Merry Christmas from Twelve Acres!

We wish you all a very merry Christmas and hope that your holiday was filled with lots of quality time spent with family and friends!

Here's a few pictures from our holiday!

 

 

Catching Up Birthdays

We celebrated Baby I's 2nd birthday back in September, and Little W's 4th birthday about a week ago. I can't believe how fast these little guys are growing up!

Our First Pig!

I'm really late posting this, but we added a new critter to the farm. We got a weanling New Hampshire pig a few months ago, and she's really growing fast! Here's a few pictures of her, as well as a video of her playing with the water hose:

Baby It's Cold Outside

A cold snap brought temperatures plummeting into the single digits, freezing everything and every body. The animals were kept snug and happy with plenty of hay and fresh water as often as possible, and the wonderful fireplace kept the main parts of the old farmhouse cozy.

Little W was fascinated by the dusting of snow we got. He can't wait to get more!

Christmas decorations make the house seem warmer.

The animals look forward to getting their ice broke throughout the day.

The cold provided the perfect excuse to relax with some Christmas movies.

Creepy Crawlies on the Farm

Recently we took the plunge and added some bugs to our farm. Worms, to be precise. We have red wrigglers, which honestly don't seem to be flourishing and that's been a little difficult to figure out just what we're doing wrong. So I'm not going to show you those, as there's just not much to see yet.

But the mealworms are doing fantastic! As gross as it is, I love these little nasties! They're so easy to take care of and propagate, and our numbers have probably more than tripled since we first started.

Watching them grow throughout their life cycle has been so interesting! And the kids really enjoy them too!

Soon we'll be able to start feeding these wonderfully nutritious snacks to our chickens and quail. They're going to love them! 

Bunny Farming

After selling most of the bunnies from our spring kindlings, we finally started building our new rabbit hutches.

We chose a nice, shady location on the west side of our chicken barn.

Having an idea in our heads, we got started, just building as we went with no clear plans.

We had lots of little helpers!

This was a perfect spot for the rabbits.

Protected from the scorching sun and crazy winds we have out here.

Some of our helpers liked to visit the nearby horses instead of working.

Installing the floor wire.

It's coming along great!

Our quality control team made sure it was kid-safe!

And here it is mostly complete, with some inhabitants. They seem to really like it, though I'm sure they miss all the space they had in the greenhouse. It was just far too hot for them in there.

Cordelia and Her Drake

After our duck population dwindled down to just one Rouen hen, I decided we better get some more so she wouldn't be so lonely. I found an ad on Craigslist for a couple of ducks in need of a new home.

Meet Cordelia, a Cayuga mix:

And her drake, a white Pekin:

Unfortunately, we lost sweet Cordelia to a possum attack, but thankfully we'd incubated some of her eggs shortly after acquiring her. We have some beautiful ducklings from her, to now keep the Pekin drake company, as he was quite sad without his Cordelia. Here they are:

Incubator Overview

Our incubator is Rite Farm Products' Model #3600 Complete Pro Digital Incubator Kit. It was just under $100 and has proved to be pretty reliable. I do use an additional thermometer and hygrometer to make sure my levels are just right.

One of our first bigger hatches was a combination hatch with quail, chicken, and duck eggs. We had decent results, but it was difficult to give the ducks as much moisture as they needed, without drowning the other eggs. Check out the video on that hatch:

Here lately though, I've been sticking to just uncubating quail, and I generally get

around a 70% hatch rate with them.

Our Quail Project

Our jumbo Coturnix quail project is sure doing well! These guys have grown up so fast and we're inundated with SO many eggs every day. The extra eggs make a great supplemental feed for the chickens!

The big indoor/outdoor pen is working out okay, though with them being on the ground, the eggs tend to get dirty if they're not gathered immediately.

We try to fill up the incubator at least once a month. Getting our numbers up to a comfortable level where we can regularly butcher the quail is our goal. So far it's working great!