to love, check out some of ours, here.

The goats are no longer coming into the house at night. They are outside 24/7, doing great, and enjoy it. The girls and I take them for walks as often as we can. They are both learning to walk on a leash, I hope to take them to a couple shows in June, but we will see if I can get them ready in time. I have no idea what I am doing so we will either rock the show or at least provide the entertainment.


Speaking of the goats, I decided to name my little hobby farm Twinkle Little Farm. Big Sister is learning Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Old McDonald and sometimes mixes up the words. She was singing one day and said "Twinkle Little Farm" and I just fell in love with it. So, because my daughters were such a big part of my decision to get goats and more specifically Nigerian Dwarf Goats, I decided that it was only right that the girls be a part of naming the farm.

My geese decided they wanted to sit on their eggs, so I let them. I wasn't sure if they would actually hatch, but I figured I would let them try. Well, Mr. Goose is fertile and all my Girly Geese are great brooders because I now have three little goslings under a heat lamp on my porch. I was afraid they would get snatched by wildlife so I decided they were safer on the porch then outside with mom. There probably should have been 6 of them, but 2 were either squished or attacked by the geese and the one egg was busted before it was baking. The girls love playing with the goslings, Little Sister is a little too rough and I really have to watch so she doesn't squeeze their little necks too hard. Big Sister is great with them and I am pretty sure they love her too, or at least think she is "Mom."

We are still working on the new house, it seems to be taking FOREVER! I never knew how hard it was to find GOOD Contractors and good construction workers. I hope and pray we are in the house by Big Sister's 4th Birthday. Most of the drywall in the new section is in, so God willing I will be choosing paint next week. Any suggestions?

Wow, if I were a super blogger, I probably would have been able to split this post into several, but that is not how I roll, hehe!

God Bless and have a wonderful day dear followers!

All of my birds are fully feathered now, and I decided I would highlight one every once and a while to teach my readers a little bit about the birds that I own and my experience with raising them.

The Embden Geese are by far my favorite bird that we bought this year, so I chose to highlight them first! I had gotten a new camera for Mother's Day, so I was able to document their growth pretty regularly with photos. In order to keep this post from getting too long, I've selected just a few for your viewing pleasure!

5/1 - Embden Goslings the day we brought them home!

5/2 - I had them outside in a pen enjoying the grass and nice weather.

5/3 - Into the water they go!

5/18 - Growing like a weed.

5/22 - Geese are natural grazers and boy do mine LOVE their grass!

6/5 - Feathers covering about 50% of their body   7/12 - Fully feathered!

Since the day we brought them home, I have been feeding all of my waterfowl Purina Flock Raiser. The geese and ducks also have access to pasture grass. Here and there I try feeding different veggies, they all seemed to enjoy head lettuce that I let them sample from the garden. On days where they aren't allowed to graze on grass, they require more grain, but when I let them out to graze they eat considerable less grain at night. When the geese were small I would keep grain in front of them 24/7, however, as they got larger I changed to twice a day, and now their main diet is pasture with grain only at night. The main reason why I chose to feed grain at night, was to entice them to stay close to home and go back into their pen at night. This method worked really well and at times they are waiting at the pen before I even get out to feed!

I personally LOVE the sound of all my birds, but I thoroughly enjoy my honking geese! When young, the geese made a cheeping noise, but now they are full on honkers. They are very smart and know me by sight as well as by my voice. I think they even know what I sound like when I come out of the house because they will start honking even before I open the porch door. For the most part they are only vocal when they see me with food, someone approaches them, or a car pulls in the drive, otherwise they are quiet around the farm.

Most people think geese are mean tempered birds that will hiss and chase people. My Embden geese are complete opposite, unless you are a cat, they don't seem to like the barn cats too much. They are very curious and friendly birds, mine will nibble on my clothing while I fill their water buckets and I can stroke their necks and backs while they drink. They will also follow me around if I call and scatter back down to the barn if I scold them. I would have to say that the Embden geese by far have the most personality of the flock.

These geese love to jump in the water for a swim. I keep several containers of water around so that they have access to swimming water. They don't seem to want to stay in all day, they just like to jump in for a quick cool down and then back to grazing they go. They are also much less messy with their water than the ducks.

The Embden Geese seem to really hardy when it comes to hot weather as well. We have had temperatures 110*F+ and they seem to have no problems with it at all. They do pant and require more water, but are very good at finding shade and just lay around until temperature drop in the evenings. Since we just got them in May, I don't have any personal experience with them in cold conditions, but I imagine they will do just fine as well.

I hope you enjoyed my introduction to Embden Geese! These are great farm and family birds and I would encourage anyone interested in getting a goose, to choose an Embden!

Have a GREAT Day dear followers!

Bantams - 4 Silver Laced & 2 Gold Laced Wyandottes and 2 Arucana

Okay somebody shake me! My crazy poultry obsession strikes again. Spring is a very hard time of year for me. Why? Because all of the farm stores have tubs of cute chicks and ducklings and such for sale. I've purposely tried to avoid going into these stores but have failed. I originally went in to see if they had ducklings. I've lost all my ducks and REALLY miss using duck eggs. Well, I ended up with 8 chicks, but I still wanted ducks so I decided to check another store. I think I should enter some kind of support group... PAA, Poultry Addicts Anonymous... By the time I got home, I had acquired a total of 18 chicks, 4 geese and 9 ducklings. Somebody shake me!

2 Rouen, 3 Pekin, 3 Khaki, & a mystery duckling 2 African Geese, and 2 Toulouse Geese

Here is the BEST part, we are in the process of moving (same property, just different part of the farm) AND I have no where built at the new place to house my new charges. Currently, they are living in large troughs on my covered porch and go outside in exercise pens during the day. I also have a kiddie swimming pool that I put the geese and ducklings in so that they get some swim time in every day. So, I am making it work and it's working well right now since they are small. I just have to plan and figure out my new Poultry pens at the new place before they outgrow the troughs.

Big Sister holding a Toulouse Gosling!

Like I said, somebody shake me. My CRAZY POULTRY OBSESSION STRIKES AGAIN!


Have a GREAT Day dear followers!

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Well, I just can't take it anymore! My digital camera is dead! The flash went out a couple months ago and I've resorted to either using my cell phone which doesn't take very high quality photos and produces mostly blurry pictures of my babies because they move around so much OR borrowing my mother in laws camera, which she uses on a regular basis so that is problematic in itself. I haven't been in the market for one for a while and I've never really researched digital cameras very much. Here is what I need in a digital camera:

1) The ability to take good quality photos indoors and outdoors.
2) The ability to take photos of moving objects (my kids) without parts of the photo coming in blurry.
3) The ability to take good quality videos with sound.
4) A camera that isn't going to break my pocketbook, has to be reasonably priced.

Anyone out there have any suggestions? I'm getting desperate! Little Sister is already 4 months old and I don't think I have even 1/3 of the amount of photos of her as I did Big Sister! There are so many moments I want to capture and right now I'm just SO limited! Please give me ideas!

Or if you are from a digital camera company or sell digital camera and need a reviewer I would be MORE than happy to test one out! PLEASE help me!

On a totally unrelated note, something has been killing my birds! I've lost all but 2 hens, a rooster, a Peacock, a Royal Palm Turkey, an African Goose, a Pekin Drake, and a Rouin Duck.  This is So not fair! I need to build again and make them varmint proof somehow! Ugh, this has been a rough Spring/Summer for my birds! To top it off, my Swedish Duck was laying on 11 eggs, they are all "half baked" and I put them in with my Goose hoping she will adopt them, but we will see. I'll keep you posted. After we lost our farm dog Joey, it seems like my birds are just not safe anymore! Good farm dogs are hard to find and hard to replace! RIP Joey we miss you!

Thanks for the help dear followers and have a GREAT weekend!
Kelsey

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Our backyard - horses hanging out as a storm passes us by.

There's nothing like a couple weeks in the "city" to help me realize just how much I LOVE living in the country. The only traffic I have to worry about is my chicken posse crowding around my feet as I get them their scratch. The only "noise" I have deal with is my Goose's honk if she spots anyone outside. My skies are not tainted with city lights, the stars are the brightest lights I see at night. The paths I follow are not paved but imprinted with hoof prints in the sand. God has blessed my family and blessed our farm and I sure do love them all!

Yeah, I'm Real Country!

Have a great night dear followers!
Kelsey

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So, March 21st I did some "Spring Cleaning" out in our barn. I hadn't been out there so quite a while, since before sometime in October I believe. My dear sweet husband has been taking care of the animals while I've been out of commission. While I was still taking care of them myself I had started letting my chickens free range outside of their coop and run, but I would pen them up over night. Well, my dear sweet husband just let them run loose ALL winter. They seem to have tried roosting in EVERY possible spot in the barn, leaving a nice big mess EVERYWHERE, but I can't blame him he  a great job keeping them fed and watered all winter. Since we've been having warm days I been itching to clean up around the barn. I've been taking Big Sister for walks and recently decided to do a little cleaning here and there when I could find time to get out there on my own.

On the 21st I was able to get out for a long period of time. I bathed our pony, both miniature horses, fixed one of the auto waterers so that it wouldn't leak everywhere, distributed salt and mineral blocks, cleaned up the duck area and filled up their kiddie pool. I'm not sure why but I have an obsession with poultry and ducks/waterfowl are my favorite! Unfortunately, the other day I lost my Pekin Duck, however I still have the Pekin Drake, a Black Swedish Duck, and a Rouen Duck. I know this is probably going to sound odd, however, my African Goose and my Royal Palm turkey tom also live with the Ducks.

After I finished filling up the kiddie pool the ducks and the goose were extremely excited and jumped right in. Normally, I empty the kiddie pool before winter so the bird don't get stuck in the pool and free to death. So, it was like I had given a child chocolate after not having it for a long time. Here are several photos of the goose that I took with my cell phone!

3/21/11

3/21/11 - Female African Goose

3/21/11

I just love watching them play in the water!
Hope you enjoyed the photos dear followers!
Kelsey