It’s a Baby Explosion!

This time of year can get chaotic with all of the new arrivals on the farm. Between the dozen lambs, 100 meat chickens that have been here for a month or so, 100 turkeys coming this week, 100 meat chicks coming next week, and an unknown number of turkey poults, chicks, and ducklings recently hatched by broody moms, there will soon be more babies here than we will know what to do with!

We have several broody birds right now, most notably a turkey and a muscovy co-nesting under our front porch. Just over a week ago, they hatched seven sweet little turkey poults. They are mostly black, but we have one pretty little blue bird as well. These will grow up and either be added to our flock, or become delicious holiday dinners. Heritage birds are different than broad breasted in many ways. One of which is that they grow slower, and develop more even muscling. If you are a fan of dark meat, heritage is what you want to eat. They still have quite a bit of breast meat, but it isn’t as huge as what you’d find in the store.

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Our porch turkey has been extra talkative the last couple days. We had a feeling it was because she was close to hatching. We were right! She had four beautiful poults in the backyard this morning. We went back to her nest under the front porch, where momma Muscovy is still incubating some eggs, and we found three more babies! I crawled under the porch and handed the little fuzzies out to Bob where he held them securely in his pocket. As much as we’d love to let mom raise her babies, we never seem to have much luck with that, so we put them in a brooder with two chicks that the other momma Muscovy hatched recently. Hopefully, more babies are ready to join them soon! . . . #turkey #heritagebreed #heritageturkey #blackspanishturkey #poults #turkeypoults #smallfarm #farmlife #michiganfarm

A post shared by Nicole & Robert Goetz (@frontierefarmhouse) on May 20, 2020 at 11:03am PDT

Over the last couple days, the porch moms and the barn muscovy have hatched over 15 ducklings. We don’t even remember the actual number! Every morning, one of our additional chores is checking in the nest for more little puffy babies. It was really cool that they started hatching the majority of their clutches on the same day!

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Not the best photo we’ve ever posted, but you try and get a picture of thirteen squiggly ducklings who can climb! They hop and use their little toes to pull themselves up and hurl themselves out of the little flower pots. It’s a sight to see! Porch Muscovy momma hatched these little babies for us. Took us a few minutes of crawling around under the porch to catch them all, but they are all present and accounted for. There are still about a dozen unhatched eggs, so we are hopeful that mom will get back on the nest for a bit longer. Barn Muscovy momma is also very close to hatching her clutch. We heard peeping coming from her corner last night! Shout out to @danarandall69 for sponsoring the farm through @patreon and helping us keep the brooder lights on! We couldn’t do it without the help of our generous supporters. . . . #duckling #ducks #muscovies #babytime #marshallfarmersmarket #ducklife #🦆 #smallfarm #farm #farmlife #farmlifebestlife #homesteading #homesteader #homesteadersofinstagram #homesteadersofamerica #homesteadersofmichigan

A post shared by Nicole & Robert Goetz (@frontierefarmhouse) on May 26, 2020 at 8:56am PDT

This is such a fun and exciting part of farming that we didn’t really expect to enjoy so much. All of the moms have easy access to food and water, so this extended broody period is not an issue for them. The next time we catch them off their nests, we will be candling the eggs and making sure we don’t have to worry about any exploding.

This post was sponsored by our Patreon supporter Melina. Find her gorgeous hand dyed yarn on Facebook, Instagram, and Etsy, and find her knitting patterns on her website and Ravelry.

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