It’s time to check on the ducks and chickens.
Let’s start with the ducks, as usual:
I really like that last picture of the ducks.
And the new chickens; here they are rushing to see me:
Some older chickens:
Inside the old coop, the flock block is slowly getting smaller:
Another post drafted before we headed to Cancún.
Porcini in the kitchen garden:
Three cats inside:
Two cats peering out:
One cat in the shelter, two eating:
I was pleased to see this: a cat in the feeder and another arriving, with three cats inside the shelter — I’m excited to see all five cats at once:
Here are the three cats inside at the same time as the above shot:
Pansy in the shop:
Pumpkin in the shelter:
Two cats inside:
Porcini enjoying the bench by the fountain again:
And playing with the algae in the fountain:
We’re in Cancún now, but I prepared this Flock Friday update before I left, so you wouldn’t have to suffer a week without ducks and chickens. You’re welcome.
The ducks discovered a fun new activity: digging for bugs in the grass next to the pond:
Digging amongst the fallen leaves is also enjoyable:
The next day, they were back in the grass:
The heron returns:
Finally, a couple of pictures of the young chickens:
That’s it for this week! I can’t view the cameras while away, so I might include some pictures from this week in next week’s post.
Time for lots of pictures of our feral cats; it’s Caturday.
This past week Porcini has taken to sitting on the bench by the fountain on sunny days; a nice spot, somewhat near the cat house, where she can keep an eye on things:
Poppy looking at a bird:
Snuggles:
Three cats waiting for breakfast in the shelter:
Two cats snuggling in the evening:
A screenshot of the camera viewing app, showing four cats; two in the shelter, one on the deck, one eating:
A Steller’s jay making very bad choices, when there’s a cat in the shelter (don’t worry, the bird flew away before the cat came out):
Porcini sleeping on the bench again:
Porcini coming out of the feeder:
When the weather isn’t so nice, Porcini has another solution: sleeping on one of the chairs on our deck, under the shelter of the gazebo (with a nice view of hummingbirds flying to the feeders):
We had suspected a cat was doing that for a while, as we noticed cat fur on the cushions, but this was the first time we’d seen her doing so.
The orange cat, Pumpkin, watching a possum that scored some leftover food:
Pumpkin spent some time inside the shelter, too:
Two cats snuggling inside:
A screenshot showing Pumpkin peeking at others inside:
A sequence of images of Pumpkin going into the shelter when Poppy was there:
Poppy hissed at Pumpkin:
But Pumpkin just settled down, and Poppy relaxed:
They shared the shelter for about an hour, then Poppy left:
And Pumpkin stuck around for another hour before departing too:
This morning, two cats waiting for breakfast inside; they don’t seem to mind the smell of Pumpkin:
It’s Flock Friday time.
Here are a couple of ducks heading up the ramp into their house:
Duck butts, looking through the pop door into the duck house:
Some pictures of the ducks in the pond, scooping up treats, and going between sunlight and shadow:
Another day, I went over to the west side of the pond, and the ducks followed me:
The chickens have been roosting above the window in the coop, which isn’t entirely approved, since jumping down from that height could injure them, or cause other chaos:
Like this: a chicken using another as a step on the way down:
So I trimmed the hardware cloth above the window to be less roost-like. One still managed to perch above the window, but the others took the hint:
A couple of pictures of the new chickens outdoors:
A chicken pecking at zucchini:
A steller’s jay bird flying off with a peanut from the tray:
Time once again to take a peek in the cat house.
One of the twins playing inside:
About to jump onto the camera housing:
Startled:
Two for breakfast:
A raccoon visited soon after breakfast was dispensed:
So I decided that since it was getting light later, I should change the feeder schedule to dispense half an hour later.
Three cats:
One arrives while another is eating:
Playing:
Poppy is sleeping, and another cat arrives:
Another unwelcome guest, a possum; fortunately with no food left:
Porcini waiting for breakfast; she didn’t get the memo of the later breakfast time:
Pepper in the shop:
Spud on the front steps:
A couple of days later, Spud hanging around again, on the kitchen lawn:
A Steller’s Jay making poor life choices:
Went back for several more bits of food:
Looking out the window:
Three cats on the deck:
Hi there. It’s me again. Doing the Friday thing.
Ducks in their house:
Paladout (what we call the alien gray cat, if you missed that in the cat updates) visited the ducks one night; they were both startled to see each other, but he wandered off without any drama:
I doubt cats would go after ducks, being similar size. And the ducks were safe behind the fencing around the duck house ramp. I’ve seen them resting there overnight several times.
Ducks exploring the back of the pond:
I went back there, and they looked at me quizzically:
A view of almost the entire pond; you may be able to make out the ducks still at the back:
The heron visited again, and knocked the mobile camera out of alignment (it isn’t permanently mounted, but just resting on top of a boulder, with some bricks loosely anchoring it; one day I’ll buy a permanent one for there). Here it’s just jumped down from the rock:
The culprit:
The heron taking off:
The ducks exploring the grass between the duck house and waterfall. One more place for me to check for eggs when they start laying:
The ducks and fish scooping up treats:
Three ducks, three big koi:
(Yes, the fish are bigger than the ducks.)
Ducks circling:
The new chickens pecking at some tomato treats:
Chickens through weeds:
Again with tomatoes:
Hey there:
The older chickens with tomatoes:
We have a lot of tomatoes from the veggie garden right now; Jenn is canning 20 pounds or so of them, but the chickens get the split ones, and the ones the bugs got to first… if they’re really lucky, with tasty insect bonuses.
Hanging out with Merida, giving her pats:
Fuzzy butt:
Domino and Buffy:
Lastly, a shot of some hummingbirds:
Did you see today’s YouTube video of hummingbirds and a wasp on that feeder?
Standing outside a couple of feet from a popular hummingbird feeder, that was also being visited by a wasp. Listen to the hummingbird chirping.
I’ve added several more project summaries to the Yellow Cottage Homestead site, for my project of summarizing homestead projects. Still a few left to go, but I’m getting there.
This is a summary of the project summaries (replicating the summary post). Each one includes links and pictures from posts on the Yellow Cottage Homestead blog. You can read the summaries for an overview of each project, and click through to the individual posts if you want more details.
Visit the Projects page to scroll through all of the projects, or pick individual ones below. Click or tap on the photo to visit that summary.
More project summaries will be added over time. Here are the ones available so far:
A project to build a shelter and feeder for the family of feral cats that adopted us.
Electrical work in our house.
Projects related to our workshop.
Various construction projects related to beekeeping.
Various plumbing projects around the homestead.
A project to build the fence and netting roof of an outdoor run for the new chicken coop.
A big project to build a new chicken coop.
A simple project to build three potato planters.
We added a handy new tool to our beekeeping practices: canvas inspection cloths. These are multi-layered cloths that go over the top of hive boxes during inspection, to keep the bees in the dark, which keeps them more calm. They seem to help quite a bit:
Here’s a frame from the yellow hive with the marked queen; one of our new queens. See the green dot? That makes it much easier to spot her:
Another angle:
A GIF of the queen (as previously posted):
A frame of honey from the yellow hive:
A partial frame of honey from the purple hive:
A purple hive frame with brood and the (unmarked) queen; can you spot her?
Here’s a closer look; I’ve circled the queen:
We switched to an alcohol wash mite test instead of the sugar shake. This is a bit easier:
A mostly full frame of honey from the Flow hive:
We noticed a bee dragging off another one; they do that to clear out dead ones, but this one wasn’t quite dead yet. It was feeling much better:
The new hot pink hive has a top sugar syrup feeder (visible on the left), and the bees took advantage of the space in the middle of that to build extra comb; that isn’t approved, but we left it for now:
A problematic frame from the orange hive, where they had previously built cross-comb. They are slowly repairing it, but are still very cranky with us, so we just removed the mite treatment patty and otherwise left them alone:
You may recall that we have two nucs with the old queens that we replaced. When we checked them, one was evacuated; empty frames and no bees. So we moved some drawn-out frames to the other one, to replace non-drawn-out ones, and removed the empty nuc:
Sometime we’ll move the remaining nuc to the hoop house, so the waxed cardboard has more chance of surviving the winter. The hive probably won’t survive, being so small, but no big loss; it was only kept just in case the new queens didn’t “take”. If it does survive, we’ll move it into a new hive box next year.