Our wee farm is growing….again! We got some baby Freedom Rangers about four weeks ago and turkey poults two weeks ago…..
This is the first time we are raising meat birds other than turkeys. The Freedom Rangers will be meat for customers and our family. This may be the only batch we do this year. We’ll have to see how they taste and how they grow. They are a slower growing breed compared to the ever popular white broiler we find in the meat section of grocery stores.
We were gifted with a surprise package of Midget White turkeys. We had not ordered our turkeys and then we get a call from the Post Office saying we have some baby birds. After listening to messages we discovered the hatchery we bought from last year had a major system error and sent out last year’s orders by mistake! Since it was their error there was no charge. A blessing in disguise, I guess, since we had not yet decided what we were going to do about turkeys this year.
Our breeding pair of Midget White turkeys, which we kept from last year’s batch, are doing well. Brownie, the hen, has been laying an egg a day. A neighbor actually just dropped by and picked up 13 of her eggs to see if he could hatch them out in an incubator. He’ll be picking up another 7-10 next week. We’ll see how that goes. Brownie has actually been sitting on her eggs, as well as some chicken eggs, for the past three days. It’s the broodiest we’ve seen her so here’s to hoping she hatches out some baby chicks on her own. Now that would cause some excitement around our little farm!
Happy Wordless Wednesday! (or not so wordless 
)
Oh my goodness, they’re so cute!!
Oh how cool!!!
Not going to lie, they’re so cute, but I bet they’ll be really delicious – farm raised, happy chickens make way better meat! (can you eat their eggs as well before you…you know…roast them?)
We actually have not eaten our turkey eggs. Guess most of us are still a little hesitant, though we have heard from others they are really good. We have fed turkey eggs to our dog and any eggs really make his coat shine.
The Freedom Rangers won’t grow past 9-12 weeks so they will not live long enough to even lay eggs. Most chickens start laying at about 20 weeks.
Oh they’re so cute. Just yesterday I was telling someone that I wouldn’t be able to live on a farm because I wouldn’t be able to eat the animals I raised. Now eating ones other people raise I can deal with ;-).
How cool. My kids raised chickens and ducks and school and loved doing it. My husband raised chickens when he was a kid and said mucking out the chicken house was the worse job he ever had, lol.
What an awesome error that the hatchery made! I raise my chickens for eggs and let them live to a ripe old age but some day I would like to raise a freezer full of chicken, it would sure save us some b=money and be so much nicer than the chicken we get at the store!
I miss having chickens & ducks, but I don’t miss stepping in goose poo with bare feet
The Freedom Ranger has beautiful feathers!
How sweet. We hatched 60 chicks a few weeks ago and today our first turkey egg hatched. Our turkey is also setting on some of her eggs. She will usually hatch the chicks but eventually kills them. This time we are going to separate the chicks once they hatch.
Henrietta the hatchery’s mistake was a huge blessing and basically made our decision that we were going to do more Midget White turkeys.
Ann-Marie and Robin the chicken poo gets to us too. It was fine when they stayed in their fenced yards but they quickly discovered they could fly over and we live in pooville.
We’ve banned bare feet this summer, but it’s not working for our youngest who has a mind of his own!
Katy we sooo want to hatch out chicks – how awesome and exciting you hatched 60! We are concerned with the chickens, which live with our turkeys – Tom and Brownie – and Tom if Brownie hatches out some babies. I’ll have to remember to remove them…just in case. Thanks for sharing.
They are so cute!
Fingers crossed for some babies! This is all pretty exciting and I’ll bet the kids are happy, happy, happy!
Yes, the children are very happy. Thankfully, they really do love farm life.
I’m just going to pretend that the cute little chicks are gonna live a long happy life
It doesn’t get much cuter!
So cute!
Aww they’re so cute. I’m too sensitive to ever raise meat, but if I had the guts for it {&didn’t live in the middle of the city} I would because it’s got to be so much healthier for you & a more humane life for them.
How cool that you got unexpected turkeys!
aww they are so cute!! My grandma use to raise chicks. I remember taking care of them when they were still “cooking” under their red light as I said, lol.
Jennifer, ours are still under their red light at night since we don’t want them to be too cold since being moved outside.
I really want chickens. My husband thinks we cannot have them due to having 2 Cairn Terriers but I think we can make it happen.
How awesome! They sure are cute!
They are so adorable. I would love to have some hens, but I could not bare to eat one of them.
awww so sweet. I love baby chicks.
Cool but I couldn’t eat them after raising them like that. I’d much rather eat a ‘faceless’ piece of meat…
I want some hens
My daughter would love to come visit you! How fun. Thanks for sharing. I didn’t do a WW post this week. I keep forgetting!
Adorable.
Aww so cute and fuzzy
Love ‘em! We are going to be moving ours into the coop soon … definitely getting big for the brooder!
My kids would love to cuddle those baby chicky’s
Aww they’re so cute and adorable!
Not a bird fan, they’re actually a phobia of mine, but they are so precious as little babies.
How cute! I really want to raise some baby chicks.
So cool. I hope you’ll share how they turn out!
Hello cuteness!
They’re so cute!
They are too cute! I really want chickens but our HOA would not be happy!
Those chicks are so cute.
They are so adorable.
Baby chicks are so cute!
They’re so cute!
Love all the itty, bitty chicks!
Those are too cute!
They are adorable!
I would love to have some chicks.
baby chicks are so cute.
Awww they’re so fuzzy and cute.
So cute!