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HayHay is back in the barn and all healed up. He's ready to get back to work protecting his hens. It's a lot quieter in the house now without him singing, especially when the sun comes up.

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Today is day 24 of our duck eggs being in the incubator. That means there are only 4 days left until hatching is supposed to start. This is a photo of a candled egg (when you hold a flashlight to the egg to see if anything is developing inside) taken this evening. All of our eggs look like this so far. They have also been removed from the automatic egg turner and placed on the floor of the incubator in preparation for hatching. Fingers crossed we get some ducklings!

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For reference, this is a picture of the stages of development of a duck egg during it's 28 days of incubation.

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Today is hatch day! So far nothing is happening in the incubator. I'm wondering if we'll get any ducks at all. When I used a flashlight to look inside the eggs recently, I could only see what looked like yolk. None of the veins or dark masses you see in the reference picture I provided were visible. There are a few reasons that eggs might not hatch. The eggs may not be fertilized, which happens when a male duck lives with the female ducks. The humidity or temperature settings may not be just right in the incubator. The eggs may no longer have been viable for incubation by the time I placed them in the incubator. Meaning they sat out too long in conditions that were not ideal (cool area with pointy side of egg pointing downwards for less than 7 days). My fingers are crossed that we will still get something but it isn't looking promising. Please let me know if anyone has any questions! :)

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The family is very excited to see the ducklings😍

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I've just checked them again and I'm not seeing anything unfortunately. :( Myself and my daughter were super excited as well as these are our first duck eggs. It'll be disappointing if nothing at all hatches. If we don't end up with ducklings to enjoy we'll be getting three little pigs at the end of may and 25 baby turkeys a few days after that. I'll be posting pictures and videos of them!

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Just a quick update on our duck eggs. Nothing has happened yet. I'll give them another day or so but I think it's time to officially announce these eggs duds. Sorry for getting everyones hopes up (mine were up too...) There is still learning that can happen in failure however. This is a good time to explain to your children who are curious, all of the possible reasons that eggs might not hatch (mentioned in a recent post). As always, I'm here to answer any questions should you have any. Looking forward to sharing the pigs and turkeys with you guys!

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I have some hopefully exciting news to share! After days of searching & help from Mrs. Kindree, I was able to get more duck eggs! We're going to try again! The eggs were placed in the incubator this morning! We have ten American Pekin duck eggs (Large white duck in photo) and two snowy call duck eggs (beige and green ducks in photo). The eggs take about 28 days to hatch so this means we should expect some action around June 2nd! It's going to be very busy around here with the three little pigs showing up at the end of the month and the turkey poults arriving June 3rd as well...

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Hi, guys from Oliver! he is Mrs. Kindree's 13 old miniature donkey.  He is the best at escaping out of the fence!!

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On the second day of our duck eggs being in the incubator I noticed that one of our Pekin eggs had a little crack in it. I wasn't sure what to do so I researched some ideas. Heres what I came up with: you can use unscented candle wax and melt it onto the cracks of the egg to seal the egg. Hopefully a duckling will still grow and hatch out of it!

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Hi everyone! Mrs. Kindree had two exciting visitors to the farm! This is a picture from the internet as I couldn't get a picture fast enough.  I had two juvenile bald eagles in my pasture.

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I thought I would a picture of what they look like when they are grown up! This is another picture from the internet I found.

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It's spring on the farms in Hunta! This is my neighbors cow and her baby calf she is three weeks old!

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Our call duck eggs are developing! You can see the veins inside the egg! So far I can't tell if anything is happening with our pekin duck eggs. Things are moving along here on the farm. Our pig feeder came in the mail and all of our little feeders and waterers for the baby ducklings and turkey poults are clean and ready for use. Miller, our farm dog also supervised as we got the turkey and pig feed bags ready in the barn.

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Wow! Looks like we might have some ducks this time! I can't wait to see the little piglets when they come! I love these updates!

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Well, Miller (our farm dog) found out what has been wrong with HayHay the rooster lately. It turns out we had a least weasel living on the farm. Weasels eat chickens so we had to get rid of him. We set a live trap and used a piece of meat to lure the weasel. While Miller was at the barn the weasel stayed away but as soon as we brought Miller into the house the trap went off. Once we had the weasel we drove him very far away to a wooden area and let him go. But not before taking this neat video for you guys! HayHay and his hens are much safer now!

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Just a little update on things... HayHay and his girls have been moved outside to enjoy the summer months. He's doing so much better since we caught two weasels. We've been really busy getting ready for the ducks, turkeys and pigs (more photos soon, I promise!) and we've been doing a little planting. This is day 20 of our second duck egg incubation. This means we only have about 8 days to go until we hopefully see some ducklings. We still have two eggs that seem to be developing normally.! For anyone who was curious, the duck egg that we sealed with wax ended up turning black inside so we had to remove it from the incubator. We're picking up the pigs on either Friday or Saturday of this week and the turkeys on June 3rd. Stay tuned!

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The pigs have arrived! We have two females and one male and they're between two and three months old. They make the loudest sounds and are still scared of us as they're in a new place. Up until this morning these pigs were still suckling milk from their mothers. Today it's our job to make sure that these little guys (named the three little pigs) know how to access their food and water so that they have everything they need to be healthy and happy. It's Miller's (for now being called the big bad wolf) job to keep the pigs safe by scaring off any predators in the area.

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The three little pigs eating grass for the first time and getting comfortable in their new surroundings.

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Today was another busy day! We went to a family member's farm to pick up a giant flemish rabbit to keep as a pet for our daughter Sophia. At this farm we got to visit all of the cows. There were four new calfs, some cows and Ferdinand the big black bull. We got to feed them some treats! Back at our farm we're getting ready for the turkeys that are coming this week and spending some time letting the three little pigs get comfortable around us.

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The pigs love to play ball!

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They are just so adorable!!!!

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Sorry for the late update. I've been in the barn all day preparing for our 25 turkey poults the are arriving  on Wednesday. Out of out 12 eggs, one was cracked and 9 didn't develop at all. The only two that developed were the smaller call duck eggs. About a week ago one of these two eggs stopped developing. This isn't uncommon. It can happen if the egg gets contaminated by dirty hands or if there was something wrong with the development of the duck. This brings us to our last egg, and it started hatching today, one day early. So far there is only a small crack in the egg. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be more exciting! I'll be posting updates as they happen on here. I'm looking for names for the duckling if anyone wants to share suggestions. :)

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The duck has hatched! Unfortunately I didn't catch a clip of it as I had to run errands to get ready for our turkeys. When I came back into the house this little guy was completely out of the shell. The duck will stay in the incubator until it dries off and begins to look fluffy. Once the duck has dried off I will move him to a brooder box which i'll post about soon! :)

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Our ducking is doing great! This morning he was dried off enough to place him in the brooder box. His Brooder box has a heat lamp, wood chips for bedding, food and water. We also added a little stuffed toy in so that he wouldn't be alone. Ducks are social animals that are normally raised in large litters.

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Here is a closer look at the brooder box. Our duckling is cuddled up next to the stuffy. :) We weren't sure if that was going to help or not.

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Lastly, the turkeys are here! We ordered 25 but got 27. This year we decided to make two brooders instead of one because there was too much turkey piling happening. Hopefully the turkeys will handle better in smaller groups. Brooder 1 has 14 poults and brooder 2 has 13. Brooder 1 figured out to lay under the heat lamp right away but brooder two (despite so much intervention) went straight for a corner and started piling. I had to add a piece of wood to the corner so that it isn’t as narrow a place for the birds to pile up into.

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HayHay is feeling so good that he tried to ride on the four wheeler! The duck is growing and has quite the personality. He/She has started following me around when I let it walk on the floor. It chirps so loudly when we do this! We're still looking for name suggestions if anyone has any. We've lost three little turkeys but the other 24 seem to be healthy and growing well. It's normal to lose some turkey poults unfortunately. They're very delicate. We've had some kids socially distance visit the farm and they loved feeding the pigs grass and veggies. The pigs are now letting us pet them but they try to nibble on our hands and boots. Lastly, the garden is mostly planted. We still have potatoes to plant but the barley, corn, pumpkins, sunflowers and garden boxes are all planted!

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The duck following me!

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I'm sorry for how close to my face this video was taken but I thought the kids would get a chuckle out of this.