New Poultry

I told you about our poultry trading the other day. Well here are the picture finally! They are all so cute. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

First we have the Coturnix Quail. We got five hens and two cocks. They make the cutest sounds and fly around like crazy little birds when they play. :) I'll have to get a video of that someday.

I wish the next two hadn't turned out blurry because they are so cute!

Here is a video of the cutie little quails. If you listen closely you can hear them. The chicks in the same room were being kind of loud so I hope you can hear them. :)


Next we have the three Delaware hens. Our original Delawares we bought didn't have very much black in their tails so these new girls should help us get color back in our lines, as well as improving type (conformation). :)


And now we have the Muscovy ducks. We got three hens and one drake. They are the most beautiful colors! I forgot how much I love photographing ducks. I don't know what it is about them, but I love it. I'm so excited about getting these guys. We've been trying to find some Muscovy ducks for about three years now! The cool thing about this breed of duck is that they don't necessarily have to live on a pond and they also can fly up into trees to roost at night so they stay safe from predators. They are really cool ducks. :)

Anyway I am sooo happy with my new birds. :)

Sunday Stills - Circles

The Sunday Stills challenge this week is circles! I had fun with it. :)

Firewood. Not a perfect circle, but I thought it was cool. :)

Feed bucket.

Horse (dog) toy.

Hay bucket.

Tire.

Chicken eye. Actually counts as two circles because of the iris and pupil. :)

Berries.

Fun News!

We did some real old fashioned trading today! We found a guy who wanted to buy our Cochin bantam pair (the buff frizzle hen and buff rooster), but he lived pretty far away. There was another guy who wanted to trade some Muscovy ducks for some young turkeys (when we hatch them out we will take them to him), who lived in the same area as the first guy, but was coming up our way for a poultry meet up, so he offered to deliver the Cochins to the first guy. The second guy was offering us three gorgeous Delaware hens (for our Delaware breeding program) for the same price we were selling the Cochins for, so we basically swapped (and he got his money from the first guy). He also gave us seven Coturnix Quail for free (he had over a hundred to sell that day). I've never had quail before and they are soooooo cute!!!! So my husband came home with four Muscovy ducks, seven Coturnix Quail and three Delaware chickens. :D I'll get pictures tomorrow since I don't have to work. They are so cute!

Note: All of the breeds of poultry are linked to Wikipedia articles if you're interested in reading more about them. :)

So Proud of Zeppelin

After I got back from taking Chrome for a walk I fed them and then went to fill their water. While I was waiting on the water I noticed Zep was harassing Chrome through the fence while he was eating, so I walked over with the intention of just shooing him out of the barn.

As I approached he turned to watch me so instead I sat on my heels and leaned against a tree right near the barn. Then I dug the rest of my treats out of my pocket and put them in my lap. As soon as I held my hand out with a treat Zeppelin walked over to me. He was hesitant at first but it only took him a second to take the treat. So I started dropping treats one by one into my left hand, propped on my knee and was petting him with my right hand as he ate each treat. After three treats he stopped moving away and wasn't at all bothered by me petting his face.

When I ran out of treats he sniffed my hands, knees and face, then he smelled my breath (horses greet each other by breathing into the others nostrils). I just sat there and let him investigate. After a minute he started licking my hands, which probably tasted like the peppermint treats lol. He stood licking the palms of both of my hands for two or three minutes and was completely content to continue doing so if the water hadn't started to overflow and I had to go turn it off. I'm so proud of him! He's getting more and more confident. I really think this year will be our year. I got a new book called Clicker Training Colt Starting the Natural Horse by Leslie Pavlich and it talks about handling horses who have never been touched. It's giving me a lot to think about with Zeppelin and helping me decide how to proceed. :) I'm excited to start working with him. :)

Be sure to check out Chrome's blog to see how he did with his training tonight. I finally took the clicker with us on our walk!

I'm Back!

Sorry I sort of disappeared for a bit. I've been doing clicker training with Chrome daily for about four days straight now and I've been keeping a training journal on my computer so I can record our progress, then I remembered how much fun it is to share with everyone so I decided to start posting in Chrome's old blog. I'll still post about him here, but his training specific posts will be over there so he isn't hogging all the attention on this blog. He's been doing really fantastic and I am just floored at how much he still remembers! I love this colt. I also read back over his entire blog from the very first day I got him so I could remember everything that we'd been through and all of the training that we've done. The first thing I noticed is that he has a lot better self control now, so I really think the break did him some good. He also eats a wide variety of treats with gusto now, so that makes it easier. :) So anyway run over there to check out what we've been working on and be sure to follow if you want to keep track of our progress.

A Fun Walk

I took Chrome for a walk yesterday and we had fun. :) When we first left it was cold and a little windy so he was very alert and feisty! He was well behaved as usual, just a little more "up" and energetic than he normally is on a walk.

He was on the look out for the neighbor's horses before we even got close to them.

This one is a little blurry, but I like it too much to delete it.

He was really marching along!

I love how he walks right up by my shoulder instead of lagging behind.

He finally spotted the neighbor's horses trotting up to the fence.

"But mom, I want to go back and say hi."

He was a good boy though and kept walking when I asked him to.

Then I decided to do some trotting to help warm me up a little. As usual I got left behind when he started his power trot. The boy is fast. Don't you love how gray his tail is going?

After trotting for a little bit we started walking again. Then he spotted something . . .

And then skidded to a halt into FFA (Full Friesian Alert). Not sure what he was seeing lol.

At the gravel road where we turn around he spotted something else interesting.

Our neighbor's cattle.

I like the Brahma cow he has. She's so pretty and a really good mother.

Chrome lost interest when they stopped walking toward him.

He was interested in something across the road as well, but I never saw anything. Probably deer.

We turned back at the one mile mark. I figured two miles was enough for his first time out in a while. And for me too! I'm out of shape lol.

On the way back he was bored and started yawning.

He wanted to graze but I wouldn't let him and I think that had something to do with the yawning. He yawns when he wants to eat.

He eventually gave up on yawning and kept walking.

As we were walking back he started to relax and lower his head a little. It made me wish I'd taken my clicker so I could reward him for lowering his head.

Checking out a pothole.

About halfway home it started to rain and I put my camera inside my coat to keep it dry. I don't know if he was getting tired or if it was the rain, but he started lagging behind which was really annoying. As we passed the neighbor's horses he started lagging really bad and just being a butt in general. I really think he was getting tired. We had a discussion about the lagging and he eventually started walking at my shoulder again. At that point I really wished I'd had my clicker because he wasn't understanding what I was asking. I'll work on it next time.

When we got back to the house I was finally warm from the walk and the rain was really light so I got some treats to reward him for being a good boy. To my surprise he stood next to me and turned his head away from me like we'd practiced last year with the clicker!! I did it several times and he even started lowering his head so I definitely need to get the clicker back out. He's so smart. :)

Sunday Stills - The Color Green

This week's challenge for Sunday Stills was the color green. This isn't my best work because I completely forgot about doing Sunday Stills until just a few minutes ago. Here is what I managed to come up with. :)

Sprite.

Eyeliner.

Aloe Vera.

My green shirt.