The Collie Farm Blog

This weekend I did get to dabble a little on the fencing; I have all but one gate hung, and all of those now latch. There is just the tiniest bit of work left to make that field livestock-ready: one 12′ section of fence to stretch, one more gate, and fixing some “airspace” under one gate that’s on a slope. But, I didn’t get to that.

I had to finish the tractor’s 100 hour maintenance list, which takes some time-oil change, grease the fittings, check all the fluids, clean the air filter, etc. And, then I worked on field mowing, which is about a 4+ hour job for each of the two mowed fields. I got more than half of the main field done.

Mowing is pretty relaxing, it’s enjoyable to see a local hawk taking advantage of flushed mice. And the swallows go bananas over the insects that mowing excites– I had several dozen birds swerving and swooping all around me. They are so acrobatic, it’s amazing they don’t hit the tractor, or each other, when they are in such a feeding frenzy. I love the smell of mowing too, its reminiscent of my days driving pea harvesters as a summer job in college- a mix of diesel, hot machines, and cut greenery. The noise and the slow pace are mesmerizing, it’s a good time to contemplate many things.

Sunday my mom and I also worked on dog 4-H fair entries-it’s almost county fair time for us. Years ago, I wrote an Access database to track all of the 200+ dog show entries for our 11-day fair, which helps with scheduling, score tabulation, prize calculation, and state fair qualification tracking. But, it requires about eight hours of data entry before the fair to transfer paper entries into electronic records-worth it for the time it saves in the office during the fair, when things are hectic.

Of course, I’m the only volunteer resource who knows how to really use the database, so I’ve signed up for a lifetime commitment at database maintenence, I think! But, I enjoy helping, and I enjoy the fair. Next year, I strive to make Excel spreadsheets where each 4-H leader can type in their own data, that would really save me time, as I could just import it.

Kirk has asked me about ten times about the Nubian goats at the fair, whether there will be some for sale at the Open Show. He has his heart set on a black Nubian doe. Our friend Lori also loves animals and goats, and aspires to own one, but doesn’t yet have the place for one. So, she offered to “fund” one that we’d house, and she could visit. We could use a blackberry eater that could be tethered on the slopes during the day to help with clearing. So, that may be a next project: making a night pen for a goat to stay safe so that we can add to the growing menagerie.

Kirk has made tons of progress on barn wood cleanup, I’ll have to snap a picture soon. This week, I have to finish mowing, and then prepare for one last herding trial trip for this year. Friday I’m headed to a beatiful farm on Whidbey Island, and will camp there in the trailer for the weekend during the trial.

New Ducks

On Friday, I picked up the newly ordered ducks from Privett Hatchery. Several people went in on an order of twenty or so ducks, so it saved us a few dollars each in shipping. I also thought it would save me a weekday trip to the Post Office during business hours, but it turned out they arrived on my day off anyway. In retrospect, it would have been simpler to have ordered my own, as I could have done the minimum of ten and not had the following difficulties…

We had a lot of trouble differentiating the breeds. The order contained (or was supposed to contain) straight-run Cresteds, Mallards, Magpies, Cayugas, Runners, Swedish, and Buff Orpingtons. I was expecting the Swedish to be blue (that’s the only “acceptable” color, but they do have black and silver in their gene pool), but all but a few solid yellow ducks, and the obvious Mallards, appeared to be black. The Swedish could  have been mistaken for poorly marked Magpies, so it was difficult to pick them out for sure. If there were Runners and Cayugas in there, they all looked the same to us (but I suspect they were all Cayugas, because we just didn’t see any hint of Runner shape to any of them). 

The other point of confusion was that we had ordered all females. Most of the ducklings had red paint on their heads. But, a few had blue paint, which we supposed may indicate males. We called the hatchery for help in confirming this, but they told us paint at all meant they were females. Ok. The phone advice on breed comparison didn’t help, so we finally just took our best guess.

I think those hatcheries handle thousands of hatchlings, and  their accuracy isn’t real high when packing complicated orders. Their convention is to pack a few extra in an order as large as twenty, but they didn’t this time. And a LOT of the birds were not doing well, they were weak, with floppy heads. I imagine one can expect some mortality rate with shipping, heck, it’s gotta be hard on the birds.

New ducks

But also when I got there, the birds were not in a hatcher with food and water in front of them to recover from the trip, but rather were out on the lawn with a half dozen kids playing with them like toys. I know when I was that age, I surely couldn’t resist baby animals, and it probably would be safe to play with home-hatched babies that had a perfect start. But, it may not have been the best thing for these ducks after a long shipping journey, to endure the stress of childrens’ exuberance, and be away from their food, water and heat source during waking hours. I felt relieved that the ones I took seemed to still be robust (since they are $5 apiece, after all!). But felt badly that the ones left behind were all destined to be kids’ pets, since probably some of them wouldn’t be making it.

My intention was to get a combo of Magpies, Runners and Swedish. I got some nicely marked black Magpies, the Swedish are also black, which is ok, but not what I expected. And, the one solid black one I ended up with, I think, is a Cayuga, not a Runner. I don’t want them because they don’t lay well (<100 eggs per year), they are more of a meat breed. But, supposedly their eggs are quite blue, so unless the Swedish lay similar looking eggs, hopefully I can just make sure this girl’s eggs all go into dog food, not baby production.

Here are some pics of the new babies. The Swedish have darker cheeks compared to the Magpies, that’s the subtle way to tell them apart, as far as I know. You can see the one all-black baby, that has a small yellow haze on the chest; that’s the suspected Cayuga. Maybe I’ll grow to like her even though she’s not a runner.

I may appear to be obsessed with ducks lately, but I’m not, really! It’s only one small aspect of the farm I wish to grow, but it just happens to be the one going on right now! My third hatchling died a day after the others. <sigh> My guesses of what happened are:

1) the non-medicated poultry grower feed may have been mislabeled; medicated chicken feed can poison ducklings (and boy did their demise look like toxicity). So, as a precaution, I’m going to discard that bag of feed and will revert to just using my adult duck feed (which is really an adequate grower feed as well, at 20% protein).
2) the electrolyte solution I was using may have caused trouble; though I used it on the last batch of ducks with no harm. Many hatcheries and books recommend using electrolytes, but I noticed advice on Privett Hatchery’s website that they recommend against  it, especially in the first week. So, I’m going to skip out on that too.
3) The cilantro- I can’t imagine that being a problem, but just in case, I’m going to stick to very plain, and washed, greens.

I really want to build my flock now, I only have one hen left to lay, and I’m reluctant to use the incubator again until I have a way to control the room’s ambient temperature. So I decided purchasing some might be the best move, for the moment. On craigslist, I found a woman who wanted to go in on a hatchery order with some other people (to meet the minimum order size), so I opted to go with that.

Before those arrive, here is a nice photo of one of the last ducks hatching, just coming out of his shell.

Hatching duckling

Today when I checked on my three baby ducks, two were dead! I don’t know what happened, other than that I fed them chopped cilantro as greens yesterday- I wonder if that is somehow toxic to them? I feed it to the big ducks all the time with no trouble, and couldn’t find any indication on the web that it’s toxic. But I did find evidence that people use it for detox measures, so maybe there was some issue there on those little bodies.

Anyway, sad to see such cute babies dead; and the one remaining one seems in distress neurologically as well as from being alone. Singleton babies are never good. I’ve given him some Nux Vomica in hopes that it addresses any toxicity, that’s all I can do! I imagine I could raise animals my whole life and always be saddened to see one perish; but I guess I would never want to see myself lose that compassion for animals either. Every loss is hard.

I’m afraid to try more incubation (though I’m going to have to get back in the saddle sometime and figure out how to do it); and I don’t have enough eggs coming in to make it worthwhile now anyway. So, I’m thinking of ordering a batch; as I really want to increase my flock to around a dozen birds.

I’ve been tempted by Metzer Farms’ “Golden 300 Hybrid” that is specially selected for superior egg production. But… their colors aren’t the best. I must admit, despite all the utilitarian reasons I keep them, I also like them to look nice!

I think I may stick with the Runner and Magpie breeds, though neither have been laying for me as well as the books say. I don’t prefer Khaki Campbells as much (the other good laying breed), I don’t like their color and they are known to be excitable (and my mom’s Khaki mixes certainly are!)

I may mix in some Blue Swedish at some point to improve carcass weight and robustness; but stay generally with the black/blue/silver colors. I’ve resigned to the fact that purebreds aren’t going to work for me, as none of them is designed for all the things I want: eggs, meat, foraging and hardiness for herding (and looks!).

This weekend I had a couple of disappointments. First, of my nine fertile duck eggs in the incubator, only three hatched! Those  three hatched on time, successfully, and are robust and healthy. But the other six were more full-term babies that must have perished about three days before the hatch-just before absorbing their yolks.

So, I don’t know what’s going wrong. My only guess is that with the warm summer weather, the temperature fluctuations are just too great inside the incubator. I believe that the heating element controller only has a variable resistor in it, that just determines how much power (or maybe some timing of an on/off cycle) goes to the  heating element. What would be better is a thermostatically controlled unit. I’d get it set right one day, then we’d have a hot or a cold day, and I’d notice the temp would be several degrees off in there! But, you would think that momma ducks would have the same problem nesting outside??

So, <sigh> I’m not sure what I’ll do next. It’s about $50+ to mail-order ten ducklings from a hatchery, and I’ve heard that mortality rates  are high in those too. So, it may be worth continuing to learn how to do them at home. Or, I could let mother ducks spend several months non-laying to raise their own. We’ll see. For now, I think nine total ducks may be enough. They seem to be staying safe all day while ranging free, despite the overhead raptor presence.

The second disappointment was the fourth side of fencing- it’s finished, but I didn’t stretch one side of it well enough, and it’s sort of puffy and saggy. Not only is it unattractive, I don’t think it’s as strong that way. I think I can fix it later by cutting it down the middle and tensioning each side back towards the middle, and then crimping the ends together. But, I’m going to put that off and live with it as-is for now.

But, the weekend was still good. I got a lot done, I have three cute baby ducks at least. We got a chance to go check out the local town’s festival and antique car show for a few hours today, and also had a great dinner out on Friday night. And, I am working on some interesting projects at work right now, so I don’t even mind that tomorrow is Monday!