10 April 2019. It is Springtime at Project Victory Gardens! The April Showers are doing wonders for our gardens and seeds are popping up overnight! Along with all this new plant life on the farm, we have been surging our flock numbers, as well. The chicks are now three weeks, growing like weeds and driving poor Mama crazy. It is like being locked in a room with nine toddlers around the clock! After the chicks joined the farm, we brought home a new puppy.
Puppies are amazing creatures! Rosy, or Rosaline Rutter, is a true livestock guard dog. She was born in the pasture and spent her first eight weeks with the goats and chickens. Both of her parents are Great Pyrenees Livestock Guard Dogs. We can't wait to add to goats to our menagerie so she has more work! Rosy is trying to find her place on the farm. Leonidas (half Great Pyrenees) is the self-appointed King of the castle. He is not sure about this puppy and has expressed his displeasure on multiple occasions. I think she is growing on him, though! It will be interesting to see their relationship progress, particularly when Rosy outweighs him! Triton, our very skittish collie mix has already ceded any seniority he had to Rosy. He sees the writing on the wall and went through the whole puppy to very large dog phase with Leo! Tiger, our great mouse killer, has firmly made up his mind, and he is not a fan. Rosy has not gotten the message though and seems to think that Tiger is trying to teach her how to box. Tiger is still winning at this point, but it is only a matter of time!
We put five duck eggs in a cheap little incubator we bought off Craig's List. We have been turning the eggs faithfully and monitoring the temperature and humidity, but it seems like our Drake is not quite as fertile as our Rooster. Two of the eggs were not fertile, so we have been pinning our hopes on the other three. And last night we saw pipping on one of the eggs! Hopefully, there will be a baby duckling in the incubator tonight! Since we had such a low hatch rate with this batch, we wanted to make sure that our little duckling had friends, which meant a trip to Tractor Supply. (Seriously, we should not be allowed to go to TSC during Chick Days. That's how this whole thing started last year!) Yesterday, Tractor Supply was ready for us. They had two Khaki Campbells (we think), two not Pekins of some variety, and one poor little duckling with a bad eye. So of course, we came home with five! Then, today, we found a nest and one of our Pekins that has not previously displayed a lick of mothering instinct sitting on six eggs! We might need a bigger pond!