The latest lambs look good.

I checked on all of them this morning and the little ewe lamb looked a little wan, so I reached out to gently poke her to stand up as I had yesterday and she jumped up, ran for her dam and immediately nursed.

If they can run from you, things are probably fine. And they both already figured out how to do that.  The new mother hasn’t cleared up all her placenta, but that is not so uncommon.  It’s just lying around, and the black and tan ewe herself doesn’t look bad and was eating with typical vigor when I showed up.

These lambs are still less than 24 hours old, but it looks good from here.

Duck Tales: Day Two

Well, our five ducklings made it through one night successfully.  They are a in bigger 4×4 brooding pen and there’s no straggler getting denied food or water.  They’ve all got good energy and nice down.  They are only a couple days old, though.  Most of the big changes start to happen around the one week mark.

We are initiating what I have to term the New Agrarian protocol with watering, as I’ve not seen anyone else on the internet follow such a process with new ducklings.  Other folks make their own waterers to prevent frequent fouling or swear up and down that their ducklings never hop in the water to play and poop in it.  Right now, for us, it’s easier to follow this system of 4x a day waterings with storebought waterer than to make something special to reduce watering frequency.  Thanks, random fellow agrarian on the internet!

Here’s their current brooding pen, it’s made from what used to be raised beds when we lived in suburbia and what will return to being raised beds when these little (mostly) gals grow out of it.

Brooding pen. Feeder on the left, obscured, and waterer on the right, also obscured. Such are the perils of cameraphoning your setup after the nighttime watering.

And here’s another blurry picture of the little flock.  Still learning how to use my fancy smrtfone.

And now it’s time to try to get myself to bed.  My own little girls are very circadian and keep long hours as the days lengthen and spring becomes summer.

A Trip to the Feed Store is just Ducky

So today we went down to one of the local feed stores to get ducklings.  It’s family run, less than five miles down the road, and it’s kind of like a PowerPuff Girls live action movie. Very chipper, confident young ladies running the place.  A knowledgeable and very professional girl who looked about ten or twelve was manning the chick zone.  She certainly knew her poultry breeds and how to handle the babies just fine.

If you live rural, you know that the feed stores generally put out baby poultry around this time of year.  The feed store had baby chicks, ducks, turkeys and geese.  All were in nice setups with plenty of light, starter, water and room to scamper around.  There was even a very sleepy duckling who had just hatched earlier this morning.  Anyway that was the chick zone.  Other times of the year other stuff is in there, but right now it’s all chicks, all the time.

First we got all the duck supplies– heat lamp, feeder/waterer, starter ration– and then we got the ducks.  Three Khaki Campbells and two Cayugas.  

And here they are!  The Cayugas are the black ones.

Probably once I find the receipt I will do a boring post about costs, but that’s for another day.  Time to go party with baby ducks!