Babies Being Born Here....What else do YOU raise???

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Miniv

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We have foals (3) so far.....expecting a couple more before summer is over.....BUT, we have OTHER babies too!

Thought it would be fun to find out about what everyone has/raises/breeds other than horses......

This past month has been busy with babies......Four Chickens and Nine Ducklings hatched...... Four Guinea Piglets born two days ago... and last night we had Holland Lop Rabbit Kits born!

Three chicks are Cochin/Austrolorp crosses and one is a Cochin/Lavender Americauna cross (the latter we are keeping).

The Ducklings are domestic Mallards and 7 are already sold and we are keeping two.

The Guinea Piglets were a MISTAKE and we are selling. My daughter thought she bought 2 males from Petco as pets......Oops. (They are cute!)

The Bunnies.......2 dead, but we have 2 alive. We'll be selling or giving them to 4-H-ers as that used to be an important part of our lives when the daughter was in middle school and high school. The Holland Lop parents are still young and I'm encouraging the daughter to let them go too. That will only leave us with 2 senior Satin rabbits that she showed and I am fond of....so they'll stay as pets until they die of old age.

Of course we also have our cats and dogs, but they are ALL "fixed" and were rescued/adopted.

Yep....we have Farm! LOL.....
 
Ooh I love hearing about what else everybody raises! So far, we had two litters of kits born to our new Zealand rabbits. We've hatched about 30 rouen ducklings and 40 golden pheasant chicks. Pea chicks will hopefully hatch soon as long as I set the incubator up correctly. A few holstein calves have arrived and two belted galloways. Now, we're just waiting for the sheep to lamb out, then we'll be done babying it for a bit lol. Oh, and there are 4 baby raccoons in the ceiling above my grooming bay...they're cute as heck but need to go.
 
We are waiting on one last Miniature foal. Have a Lamancha and Nubian due any day, bred to a spotted Boer.

Have three litters of rabbits. Seven pedigreed Rexes and six American Blue New Zealand crosses.

Also have a hen setting on five eggs. Rooster is a Frizzle. We will see if they hatch in another couple weeks.
 
Besides our Angus calves, the only babies here are a couple litters of barn kittens from the barn cats that haven't made it to the low cost clinic yet (I'm about 3/4 the way through the barn cats, but have to haul 65 miles, only have so many kennels and the clinic is only once a year, or less frequent).
 
Amysue - You must have your hands full with those pheasants and ducklings! And Belted Galloways? Aren't those the ones that my daughter would call "oreo cows"? LOL.

Magic Marker - My now grown foster daughter is into the goats.....They are SO CUTE as babies, but we've decided we have enough critters.....She always seems to have at least one bottle baby and brings it with her when she visits. (We actually owned a few over the years, but never bred.)

Chanda - Don't envy your barn kitty situation. When we first moved here 12 years ago the previous owner had had a "cattery" and she just left a bunch of cats behind running loose! (I think it was a kitty version of a puppy mill.) Fortunately one of the regional shelters felt sorry for us and loaned us live traps and allowed us to turn them over to them for only $5 each! I doubt they would do that anymore......
 
Chanda - Don't envy your barn kitty situation. When we first moved here 12 years ago the previous owner had had a "cattery" and she just left a bunch of cats behind running loose! (I think it was a kitty version of a puppy mill.) Fortunately one of the regional shelters felt sorry for us and loaned us live traps and allowed us to turn them over to them for only $5 each! I doubt they would do that anymore......
We'd have fewer cats if the country wasn't a dumping ground. Found a cat on the side of the road in January one year; we bought a piece of property, and the guy left his house cat when he left; and then we tried to rent that house for a year, and the renters left their 13 cats behind (4 young adults and their 9 kittens - got 3/4 of them rehomed, but still had a few left here).
 
Well our Nubian surprised us with triplets. She didnt look very big so was surprised to have her have three. She wants nothing to do with them. We have to tie her up along with both back legs. She was a bottle baby herself so with research, learned it may take the mom longer to accept them.

She had a small light brown doeling, we named Lucy. The larger, darker doeling is Jackie. The red moonspotted buckling is Moonshadow.

The other doe looks like she will deliver today. We took the does from the buck on Jan 16 so she will be 155 days yesterday.

Also got 15 Americana chicks, a lamancha doeling, and a purebred Bullmastiff puppy at the monthly auction. We didn't get his papers because he was sold so cheap. He usually sells his puppies for $800. The puppy is disqualified for showing because of white on his paws and tail. Bullmastiffs can only have a small amount of white on their chest. His name is Beau and is in the yard with the goats and chickens. He was raised with chickens and was born on April 24.
 
Cute babies! We don't have baby anything this year. Did find 4 adorable kittens under our leanto. They had their eyes open but weren't crawling yet. Mom is feral. The kitties looked like they needed to be housecats--pretty markings, plump and healthy looking. We put them in a trap and hoped to catch mom, so we could find homes for them, but she got every kitten out of the trap without setting it off. Don't know where she moved them, but doubt they will last very long out there. We have a new predatory visitor lately--a gray fox.
 
Our Lamancha had twins this morning. One elf eared buck and a eared buckling. Made my roommate mad because the doe is getting up their in age and she wanted does. Two years ago she had twin does by the same buck. Needless to say, the two bucklings will be sold.
 
We have a broody hen. Sat on five eggs and they never hatched. They were not fertile. Tried to put chicks with her and she kept pecking them. We put her back in the coop. She wouldn't let any of the other hens in the nest, needless to say she was booted out.
 
I have an Americana (Easter Egger) hen who spends most of her day in a nest box....often sitting on another hen's egg (which I pull). I take her out of the box every afternoon so she'll eat.

She hasn't laid her OWN egg in WEEKS. I'm baffled.
 
I have an Americana (Easter Egger) hen who spends most of her day in a nest box....often sitting on another hen's egg (which I pull). I take her out of the box every afternoon so she'll eat.

She hasn't laid her OWN egg in WEEKS. I'm baffled.
She's broody. I have resolved this before by putting the hen in a wire cage up off the floor for a few days. Otherwise, if you have any fertile eggs, mark them with an X in pencil, put them under her, and just let her do her Thing.
 
Gah! All photos are too big for this forum....had to upload m then download to shrink them. No longer have a resizing option on my phone. =/

Anywho, wheelies are the only babies born here.

First pic is some of this year's lamb crop.

Rest are from previous years.

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And this is Marshmallow when she was a baby.

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Five chicks hatched yesterday out of 6 eggs. Rooster is New Hampshire Red and hens Rhode Island Red. Setting hen is a Buff. She did a great job in this hot weather.

A couple of days ago she came out for a drink and got into a hen fight with one of the other hens. Luckily I was nearby and ran to separate them. I think it was to the death. Neither hen made a sound. I was scared the broody would not go back to the nest, she was so stressed. But luckily she did. I have her and the babies separated from the other girls.

chicks.jpg
 
We had a feral cat with a litter of kittens under our leanto. Usually we just let nature take its course, but these babies were so cute and healthy looking that we hated to see them in the food chain. We finally trapped them last night. There is another one we caught later, a darling gray tabby. Wow, they were wild! I wore gloves and they squalled and bit and scratched. Good thing they are just morsels! Gave them some supper and breakfast and they are already tamer. Someone is coming to get them this afternoon so they will get to be house cats. I think they are only about 4 weeks old, but eating well so we feel okay about getting them out of the food chain. There were 4 kittens at first. One disappeared already.

We had to move the hay bales to find them and among the other trash under there was a mouse trap. I guess the mom dragged the trap + mouse there for the babies. I got 4 ticks off one of them; the others were too wild to check.

kittens.jpg
 
Marsha, what happened to the mother cat?
 
Marsha, what happened to the mother cat?
I saw her today. We wanted to get the kittens while they were still young enough to tame and before a predator got them. They were lapping milk with small dogfood in it (that's all I had). They ate two big bowlfuls, so they were definitely ready for food. One bowlful was goats milk kefir; I thought that would be a nutritious thing to give them. I picked 4 ticks off the little white one; she was not as lively as the other two. Maybe other ticks had been on her. couldn't check for ticks on the other two as they were too wild. The lady who took them is the wife of a vet. She was going to have him look them over good.

We've tried to trap the mother before but she has been caught at the neighbor's, and won't go in a trap any more. I was going to take her to a farmer who likes cats in his hay barn. He doesn't care if they are sort of wild. And he feeds them. We don't really want the cats here. They kill our bunnies, quail and song birds, and hunt our mountain boomer lizards. They poop under the leanto and the toms spray. We like kitties, but have enough predators with hawks and foxes and raccoons and skunks and snakes.
 

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