Jest Another Day in Pear-A-Dice - Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm in Alberta

[chickadoodles]

I love to go to the parks and feed the ducks and geese as long as they are not at my house I like them. We do not have any way to keep ducks here all our birds have to be in pens or runs due to all the predators here. That would not work with ducks or geese. But I can sit on my porch and watch the wild flocks fly from pond to pond here and that is nice.

 

[Dragonfly216]

WHYYYYYYYYYY ever did you have to ask about FTD?? I can almost forget what those cute little ducking look like, ESPECIALLY the multi colored little webber feet and the absolutely STUNNING Mandarin drake, but Nooo! Then had to make her tempt me more with more photos! AUUUUGGHHHHH! Just keep repeating to myself....FTD......FTD....... I would have to do pens too, and they wouldn't be as happy......FTD....FTD.......

 

[CanuckBock]

Heel low:

Glad to see that "some" will heed the FTD advice...

Mandarins are probably the last kind of ducks we shall keep--wild and therefore less needy...HA HA!

They do require over the top facilities as the day olds are amazingly vigorous about hiding in the smallest of spaces & the adults don't really truly warm up to "cuddles" by humans, so far rather make like a bird & well, you know... Har har

"Have you hugged a duck today?"

"Now however did that ducky poo get on my pants?"

Rick built me the Taj Mahal (link to that thread in my sig file) so we are outfitted well fer Mandies.

I will NOT get into how easy ducks are to keep past a few simple rooles like use oat straw for bedding, hardware cloth RE-predation & repeating the duck mantra of "objective is to drown oneself" or at least make mud pies at every opportunity!

http://poultrykeeper.com/duck-keeping/winter-care-of-your-bantam-ducks

This UK site has a copy of my article (as does my website page "Tales from Rat World") on keeping bantam ducks if you need further info on how to be inundated by duckers.

The mandarins are quite pretty. I've only seen them in the wild, we had one drake living with more common ducks close to our previous home one summer.

We have had Wood ducks nesting on our land--so knew the similar ducks like the Mandarins would enjoy summers here. The Woodies' nest rotted out but in the evenings we can still hear their low calls, so still in the area. Did see a Momma one summer taking her brood to the river--dreamy!

Poplar tree Wood Duck nest​

Hatch yesterday; 6 turks, 30+ chooks, & 6 ducks...

4 of 6 poults
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Black based poult - see white around the face and eye?​

Bantam Brahmas - buff, dark & partridge​

Booted Bantams (white & MDF) on left
&
pretty durn white bantam project Chanteclers on right (from the sorta "white pair")​

Chanteclers



Ducklings (two from previous hatch) - left front has better "Call" type - tiny/wide bill with short bod

Now a guessing game fer yah...

Natural hatch, five landfowl in total.

In the past I have tried to leave Mom to raise but the coop has too many small spaces to lose babes in (love to hide from perceved dangers!) and if contained in an area, the dang mice feast on the baby provisions--anyhoo--their piercing shrill calls told me BABIES (I laugh -- so why do I instantly lock on to that kind of sound?)! So retrieved the five (one looking a bit rough) & plopped in with chook day olds...

What are they?

two of them / Booted chick on left with what am I? on the right​

right side mid point - about 3? / far top right - one, another two/three at mid point​

So, these are landfowl, looong legs, pretty attentive eyes, marked very much like day old Partridge chooks. What be they?


Told the kid how much we were enjoying HIS raspberry patch & now he's comin' to visit on Sunday...dang blabber mouth I am!

Now Fixins is mad because we gotta share the bounty!

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[Lacy Blues]

Partridge Chanteclers?

 

[chickadoodles]

I love looking at all your babies! Some days I feel over whelmed with what I have and I don't have anywhere near the amount of birds you do! How do you do it all?????

 

[CanuckBock]

Partridge Chanteclers?

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Parti Chant & mystery babe​

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Don't think "chicken" (tho they most certainly DO look chipmonkey as day olds too!)...think, another landfowl species!

Two standard Chanteclers & two mystery birds​

Toes and shanks are loooonger than chickens I have here​

Keep guessing please!

I love looking at all your babies! Some days I feel over whelmed with what I have and I don't have anywhere near the amount of birds you do! How do you do it all?????

Gotta luv dem snooky looky babes!

In order to be allowed to be "out," I had to have a valid "reason"...so as soon as I could, I got me a job...at a gas station in town (1st job was low pay--more than babysitting tho!--but you DID get paid to clean toilets even if the owner was so fat, he missed

)! Learned from a friend's Mom a real gem of advice--"the harder the work physically, the lower the pay." Think manual labour...if you got to use yer brain, your education...for some reason you got more $ & therefore were more in control of your destiny!

As a teenager, I rode my bike to town & cleaned salmon at the cannery (great wages because it was unionized)--wasted a lot on pizza & beer/records & jeans, but can't say I had much good guidance on what to do with my wages--was a kid. Good pay but seasonal...and warped as I am, loved the actual cleaning of the fish. Still love butchering--not the killing part, but the actual processing. Pretty much had open standing offers with the Boys--made great picnic lunches & instantly cleaned the catch--loved to see what was in their guts...what they were biting on...amateur fly tier as a kid but never allowed the op to actually "fly" fish--no gear & no one to learn by!

So I put up with some more abusive jobs such as waitressing (morning & afternoon--better than pumping gas and always seemed to have some $ from tips) and went to college at night. Worked good for the kid because at night, he got to be home with Rick since I was home in time to be with him after school--make cookies & keep a house a home.

All those physically hard jobs teach you that you can choose to "work" smart & just be tired at the end of the day or not "plan" your attack with defermination & be exhausted at the end of your shift!

Going one way, carry a coffee pot (earn more tips doing a job well), coming back to the kitchen--clear off a table! You don't get to go home if your section is not made up for dinner service!

I learned to be efficient or miss out on a good quality of life! Not just hard work but work smarter & you reap bigger bonuses!

Off the top of my head, some of the things that I figure that could overwhelm me with the birds are:

- predation (decent facilities, hardware cloth, due diligence to watch & put away birds-we have been blessed with zero predation since 2007)
- weather (roofed runs, adequate buildings, watchful to put them away, decent foods, oat straw bedding, & strong poultry lines)
- feed (adequate equipment, finances to cover, proper storage, decent suppliers)
- what to do with waste (compost & till into land, equipment to do this)
- diseases (biosecure, quarantine if I must bring in new birds, research info & sources, prevention, keep stock healthy to fight off threats--generous amount of luck!)
- numbers (sensible about limitations - less is better than too many, knowing what are & what to do with culls)
- support that what you do holds value & is worth doing!

I know we all make mistakes but what we do with the hard knocks (lessons learned), determines if we succeed or fail and keep at this fanciful Fancy!


I think some of my saving grace is Rick's thought process in designing the buildings. Even when we flooded in 2005, not a single permanent building he placed was swamped in the 3 feet of water that perked up from the ground. He builds to code & was actively involved in raising birds himself. We rely heavily on input from each other to decide things--tweaks to be more efficient, avoid troubles & generate more happiness for us all.

Every day you have pans to fill & buckets to dump and top back with water...when we use to do tours here before we went more biosecure, it takes a minimum of 3 hours just to go thru--one fella that loves geese stood the first hour at the goose runs before we could warn him to move it along if he wanted to try to see everything before it got dark.

whole grains - oats & wheat



pelleted rations
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We use a ton of poultry rations a month...with the 1 ton truck & trailers, tractor, larger feed room, and contacts over the years here--we can buy in bulk, so doing things in a much bigger way --

Full?

I plan feed mixing about once a week, summer duties like I just changed the goose/swan/shels' ponds this morn, but also try to do something odd each day...I trimmed all the Lilac turks toenails and beaks. Things that need doing but not daily or even weekly. Try to have revolving duty list too.

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I had filled a wheelbarrow with a load of limerock and it sat half way to its dumping destination...I was staggering (literally?) my work day so it is never drudgery, boring or too tedious. Think my day thru...har har

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I do things like a bit of weeding the veg garden every few days, bonus is greens for birds & us!

spinach for birds​

I try not to set eggs to hatch on or near the weekends so if Rick wants to go some place, I am not holding us up from going. We did loser laps in the red Chev yesterday...

Not sure how we get all we do in a day done, but we do!

Keep in mind; our kid is grown, I have summers away from my part time job (so I hatch now & more in tune to Nature's schedule for my location--things flourish right now), and we've been at this a lot of years to get it setup to enjoy! It takes a long time to get ready to play this serious!

Speaking of which, Rick got to mowing the duck yard! Took all of 20 minutes.

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I wash the grass down after ducks and sure makes it green!

Silver buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea)​

Sour fruit but a light frost improves flavour. Birds like Grosbeaks like them.

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Weather says rain and we sure need some; so when it poured, we were all happy.

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Get a charge out of how dark feathered birds will often lay dark shelled eggs.

Not Marans dark, but still a good one (kina a plum shade)--not white, eh?

Got a salad to make...

Romaine ​

and then dinner for the humans & dogs...

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[Lacy Blues]

ok, how about a ruffed grouse or prairie chicken? Some kind of plover?

 

[chickadoodles]

Tara, you have such a beautiful place I know it must take a ton of work to keep it that way.
As for your mystery chick, I have no idea what kind of wild birds you have there. lol Knoza?

 

[CanuckBock]

ok, how about a ruffed grouse or prairie chicken? Some kind of plover?

Getting SO much closer....

Tara, you have such a beautiful place I know it must take a ton of work to keep it that way.
As for your mystery chick, I have no idea what kind of wild birds you have there. lol Knoza?

Thanks Woman! Again, aiming for easy to keep (easy keeper--like me? HA HA).

The first house we bought...woman was a full time gardener! Rock gardens galore & natural shaped rocks for borders--we got the place one more owner from her--what a mess of neglect & ruin.

Never again! The amount of work to even keep the beds looking half presentable was enormous because of those untidy rocks & uneven borders! Best to have edges that are straight so they can be weed whacked tidy!

Thyme bed 2012
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Shade garden by dog kennel


July 2014

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Rick has fashioned us landscape tye beds...herb garden, shade one & one on the side of straw barn & others....even the raspberry plot is "cribbed in."

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barren late fall pic--burrh!

Herb garden 2014 - pile of "rocks" removed & by greenhouse​

I musta forgot how tedius rocks where & did have them in with the herbs (more to keep neighbour's wandering felines from pottying in the soil).

Haskaps this July​

Containers work good too--keeps grass from taking over--sorta! We can also bury the plants in the containers in the veg garden to protect them from winter kill. PLUS clears the place out for easier snow removal--haul it all to store so less obstacles to get buried.

We have half the place in forest and spent the first five years making it more park like & less of a fire hazard...now so much easier to keep up on. No real oh my eye pokey branches for us to klutz into.

On the mystery birds...they are landfowl, are not chickens, and I am legally allowed to keep them without any permit!

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[bamadude]

Quail?