Willow and Muffin

These are me and Abbi's new rabbits, Willow and Muffin. If you want to be fancy, I'm pretty sure you would say that Willow is a blue or lilac, i cant decide, silver martine Netherland dwarf doe kit, and Muffin (Abbi's bunny) is a sable martine Netherland dwarf doe kit. Their mother I think is a smoke pearl Netherland dwarf, while their father is a black otter dwarf kind of like Muffin. We only just got them last Saturday and they are already pretty tame! Unlike what we did when we got Peter, we didn't hold them straight away. Instead we did things properly (although Peter is fine and likes being held) and put them in their brand new walk in rabbit run, just sitting in there every now and then for them to get used to us and offering them food. Only two days later did we start picking them up and holding them. But it wasn't easy! They still run away when you go to pick them up but you can't expect them to kind of jump into your lap or something just because you feed them, especially not at their young age of about 7 weeks old!  

I am hoping that they will grow into their ears like Peter did- as Netherland ears are supposed to be 5 cm in length- no longer and no shorter. I did measure them the other day and they where perfect, so fingers crossed! The reason why I want them to be a good length and everything is because me and Abbi are planning on breeding them with Peter and possibly supplying the local pet shop with some rabbits because Nethies aren't always available there. Or just selling them on trade me etc. The downer is that we have to wait until they are at least five months old before they can start breeding!

  They are really cool rabbits and I would suggest Netherland dwarfs to anyone interested in buying a pet rabbit, despite what most rabbit books say about them being nervous and grumpy, our Nethies are anything but that!

Pepper and Penny- growing up

Pepper and Penny have been very busy recently, eating, sleeping, scratching, peeping... but mostly growing! You can see the difference in them and how much they are starting to actually look like real chickens rather then cutesy little Easter chicks. Photo number one is of their first home out of the egg, when they started to hatch we rushed out to town to buy the heat lamp and put wood shavings in a plastic box, which WAS being used for school work stuff in the sun room!

This photo is of Pepper when he hatched and had dried out a bit.

This is Pepper and Penny all dried out and a couple of days old.

Pepper and Penny are starting to get their adult feathers on their wings in this photo!

Pepper and Penny in their day time home- the newly built rabbit run which Peter is very happy to share funnily enough! It also just happens to be right next to the hens... and their mother! They no longer need a heat lamp so at night time they go to bed in the sun room.

Pepper is growing fast- he's already getting feathers on his tail and all over the rest of his body!

Lilly's 5 star meal

Yesterday, I went to go and give the dogs their breakfast and there where no Tux left! So what do you do when you have two hungry dogs and no biscuits? Make them a rice master piece!

It was heaps of fun and Ben and Lilly really liked it!


Here is a recipe for how to make a 5 star meal for your dog...





Lilly's five star meal, chicken surprise!
  
Ingredients:

*rice
*pasta sauce
*chicken
*two treat sticks for dogs
*chopped up training treats
*water
*tomato sauce
*mint leaves (optional)

How to:

First of all cook up the rice, one cup per dog depending on how big they are. Next put as much rice as you can in a dessert bowl, making sure that it is smooth on top and put your chicken in the middle. Once this is done, get a large dinner plate and put the bowl on top like making a sand castle. After this you can put the pasta sauce on top  of the rice and then stick the mint leaves in it. To make the sauce with treats in all you need to do is mix some water with the sauce to make it a runny consistency, pour some on the side of the plate, and sprinkle  the treats in it! To add the final touch, get your treat sticks and put them in the side of the rice. Et voila!

   
  

Pepper and Penny-new adidtions to the farm!

On the the 11th of march, two of our eggs hatched! They are called Pepper and Penny and they are both black little balls of fluff. Their Mum is Gem, Abbi's funny little mongrel chicken who is also black. Pepper and Penny are really funny, if you put your hand in there they will both come over to have a look at the foreign object. They also start pecking each other if they happen to have a bit of wood shavings on their back or if they just get in each others way. When I was taking the picture they were eating and when ever I took a photo it made a funny noise and they would run over and start pecking the case or trying to get a better look at it! Another thing about them is they NEVER stop peeping!!!!

eggys!

When we got our 5 laying hens about 3 weeks ago, they had been living with 4 roosters. And of course this means fertile eggs which was later confirmed after cracking open an egg for a cake and seeing the 'bulls eye' which is the early sign of a fertile egg! So Dad borrowed an incubator from someone from school and we set it up about 24 hours before putting the eggs in so it had plenty of time to heat up.
And 15 days later, we just candled the eggs to see if they where alive and they are! It is so cool looking at them because you can actually see all the veins and we even saw them moving around! I'm also sure i saw some little toes in one of them.

I can't wait for them to hatch, it will be so awsome to have six little chicks running around. I will definatly add photos when their time comes to hatch!


Here is a website that I really like and has helped heaps,  http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/candling-pics-progression-through-incubation-of-chicken-eggs

Enjoy!

Pop and Dan at the A and P show

 On March the 2nd Abbi and I took Poppy and Danny to the Donovan park A and P show!
 We got up early so we would have time to feed all the other animals (and ourselves!) and got dressed. Then we put Pop and Dan out in the neighbours paddock, with permission of course, and gave them their morning feed of 'farm feed nuggets' and went inside to change into our show cloths. After this we got the boot ready (we don't have a trailer- we know another crazy family who take their COWS to the vet in the boot!) with a tarpaulin on the floor just in case of any accidents and loaded them up! Me and Abbi had to sit in the back seat next to Noah and hold a bed roll over the goats as Mum was scared that they would try and jump over-this wasn't the first time we had done this!
Once we got there and had found a park, we let the goats out and walked over to the show grounds where the pet competition was being held. While we where waiting to be judged this girl with her pet lamb walked past us and Danny tried to head but it!
After the judging we where awarded with our ribbons and Poppy and Danny got 2nd equal! (Although, I must admit that there was only one other person with a goat there!) It was really funny on the way back to the van because we literally couldn't walk 5 meters without someone stopping to pat them!

It was SO much fun and the goats where really well behaved and handled it all really well, everyone thought they where adorable!



In the picture is me with Danny on the left, our friend and our competition Hanna with one of her goats Jubilee in the middle, and Abbi with Poppy on the right. :)

Honey!

This is the journey of honey.  First of all the worker bees suck the nectar out of the flowers surrounding their hive, which they then store in their honey sacks. After this they fly back to the hive where other workers suck the nectar  out of the other bees sack and chew it before putting it into wax cells that yet more worker made. Then they fan it with their wings until most of the water content has evaporated. All that's left now is thick gooey honey. The last step for them is to cap it of with bees wax.
 This is where the bee keeper comes in; first they spray the hive with smoke from burning pine needles which lets the bees know he is coming (bees will sting if taken by surprise). Then he takes the wooden frames that hold the wax cells and the honey out and they go off a honey factory. There are 100's of 1000's of bees per hive, and the Queen bee will lay up to 2000 eggs a day!
 When the frames reach the factory they are put into an 'uncaping machine' where lots of different blades shave the wax caps of. When this is done someone will scrape of the remaining bits of wax with a scraper. The frames are then sent off to another machine called an extractor which spins around and around and around and around.... and around until all of the honey is forced out of the cells. The last step before bottling is to filter the honey to make sure that there is no wax left in it.
 At the bottling station all the jars are steam cleaned, then honey is squirted into each of them. The lids and branding stickers are put on by special machines. Then it's off to the shelves!!!