They Proved Me Wrong! July 2023

I saw this Sail Tarp (Triangle Shade) online for a great price.  Marked down a lot, I'm assuming, because it's probably not purchased a lot? Instantly I loved it, because I could see great potential of using it for the ducks.  They would be able to hide under it quickly to get away from the hawks and owls that swoop over our field, looking for food. While I don't think they would ever attack my ducks, I know that those predators really scare my ducks. The ducks quickly scamper into their coop to hide.  I wanted to give them another option, while also giving them some shade, which would allow them the option to keep an eye on things without running into their coop. 

My tallest stakes are four feet, and no amount of "taunt" is enough to keep the center of the tarp from drooping.  At the lowest point, the tarp dips to 2.5 feet from the ground. My ducks are all about 2 feet tall.  I honestly never thought that they would hang out under the tarp with it being so close to their heads.  But, nonetheless, I put the tarp up inside their pen to at least get them accustomed to the tarp as a non-threatening object, until I have the taller stakes to lift the tarp higher. 

So, today, after about a week, the ducks have proved me wrong.  They will and do go under the tarp for shade. First I saw Indigo, then shortly after that, I saw Diego and Sparks, and then finally saw Toast hanging out under the tarp, in the shade. Today is not a hot day, by any stretch of the imagination but , yah, they are using it. Wish they had been braver earlier when we had temps in the high nineties, but, hey, that's just the way animals are. 

I started most of my garden pretty late this year.  So, I have been really thankful that our hot days didn't burn the plants. We are getting some quick growth from our little crops. Corn, the most.  I need to take a moment to really weed around them, but the stalks have really grown a lot in the last few weeks of warmer weather. 

Shredded Straw for Nesting and Coops

Ever since we started raising ducks, we have been using straw for their bedding as it is inexpensive, more absorbent and the ducks are less likely to try to eat it BUT straw can be brittle, and sometimes sharp on their feet and underbellies. Last fall, I saw a guy using a wood chipper to shred the straw for his ducks, which I thought was a good idea, but didn't want to invest that much money on something dedicated to breaking down straw.  After more reading this past year, I decided that I would try a leaf mulcher, but I wanted something that was inexpensive, battery or electric, and easy to use.  Most of the inexpensive leaf mulchers were combo leaf and small branch chippers, and well, I didn't like their designs. I opted for a glorified weed whacker in a barrel type of leaf mulcher.  It's noisy, dusty, and kinda messy, but it got the job done quickly without a lot of extra effort. Dumped a five-gallon bucket of straw into the device, and whizzzzzzz, it was done in less than a minute. 

While I won't "promote" any particular product, but I'm guessing you would be able to figure it out if you went searching for leaf mulchers. 😁

And the final product to the right of the original bale. 

Snow Day for Hens and Ducks February 2023

We aren't getting a ton of snow, but enough that it is turning things white around here. Snow is coming in from the Northeast so we have wind panels up on those sides of the chicken coop, and the duck coop door is turned towards the South. At times, the flakes are pretty large, about the size of a quarter, but mostly just small, wet, flakes. 

Gave the hens some scratch.  We had a bad day yesterday in that it was windy and it blew their house hatch closed, locking them all inside for the majority of the day.  We knew it had to have been most of the day because there were no eggs in the nesting box. When we moved them to some fresh ground last night I put a light inside their house with some fresh water, while we did all the prep work for the potential of snow today. That way they could, at least, rehydrate before going to roost. Poor Girls. So they deserve a little extra scratch today. 

Ducks are doing great. Playing in their pool and running around inside their pen checking out the snow. We need to keep an eye on the white/fawn duck as she likes to take flight into the wind and we are having just enough wind to make it possible for her to fly right out of the pen. LOL

Update, these photos were at 2pm. By 6pm, the snow was five inches deep and still building up. When I went out to put the birds to bed, the duck coop looked like an igloo cave.