Lancelot Acres

We have new critters! :)

We attended the animal flea market/ swap meet near Ligonier, Indiana on Saturday and we had such a nice time!  Lilli had so much fun choosing which chicks she wanted to purchase with her own money.  I was so busy helping her find the ones she wanted that I forgot to buy laying hens!  I remembered when we were driving out but it was too late.  Sigh.  The didn't have ANY guinea keets either!  I looked through that entire place and not one keet anywhere!  There were several young guineas that didn't have all their spots yet, but I really want young keets.  I've found that if you buy them when they are older, then they always run away.  Always.  It doesn't matter if you keep them locked up for a year before letting them free-range, they will still leave. 

So we hope to go again next month and I hope to find guinea keets and laying hens at that time.  Until then, my little hen has been supplying us with enough eggs to get us by.  Somehow she lays 2 eggs per day about 3 times per week.  Bless her heart.  (LOL)

So...I bought a mama banty w/ 5 itty-bitty babies.  They hatched just two days before.  I paid an amish boy $15 for her and the babies.  I didn't even hesitate.  I find banties are great mamas and worth their weight in gold for that reason.  They will hatch any type of egg you place under them while they are sitting and she'll raise the babies for us. 

Mama and babies are residing in our chicken tractor (a cage without a floor so they can free-range in safety) for the time being.  They are safe and she can peck on the grass and find bugs, etc. 

I also bought 4 bronze turkey poults ($5.50 each).  We've never raised turkeys, but would like to start putting a few in our freezer each year.  The girls and I really like turkey (Lance not so much), so I'd like to have some on hand that are homegrown and organic.  We'll see how this goes, I have no experience whatsoever with turkeys and I'm just going to raise them with the chicks and hope for the best.

Lilli bought several things with her money.  She had $40 and spent $28.  She bought: 

*4 itty-bitty barred rock pullets (the guy said pullets, I have no idea),
*4 Auracana chicks that are a bit bigger than the barred rocks, and
*2 misc mixed breed chicks

So we brought home 20 new feathered friends.  We put the chicks into two different wire cages in the chicken coop and put a heat lamp over them.  They all made it through the night, so that was good.  I wasn't sure about the turkeys, they were shivering everytime I checked on them, but they all seemed ok as of Sunday night, I haven't checked yet this morning, but will head out soon.

All the critters rode home in the front of the truck with us.  Lilli held 4 of the chicks in a shoebox on her lap (per her request), and the rest of them rode in a large cardboard box on the backseat.  The little mama didn't like this set up much, but it was dark enough that she didn't raise too much cain unless we hit a bump and the other chicks got too close to her and her babies.  Then you'd hear her growl a warning and hear some shifting in the box and then all was fine again.

I did buy a few non-animal items. 

Two small bags of chick feed to last me until I head to the feed store today. 

Two pairs of boots for Lauren in her next size up.  One pair of insulated mud boots (woohoo) and one pair of waterproof winter boots for $4 each.

I also bought a set of King size sheets for our bed.  400 thread count for $20.  I've never found King size for that cheap, so I figured we'd better try them out :)

We spent Saturday afternoon arranging cages and moving chicks around.

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Sunday morning Lance, Lauren and I (Lilli was at my parent's house) went to the local flea market.  I'm in the market for glass, cast iron, stainless, or stone bread pans, and glass bowls w/ lids, so I wanted to see what I could find.  I found a small glass pitcher (really small)$2, a cheese grater (smaller than a shredder)50 cents, and a glass '2-cup' measuring cup -50 cents.  Then I found 3 bread pans...2 glass and one stainless steel, for $1 each!  Woohoo!  LOL.  I love flea markets.

Then we found pet carriers and cages.  We spent $35 and bought one large, one medium, one small and two tiny (think rabbit) pet carriers (the tiny ones are perfect for Lilli to carry at the swap meet).  Also included in that $35 is a $15 stacked wire cage.  I am thrilled with that purchase.  It has 3 wire cage compartments on top, and 3 on bottom, with trays underneath for easy cleaning.  It will be so nice to put our chicks in there for brooding, and easier to clean than standard totes that we usually use.  It will be handy to use when we are nursing a sick critter back to health or if we just need to separate some critters until auction day.  It was definitely a good purchase for us.

Then we went to Rural King in Niles.  We love that store.  Lance picked up a salt and mineral block for the cattle and I picked up grit and feed bowls for the chickens (for their new cages). 

Then I bought:

4 MORE turkey poults!  LOL.  2 Royal Palm and 2 Red Bourbon ($7 each).
2 itty-bitty banty chicks ($1.20 each)
2 buff orpington ($1.70 each)
1 speckled sussex ($1.70)
1 silver phoenix ($1.70)

So we added 30 new feathered friends to our collection this weekend.  We'll thin them out this fall and sell (or eat) the ones we don't want to keep.  We can't keep too many roosters, so those will be the first to go, followed by any mean hens.  We'll see how it goes. 

Lilli wanted to make sure that the chicks she bought were going to be 'pets' and not 'food'.  LOL

I told her that we would keep them all, but she would have to sell her roosters if she had any, as we can only keep one or two.  She was fine with that idea, especially when I told her she would get the money from the sale.

Here are a few pictures:

This is one of Lilli's little barred rocks...she has 4...the second picture if a view from the top of their cage...they are so little!  :)

This is a picture of the rest of the chicks (not including the mama w/ babies).  The brownish ones with stripes on their heads are the bronze turkey poults.  The rest are the various chicks that Lilli picked out.  the second picture is just a side view of their cage.

Here is the mama banty I bought with her chicks.  She has 5 but it's hard to get a picture showing all 5, they spend a lot of time under her wings.

The rest of these are just pictures from around our place...

Here we have 3 little piggies:

Two friendly goats:

Two happy dogs:

One upset barncat (she is not trapped, she's mad because we kicked her out of the coop where she was stalking the chicks).

A view of our hillside.  Here are 6 of our 8 cows.  The white one, the tan one and the two mostly black ones are our newest additions.  I hope to get better pictures of them soon.

Here we have Stripey (our roo that we thought was a hen) and Penny, our hen that lays two eggs per day sometimes!

I don't have any pictures of our chicks/poults we bought yesterday.  I'll try to get some today when we get them all situated in their new cages.  Right now we have the itty-bitties in a cardboard box and the rest of them are in wire cages.  I'm not sure what I'll end up doing with them all...It's a constant changing game while we figure out who lives best together and such.  They'll all live together eventually anyway, once they get big enough to go without a heat lamp, but right now they have to co-exist in smallish living areas, so we try to watch them and keep the bigger chicks from eating all the foods and picking on the smaller chicks.

I love Spring!  :)

:)

{ 11:44, 2008-May-5 } { Posted by Barefootcountrygirl }

This was such a fun read!! Love the pics!!

Thank you for sharing...

{ 11:46, 2008-May-5 } { Posted by mamaof2andtwins }

I loved hearing about your adventure and seeing the pictures.
Blessings,
Jennie