Tag: turkeys

Keeping Busy

~ wattlesandcombsfarm ~ Leave a comment

We have been keeping busy here at our house. Summer is here, but it’s been more rainy and stormy than anything. Which means the garden has taken off, both weeds and plants. I was out weeding yesterday and almost put my hand right where a giant Wolf Spider was hanging out. I HATE spiders. The worst part is that I walked away for a minute, and when I came back, the spider had disappeared. So, now I have a ton more weeding to get done and I know there is a giant spider out there somewhere, but no idea where.

So, needless to say, I really don’t want to go out and get the weeding done. I also desperately need to trim my tomato plants. They have gone completely wild, and I can’t see where anything is. I did get four of them trimmed up the other day, but it took an hour and a half. So, tons more work to do in the garden.

Livestock

This year, our goal was to put a little bit more home-raised meat in the freezer. We hatched out our own chicks for the first time, so we could process a few of the extras and the roosters. I call them our teenage chickens, and unfortunately, we have lost a few. The teenagers are small enough to get out of the chicken pen (I am working on fixing this), and they hang out in the goat pen with the boys instead. Which I didn’t think was a big deal. They are still behind fencing, they sleep in an extra dog igloo, and I thought everything was fine. Until one day, I counted up the teenage chickens, and we were down a few. A week later, we are down a few more. We have been here for a little over a year and have never had a predator problem. However, there is apparently a fox in the area, down further away from us, but I wonder if it hasn’t made its way up to our property. I still don’t see how, again, they are in fencing and with male goats, I wouldn’t think that would be something they were interested in messing with, but goats aren’t known for their protection abilities. There have been absolutely no signs of anything, no struggle, no feathers, just missing chickens. We do have large birds in the area, so it could maybe be that, but I don’t know. So, the chickens will be locked in the chicken pen as soon as I find where they get out, and hopefully, we don’t lose any more. We have a few extra roosters, so we will at least be able to put a few birds in the freezer.

Last year, we raised two broad-breasted turkeys, one for Thanksgiving, and one we made into ground turkey meat. This year, we wanted to have a bit more turkey meat and brought home five white broad-breasted turkeys. They were the absolute cutest things ever as chicks, but now I am ready for processing day. The adult turkeys STINK. Like all meat turkeys, they eat a ton of food, act like they are always starving, but I don’t remember last year’s smelling this bad. It makes sense, I guess, they eat to grow, so they poop a lot, like a giant chicken, and it’s just gross. Wherever the roost is completely covered and I am ready for them to go bye-bye. Next year, if we raise turkeys again, they will need to be off in their own spot, completely away from everything else. Our plan for the meat, if anyone is curious, is to keep one for Thanksgiving, halve two of them so we can roast a half a turkey instead of a whole chicken, and then grind the other ones into ground meat. I also have a wild turkey in the freezer that we will add in there somewhere.

Our goats have been a bit of a disaster this year. We had our first kidding season and ended up with three beautiful little does. However, we did lose one mama to complications. This made my milk plans sort of go out the door. Our one Nigerian Dwarf that survived only had one kid, and therefore didn’t produce as much milk. It was her first time, and when I put her on the milking stand, she hated it. No matter what I tried, she never really got any better, so I just let her raise her baby and didn’t bother milking her anymore. That left us with our Alpine as the only milker. She is the best goat. She gives us tons of milk, she is easy on the stand, and we love her dearly. However, her milk, no matter what I do, is always goaty. It’s ok if you drink it fresh that day, but if it sits at all it gets a goat flavor to it. So, as much as we love her, having her in milk isn’t all that helpful. I am currently in the process of drying her off and hoping our next round of kidding goes better for milk production.

We did end up putting a little goat meat in the freezer for the first time. We had a wether that ended up being a bit of a nuisance. I have written about him before, he wasn’t fully castrated and still had one testicle. This complicated all of our breeding because I couldn’t put the does in with the buck without having to move them all around to avoid possible breeding by the wrong boy. He was also very loud. Just outside bleating all day for no reason. We are a small property, only three acres, with neighbors on similar three acres, and so we try and be courteous to them with the noise. We processed and put him in the freezer. We have only tried goat meat once, we roasted a leg, and I have to admit it was pretty tasty.

Whats Next?

For the rest of the summer, I will be tackling weeds. They are terrible out here. We are a very windy area, and the weed seeds blow around and take root on any exposed ground. It’s quite frustrating. However, the garden is producing, and soon I will have garden produce to process and put away. I love the feeling of stocking the house with things I grew and preserved.

In about a month, the turkeys will be processed, possibly a duck or two along with them, and we will have home-grown meat in the freezer again. My husband is going on an elk hunt this fall, if he is successful, we will have a ton of meat to put away from that. I also drew a doe tag this year and will hopefully be able to use that to bring even more meat home. I am toying around with the idea of bringing a few sheep onto the farm. I will need to downsize the goat herd first, just for more manageability, but we have a large pasture area that the goats aren’t using well, and I think sheep might be a better option for us as far as being able to raise them on grass and process. We will keep a few goats for milk, but I don’t need as many as I have. Lastly, we are getting ready to start our next homeschool year. My son will be starting his first year of high school, which has me a little stressed out. I struggled a little bit planning the year, because you kind of have to plan it all at the same time to make sure everything is covered. I think I have got it all mostly figured out, but now we have to follow through and track it all. I am excited about it, but also just really careful to make sure everything is covered and done correctly.

I can’t believe summer is sort of ending. Once the school year starts, summer goes by so quickly. Getting things up and running on the farm this year was a challenge, but I think I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. When the garden is harvested and put to bed, the meat is in the freezer, I truly think this year will be called a success. It just takes a while for everything to come together. Not too shabby for the second summer on the farm.

Homestead Pest Control: Using Muscovy Ducks and Other Poultry for Bug Management

~ wattlesandcombsfarm ~ Leave a comment

This summer we have been eaten alive by mosquitoes, we have grasshoppers everywhere, and there are spiders and beetles galore. The bugs on this property are out of control. It makes sense, our property is in the middle of the prairie and we are surrounded by farmland, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I know there are chemical answers out there, but I don’t like the idea of covering our land in insecticides. So, I began searching for natural answers.

First, was our mosquito problem. I have never lived somewhere where we had mosquitoes like this. We do have a small fish pond but that is our only standing water and I still cannot figure out where they are coming from. I swear they live in the grass and they are making outside time miserable. We built a new goat shelter and my husband’s legs got eaten to pieces. I can’t go into my garden to take care of it without having six mosquitoes on each leg every time I turn around. I don’t love being covered in bug spray but at that point, it was our only option. So, a Google search ensued.

Most birds, including chickens, will eat mosquitoes and other pests however, they are not particularly good at it. Bats are great mosquito hunters, but as I mentioned we live on the prairie so that didn’t seem like a good answer. Ducks are better foragers and bug catchers than chickens in general, but not all ducks are as good as others. From my research, it seems that the Muscovy duck is the best duck for pest control. In fact, I believe they were called mosquito assassins and will eat mosquitoes out of the air. This was absolutely perfect for me because Muscovy ducks have been a dream animal of mine for many years. I know a lot of people think they are ugly but I love them. The fact that they gobble bugs is a giant bonus.

Bringing ducklings home

I started to look around online hoping to find adult Moscovy ducks. I did, but all the adults were a minimum of four hours away and I won’t drive that to pick up birds. So instead, I found a local woman who had four Muscovy ducklings. They won’t be gobbling bugs right away but I don’t think it will be too long before they do. If you want Muscovy ducks, I recommend starting with your local Facebook pages. Here, we have a statewide poultry exchange page that is pretty helpful when looking for poultry of any kind.

Before I continue this story let me add that we currently have three baby turkeys about 3-4 weeks old, and a gosling also the same age. They were sharing a brooder and I thought they would be too big to put the babies in with.

We picked the babies up, brought them home, and put them in their own brooder. Later that day we took them out for a little outside time and decided to also bring out the gosling to see what it would do. This gosling, we are now pretty sure is an African Goose, but still do not know the sex. As soon as the gosling saw these babies it went straight over to them, checked them out, and plopped down right next to them. They also ran right over to the gosling cuddled up and wouldn’t leave it. It was the cutest thing and not how I thought that would go at all. So, now our 3-4 week gosling is basically a mother duck. They are in the brooder together and it hovers over them like an anxious momma. Every time we go out to check on them they are all snuggled up together. This gosling was originally purchased as a chicken guardian, but I guess it is now the duck guard.

Muscovy Benefits

Muscovy ducks are not like most ducks, in fact, they are more goose-like than duck. They grow to be large birds that are capable of protecting themselves fairly well. They make good mothers who raise very large clutches of ducklings. This is also why they can become an invasive species, as they reproduce rapidly. If you have a homestead or a farm, Muscovy is said to taste more like steak than duck, and since they are such large birds make great meat options. They also do not quack like a typical duck but make more soft honks or hissing noises. Their water needs are less than your average duck. They do still need water, but they do not hang out in it all day like a mallard duck would. For all these reasons. plus the fact that they forage and eat insects, we decided to bring home Muscovy ducks to our little farm. Hopefully, the next update about the ducks will be a long post on how amazing they are at bug control.

Other options

We have obviously decided to bring Muscovy ducks to our property as I think they are going to be the best option for pest control, but what if you don’t want ducks? Once again, chickens do an ok job at pest control. I have seen ours chase grasshoppers around the yard and eat them, but I read they really only take care of mosquito larvae in water and not mosquitos in the air. The other poultry we have are the Turkey poults. We have recently found out that turkeys LOVE grasshoppers. Right now they are only able to catch and eat the smaller ones, but once they get big the grasshoppers are going to be in trouble. They are even better than the chickens at catching grasshoppers, but I am unsure of their skills with the mosquitoes or the beetles. One of them did eat a spider which for us is extremely helpful. Out on the prairie, we have wolf spiders living in the ground all over and I hate spiders. Wild birds will take care of some bugs for you, but for what we have they do not do enough. Another option would be something like Diatomaceous Earth. It will kill quite a few different varieties of bugs, but it can also take out your good bugs so I would be selective on where I put it. We did put that down first before the ducks came home as the mosquitoes were not bearable. I am very hopeful that when all the birds are big enough to roam around we will not have to use it again. Maybe between the combo of poultry and DE we can survive this summer without losing our minds over the bugs.