Farming life

I've been asked by friends and family to blog my experiences on our small farm.  There were two incidences that happened one day that convinced me to begin this blog.  I will not bore you, I hope with trivial information, but hope to share what it is like to run a small farm.

I will be posting two short video clips to begin this blog journey. The first video clip is of an armadillo that I run into from time to time in our back yard.  I took this video with my Android X phone. I also got as close as possible without him running away.

Our 20 acre farm is in North Texas.  As you may or may not know, we are experiencing a severe drought.  The animals and all plant life are in a state of distress, along with death in this drought.  We have a small kiddie pool in our back yard for our ducks to swim and bathe in.  The armadillo comes out before sunset to drink from this pool.  The first time I was able to get a photo of him and then this video:  

Now on this evening,  2 of our 6 ducks went crazy, in a sense.  Our oldest duck Oma is molting. Molting is very painful process of the new quills push the old quills out.  The female ducks get rather cranky. In human terms, they are like women during PMS or women heading through menopause, without medication.  Needless to say Oma is in a mood. My husband says, "she is in a really 'fowl' mood."  She attacks one of our younger female ducks named Phoebe.  I could not understand this aggression. When Oma molts, (usually twice a year) she is quiet and broody, but not this time.  In observing them, I figured it out. Oma is the queen of our 3 drakes (male ducks). She has a faithful drake named Little Dude that does his best to protect her. Well, our other 2 drakes ( male ducks) are now giving all their attention to Phoebe, to the point they beat each other up trying  and get to her. They are no longer showing this kind of interest in Oma, (the queen).  Now neither of these females want to mate with these males. But the attention taken from one female and given to another has caused this aggression on Oma's part.  Basically, the girls are fighting about boys! Reminds me of junior high and high school girls.  I caught this fighting on video but with an interesting twist. Our chicken Blinkin decided to mediate the fight.  Here is a video of Oma and Phoebe fighting and Blinkin mediating the fight.   

I hope you enjoyed this introduction of sorts. I hope to bring you more stories from and about farming.