The Urban Ladybug Farm

Give Thanks not just on Thanksgiving Day, but every day of your life. Something I can struggle with when sh*t is really rough… and truthfully, life’s stressors and adulthood have been creeping up HARD lately and trying it’s damned hardest to break us. But with every hardship is a blessing around the corner and this Thanksgiving has been no different! We celebrated, cooked & ate our little hearts out, cuddled and watched lots of Christmas movies, and thoroughly enjoyed our first holiday with just the 3 of us. It was quiet, and calm, and the biggest drama of the day was when Kylin dumped over the entire bowl of freshly baked warm cookies all over the counter… 😂 wouldn’t be a holiday without some form of chaos. Happy Thanksgiving Week to All, grateful for each of you who chooses to follow our farming family journey, we love you all!📸 @reneefoxphotography

🐥🐥🐥 These quail eggs took 23 days to hatch, when they normally hatch between day 16-18, figure me that? I’ve hatched so many chicks and ducks I likely could never recall them all but this was my first time incubating quail eggs all the way to hatch and these peeps had me second guessing if I was going to get any to hatch but I stayed patient and we ended up getting 10 little cuties from this incubation, resulting in a pretty poor hatch rate of around 30% but considering they were shipped from an Amazon seller and nearly all came with some level of crack/damage, I’m kind of surprised we got any to hatch at all! What other candling question’s might you have, leave them down below. #incubatingeggs #quaileggs #hatchingquail

Their eggs are like delicious little business cards, telling me who’s been working here 😂I also know from the color of their yolk, who’s being lazy and sitting by the feeder all day and who’s out foraging around and eating a balanced diet of bugs, grass and grain, #caughtredhanded LOL#farmlife #chickenkeeping #eggfacts

More kids scheduled to drop this weekend! Miss Moo is a week out so it’s time to move her into the kidding pen and move Dulce, Truffle & their mama Petunia back to the main pen with the rest of the crew. Babies can come a few days early or a few days late so planning about a week out is usually a good time to move my expecting doe’s and yep, mine are extremely food motivated too, so I find the easiest way to move them is by bribing them with some good ol’ tasty pellets. Goats are such herd animals and need to be able to socialize with other goats, so I keep the kidding pen right next to the doe pen, sharing a small fence, so that my expecting mothers can birth in a peaceful area but still be able to see and socialize with their sisters. This gives them the space to birth with minimal disturbance, to bond well with their babies, and to keep their babies safe from the other doe’s until they are big/fast enough to get away from their ornery behaviors. Miss Moo’s ligaments are softening (meaning she’s starting to open up and ready herself for birthing), her udder is filling more each day and summer kidding season is well on its way, with 5 more doe’s due at various times over August and September, including Ruth, Periwinkle, Pixie, Espirit and Kami. 💙 Here we go! #kiddingseason #summerkidding #farmlife

Farm life can be challenging enough but finding someone willing to watch your farm when you go on vacation can be so tough. Especially when you have a farm like ours, with chicks damn near constantly in a million different cages, goat kids being born all throughout the year, doe’s that have to be miked daily, over 25 goats and over 100 chickens to feed everyday… Its a lot to take on and we are extremely fortunate to have such wonderful friends here in town who have a similar farm as ours. They watch our place and we watch theirs and it’s a wonderful symbiotic relationship! How does it all work? Well, there are specific things we do to make their life easier while we are gone, like lots of automatic waterers for nearly all the animals, large feeders that don’t need to be filled daily, etc. And even though they have their own farm, we also don’t expect our farm sitters to just guess on how to care for all our animals either and we will either go over each animal in detail together or we will leave a detailed “job aid” to go over each animals care, where to find their food, any special care notes etc. so that they are completely set up for success while we are gone. Many people have the idea in mind that if you have a farm you can’t ever leave it… but I’m a “have your cake and eat it too” type of gal and I really want my raw milk and homegrown veggies but I also really want to see the world too and I don’t think they have to be mutually exclusive, I think they both can exist in the same lifetime! What are your thoughts?? #farmlife #goingonvacation #farmsitters #farmhelp

We’ve got 20+# birds y’all! From shell to full blown dinosaur in less than 2 months! 😂 I can’t even imagine how big these birds are going to be at full-grown! Ducklings always shock me with how fast they grow compared to chicks, but I have to say, these geese have surprised me even more! I have to say though, for both being waterfowl, geese are so wildly different than ducks! Geese are so friendly, watchful, calm. Ducks are so incredibly skiddish and unless you work with the them daily (hand raising them) they will hardly let you pet them willingly. They certainly don’t follow you around like your shadow, how geese do. These goslings seem so protective towards Kylin, biting and pinching at Poppie if she gets too rowdy, while my ducks could care less about protecting their human companions! I’ve really enjoyed watching these 3 grow & blend right into our life here on the farm! It’s almost like they have always been here! 😍🪿🌼#goslings

Part 1 | Companionship with your animals… There’s nothing like it and there’s only a few things better in this world for your heart than this! Time spent with our animals brings our blood pressure down and our endorphins and dopamine up. That’s because we are experiencing unconditional love, something that’s so hard for some humans to give, is all some animals know how to live. It is not lost on me how blessed I am that I get to care for these animals every single day and that they love and trust me enough to form the most beautiful bond. Who else absolutely needs to spend quality time with their pets every single day? It could be the dogs, cats, goats, birds or bees… they all make this mamas heart happy! #farmlife