Goats, Ducks, Rabbits

It's been a looong time folks, hasn't it? I haven't gone this long between updates in years! But that just makes my posts all the more rare and special, right? 😉

To get the rabbits out of the way: I sold all my rabbits. Now that I'm working part time for Chad, I don't have unlimited time to do all my different animal projects anymore. Also, my experience is that the more species of animals you raise, the less people look at your animals as top quality because you have so many that you can't possibly be pouring as much time and effort into producing the best as you could if your time and money weren't stretched across so many species. Rabbits were the first to go as rabbit sales have been extremely poor. I liked those rabbits, especially Spruce, and I do miss them often. I still have chickens, ducks, goats, dogs, and now sheep. At this time, I don't plan on really getting into the sheep, but just keep them to train dogs on. I may have lambs and just sell them at the auction for a little bit of cash, but I don't plan to "raise" sheep. I think chickens will be the next to go-right now I'm experimenting with keeping my ducks laying through the fall(because in the past they quit in late June) and if I can get them to do so, the chickens are gone. So that'll leave me with just 3 species, which seems like a good number. 

These are my breeding ducks, plus some I kept back from my first hatch this spring-there are about 7 drakes in this picture, so I'll have to butcher those. I have a bunch more from my last batch still in the barn, and plan to keep the females from that batch too. I have figured out my hatching issues finally, so may hatch some more soon to be able to selling hens on the point of lay next spring-those went well last year! 

Felix-we have decided to sell Felix. Because he is related to almost all of my does and their daughters, it really wasn't the best decision for me to buy him in the first place. It was a lot of an emotional thing, because he is a full brother to Flicka-I'm still not absolutely sure that selling him now is the best decision either though...  Anyway, someone saw I had him and said that if we ever decided to sell him, they wanted to buy him. We put the price a bit higher than what we bought him for and they agreed to buy him. They are supposed to come next week. I would like the breed Bluebelle to him someday, so hopefully we can arrange something!

When we bought Felix, the breeder gave us Ace to be a friend. She said if we decided to buy him to just let her know and she'd get him registered. So we did. He's not quite as wide as Felix is, but is a bit bigger and much more heavily built, which we really like. He is also less related to our does. 

 

Bluebelle. I'm trying to get her to lose weight in hopes of getting more than a single kid next year, but it's not working so far. 

Marion

Bunny and her triplets by Sultan.

Annie's doe kid.

Annie's buck kid-he has such a cute face!

Pavlova-Eclipse's doe who I am keeping.

Carmelita, Eclipse's other doe who I am also keeping.

Clare's twin bucks. I think we're gonna keep the one on the right. He should make a nice buck, plus he's French so Mom can use him on Bunny and get French kids.

Several barn swallows successfully raised babies this year. They started fledgling a couple weeks ago, and watching them on the deck was quite entertaining!

It was pretty breezy and occasionally a gust would knock them all off the rail. 

Just one family, out of 4 or 5.