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BESS

by with One Comment DucksGolden Cascades

Sorry to say it, but we’ve had to let Bess go. She developed a prolapsed oviduct, and it would have required an expensive visit to a vet to repair her. It just wasn’t worth it to us to take the time or spend the money. Apparently it is somewhat common, we’ve just never experienced it before. I believe she was our first duck to lay eggs; the day we first had eggs, she had a wet, drippy rear end with something hanging out. This led me to believe she was the one to lay. Perhaps she had problems right from the beginning, although it did go away and she was fine for a while.

Bess began to lay eggs on November 15th, just 2 1/2 weeks after I began lighting the duck house to encourage laying. It wasn’t until January 26th that we found more eggs from other ducks. In the meantime, we had a couple of whopper-sized, double-yolk eggs–one was 4.5 ounces. They must have been hard to push out!

Apparently the prolapsed oviduct can be caused by a few things:

  • A duck that’s been artificially encouraged to lay too young, and lays eggs before their bodies are mature enough.
    • I don’t believe this was the case; I didn’t begin to add light before the recommended age (I began at 21 weeks. Sources suggest anywhere from 19-23 weeks.)
  • A duck may have strained too hard when laying extra large eggs.
    • This may have been the case for Bess.
  • The drakes may have been overly abusive to the duck.
    • I suppose this is possible, but I haven’t noticed, and I don’t have too many drakes in ratio to the hens. (1 drake to 4 hens seems reasonable.)
  • A duck may inherit this trait.
    • Maybe???
  • She may not have had enough calcium, which not only helps form the shells, but give strength to the muscle structure in the vent area.
    • This is possible. I was not giving oyster shell or other calcium, but solely relying on the calcium content in the layer feed and some crushed eggshells added to the feed.

So, I don’t know why this occurred, but I think I will be more careful in the future not to attempt adding light for young ducklings. I may just let nature take its course, and they’ll lay on their own time-clock, not mine. I will also give free-choice oyster shell.

Our visit to the wolf sanctuary last August.

Bess was taken today to our local wolf sanctuary. That may seem extreme to some readers, but after all, it’s the “circle of life”, and these wolves are unable to be in the wild to find their own food. They appreciate donations of fresh meat.

GUFFEY GARDEN?

by with No Comment GardenGuffey

As January rolls on and we’ve been receiving seed catalogs and emails from favorite seed companies, I’m itchin’ to start a garden here at our new location near Guffey, CO. Our house is well along the way, and we hope to be able to move in by the end of February. However, the house won’t really be “done”. There will be continuing work to complete the interior, even after we’ve moved in. I’m afraid I won’t be able to do much of a garden this year, and am not yet looking at the catalogs.

I do hope to begin with a few things just to get started, such as a salad garden, and hopefully I’ll be able to get in some perennials, such as asparagus and berries, so they can get a start. It will be fun to determine where to put things and gradually get them going! We do plan on putting up a greenhouse, perhaps in time for fall 2016.

I’ve begun thinking and researching high-elevation gardening, including designing a garden to keep the deer, rabbits and ground squirrels out. There will be much more on that in the years to come.

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ALL DECKED OUT – PART II

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

A while back, I had a post called “All Decked Out”. This showed the completion of the deck. However, the railing was not up. So, here’s “All Decked Out” – Part II.

We had a few days of nice weather, so I moved back outside and put up the railing on the deck. There are code requirements to meet, but we wanted the railing to be as minimally obstructive to our view as possible. We think we succeeded.

Here’s a pic looking at the house from where the horse paddock is:

This one shows an outside view looking across our pasture: 
 This is from the inside looking toward the barn. You can see a bit of the finished ceiling in this one.
One by one, we’re ticking off the things needed to get our final inspection done and to be able to move in (CO – Certificate of Occupancy). We’re almost done setting up the kitchen to make it functional enough for CO. Laurie textured and painted it. We have the counter in and the sink should be hooked up in the next day or two. I will be building custom cabinets for the kitchen over the summer, but for now, we’ll have a few cheap-o cabinets just to get by. The bathroom is well underway. I’m working on tile while Laurie is working on texturing and painting. We’ll post more as each area is complete (enough for CO). 
It’s starting to feel like we’re coming into the home stretch. Another 4-5 weeks and we could be moving in! WooHoo! 
SPOT

SPOT FLIES!

by with No Comment DucksGolden Cascades

Silly Spot. She seems to be my silliest duck.

For the third time I know of, Spot has gotten herself onto the deck.
She’s not terribly concerned, just looking at her buddies below.
Her buddies are checking her out.
She contemplates her departure.

 

And….there she goes. Flying like a real duck!
She’s just gotta work on that landing. Not too graceful.

Silly Spot!

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WHERE THE DEER & THE ANTELOPE…UH…INVADE?

by with No Comment Mountain GaitwayWildlife

Life at the ranch isn’t all about building a house. We continue to be amazed at the scenery and wildlife. We see a LOT of deer. Occasionally, we see a few elk. Only one time have we seen one lone antelope walking down, of all places, Antelope Lane 🙂 . That is, until yesterday.

They must have been planning this huge invasion! Laurie noticed the horses running in the pasture. When she looked out the window she discovered what they were all excited about:

There must be over 50 antelope in this group! They are just outside the fenced portion of our pasture. At first the horses and antelope all stopped and just stared at each other. Then they all relaxed a bit.

A little later in the day we had some neighbors over for dinner. We told them about the antelope and showed them some pics. As if to “show off”, the herd reappeared and treated the neighbors (and us) to another live viewing.
What a wonderful place to live! As always, we give thanks to our Father for these blessings.

 

ELECTRIFYING!

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

We got everything done that needed to be done in preparation for finishing up the electric. The electrician came out a week ago and finished up all the electric. So, now we have lights, hot water, live outlets everywhere, outside motion detector flood lights, etc.

Now we can work all night if we want to. Wait a minute! We’re retired…we’re not going to do that!

Laurie and I are continuing to stain and put up the ceiling tongue and groove boards. It’s really looking nice. It is getting more and more to feel like a real house.

I’ll start focusing on the bathroom next. Putting in the shower tile, bathroom floor, vanity, toilet, etc.

 

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MOVING RIGHT ALONG

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

 

Well no, we’re not actually “moving in” just yet. But we are continually making progress. It’s been an entire month since our last post, and during this time Tim has put up the drywall, and we’ve begun preparation to get it textured and painted soon. Here is (left to right) front door, kitchen (showing back side of counter, where the sink will be), hallway (utility room window at the end), bathroom door, and the edge of our closet.

We’ve begun covering the ceiling with pine from a local sawmill. We like using local and/or “green” products as much as possible, and have found a sawmill where we’ve ordered all the wood for the interior: ceiling, trim & flooring. We found a tung oil product that uses a natural citrus solvent, and is “zero-VOC”, meaning: it smells nice and won’t give off dangerous pollutants. (see Real Milk Paint) The vertexes of the ceiling and walls, and the compression ring under the dome will be blue-stain, or “beetle-kill” pine for a nice contrast. We plan to build our kitchen cabinets with the blue stain pine as well. We will be attending a class in January to get tips on building the cabinets, and I plan to help and learn as much as I can about the process.

We took advantage of some holiday sales and ordered some appliances through amazon.com**, and received them a couple of weeks ago; a range, microwave & “combo washer/dryer”, which washes & dries in the same unit. A nice space-saver, we have a smaller one in the RV and have grown to like it. It’s ventless, so we won’t have to vent it out, and it runs on just 110, so is also an energy saver. Tim has the washer set up, so I’ve begun to use it in the utility room–it is nice to be doing larger loads! 
We will be setting up a temporary kitchen, with sink, range, microwave, shelves & enough counter space to get by after we move in, while we build the cabinets in our workshop alongside the barn. They will take a while to build, and we’ll be cozy in the house while we do that. We will also probably move in before we install the flooring, and will do as much of the finishing for that in the workshop as well, prior to putting it in place.

We enjoy being inside working where it’s warm. Our gas stove does a nice job of keeping the place toasty. We are coming along nicely, and think we may be able to move in within a couple of months. Only time will tell.

We had a nice brunch on Christmas Day at a neighbors’ home. It was a cold, snowy day, and nice to travel just a quarter mile for some neighborly fun.

**We’ve become real fans of amazon.com and Amazon Prime, here in our rural location! We can order all kinds of stuff and get it in two days, which means fewer trips to Canon City or Colorado Springs.

FRAMING

TRIPLE CLINK AND READY TO FINISH

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

We have developed a fun tradition with our dear friend Trisha (in North Carolina). Whether we’re together or apart, if we have some good news to share we celebrate with a toast. We call it a “clink” (think of glasses clinking together). Any drink will do, ice tea, water, wine, fruit juice. it’s all fun. And if we’re not together a “virtual clink” over the phone is just as good.

We called Trisha the other night to report a Triple Clink. We passed the electrical rough inspection, plumbing rough inspection and framing inspection all within a few days of each other. It was a stressful but rewarding week.

Here’s a pic of the crawl space with the electrical and plumbing ready for inspection:

This pic shows the interior walls all framed up. You can see the plumbing and electrical in the walls. 

I did all the plumbing and gas pipe myself. We sub contracted out the electrical work.

The framing inspection passed with flying colors. This is where the inspector has a last chance to look at all the structural components of the house before you’re allowed to cover anything up. Once again, he complimented us on our work.

Now we’re ready to start finishing the interior. I started putting up drywall today. The floors, ceiling, kitchen, bathroom, trim, etc. are all on the agenda and we’ll be working on those things over the upcoming weeks. The timing couldn’t be better. It got pretty cold outside and started snowing today, but that’s OK because we can now work inside out of the weather!

We bought our gas heating stove. The brand (Jotul) is Norwegian; I’m half Norwegian, so that’s a good fit 🙂  Here’s a pic from the brochure:

 

We’re getting the propane tank delivered on Monday. Then we should be able to fire up the stove and keep the house nice and toasty while we’re working inside.

We’re truly amazed at how much progress there has been. We looked back and determined that we broke ground on June 29th, and here we are working on the finishing phase of the house. What an adventure!

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FIRST EGGS!

by with No Comment DucksGolden Cascades
First eggs from Golden Cascades, 14 November 2015

There were TWO EGGS in the duck house this morning! This is a full month earlier than the first eggs we’d gotten from our previous ducks.

One of the eggs (the larger of the two) was crushed, but the other was unbroken. They both had some blood on the outside, and the shells were not real hard. The smaller of the two was about the size of a medium to large chicken egg. I did not want to eat the egg, due to its messiness on the outside, but I cracked it open and it was fine on the inside.

One of the ducks, Bess, had a gooey mess hanging from her rear–I imagine she was one of this morning’s layers. A couple of days ago I noticed she had a quacking fit. Quack, quack, quack…constant for several minutes. Perhaps she knew this thing was growing inside her. I can’t help but wonder what these ducks must be thinking the first day they lay an egg???