So, you may remember that our drake had been chasing our hens around, which led us to order some ducklings as more girlfriends for said drake. When the ducklings were 3 weeks old, and outgrew their brooder, we put them in with the hens/ducks. Only to have the drake chase them all day and damage the down & new feathers on one duckling in particular. So, we were forced to put the drake in solitary confinement (ie live with the goats).

He wasn’t thrilled with the idea but seemed to tolerate it. Here’s his mug shot:

Well, earlier this week, the goat kids were being ornery and knocked down part of their pen wall and the drake managed to escape and run loose through the garage. When I went to do chores in the evening I found him wedged between the chain link chicken pen and the wall trying desperately to get back in with his girls. I managed to catch him before he got out into the yard, but we decided it was probably okay to go ahead and let him back in with the girls.

Really, the drake’s escape wasn’t the only reason we moved him back in. Our 9 meat birds were severely outgrowing their box, so by moving the drake out, we were able to move the meat birds into the goat pen.

We also discovered through this process that the mama goat, Geraldine, prefers chicken feed to goat feed and would quickly eat up the chicken feed before they got any. So we had to switch to a covered chicken feeder attached to the fence. Here’s Geraldine trying her hardest to get some of those chicken crumbles out.

The little goats are getting much bigger and are definitely ornery. Here they are lounging around in the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having.

Really they’re getting too big for the garage pen, so we’ve been working lately on their outside/permanent pen. It’s been going relatively quickly and progressing well. Here are a couple of pictures of what’s been done so far.

Putting walls up for the goat house.

Matt got the gate put in and part of the drainage ditch dug to route the runoff water around the goat pen.

In order to get all this done recently, Matt took a couple of days off work. The first day he was home this week I was out in the garage doing chores with my youngest, and he turned to me and said, “Mommy, look a baby.” I looked where he was pointing and the broody hen had in fact hatched a duck egg.

We checked on them several times that day and had determined that she had actually hatched three eggs.

The bigger hens got to picking on the baby ducklings so we put up some chicken wire around the nest. I went back in the evening to tuck everybody in and do evening chores and all the hens and ducks crowded around the newly fenced off area like it was a nursery window in a hospital. It was pretty funny.

Well, I think that’s enough excitement for one post, especially since it took me three days to get it all posted.

I hope you’re all having a productive spring so far. I have several other things to tell you about, but I need to end here for now. See you soon.