Sunday, January 17, 2016

Hana is 100 days; we have ducks and guinea pigs

First, we got two guinea pigs: Hamster and Golden. Someone was moving and couldn't keep them and so we were asked to take them. Eug has a thing for rodents so here we are. They're pretty cute. We'll get them to work on the farm somehow. No free lunches here! Wait. We're all about free lunches. We'll let the piggies contribute poopy hay. 


Not in order of importance: Hana is 100 days old. 100 mostly very good days. We are so grateful for her, and we celebrated with dumplings.


We also made the carport thingy into a makeshift duck enclosure using scrap wood, and got 7 muscovy ducklings from 2 farms an hour away in the northern suburbs. The temp in the northern suburbs was over 41C. With that kind of heat, we just had to try to get the ducks as quickly as possible then make a run for it.


We're hoping that muscovy ducks will be quite hardy and provide us with both eggs and meat (You ask: do we know how to kill a large clawed duck? uhh no. Not yet. But we'll learn). They're also good foragers, so the enclosure is just for them while they're young, to teach them some lessons about home, then they'll free range. In the meantime we're trying to fix our fence with our neighbour, so that their chickens are separate from our ducks and our ducks are safe from dogs. Our first year seems to be a story about fencing. Fencing fencing fencing.

Even though they're from 2 different farms, they immediately became their own ridiculously tiny herd. 

1 comment:

Danny said...

Yay for 100 days and for new animals--but mostly I just love looking at your summery farm! We're all ice-bound here, without even any real snow. And I look forward to duck updates!