rachels.haven's Journal

[Deecarter]

Hi out there! Normally I don't really care to share much and would much rather hear about others' adventures, but I'm having a lapse of normal judgement, so I think I'm going to start my thread. I've kept yard birds of various forms for a long time, but just started keeping rabbits, and when writing up pedigrees you need a rabbitry name, so this year when I decided to start breeding rabbits in earnest we became Firebird Gardens. We are very much not a farm, unfortunately. We live in a suburb of Detroit, on an acre that I've filled with fruit trees and vines and bushes and a large, fenced in vegetable garden, and every year the lady muscovy stuff our yard with more ducklings than I want to count. I typically put male ducklings in the freezer by 16 weeks and the female ducklings get sold to others who have had losses the previous winter or who are just getting started. The beef duck is great, but I really love my drake Elvis, and Cocoa is not so bad a character, just a little chubby and lazy. The girls are pinchy and huffy and all obsessed with eggs to the point of having little personality, so they typically don't get names, but I definitely know who they are. This year I kept 5 females back. Two are solid chocolate to go with my drake Cocoa, and two are cream pied, one is lavender pied. Elvis carries dilute genes, so his ducklings wind up fun and surprising colors.

We also breed red English Orpington chickens. They are currently mostly preoccupied laying eggs and fighting with the pilgrim geese through the fence, so there's not much to talk about them right now. They're a great meat and egg breed for this far north, although I admit, I always make sure they have at least 10 hours of light and food and water always in the shed so they stay fat and lay all year after molt. This is my first year lighting the shed. For the last few years the hens got skinny in the winter, so I'd worm them and just pray they'd make it. This year I decided to try lengthening the days with a single puck LED so they'd have more time to eat and drink, and lo and behold, my birds stayed nice and fat, and after molt, they resumed laying at a decent rate. We also have a 4 gallon horizontal chicken nipple bucket with an aquarium heater in it so they never go without clean water, ducks or no ducks. That whole setup is sitting in a stainless steel stock feed pan, so said ducks don't turn my shed into a slop house and frostbite heaven when they get bored.

My mini rexes came into the picture two years ago when I decided I wanted something that actually let me hold it. And I'm allergic to cats, and minorly allergic to dogs, so something else was going to have to fill the void. I got a broken black doe with fantastic fur quality from my Mom, turned her into a sort of house pet (I despise frozen water bottle and crock season that much). Later I bred her to one of my mom's very nice bucks, and got the black doe (we call her Apple) I currently have. Much later I got a very nice breeding pair of red mini rexes from my Mother, who needed the cage space.

At the moment, both of my does live indoors. Kits raised inside with my two preschoolers running around wind up pretty much bombproof and are very handleable for showing (how do you not constantly hold baby rabbits that live in the house?) so the does will probably stay in for now, at least until the weather warms.

My bucks, I'm not sure what I will do with them. Right now they are in due to winter, but I'd like to have an outdoor setup later, at least in the garage. Probably going to build a cage rack and tuck it away back with the rest of my animal stuff. My red buck, who the kids have named Benjamin Buck Bunny (oops, didn't name him fast enough) will not potty train, so he's going back to a wire cage, which I don't normally like looking at in my house, but this is an exception in the name of sanitation. He's sweet and loves the kids and to be handled, but potties absolutely everywhere in his cage EXCEPT for his litter box no matter where you move it, so in the name of sanitation, I think he needs to be housed like a proper rabbit, not whatever it is I've turned the females into. My other buck is a tiny black otter (Beaman Buck Bunny, also lost that naming war) and he does potty train, but does not enjoy people. Both bucks are upstairs in my front room due to some husband related de-contstruction that was going on last night in my basement where I was housing them for the winter away from the does. We have bunnies due the first few days of February, and man, I've missed that. I grew up with parents breeding meat rabbits, so there were always babies around (and they just in the last 8 years or so switched to mini rex). My kids are terrified of bald baby bunnies because they're not cute like ducklings or chicks when they "hatch". The kids also think rabbits lay eggs, and for now I think I'll leave it that way.

We have geese too. They are pilgrims, and I might be selling them when I get to the end of my patience with them if my mom doesn't want them. This fighting with all other birds thing is really not fun for them. They deserve to be walking the yard, picking at what's left of our grass, and instead the breeding season has rendered them pen birds. This is our first year with them, and normally the yard is fairly peaceful right now, but the geese want to fight through the fence and the chickens are loving it ALL DAY LONG (what's the deal with those dense, crotchety, war-mongering, ridiculously fluffy hens?!). Honestly, if the chickens weren't the ones making the eggs my family prefers I'd probably just have my muscovy duckers and I definitely wouldn't have the geese.

I'm thinking of adding a pair of dairy goats to our mix. Our township allows it, I can build a decent sized shed for them, and I've got plenty of time to care for them every day, but I've got an entire fence line of 30 foot trees to clear all by myself so I can replace the old field fencing and put up a goat pen to keep the goats out of my fruit trees. The husband is not yet on board with the goats, so hiring to do the clearing is not in the budget. Last year I did about 20 feet of it, which came out to be about a dozen large sumac trees to burn (yes, I CAN do it!). This year I might get a chainsaw, but for now I'm using a bow saw and a hatchet. Unfortunately we only burned 2/3 of the wood before the snow came and now we have one of our hundreds of groundhogs living under the pile. I'm probably going to enlarge our burn pit and just move the pile into it and burn it one of these days when I get a chance. I wish I could clear faster, but I can't take down trees with kids in the yard, so last fall I used their TV time to do trees every day, and I'd do one or two per day, saw them up into light enough pieces, and drag them back to the pile for stacking. The kids are no longer into TV, so we'll see what happens this year. I might have to be a weekend warrior and make DH watch them. Maybe I'll negotiate for some budget and get some help. It won't be cheap, is the main problem. It's hard work, the property is very long, and felling trees makes lots and lots of burn wood. I'm definitely rounding up what I've already done because those trees are trying to return with a vengeance, as sumac trees tend to do.

Well, that's that right now. I'll get pictures of everything later. My two year old broke the camera as his major accomplishment this week and we're not smart phone users, so I either get to use my kindle's camera, which comes out grainy, or maybe try to turn my laptop webcam into a camera somehow, which I'm less optimistic about. I think I'll just get a new camera...but that takes time, and I just used up all of my "I feel like being on the computer" time for today already.

So hi out there, if anyone reads this! And sorry for the lack of photos.

I have a suggestion if and when you decide to get goats. I think the Nigerian Dwarfs would work great with your set up and they are small goats and easier to handle. I plan on getting some maybe next year and selling my registered nubians because they are big goats and a bit more than I can handle by myself. There are also miniature nubians that you might consider. Good luck on those trees. I can't imagine how you do that!

 

[rachels.haven]

I have a suggestion if and when you decide to get goats. I think the Nigerian Dwarfs would work great with your set up and they are small goats and easier to handle. I plan on getting some maybe next year and selling my registered nubians because they are big goats and a bit more than I can handle by myself. There are also miniature nubians that you might consider. Good luck on those trees. I can't imagine how you do that!

What feels like a million years later I've settled on lamancha goats with a subset of a dwarf herd...and a nubian or two that I'm not sure what to do with. I've had lots of fun...um, "deciding".

 

[Deecarter]

What feels like a million years later I've settled on lamancha goats with a subset of a dwarf herd...and a nubian or two that I'm not sure what to do with. I've had lots of fun...um, "deciding".

I'm learning too, and it can be stressful, but I love this animal babies.

 

[Mike CHS]

The "deciding" is what makes it rewarding for us amateurs.

 

[rachels.haven]

It looks like you're not allowed to install your own ac in Mass beyond say, a portable or window unit. But it also looks like the state has a program that makes utility company give you some compensation for installing energy efficient AC...maybe it won't be so bad. We're going to do it.

 

[Bruce]

It has cooled off now so you don't need A/C

 

[rachels.haven]

I'm not concerned about it, but today the second floor began falling through in the back half of the barn. In the front half I have 50 bales. I'd worry more if it was up there, lol.
Here we are in the front half of the barn, doing a photo shoot of Lace, who is STILL here. She wants to be a show goat. Also, I found a hernia with intestine in it on her buckling on Saturday, so he went to the meat buyer asap before it could cause him grief, and she is now on my milk string. She only spilled about a third of the milk and kicked the bucket 4 or 5 times, lol. Butthead. But she is pretty. (Ignore my feet and yoga pants and the dirty stall please. I'm so glad no one is in there currently). EVERYTHING is perfect about her now but her attitude and scur.

 

[Bruce]

Nice farming footwear there Rachel

Sounds like that barn really does want to come down. I imagine if parts start falling other parts will soon follow since there is a shift in support from the displacement. So sad but sometimes it is the best choice.

 

[rachels.haven]

I'd love it to stay up until I got it taken down, but yes, it is going. It looks like the foundation is big rocks they picked from the field (then later covered with a thin layer of cement) and they may have mounded in the back with dirt or manure and with the heavy rains we've been getting the dirt appears to be washing away and the rear building wall appears to be leaning more and more to the left and taking half the second floor with it. The side you'd see from the house is the good one. They redid half of the wall with the doors and it is trying and taking more and more of the weight. The buried north wall and the short west side are working on their two weeks notice. I stay out of it most of the time. If the building falls, the cats will get out (I mean, unless it like gets stomped on by a giant...), we will be needing to clean up and recover what we can, then schedule the rest of the demo and cleanup asap. We'll be okay. I keep thinking I should probably move my milk stand soon. That would be the hardest thing in there to replace...but I guess we don't have a lot else in there.

Moses wants the building to fall sooner rather than later because I got his retrieving dummy stuck on the roof. Now who's the dummy?

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

Can you get a shed or something to store the stuff you have in there now until you can get a new barn built? The fewer times you have to go inside is fewer chances it can fall on you. Maybe get all the stuff out (and cats) and push it down with a tractor since it's coming down already?