Excuse me while I duck out...

For those of you that don't know, I'm inserting a quick advertisement here for my Facebook Farm Page - facebook.com/littlefarminthesuburbs . It has all the updates you could possibly need on the chickens, ducks, new flock, culls, slaughter and all the general mini-farm related stuff. I might possibly get a twitter for this in the near future. Ugh. :P

So. The farm has, count it, six sets of babies waiting to come to light. Basically, spring happened and everyone is now expecting. I've got a barely-laying hen on a Muscovy egg, a Muscovy on Blue Swedish duck eggs, a Swedish duck on Silver Swedish eggs, a leghorn (!) on 5 sets of rare breed eggs, a pregnant cat and we're picking up our new beautiful King Parrot on the 1st, when she's old enough.

Here's how animals work when it comes to all of the above, because as I wrote it I realized a lot of the information was stuff I had to learn - but that I haven't told anyone. So naturally now that I've learned it I assume everyone knows it. Here's the skinny:

Muscovies are EXCELLENT mothers and I. didn't. know. this. Pissed. Turned out Muscovies can clutch 14 eggs THEIR FIRST GO. This is 20 chickens. After that they can do 20 ducks! or like 30 chickens! What does my Lady Duck Muscovy have? 5. 5 Blue Swedish ducklings. And by the time I figured out what I had done - it was too late.

See, once a hen has a set of eggs, she has THAT set of eggs and unless you can time the hatching of ducks and chickens to the DAY, you're gonna screw yourself over. Because once things hatch, mama gives it a day and then gets off. So if you put new eggs under there too late - you just killed an entire clutch. (Clutch = one full set of laid eggs before the hen decided to sit on them usually 12 for chickens and 15 for ducks)

Leghorns are NOT known for getting clucky. Especially my Leghorn, which is an ex-battery hen. It was BRED to make eggs. For years and years and generations. It should not be clucky. Which is why I put eggs under her the SECOND day she was clucky. Sometimes new to cluck hens get un-clucky too soon because of their childish impatience.

Which brings me to Natalie. The reason we had to buy new nesting boxes. Bitch likes to swap eggs! Remember what I said above? I spent every day reorganizing eggs to very much the danger of the eggs. I tried to move all of them but she DOES NOT like it. The muscovy and leghorn have adapted to the new separated nesting boxes (it's a triple - three separate boxes in the same structure) but I've had to block her in with a cardboard box and a tyre. Which sucks because her singular duckling is due in 3 days. Meaning I have to make sure she STAYS there while simultaniously making sure once that baby hatches, she can get off quickly and start raising it without smushing it.

I've let the Silver Swede build her own nest in a corner near the house and lay an egg a day until she was done (which I believe was 9) and then I threw another what I suspect was Blue Swedish egg underneathe her. Muscovy was clucky but the blue has only laid that egg since. Could also be a Silver egg, but it was laid in a funny spot. Either way, they (10? 11? 9?) should all hatch at the same time and all, but one, 100% naturally!! From nest to lay to hatch, all natural. How cool is that?

The cat is just a whore.

Don't Count Your Fois Gras Before They Hatch!

5 days until I get married. 10 days until baby chickens hatch. 30 days until we have baby ducks. And possibly only a week until we have kittens. Due to an overwhelming oversight in feline Houdini magic, a big fat orange tabby managed to make his way into my home about 6-7 weeks ago to give my 5 month old (at the time) little kitten a what-for. Figuring I had a couple months to fix her after the wedding, I was a bit taken off guard. I didn't witness the what-for and had actually assumed it didn't occur since I only found the behemoth in my garage, not the house itself. Judging by the belly...kittens.

So, I fail at cat ownership. In my defense, the little thing is barely seven months old and was always kept indoors. In my defense, cats are notorious for doing this and I should've just really known better.

However I really seem to WIN at duck ownership. I candled the eggs last night under my newly-nesting Lady Duck, who is Elvis's girlfriend, the muscovy. It appears we have two duds but SIX ducklings. My current problem is I made the mistake of not separating Muscovy eggs from Blue/Silver Swedish and Muscovies take about 4-5 days longer to hatch than Swedes, so hopefully this works. I'm GUESSING that the two duds might be Muscovies because her and Elvis are new to mating and, since it does take longer to grow, might not be duds at all, just slow-growing Muscys.

Lady Duck

So I am excited. I really don't know what kind of ducks she's hatching and I'm pretty sure she doesn't care, she's been stealing the unfertilized chicken eggs (much to my poor hand's distress when I need to retrieve them) and trying to hatch those as well. As you can see, she's plucked much of her gorgeous ducky down feathers and built her nest up with them. I have wild notions of sitting there for hours picking through it all to get enough fluff to make a pillow. Clearly this will end after about 10 minutes of cursing, but I like my wild notions nonetheless.

My fiance made a sook last night because I was excitedly telling people of my ducklings and kittens. "You are more excited about babies than you are about marrying me this week," he said. I felt bad, but he's not right - it just appears that way.

See, when you're about to get married, you talk about it a lot and people get, well, kind of sick of it. So you try not to talk about it as much. Only... the day gets closer the less you try to talk about it. So you feel like a rubberband about to snap wanting to describe your dress for the 1056387th time to your friend because the day is only a week away but you know you're just going to get an evil glare, so you don't.

... but this is my blog, so fuck you guys.

My dress is gorgeous! And the amazing tailor at Admiral's Quarters in Brisbane CBD really knows how to take care of people. Not trusting any tailor with Glynn's first suit, especially at Hugo Boss prices, I knew this particular tailor was, well, good. I've used him before. He has excellent prices, takes pride in his suits and it always willing to help you out and make you feel great - even if you're the 10,000th bride he's seen that day. He'll excitedly whisk you into a beautiful dressing room and professionally but nicely compliment you and help you any way he can. The whole experience is over before you knew it began - and the whole thing is relatively painless. Even the price - so I thought I'd put a little advertisement here for them. Stuart's Suits is just below (but inside) Admiral's Quarters and is fan-fucking-tastic.

Truth be told, I'm panicking just a little. Didn't think I would but I think my mother makes me panic and well, she's here. So I feel like I've got to entertain, plan a wedding, make sure she's proud of me, farm and get married all in the same week. All while feeling scrutinized beyond recognition. It's been making me nervous and I've been dropping things, stuffing up recipes, feeling sorry for myself and even crying - which is something I really don't do these days.

It's not hard, I'll say that. It's easy, life. It's just complicated. So many things to do, I feel a little overwhelmed but I don't feel so terribly challenged. I know I can do it. I know it'll be fine.

This might also be why I just start going on about ducklings and how excited I am 5 days before my wedding. Because actually talking about the wedding makes me start hyperventilating.

6 ducklings!!! 6 beautiful gorgeous roasted ducks. 200 bars of duck fat soap. 24 litres of duck stock. 3 gorgeous duck down pillows or 1 duck down blanket. 6 servings of hand-made fois gras.

DUCKS!

Duckling and Gordon Ramsay

I think I forgot to mention that when I went to the farm, I brought the Two Fat Ladies and Nigella Hoverchicken with me. Nigella was always supposed to be Mother's but the Two Fat Ladies were simply causing too much trouble in my roost to keep for long. With 750 acres and a couple old biddies who are barely laying in a much bigger pen, they should fair well and just be on laying age for Mother to start getting some chicken eggs once more.

I have this...habit.. much to Father's faux distress, of bringing up birds with me of various breeds. This time being the three chickens from my flock, nine ducks and three guinea fowl. The chooks weren't a surprise and the guinea fowl were probably only a minor surprise since Mother slyly hinted at wanting them when we called to ask her if she wanted peacocks (answer was yes followed almost immediately by a loud bellowing male "NO!" in the background). I think she secretly knew they'd be bought for her almost immediately and she'd get them if she put the idea in my head. It's what I do.

However when we went to pick up the ducks I fell in LOVE with this one I called 'Lipstick Duck' because it had a red tipped beak compared to it's brothers and sisters. When my husband was collecting them to bring to Mother, this one was wiley and got away and made funny noises and jumped on his hand and acted out in a great way. I declared that duck mine and then spent the next day and a half pestering my husband for the duck. No. No. No. No. No. OKAY FINE YES! Pft. He knew I was gonna keep it anyway, don't know why he bothered with the day of no's. Maybe so he could look like he had a say in it. Ha.

So everyone, meet my new little duckling, who is keeping great company with Gordon Ramsay, the chick of the 'farm'.

They are currently housed in the run I built with the other chickens, so the others can get used to them and not attack them when they're finally big enough to join the flock, which should be in a month or so. Exciting!

So much for this blog having my motorbiking and cleaning recipes and the like in it... oh well. Just to make this blog about something other than chickens, here's a photo of 20g beeswax shells I've been making for quick soap/candle dispersion:

I've been passively making these for two days.. I have about 40 of them now... just melt the wax, wait for it to cool a bit, pour and pop in the freezer. Repeat whenever I remember. All fresh from Mother's farm with a backdrop of the honey the same bees made for me. I love my pretend farm life.

Maybe I should change the name of this blog to Farm Girl in the Suburbs.