Mountain Sunday * 20 September 2015

South of the barn.
20 Sept 2015

East over the barn.
20 Sept 2015

North of the barn.
20 Sept 2015

Photos from the Farm – Barn Layout * 18 September 2015

Welcome Back!

I hope you had a wonderful week! Did you enjoy all the rain we had? It got muddy around the farm, but I love the rain so I don't mind the mud.

You're teacher said you are still working on maps. Did you draw a map of your classroom, or your bedroom?

I thought you might like to see a map of our barn.

This is what I see when I walk out to milk the goats. It's not always this messy looking, but we've been very busy the last few weeks and haven't had time to clean everything up.

A little closer. You can see the milk stand in the middle of the big, open door. We don't leave the big door open very often.

Do you see the blue hose on the left of the door? That's where we get water for the animals' water buckets. You can see both milk stands with the short milk stool between the two stands. The stand on the left is a tall stand, the stall on the right is a short stand. The goats stand on the milk stands and eat some grain while I milk them. They love being milked because they always get grain.

If you walk past the milk stands you can see the three stalls on the right side of the barn. Stalls are like bedrooms for animals. They don't live there all the time, but they sleep and eat there. They need shelter from the rain, snow, and from the sun in the hot summer.

Look at the hay bales! They are so big! It takes the animals about one month to eat a whole bale. Two bales weighs about the same as a small car, that's heavy!

On the other side of the barn we keep grain in big, blue barrels. We buy grain in big bags. Do you see the two stacks of bags to the right of the blue barrels? We store food for the animals just like you store food at home.
Do you see the white door? That's how we get into the chicken pen.

The chicken pen is under the roof. The chickens need shelter from the weather just like the other animals.
And you can see our red tractor!
The little dog house is for the ducks. They need shelter when it gets cold, too. Sometimes they go into the chicken pen, sometimes they like to get into the dog house.

If I draw a map of the barn, this is what it looks like.
If you look at last week's post you'll see what the barn looks like if you are looking down from an airplane.
A map is a drawing of the same thing.

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This chick was just born on Tuesday, 15 September 2015.
We are lucky to have nice hens that let me pick up their chicks!

Here is another one that was born on the same day.
Two hens hatched out 5 chicks. One hen hatched out 2 chicks.
How many chicks did the other hen hatch out?

This is the same little chick. Chicks are loud when they want their mama hen!
What other sounds do you hear?

This is what the mama hen and her 3 chicks look like when they are looking for food.
The mama hen is teaching her chicks how to follow her, and how to find food and water to eat and drink.

Here is one of the chicks that was born on the first day of school.
How old is this chick?
This chick is a little more than 4 weeks old!

This hen is fierce! She protects her chicks by pecking and attacking anyone that comes close!
We keep her because she's a good mama hen.
She is such a good mama hen that she adopted some chicks that were born the same day, but they were born in an incubator.

This is an incubator.
It keeps the temperature and the moisture just right so that eggs will hatch.

It also keeps new chicks warm right after they are born.

I hope you have a great week!

See you soon!

Mountain Sunday * 13 September 2015

South of the barn.
13 September 2015

East over the barn.13 September 2015

North of the barn.13 September 2015

Photos from the Farm – Maps * 11 September 2015

Welcome back!

I hope you had a wonderful week and that you are still enjoying school.

Your teacher said that you are learning about maps in school. Maps are wonderful! They help us know where to go whether we are driving or walking. I love having a map to follow when I'm at the zoo so I can go right to the animals I want to see.

Here is what our farm looks like if you were flying over it in a helicopter.
We have fences in a few different places now that when the photo was taken.

This is what it looks like if I draw a map of the farm!

What looks the same between the two pictures? What looks different? Did I draw trees in the map? Did I draw the driveways? Can you find the house and the barn?

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Do you remember the chicks that were born the first day of school?

These are the two chicks that were born on the first day of school, 19 August 2015. How many days old are they now?

They are starting to get their feathers. This one is still in the coop.

This chick is wondering what I'm doing.
He isn't used to having his picture taken every day.

Here are the turkey chicks that were born on 1 September 2015.
They are starting to get their feathers, too.

This is a picture on their birthday, the day they were born.
Do they look different now that they are older?

This is a video of the turkey chicks the day they were born.

This video was taken on Thursday, 10 September 2015 when they were 10 days old.

The mother hen is helping this chick find food.
Chickens eat grains, seeds, plants, and bugs. At the very end of the video you can see the mother hen catching a black bug and eating it!

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That's all for this week!

Next week I'll show you what the barn looks like on the inside, and I'll show you a map of the barn. 

If you have any questions, please write them on a piece of paper and give them to your teacher. If you have good hand writing I'll post your question and answer it for everyone to see.

Mountain Sunday * 6 September 2015

South of the barn.
6 September 2015

East over the barn.6 September 2015

North of the barn.6 September 2015

New Turkey Chicks

Our turkey hen hatched out 5 chicks this morning! We've kept an eye on her since she started sitting.

I was told that domesticated turkeys don't do a good job of sitting because they are so big it's hard for them to go without food and water for so long.

This is where she decided to sit, on the top of two 1-ton bales of hay.

We put water and food up there for her so that she would have some incentive to stay put and hatch out the eggs.

Once they hatched we were worried that they would jump down onto the cement below and die. This morning I found chicks hatched, and two on the floor already. They were fine, uninjured from the fall because they fell onto the hay that we intentionally left on the barn floor.

While the hen was down below watching the two on the ground, I used our old fishing net to catch the three left on top of the bales and brought them down to their mama.

This is one that I was able to catch and hold.

Running to mama!

Later today I'll pull three of the chicks and hand raise them in a brooder. I was told that domesticated turkeys don't do a great job of raising their own chicks. Wild turkeys do a great job, but domesticated turkeys aren't quite as intelligent.

We try different 'experiments' on the farm so we'll let her raise two chicks, and I'll raise three. If she can keep two alive and well, then next time she hatches out a clutch I'll let her raise all of them.

There are still 12 weeks until Thanksgiving...... I'm not sure if we will have one big enough for dinner by then. I wouldn't be surprised if we did because we take good care of the animals here and they often grow bigger than expected.

Last year our turkeys weighed 40 lbs or more. That's big!