The Mountain Blossom Homestead

04/15/2021

The first three of our hobby chickens have spent their first night, morning, and afternoon in their coop~ they’re already taking great to foraging out in the grass

04/03/2021

Best way to start your morning? With a chicken on your shoulder.

04/02/2021

While out running some needed errands yesterday we found out our local feed store had a Buff Orpington roo that had been specially requested by someone, but then abandoned soon after the store had him in stock. I was looking for a roo for my girls so I brought him home 🥰

04/02/2021

Doing some work with my shoulder chicken~

04/01/2021

Tractor supply is mistreating many of their baby birds with their new brooding system, and we need to let them know this system is causing serious harm to these animals.

Demand that Tractor Supply Company change their in-store brooding practices

03/31/2021

I love this derpy little nugget, but she gave me quite the scare last night x.x while foraging in a pile of treats was ignoring the treats and just eating wood bedding... I separated her and treated her for crop compaction. While having her in the recovery tank away from her flock I discovered she’s having some vision loss in her right eye. I don’t know if it was something she was born with or if it has some environmental cause, but I’ve made the difficult decision to make this girl a house chicken rather than a pasture chicken. As she grows I’ll be getting her a small indoor coop, getting some chicken diapers, and taking the long and tiring road to litter train her. While it’ll be fun to spoil her and laugh at the surprise of guests when they see my pet chicken I can’t help but feel bad that she won’t have the same free pasture life as her former flockmates.

03/30/2021

There’s no better feeling in the world than a baby animal trusting you enough to fall asleep in your hands. This is what makes homesteading worth it for me; being able to hold these lives in my hands and let them know, no matter what the fate of that animal is in the end, that they were loved for their entire life.

03/29/2021

After another long and stressful power outage that lasted most of this morning, we’re finally back to a tentative normal. As far as we can tell the wind storm is finally over 🙌

03/29/2021

Getting all my ducks used to being bathed and inspected. While not all my ducks are show worthy, they all need to be comfortable with these thing in case I need to treat for an injury or they have a vet visit.

03/29/2021

Had a blackout last night. The ducks were fine but the chicks were a real concern. I’ve never been more thankful for having gravity fed water, a gas powered heater, and a lot of clamps and thick blankets laying around 😩we moved them into a smaller stock tank brooder we hurriedly set up in our bedroom because it’s the room that stays the warmest, filled up a couple huge bottles with the hottest water we could get out of our heater, and made a little half-tent with my dog’s favorite blanket. It worked great until the power came back and we were able to move them back to their normal brooder around 3am.

03/29/2021

Learning the most important skill for future free-range birds; foraging!

03/28/2021

Adventurous little cutie decided the top of the brooder plate was the best perch

03/27/2021

I made the mistake of going into our local North 40 while they had birds for sale... intended to only go in for a replacement bag of mealworms and left with 5 Rainbow Dixie hens alongside my bag of mealworms 😅

03/18/2021

They grow up so fast 🥰
First: 2 days old
Second: 2 weeks old
Third: 6 weeks old
All held by my husband so that the scale would be consistent

03/16/2021

Puddle of cuddling duckies~

03/09/2021

Introduced the two youngest ducks to the rest of the flock now that the female has recovered from her wry-neck and the two of them are old enough to eat the grower feed.

Introductions started a bit rough, but nobody was hurt. The only remaining conflicts now are coming from one of my older hens being convinced the youngest hen needs to be sat on at every opportunity, and my awkward hypermelaniatic hen that just can’t get it through her head that nobody likes it when she nibbles on their toes. But even then the conflicts are really just frustrated peeping and the occasional quack, no real chasing or pecking at each other.

03/03/2021

Peas!!

03/03/2021

Update on our little girl with wry-neck! We were able to remove the neck brace yesterday and she’s doing fantastic without it. She’s still a little lethargic and she still has the occasional neck spasm, but every time I check in on her she’s doing better and better 🥰

02/26/2021

Please don’t do this without guidance from a knowledgeable vet and keep your eyes solidly on your bird as often as you can (I’m going to be sleeping next to my quarantine brooder tonight) to make sure everything remains ok.

I have a huge update on this cute little girl!

I had a conversation with my vet this afternoon asking for advice to help her keep her head steady, and she gave me instructions for making a soft neck brace out of things I had on hand that has helped keep her head from lolling about when she tries to eat, drink, and sleep.

As long as things keep going well, she’s well on the road to recovery~

02/25/2021

When we got our first set of ducklings one was badly injured and had to be euthanized shortly after coming home. This morning we picked up a pair of ducklings we received to replace the one that arrived injured.

I was saddened to see that the female was in pretty bad shape. She seems to have wry-neck, and we have begun treatment based off that assumption.

She’s already showing massive improvement in the 4 hours since we first got her to drink and eat compared to her condition when we picked her up, and we plan to continue treating her as best we can. I hope she continues to improve and we see all symptoms subside over the next week. Though for the next 42 hours I won’t be straying far from the quarantine brooder to make sure she doesn’t relapse and her male counterpart doesn’t develop any issues.

02/23/2021

These little cuties are growing so fast

02/18/2021

I have a policy of being completely open and honest about all my animal care. I don’t like pretending that I’ve never made mistakes or things are always perfect without unforeseen circumstances. Social media filters reality too much so that you can never tell what reality actually is like, and I want no part of that pretty washing.

In this instance, I want to be completely open about what I had been keeping my ducklings in for the first week they were with us compared to our now finished permanent brooder.

It took a lot longer than we anticipated and not everything worked out how we wanted it to which really forced us to be creative in our solutions, but in the end what we got is a million times better than the alternative of keeping them in something unsuitable.

If you’re in a situation where a big necessary project isn’t done in time and you have to keep your animals somewhere that may not be the Instagram worthy masterpiece of your dreams, just know you’re not alone and that with careful management even the worst situation can be suitable for a short time while you finish that build.

Don’t give up or be disheartened because it takes longer than you may have planned or something goes awry. What you learn from those moments of frustration will benefit you in the long run.

02/18/2021

Our massive 6 foot by 4 foot permanent brooder is finally finished! It was a huge project, but offered a lot of fantastic learning experiences for us and we got a pretty sick new home for our Silver Appleyard ducklings until they’ve feathered out 🥰

02/14/2021

The stars finally aligned so we could finally start building our permanent brooder @ no more lame kiddy pool brooder for our ducklings

02/11/2021

A few more pics from early this morning that I derped and didn’t share

02/11/2021

They’re not quite ready for it to be morning yet

02/11/2021

You know it’s going to be a good night when a young animal suddenly gets a hard case of the 💤s in the middle of having the zoomies xD

02/10/2021

Got my first Silver Appleyard ducklings from delivered this morning 🥰 I’m so in love with these adorable little peepers!!

01/16/2021

Are you really a backyard duck keeper until you’ve cut your hands on hardware cloth and burned fingers with hot glue making a DIY splash catcher for your brooder’s waterer?