Well we’re off to a great start with our spring hatchlings this year!

Our buff Orpington chicks arrived yesterday morning at the post office and they are just so darn adorable. We put them in with the baby pheasant until they are big enough to move outside and they all seem to really like one another.

They will be replacing the silver laced Wyandotte flock we’ve had for a couple of years now.

They’ve been great layers but their attitude leaves something to be desired. They aren’t very friendly and they fight a lot, so we’re going back to the buffs because they have much better temperaments. They are my favorite breed when it comes to keeping chickens.

Our quail have been laying lots of eggs which we’ve been collecting for future hatching. We are just days away from lockdown on the current batch of pheasants so as soon as the incubator is free they’ll go in next. We really need a second incubator soon because the quail and pheasant are laying so many now we can hardly keep up!

Interestingly, I read that quail eggs are supposed to be good for treating food allergies, rhinitis and other symptoms of mast cell disease so I’m going to look into that more. I’m using quercetin now, and have had really good luck with it, but I will definitely try quail eggs, too! Hopefully I’m not allergic to them (hehe).

We’ve had fifteen ducklings hatch out this spring already and our mommas are both sitting on new nests now. We’ve been selling most of them off and will only keep a couple out of this current bunch. They are soo cute, too!

We’re mulling over getting turkeys again, even though I wasn’t crazy about the last ones we raised and butchered.

They just taste so gamey and I’m not a huge fan of that.

Our Cornish cross chicks will be here in a couple of weeks, though, and I am looking forward to filling the freezer with those. They are delicious and grow super fast so they’re cost effective for us to raise. Our pasture grass is growing in nicely and we’ll be grazing them on that once we figure out a way to fix the fence back now that the neighbors installed the new one.

We love the new fence they put up, but there are some big gaps at the bottom we’ll have to fill in. In the meantime we are just letting the pasture grasses do their thing.

This weekend we have a lot of projects planned so hopefully the weather will cooperate.

Of course I just bought a new patio lounger so I’ve probably cursed us with windstorms now because that’s how the universe seems to work for me! 🙂