Today you get to meet some of the critters on our homestead! We have a wonderful crew of animals on our homestead whom we absolutely love. They keep us entertained with their antics and individual personalities.
One of my favorite chores everyday is taking care of the animals on our homestead. My 11 year old feels the same way so we are often vying for who gets to do which chores, even on cold below-zero days! I love talking to our critters and taking care of them everyday. They are such a joy to be around!
The Chickens on our Homestead
We currently have three different breeding flocks of chickens, each with their own coop and very large fenced pasture area to roam (although a couple of them are escape artists and fly right over the fence!) My kids started breeding chickens several years ago, selling fertile eggs and hatching baby chicks to sell.
Our first coop is home to our flock of Sweedish Flower hens and their Sweedish Flower rooster named Sir Cowboy. The Sweedish Flower hens are named Ani D, Twilight, Fiachetta Bianca, and Cutie Orange Flower (don’t you just love the names kids come up with lol?!) One of their favorite places to hang out is scratching and pecking around in the barnyard with the ponies.
Our second coop is home to our Black Copper Marans rooster Rudolf Von Flugal (Any Richard Scary fans out there?) His hens are Black Cooper Marans, Cuckoo Marans, and Olive Eggers we hatched from hens in our third coop. Their names are Pumpkin, Ash, Bluebird, Goldie and Princess Tillie.
Three of these hens are little wanderers so I nicknamed them “The 3 Cluckateers”! They can often be found getting into Grandma’s flower gardens next door (oh the drama lol!) or catching grasshoppers on the path to the creek.
These three hens are total daredevils! It’s not unusual for us to look out the kitchen window and see one of these adventurous hens jump onto the top of the chicken coop, take a running jump and fly over their pasture fence and land on the trampoline.
The trampoline! Can you imagine a chicken on a trampoline?! I really need to get a picture sometime, it often happens so fast I miss it so you’ll just have to believe me when I tell you these crazy chickens get on the trampoline.
Our third coop used to be the home of our beloved Cuckoo Marans rooster, Sir Francois Benocho, who died last year in a freak accident. He made some gorgeous Olive Egger and Cuckoo Marans hens that we still have.
This third coop is now home to a mixed variety of hens: Easter Eggers, Blue Laced Red Wyandottes, Cuckoo Marans, and Australorp. The hens names are Ginger-Hazel, Chickaletta, Hattie, Francisa, Cinnamon and Princess Buttercup.
Francisa is our most tame chicken and loves to hop onto the table on our back porch, look in the window and watch us eat dinner at the table. She is such a character!
In September, one of our Wyandotte hens named Cinnamon went broody. She was sitting on a nice sized clutch of eggs but we experienced some early below freezing temps and we didn’t realize until it was too late that she couldn’t keep all her eggs warm enough.
Sadly only two chicks survived, both Sweedish Flowers. One chick turned out to be a rooster so we named him Chico (can you tell the kids are learning Spanish in our homeschool?) The other chick is a hen so the kids named her Chica Tiger Lilly.
Last week was the first time I heard a good crow from our little Chico! By our calculations, Chica should start laying her first eggs any day now.
This will be a great relief since most of our other chickens have been on an egg laying vacation since they molted this fall at the beginning of our really cold winter. Although now that the chickens have freshly cleaned coops we’re hoping they will all start laying regularly again!
In years past, we have raised meat bird chickens but currently do not have any because it is the middle of winter. We typically raise them in late spring or early summer. This way they can be out in the pasture and rotated to fresh grass every day and not raised in brooders under heat lamps all winter.
The Equine Critters on our Homestead
Last year we adopted our first equine on the homestead: two ponies! Our smallest and youngest pony is an adorable Shetland Pony named Muffin. He used to be a breeding pony and was named Stud Muffin in his former life. So funny!
He is the sweetest pony gelding and we absolutely adore him. He definitely gives us a little pony attitude at times but that’s part of his character and charm! My kids love to ride him bareback and we are getting started with the process to teach him how to drive a little cart and pull a sled.
Our second pony is a Morgan horse/pony cross mare named Willow. She thinks she is the Queen of the barnyard and makes sure everyone knows that!
She is one hand shy of being a full size horse so a lot of people don’t realize she’s actually part pony. She is trained to drive a cart so we can be found driving the back roads in our little horse cart. So fun!
Driving a horse is truly a dream come true for me. I’ve always dreamed of being able to do this since I fell in love with the Little House on the Prairie Books as a little girl.
I’m planning to take Willow to some clinics and trainings this year to learn how to use her in horse powered farm work and log pulling. It will be so fun to learn how to have her help us work around the homestead!
Last month we adopted our third equine, a gorgeous Grulla horse gelding named Dusty. He is primarily my daughter’s riding horse since she grew so tall her feet almost touch the ground when she rides Muffin!
Dusty was a rescue adoption since his former elderly owner was having health issues and could no longer care for him. He is the sweetest horse I have ever met. He has a history of being used as a therapy horse which isn’t surprising because he is such a gentle soul.
One of my other passions in life outside of homesteading is social work. I have a Master’s Degree in Social Work and am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (fancy speak for mental health therapist). One of my goals for this year is to enroll in an equine therapy training. I actually planned to do this several years ago but then COVID hit and all of that was put on hold. I think the timing is meant to be now that we have sweet Dusty in our family!
The Canine on the Homestead
Up until a couple years ago, we had two elderly dogs on our homestead that I adopted from the animal shelter before I married my husband. We grieved for a while after they passed and eventually decided that we wanted to adopt another dog.
I’ve always felt strongly about adopting animals from the shelter who really needed a home. We didn’t have livestock that needed guarding so getting an LGD from a breeder wasn’t a fit for us.
We eventually found our new sweet puppy at an animal shelter two hours away. He was a stray that no one claimed and we fell in love as soon as we met him.
He was a puppy when we adopted him and is now about two years old. According to the genetic test we did, he is a Minatare American Shepherd/ Australian Cattle Dog mix.
He’s a little ball of energy with quite the herding instinct! One of his favorite jobs on the homestead is to help herd chickens who don’t want to go in their coop at night and will end up racoon dinner if they don’t go in the coop.
My kids have been training him to do tricks and they are very entertaining: jump a hurdle, crawl, shake, go under an obstacle and even to tap keys on the piano!
My 11 year old is going to be writing posts our our site for her homeschool Language Arts. She has some posts in the works with funny stories about our critter antics so stay tuned for more fun reading about our beloved critter crew!
Collage driving horse photo credit: Claudia H. with Out West Wagons
I love the Sweedish Flowers and have never seen them before. I’ll have to check that out. I have Barred Rock, Black Australorp, Brahmas, and Americaunas. They are all such great layers.
Rita
We had never heard of Sweedish Flower hens either until last year when someone local was selling this starter flock that we bought. They are all so beautiful and unique, they’ve become one of my favorite chicken breeds. That’s wonderful your ladies are great layers, ours were last summer but took a long break and are just getting started again finally!