These animals are good at what they do!

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For those of you who have been following @papa-pepper for a while now, you probably already know that part of my current goal in in life is to drop the cost of living so that I can increase the quality of life. Basically, the less bills and expenses that I can have, the less money I will need to earn and then the less time away from my family working I will have to spend.

Part of that includes things like owning land and building a house debt-free to get rid of recurring bills like rent or mortgage payments and to eliminate paying interest as well. Another piece of that puzzle is providing for more of our own needs, like food. Foraging and gardening take care of a lot of the fruit, vegetable, and plant needs, but for other food, like meat and eggs, we have animals.

I once heard a story about a friend of someone that I know who had not bought chicken or eggs since sometime in the 1990s. At that point, he had picked up some chickens and they had been making eggs and hatching some of them ever since. Basically, the man had been “printing” his own chickens and eggs at home. How cool is that?

WILL OUR CHICKENS DO THE SAME?

Recently, two of our chickens “went broody.” This is when they begin to sit on their eggs to hatch them. The other seven chickens just take turns laying their eggs next door, but these two are hard at work.

When chickens will hatch out their own eggs, it is so much better than using an incubator. For one, you don’t need any electricity to run a chicken. Secondly, they are doing it in the way that they were created to. Broody hens can also come in handy for hatching other eggs. At the moment we do not have any, but it is good to know that we would have some “incubators” if we did. Unfortunately, neither of these two really began to sit until after we had lost our black female Muscovy duck. We really wish that we could have hatched those eggs.

Hopefully we will be able to have some chicks hatch in the near future. If we can keep new chicks hatching, then we will have chicken dinners on the way and a new generation of egg layers too. The eggs are already a good amount for our family, so potentially we may never need to buy chicken or eggs ever again! That would be a huge blessing.

THE MUSCOVY FAMILY

When our neighbors gave us a pair of Muscovy ducks, we were so delighted. Free ducks! Then, they gave us a second female, because polygamy is permissible for ducks. Unfortunately a possum or raccoon killed one of our females a while back. She was a “sitting duck,” literally. (We learned the hard way where that saying comes from.)

Our other duck successfully hatched out four ducklings, but was aggressive towards the last two and wounded them. One of them did not make it, and the other one is now part of the Guinea Fowl family for the time being. The two that she hatched first are doing well, and she is still taking care of them.

Now, she even has her next batch of eggs in the works. Last time she sat as she laid, so the ducklings hatched out over a period of days, and she only took care of the first two.

This time, it looks like she will lay a whole batch first and then incubate them, which is the way that they normally do it. The last time was her first time being a mother, though, so she is learning.

BREEDING LIKE RABBITS

The rabbits are all doing well. At the moment we are keeping four does and one buck as our breeding stock. After a long period of failed pregnancy attempts for Runaway, she finally got pregnant and had her babies. Total, she had twelve, and we still have ten that are doing great. (It is common to lose a few, especially with first time mothers.) It is amazing to see the wide variety of babies from the same parents.

Sliver also got pregnant and had a litter. She currently has five little ones that she is nursing. They are so cute, and so small.

A mother rabbit can pull an impressive amount of hair to make a nest for her little ones.

Runaway’s sisters, Brownie and Polkadot, are also believe to be pregnant and should be birthing soon. They had their last litters together too, and produced some beautiful offspring. Most likely we will never need to buy rabbits again either.

MOVING FORWARD & PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

Our hogs are still doing a great job clearing some of our land for us, but we will still be getting some goats to help. We definitely want to have a milk goat anyway, and that is next on our list. We have to build a place for us to live down on our land, but we will also have to make places for our animals down there too.

Thankfully, we have places to keep them all at the moment and we are already building up our supply of homestead animals. They each have their own purposes, and we certainly enjoy each different kind. Yes, they can be a lot of work, but so can anything. At least they provide a lot of joy for us and serve a purpose in our lives.

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-animals-reproducing-after-their-own-kind

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Until next time…

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