Free Range Paradise

It's been too long again.  I have gotten behind on my posts.  It has been a very busy holiday season around here.  All is well, just crazy busy schedules.  One of the many projects hubby and son and have completed lately included removing leaves for a dear friend from church.  I asked them to please save and bag the leaves so we could empty them into the chicken yards.  I was so excited when they came home with a LOT of bags!

The chickens are in heaven enjoying scratching and pecking through the piles of leaves.  I still have more to put into the 3 run areas I have, but they have a lot in there already and they are loving it!  I can't free range them due to the population of neighborhood dogs that frequent our property.  It was like bringing the forest to them.  It is almost as good as them getting to free range for right now.  It is helping to keep them occupied and from getting bored and picking on one another.  It's also a wonderful substrate that will compost well in the run areas.  I have 7 juvenile roosters growing up and the barnyard has been in quite a tiff lately.  We will hopefully cull a few roosters this weekend and I hope to get 6 or more pullets rehomed (plus one rooster) very soon!

We are up to 57 chickens right now and that is just a few too many.  We had 3 separate hatches this past year that added 13 new chickens to the flock but 7 of them were roosters!  There is more peace when there are not so many.  Two of my three run areas have a good amount of chickens but my main run area has 41 and that is just a few too many.  Rehoming the 7 and culling a few will help a lot to restore some peace.

I need to get back to a regular schedule again and I still hope to have more informative and specific posts.  I will begin my regular homeschool curriculum reviews again soon.  I believe my first one is due in the first week of January.  Blessings to you as we prepare to begin a new year.

Friends

Little Bug just LOVES to draw and she is so good at it!  She just turned 7 and has been drawing like this for years.  She loves to tell stories with her drawings.  This is a picture of her with her friends from church.  I always say she will be an illustrator and possibly write her own books.  She just drew this picture and I wanted to share it.  I have gotten so behind on my blog posts due to our holiday schedule and I just wanted to stop by and say a quick hello.

I promised myself I was going to take a year off and rest from my Crew reviews, but alas, I really do enjoy it so much that I decided to make a go of it again and try much harder at not signing up for too many reviews.  I really got quite overwhelmed at times last year.  As always I will try harder to create more non-sponsored posts with better content.  I really need to focus on the chickens and homeschooling since that is where my heart is.

May your day be richly blessed!

Mud Ducks

Ducks and mud, they go together, always!  It doesn't help that I indulge them with an extra container of water to play in.  My Pekin, Rosie, voices her great displeasure on days I don't fill their water pan.  They always have a bucket to dunk their heads in, but in the colder and freezing weather, no water pan.  She pouts.  Rowdy is a Rouen drake and he takes care of Rosie.  He was a very shy standoffish little one, but has come into his own the more he matures.  They are both only about 6 1/2 months old at this point.

 

 

Ducks love mud!

I had always wanted ducks but when I learned how messy they could be I decided maybe not right now.  I then settled I would get some Muscovies that are land ducks and really don't want/need the extra water.  When these ducks needed a home, I reluctantly agreed to take them and have fallen in love.  I had a chance to rehome them, but then couldn't part with them as I have become quite fond of them (mud and all!).

 

Rosie has been giving us beautiful, large eggs (more like extra jumbo) for months now.  They are seasonal layers, more so than chickens, but she's been laying almost non-stop so far.  The last week or so it has been almost every other day so I wonder if she is going to take a break for the winter.  If you have considered getting ducks, just do your research on which breeds would be best for you and then just do it!