Adventures in vermicomposting

I decided to set up our worm bin again, to compost all the things that chickens/dog/cats/etc. won't or shouldn't eat. Moldy bread or produce, etc. I kept a compost bin in the kitchen when we lived in the subdivision in Durham, NC with great success. No smell, no flies as long as I went behind the boys and covered the food with shredded paper. And more worms than we knew what to do with. I ended up putting two 30 gallon trash cans by the back fence and seeding them with worms and shredded paper and they took off as well. Lots and lots of lovely worm castings and worm tea for happy veggies and houseplants.

Unfortunately the worm bin was neglected over the past year here, and all the worms died. Just for the heck of it, I looked on amazon.com to see if I could order more worms. Well, not too surprisingly, I could. The seller had 50 or so 5 star reviews and only a couple of bad ones at the time I placed my order, on July 20th. July 22nd I was supposed to get 1000 live red wigglers, via FedEx. The 22nd came and went, and no worms. Finally, at 6:30pm on the 26th, the box showed up. I wasn't very optimistic about it, as 6 days in a box in this heat didn't bode well for the little wormies. Sadly, I was right. All were dead, the dirt was bone dry and so were all the worms.

Amazon offered to re-ship them, if I sent back the "damaged product." Really? You want to make the poor UPS guys pick up a putrid box of dead worms and bring them back to you? Okay, if that's how it is, I'll do it. So, the re-ship was supposed to arrive on the 28th, this time with 1-day shipping instead of 2-day shipping at no charge.

It's now noon on the 29th. Guess what. Yup, you guessed it. No worm sign yet. (Sorry, had to throw in the geek reference there.) If they show up dead this time, I just want a refund.

Someone on the local Craigslist has been offering worm tea. If this second shipment is dead, I'm going to email them and ask if they have any extra worms they can sell me as a starter culture. I know from experience that it only takes a small handful of worms to get you thousands of worms pretty quickly when managed right.

Maybe I'll find their ad and ask them to buy some now, even before the second shipment shows up. That way I'll have at least one starter, if not two....

Still hot.

Right now weather.com says we are at 93F, heat index of 99F. Which is better than 118F heat index, to be sure, but it's still hot.

Lost two more chicks to the heat, one was the sole Ameraucana hatched out here in spite of the week without electricity caused by tornadoes in April.

Still getting no eggs, now not even from the Ancona ducks. I started closing them in a stall in the barn again last night, and letting them out at noon. They have food and water in there, of course. No eggs this morning but I'll keep it up and keep hoping.

The cotton farmer next door has been spraying his fields again the last two days, so I'm not even keeping the milk from the goats. Luckily we have two gallons ahead in the fridge so we won't go without.

Not much else I can think to write about now.

What's up, chicken butt?

Did you know you shouldn't eat brown eggs, because they come out of a chicken's butt?

Yes, there are people that think that. And apparently, when you ask them where white eggs come from, they will tell you, "White eggs come from the store."

I only wish I could find someone that believes this, because I want to know where they think blue and green and pink eggs come from. Our Ameraucana chicks will lay blue, green and pink eggs once they're old enough! For that matter, our Ancona ducks lay eggs that are green and purple as well as white. Where to the purple ones come from, do they think?

I've also heard of people thinking brown eggs shouldn't be eaten because they are infected with bacteria that turn the shells brown. I hate to break it to them but, the entire time we were in China we didn't see a single white egg, only brown eggs. Billions of Chinese eat brown eggs and they're still alive and healthy.

All that is just a segueway to saying, I'm really liking our Ameraucana chicks. Some of them are growing as fast as the red cornish cross broiler chicks and they're much better foragers. With the heat, we're not getting any eggs from our Rhode Island Red hens we got as chicks last spring. Maybe once the South American-origin Ameraucanas mature the heat won't bother them as much...

HOT hot hot

Heat index is 96f right now. I just came in from making sure all the livestock have full water and feel like I've run a marathon. Dripping with sweat like I did, too.

Have someone interested in buying Missy, the TWH mare. She's just going to waste here with nobody the right size to ride her, so, hopefully it will work out.

The one Ancona duckling is so far, so good. Four days old now, eating and drinking and lively. The six adults have taken over the front yard, and decided one waterer is theirs. They've also claimed the shade under the utility trailer as theirs, and woe to any chicken that tries to sneak under there with them.

One very expensive duckling.

The 22 Ancona duck eggs in the incubator only netted me one live duckling. That's a $50 duckling right there, as the eggs cost me $25/dozen. *sigh*

Good thing I also bought 6 ducks from that person later, or I'd be even more unhappy. At least I have some chance of having a full flock of ducks that way.

Duck eggs = super rise bread!

Everyone that says that duck eggs are great for baking... is totally right! Wow! I made bread with one of the chocolate duck's eggs last night, and when I got up this morning I couldn't believe it. It rose so high that there is bread on the inside of the bread machine's lid. It's so light and fluffy it puts store bought white bread to shame. And it is whole wheat (the only kind of bread we eat here).

Come on duckies, lay me another egg so I can make more bread tonight!

Definitely more ducks.

So, the funny farm just went quackers! :) We've had Muscovy ducks for a year or so, but they don't quack. They hiss when upset but don't quack at all. But now we are the proud owners of two trios of Ancona ducks. And they definitely quack.

Mature trio is: a black and white drake with a heart-shaped patch on the back of his head, named Romeo. A lovely chocolate and white duck that lays green eggs. And a lavender and white duck. Juvenile trio is: a blue and white drake, and two black and white ducks with iridescent green wings.

They're residing in the Chicken McMansion for a few days, so they learn that this is home now, and where food will always appear. And I'm planning on baking my bread with duck eggs in the morning! :)

Ducks, ducks and more ducks.

So, the people we bought the Ancona duck eggs to hatch out here, are moving out of state. They are selling out a lot of their adult and juvenile ducks. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go buy at least an adult trio (a drake and two ducks) from them in the next couple of days, and possibly a few 14 weeks old juveniles as well.

Pretty sure the baby goat is sold, just have to find out how soon his new owner wants to take him.

Still need to put up a CraigsList ad to sell Missy, the TWH mare.

Still no eggs from the Chicken Horde. They stopped laying, probably because of the heat wave last month, and haven't started back up again that I can tell. Really dislike having to buy eggs at the store and still feed 2 dozen hens! Maybe the new ducks will pick up the chickens' slack.

Just write something!

The only way I'm going to get this blog going again, is to just write something. So, I'm writing something...

We lost a Buff Orpington hen to a predator yesterday. I don't think it was a stray dog, because her head was gone but there was no other damage. A weasel or a raccoon probably. I smelled either skunk or fox musk around where I found the carcass so I suppose our neighborhood fox might have grabbed her then got chased off its kill by our Great Pyrenees. Sad though, we've had her almost a year and the people we bought our Buff hens from had them a year.

Have 7 newly hatched Buff Orpington/Rhode Island Red cross chicks in a nest box in the Chicken McMansion, our first hen-brooded and hatched chicks. They are adorable bundles of fluff right now. I really like the Buff/RIR cross chicks we hatched in our incubator earlier this year, they're growing fast and excellent free-rangers. Having more of them is a good thing.

Our 100 chick order from Hoffman Hatchery (that was really only 98 chicks but that's a rant for another post) is down to about 75 chicks now, and most of the casualties have been the Red Cornish Cross cockerels. They just die for no reason I can see. I'm assuming it is heart or organ weakness, the Cornish Crosses are infamous for that and it's been pretty hot here. They have the shade of the chicken tractor, and food and water and can forage as they please so I'd think they'd be in chicken heaven. Well I guess most of them ARE in chicken heaven now, just not the one that does me any good here. :/

I haven't attempted to count the survivors, but we started out with 26 Buff Orpington straight run, 23 RIR straight run, 24 Ameraucana straight run, and 25 Red Cornish cross cockerels. There is one Ameraucana that hatched out here before this order arrived, the sole survivor of 42 eggs in the 'bator during the tornado power outages of April 27-May 1.

I bought four solid white guinea fowl keets from the feed store down the road a few days ago and put them in the chicken tractor with the chicks. No sign of them now. *cries*

We have 22 Ancona duck eggs in the incubator, about 10 days from hatching. I bought 2 dozen but two never started to develop. Looking forward to them hatching and having cute fluffy ducklings, but not looking forward to the extra work that ducklings entail.

Our first goat kid born on the farm is almost 3 weeks old now. Little Bit had a single buckling on June 13th. He's brown with frosted ears, nose and white crown. Hopefully he is sold, to someone that wants a purebred Nubian herd sire.

Sold the two problem children goat kids, Spot and Runty, last week. The barn and goat pens have been so much quieter and calmer since then! The remaining goats don't leave the paddocks even if the electric isn't hooked up. They don't yell all the time or pick fights. Next on the sales list is Missy, the Tennessee Walking Horse mare we bought last year. She's too small for adults to ride and too green for kids to ride, now that my two older sons have gone back to live with their father in South Carolina. So she needs a home with a job.

There's more to write, lots more, but it's 1am and I need to get some sleep. Hopefully more soon.