A happier day today

We have had the arrival of 7 new baby rabbits to a Californian mum. She made them a nice nest of hay but didnt figure out the pulling fur thing till afterwards. I topped up their wool from the angora clippings and took Alfie out of the house so she could raise her babies in peace. Alfie is looking too skinny so he is going out in the big run with loads of hay and freah food all to himself to plump him up.
Hazel has her own cage now and the other Californian has moved in with Archie.
Hugh has stopped harrasing the bigger babies now and the whole community feels a little more relaxed.
A new baby chick was born in the incubator and named Chu chu by Noah. We hope it is a she and she can one day cluck around our farmyard too.

Sad day in the farmyard

Today I had to bury 5 little baby rabbits, still skinless and blind, but with big round tummies. I put them in the plot with the sunflowers, it seemed like a nice place for them. I said a little goodbye and contemplated life a bit. Then came a few little tears for those wee babies, who lived for only a moment.

It is rainy,too much rain to go picking weeds today. Lucky that Nana is fussy about the freshness of her food and donates a large bag of greens. Everyone is out of water and a roof needs to be fixed (again) which I will have to do in the rain. 

I am trying Hugh with being in charge of the little ones, and he is not doing as good of a job as the Whites did, chasing them around alot. 

There is alot of thumping from Archie's house, where he is meeting Hazel for the first time. 

There is new cheeping in the kitchen of three black and white chicks, just fluffed up.

Rainy day preparation

Californians

Bad sex ratios in our farmyard

Finding free food in the park

Hazel has her babies

Hazel's new babies

Lost all our video updates!

The videos I've made in the past couple of months have all mysteriously disappeared, so I will write a bit now about whats been going on.

Quails
We mostly solved the pecking problem with one male to the rest of the females. The other male was taken by the nieghbours cat, returned will a bung leg and was then sacrificed to the fridge. Andrew did the cutting off of the head and I did the butchering. The butchering was pretty easy, less than 5mins to do and not to fiddly for a little bird. I would definately like to have quails for meat in our farmyard. The idea of having a chicken sit on the eggs and raise the babies has so far been unsuccessful with a friend's very broody silkie hen. The only other alternative I think is to get an icubator (or to make one) which requires some investment in equipment.
We are getting 2-4 little eggs a day that I have been recently pickling. They are delicious.

Chickens
We added three gorgeous bantam hens to the farmyard for the purpose of eggs and to raise babies hopefully in the spring. They are awesome. They are pretty much self caring, make a great alarm for spying cats and clean up the bugs well. Also they are so cute. Andrew thinks they are his favourite member of the yard.

Rabbits
We added Hazel who is a 2 year old standard rex doe to the colony. I wanted her for her amazing smooth pelt, and also so we could get on and breed before winter. She has previously been a show bunny and is quite jumpy, but she has done a super job with her first litter to Alfie (REW angora). She had 4 kits, 2 REW, 1 black and 1 grey with otter colouring I think. I havent kept any of her lovely pelt genetics with these kits (which is whatt everyone told me before I bred her of course) and they are not very meaty so we will try and sell them as pets first off to recoup some money for feed, and if noone wants them they will be up for the chop.
Another angora is coming to the farm tomorrow. He is bigger and much meater than my current bucks and much more suitable for breeding for meat. This. of course means I will have far too many bucks. Not sure what I will do about that yet- perhaps castrate my pet boys so they can live happily together and only occupy one cage. This also means that we will now have three wool producing rabbits. Anyone need wool???
The NZ girls are huge now and have appetities like a horse. I think they are coming into their teenageness as they have started fighting and I have had to separate them into separate cages. This ruins the plan of having multiple girls in the one big cage, so now I have two huge two story cages with one rabbit in each. Perhaps they will be grow out cages for the meat babies when I breed them. Plan is to breed them both soon and impliment a touch more science and note taking to the project.
We were given an old playpen that I have made into a run for the lawn. Its nice to take them out of thier cages for a run around every day. Everyone except Alfie has taken to digging holes in the farmyard and I am a little nervous they will get under the fence one of these days so they have been in their cages a bit more than I had thought they would be.

 Worms
The worm farm is super! I'm harvesting heaps of worm pee and saving it for the garden in spring and they are making delicious looking soil that I will use to grow my seeds in.


I have had moments lately of realising the insanity of this project. I really do appreciate why northwood folks dont all set up a farmyard in thier backyard.

New Quail domain

NZ whites and Quails come to the farmyard

The Start

Hello!

We are a young family of four living in a small flat in suburbain Christchurch. After four years at uni living in an apartment we once again have some grass and a garden. This is a video account of the experiment of making a farmyard on our front lawn, the lessons we learn and the food we produce (hopefully!).