Our Animals

Okay, here’s my long post on our animals — beware, I do have a bunch of pictures thrown in. I’ve reduced them though so they shouldn’t take long to load. I’ve tried to go into detail, but if I missed anything let me know!

Chickens

Chickens are very good for eggs and meat, and eating bugs. Basically it usually depends on what you’re going to do with them, on what breed you get. There’s the Cornish hens that are good for meat, others that are great egglayers, etc.

Personally, I prefer Rhode Island Reds. They are friendly, curious, and good egg layers. They’re a reddish brown with some beautiful green and some dark blue scattered throughout their feathers.

They can be easily spoiled too, we had a rooster once who thought he was a dog — I mean he actually came up and ate with our collie, Prince, out of the same bowl. And he ate chicken! Unfortunately he was beheaded by my lab mix, Woofie. Stuck his head through the fence a bit too far.

The roosters, of course, like to fight (if you have more than one) and sometimes you might have to separate them though this usually isn’t too much of a problem, but you do have to watch if one rooster is inside a fence and the other one isn’t. Our rooster once got his spur stuck in the fence and was hanging there until I found him, his leg was quite asleep by that time.

And whatever you do, don’t let your chickens eat mice. Don’t even throw one in to see what they will do. My favorite hen died by eating a mouse. I guess she couldn’t digest it.

We’ve butchered them before when I was younger, but not lately. We’d put their heads on a chopping block between two nails, and hit it with an axe. Even with their heads cut off, they fly and flop around on their nerves. If you don’t like to watch animals die, this would not be a good thing to watch. Then, after that’s done, I think we dipped them in a bucket of hot water, to loosen the feathers and plucked them. I don’t remember much after that.

We use the eggs for eating, and cooking. Making cakes, stuff like that. If we have lots and lots of eggs, we’ll give some to the neighbors.

Guinea Birds

These birds are not something to get if you have close neighbors or not enough land for them to roam on. They’re loud, with their screeching and other noises, but great “watch-dogs”. They will certainly alert you if something is coming on your property that they are not familiar with.

One thing to beware of though, when it gets warm, the females go nesting. In the woods, brush piles, etc. Sometimes it can be very difficult to find them, and then you have to get them back to their pens.
Occasionally the males *might* stand guard over them, but not too often. It is good to have a good dog that knows the word “guineas” and can sniff them out for you, and then help you get them back.

And do not, whatever you do, don’t put guineas in with chickens or roosters. They will try to keep them from food and water and run them to death. Our male guinea is the *head* of all our animals (except the ducks) and he charges them to get them out of the way.
Guineas are also good bug eaters, and mosquito eaters. We noticed a good drop on bugs after we got our guineas. Of course, now that we only have two left, the bugs are coming back.

And I don’t think we’ve ever had a problem with guineas in the garden, instead of eating the plants they eat the bugs off the plants, so actually they helped us.

Oh, and some more advice, guinea’s necks are fragile. Don’t try to swing at them with a stick and accidentally hit their neck; chances are it’ll kill them (it happened to our guinea “No-Tail”) And you can’t catch them, unless it’s in pitch black darkness, and they do fly. If left out at night, they will roost in trees. And when herding them, try to stay calm and not really chase them too much unless they’re running to fast, because they frighten easily that way.
Currently our two guineas are housed in the “Rooster Pen” with our male duck Jack. He isn’t afraid of them.

And, um, if you have fences around your property, that doesn’t keep these guys in. They’ll either fly them or find some way around them.

Ducks

Right now, we only have two ducks, an old female whom we call Light-Bill (or Lighty for short) and a young male named Jack. Light-bill is in a small, fenced, open building type thing build for the ducks (or was it the rabbits? I can’t remember) and Jack is in the Rooster Pen with the guineas.

They love mud, water, and earthworms. It’s pure joy to them if you let them out in a rain storm! Unfortunately we can only let one duck out at a time, since if we let both of them out together Jack will cripple Lighty by getting on her back, since she is so old. So we alternate — Jack gets out one day, Lighty the next, and so on and so forth.

If you want to give them a treat, feed them some earthworms.

I have also found out that ducks appear to have wonderful memories. So don’t make one angry and expect to be forgiven later. I learned that with Jack, and the duck still hates me. I used to dunk him underwater to give him a *bath* and he actually bit me on the face once. And now he just charges me and –get this– hisses!

We just keep woodchips in Lighty’s pen, and in the winter put hay in the back for her to snuggle in. The pen gets cleaned out at least monthly, depending on how bad it is or how much rain we got (cause that makes it really smell bad)

Turkeys

Unless you intend on eating them, don’t get them. Our female *wanders* away, out in the woods, over to the neighbors house, and requires a constant watch if let out. And, of course, the males follow her wherever she goes. We only have three turkeys left out of twenty that we used to have. Now, babysitting 20 turkeys wasn’t fun at all, especially when the males didn’t like me.

But, anyway, they are big eaters. And, like ducks, they have great memories. Don’t ever, ever, make a male mad by kicking at it, or whatever, unless you intend to pay for it in the future. They’ll flop you, chase you, peck you, and it hurts. They have very sharp beaks. And, be sure, they’ll remember it forever.

But, like I said, don’t get them unless you intend to eat them, because they eat lots of food and require a lot of attention. We’ve been putting the males and female up in our old dog pen (currently unoccupied) where there’s grass, food and water, so the female doesn’t wander.

We used to have two white male turkeys, and I mean, they were MEAN! I had to actually have them chase me to the upper end of the garden, pour some feed on the ground and run back to do my animal chores, because they would trap me in the duck building and I didn’t dare go out unless Levi rescued me. Thankfully, we got rid of them.

for butchering these guys, I would suppose you do it in a similar way that you do chickens, but I don’t know for sure since we’ve never done it.

I *think* I covered it all.