My hobby--and how one's interests evolve in adulthood.

[Maddy McCall]

I was raised in a rural setting, but never much cared for "country ways" until I moved into my current home in the woods four years ago. I have been pretty bookish in my adult life (am currently finishing my PhD, and have spent most of my past six years in a college town and university setting), although I have always enjoyed the great outdoors, but in the form of hiking, camping, and fishing.

Well, several months ago, I bought an incubator. I now have 13 coturnix quails, seven Indian Runner ducks, and will soon be incubating some cool chicken eggs, when they arrive.

Here are pictures of the breeds of chicken eggs I will be incubating:

A Phoenix rooster:





A Frizzle hen:





Polish flock:



And I am now looking for some Guinea eggs to incubate or some adult Guineas to breed. And I want to try my hand at some peafowl eggs. I never expected this to turn into such a fun hobby. I started doing this as an homeschool science activity for my kid, but it has evolved into something we both thoroughly enjoy.

My dad was raised on a farm, and it's funny how this has brought us closer together. His knowledge about chickens, which he attained as a child, has really come in handy, and I think he's enjoyed my hobby more than I have.

Anyone else enjoy "down on the farm" stuff? I'm thinking about buying some pygmy goats, too. (And if any DUers want to sell some fertile bird eggs, I'm in the market. :-) )

[Parche]

1. hobby

Sounds eggselent and fun!!!

[Maddy McCall]

2. It is very fun.

The most exciting part is finding the little chicks hatching in the incubator. And, then, after that, is waiting for those chicks to lay their own eggs. My quail should be producing eggs in the next couple of weeks. I have a list of people begging for pickled quail eggs. :-)

[Parche]

6. quail

you should name one of your quails "Dan"!!!!!!

[Maddy McCall]

14. LOL! And I can name a hen Marilyn. :-)

[patrice]

3. They're pretty!!!

Do they seem to respond to you like house-pet birds do?

[Maddy McCall]

8. I don't have them yet. The eggs are on the way. But the quail and ducks

follow my kid around and just love him. I guess my psychology classes paid off...I know they have "imprinted" on him.

But the birds will be considered pets. We won't be eating them. Maybe their eggs, but not them.

[patrice]

15. I've heard that chickens are stupid, but . . . .

the bird pets (other kinds of birds that, not chickens) that belong to friends I have seem very personable and intelligent, so maybe chickens can be your friend too.

[Maddy McCall]

27. They may be stupid, but they know when it's feeding time!

At least the ducks and quail I have know. :-)

Actually, you can train chickens to do tricks. I have no interest in doing that, though. :-)

[MuseRider]

4. Maddy

one of the things I am looking forward to when we get (IF we get) our house built out on my farm is raising chickens. My father was a farm boy but hated it, it was during the depression and they rarely had even shoes, and my mother was a confirmed city girl so I took out on my own to do this. I can garden, know how to store and can food, I have my horses but I really want to have chickens. As soon as we are close to getting the house done I am going to buy a book on them. One thing I want to do is build one of those moveable coops that you can put over your gardens. Anyway, your interest is really cool to me. Watch out for the Guineas though. A neighbor of mine had them, 6 of them, they would not stay around and were always running in the road and getting hit one by one. I don't know much about them but they would not stay with the other chickens and geese that she had. They are awfully cool though.

[Kali]

11. get this book for sure:

Pastured Poultry by Joel Salatin

PS

Lots of cities actually allow the keeping of a few HENS. Check with your local zoning board (or not - easier to say sorry than get permission!) two or three hens will lay enough eggs for the average household.

[MuseRider]

12. Thanks.

I will go get it. I appreciate that.

[Maddy McCall]

19. My dad was a Depression-era farm boy, who left the farm as an adult.

You know what they say, you can take a boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy...well, that's my dad.

My mother was raised in the country, but in a more genteel way than my father was raised. Like you said about your pop, Dad had five brothers and sisters, and an extended family living in the same house, and they rarely had enough to eat. My grandfather slaughtered goats, took the meat to town, and bartered for the luxuries like sugar and flour. Still today, my father would rather eat milk gravy and biscuits than filet mignon.

I have the ducks and quail penned, and will also pen my chickens according to breed, so that they don't interbreed and I can sell purebred eggs on ebay. We live a good half-mile off the road, and my greatest concern is that the guineas will be eaten by predators. I am building a roost for them now, and will pen them for a while before I let them free-range. I don't know if you remember, but I had some snake problems this past summer, and my Dad told me that guineas would take care of the snakes. I remember visiting my grandfather when I was a kid--he's dead now, died when I was ten or eleven--and he had no electricity, just a gas tank and water. He lived in the 1970s like many southerners lived in the 1930s. Anyway, I think sometimes I am trying to reconnect with him through the hobbies I have. He had guineas, chickens, goats, and pigs. He only ate what he could raise. He was still using a refrigerator in which you had to put ice. I wish he would have lived long enough for me to really get to know him...that's one of my regrets in life.

Sorry to ramble on. It's rare on DU that I meet people with similar interests to mine. :-)

[MuseRider]

30. Are you my

sister? My goodness that all sounds so familiar! My fathers family raised turkeys, oh how he hated turkeys, because his father was a mailman and did not earn enough to support his large family and extended family. I have some old pictures that look just like stuff from the "Grapes Of Wrath". It inspired in me some sort of Disneyesque fantasy about farm life. I have learned over the last 10 years how to run my farm and it is hard work but I adore the closeness to the earth. So guineas take care of snakes? Good thing to know, I have tons of them. I love them too but not in with eggs and babies. Now I am rambling but really, it is so good to find others out there who love the same things. My farm is fronted by a 3-4 acre pond so I am thinking of ducks as well, perhaps some geese but I am not certain I want them badly enough to have to clip their wings. I would rather build an artificial island so the wild ones would lay.

[Maddy McCall]

32. OMG. Funny you should mention mailmen.

My father was a rural mail carrier until he retired several years ago. Too weird!

Let me give you some advice about ducks. You can buy a breed of ducks, called Indian Runners, who do not require their wings to be clipped. Their wings are more like little appendages than actual wings.

Here's a photo of them:



These are the breed of ducks I have. They are soooo sweet. They love to play in the creek, and always return to their pen at night.

You can't go wrong with them. They can't fly away, and they can run really fast! They look like bowling pins on legs. Funny birds. :-)

[MuseRider]

34. Those are some crazy looking ducks

but somehow I have just fallen in love. Thanks, I will most definitely look into them.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

5. Neeew York is vhere I'd rather stay...iiiiiii get allergic smelling hay

Cool hobby, MM :thumbsup:

[MuseRider]

7. NSMA

:loveya: You crack me up.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

23. Hey I crack myself up

but in all fairness to the farmbelt..THANKYOU FOR FEEDING ME!!!! I'D STARVE OTHERWISE :D

[Maddy McCall]

10. LOL! Thanks.

I think I have more in common with Oliver--yes, except for gender, it's the perfect analogy.

:-)

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

24. Hey do you have overalls?

Enquiring minds want to know :D

[Maddy McCall]

28. Hell, yeah, I do. And I've even been hit on while wearing them.

I'm a sexy farmer. :7

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

29. LOCKING

no sexy threads :wow:

[Maddy McCall]

31. LOL!

[sendero]

9. My wife and I..

.... bought 40 acres in the country a couple years ago. We have kids in school here, so we can't live there yet but we go 2-3 times a month on the weekends. I've put in a mobile home, a shed, got a tractor, and had a 2 acre pond built.

We LOVE IT up there and would move there tomorrow if we could. We plan to have goats, chickens and either a llama or donkey to protect them. Wifey wants a horse, but I'm not sure about that yet.

We have planted pecan trees, and plan to put in a bunch of blackberries and grapes next spring. We both love gardening.

Two years ago - I built my first barbed-wire fence, about 850' crossing two "draws" (small creeks). It was quite an adventure :)

Most of our land is wooded, and I've learned to sling a chain saw - I've cut down several hundred small cedars (junk trees).

We plan to build some kind of house and move up there in about 8 years. Sounds like forever, but the way time flies I know it won't be long :)

[Maddy McCall]

13. Save those cedars!

They'll make an excellent split-rail fence, which is my next project.

Your situation sounds very similar to mine. I am living on the fifty acres that belong to my father--he's had this property for several decades, just to have it. My pop and I built the cabin together in which I live now.

If you would have asked me ten years ago if I could foresee myself engaging in my current hobbies, I would have told you you were crazy.

It's funny how interests evolve. :-)

And, if I were you, I'd invest in some muscadine vines, too. I want to buy some and plant them, so that I can make jelly.

[sendero]

17. My place...

... is in north TX, just a few miles from OKLA. What part of the country are you in?

I've been interested in living in the country since I was about 25. We visited a friend of a friends place out in East Texas and I was immediately hooked.

I once lived in a very old house on 9 acres north of Dallas in the early 80s, but moved back to town in 85.

My wife and I are avid nature lovers, we have deer, turkey, snakes, squirrels, armadillos, rabbits and endless species of insects like butterflies and dragonflies to look at. We get lots of migratory birds every winter - different each year. This year there were hundreds of robins and we saw a purple finch for the first time.

Its funny how important these bird sightings can become - I really couldn't explain why it is so exciting :)

The city is fine, but the country suits me better.

[Maddy McCall]

20. I'm in Mississippi.

Funny you should mention East Texas! That's where my mother was raised. Ever heard of Teneha, Timpson, Bobo, or Blair? That's my mother's old stomping ground. :-) When I was a kid, I spent all of my weekends in Timpson.

And I was born in San Antonio--I'm a bona fide Texan. :-)

And some of my extended family owns a camp up on the Texas-Oklahoma border, north of Longview.

I also want to build a bat house. I've got LOTS of projects I want to do, just lack the time I need to do these projects. :-)

[sendero]

26. Well...

.... the country is the busy-person's dream. There is *always* something to do - you never have to cast about for a project :)

Every time we visit our place there are 5 competing tasks we need to get done, we just pick the most urgent one :)


Best of luck with your birds, I know they are fun. I raised pigeons (of all things) when I was a young teen and I still remember how much I enjoyed them. There is something about the natural world that imparts a perspective and understanding of life you can't really get anywhere else.

[Lorien]

18. Hmmm...I've never seen a "junk tree"

to me, they're all beautiful and well worth saving.

[sendero]

21. The problem is..

... if you have oaks, elms and cedars, why let the cedars choke out the oaks? Also, we needed to clear out 2-3 acres of meadow for animals in the future- the cedars had to go.

Here is Tx, these trees are considered "junk" because they will take over your land and choke out everything else. They are more like giant shrubs than trees, but they are evergreen so I will leave some of them around so that I have some green in the winter.

[MuseRider]

33. We have those too

here in Kansas and I cut them out of the pasture because I need the hay grass but I use them for animal sanctuary or bean poles or as crop cover on my wildflower garden in the winter. I have been cultivating several wooded areas. I wish I had more willow to use for garden fencing. I did have a big one come partly down in the last ice storm so I will chop it out and have some on hand. Your area sounds nice are you anywhere near Denton?

[sendero]

35. Somewhat north of Denton..

.... but we pass not too far from Denton (15 miles) on the way up there and back :)

Yes, cedars often succumb to ice down here also. They fall over and leave a big hole where the stump was :)

[Maddy McCall]

36. Like I said, split-rail fence.

:-)

[Maddy McCall]

22. Do you live in the country?

If you did, you would know that in a hardwood forest, many times the oak and hickory canopy will cut out sunlight to the smaller trees. Inevitably, they will die. A cedar can grow if it can get ample sunlight, but it won't grow and will die if it can't.

This also happens in pine forests. We use the junk trees, too, for bean sticks and the likes. And when our garden dies, we compost the dead stuff and use it to feed the earth.

[roguevalley]

16. I *LOVE* fancy chickens. You will love pigmy goats. Did you know

they make pigmy cows and horses now? They are adorable. :)

Lucky you.

[Maddy McCall]

25. Thanks! One of my friends has a pygmy horse...

It's like a dog. She even lets it in the house. It's crazy. :7

[Kali]

37. Can't resist adding a few more comments

1) there is a rural issues forum on DU

2) big difference between making a living off the land and living in the country

3) guineas are good watch animals in general (as are geese) and they are great tick eaters, but they are not the best mothers when the chicks hatch - they move too far and to fast for the babies to keep up - better to pen them. Chickens are better mothers - another good move is to let a chicken hen raise the baby guineas (they are such good watch animals that if you have many "visitors" of any kind you may soon start hating them - they are quite noisy and it can get nerve wracking at times - same with peacocks.

4) another good snake animal is actually a cat or several - of all domestic animals they are the least affected by rattlesnake venom, also good to have around birds because their feed also attracts rats and mice, thus snakes as well