What exactly is a Hobby Farm?

A hobby farm is a farm where you don’t have to depend on its income. For example, having chickens. Eggs do make money, but you aren’t reliant on how much money you make from just the chickens. It’s basically having the hobby of taking care of animals. Most of the time, hobby farms are run on less land than big farms. On a hobby farm, you can also grow a garden filled with fruits, veggies, flowers, and more! From my experience, it’s so much fun!

Daily Animal Chores!

You’d think that chickens and ducks are easy to take care of but that’s definitely not the truth! They are such high maintenance, at least mine are! I have 12 ducks and 20 chickens including our rooster. We get close to 35 eggs a week currently but, when spring comes around and our chicks get older, we will have an estimate of 140 a week! Every morning, my dad wakes up to let the chickens and ducks out of their coops at 8 am. Then he feeds and waters them. During the day everyone will go out and check on them and see if they still have what they need. At around 5 the ducks go up on their own and we go and shut their door to make sure they stay safe through the night. When it starts to get dark, we put the chickens up and that’s more of a task because the chickens roost where they want. After they are up, we check for eggs and take them from the nesting boxes. Then we lock the extra coop door to keep them even safer. 

We clean the coops weekly to make sure they have a clean place to sleep and lay eggs. We also have started building them a new coop because we have gained more chickens and they need more room. 

Gardening and canning food!

Every year we grow a 2,000+ square foot garden filled with corn, carrots, dill, tomatoes, cucumber, leafy lettuce, pumpkin, squash, zucchini, banana peppers, bell peppers, peas, green beans, black kidney beans, pinto beans, green onion, purple onion, yellow onion, cabbage, Iceberg lettuce, mustard greens, lavender, potatoes, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, cauliflower, broccoli, cantaloupe, and watermelon. We also have walnut trees! This spring we plan on growing flower gardens too and growing sunflowers for the seeds. 

When we have the garden, we have to pull weeds and prune several times weekly almost daily. We have to water the garden every day. We also all till the ground and plant the seeds and use garden hoes to dig.

Meet some chickens and ducks!

Our chick’s names are Roo (our rooster), Wilma, Penny, Betty, Nugget, Lulu, Ivy, Baby, Roxy, Ethel, Lucy, Winnie, Chloe, Dottie, Goldie, Madam, Owly, Bella, Karen, Franke.

Our duck’s names are Quackers, George, Wheezy, Tiny, Ruby, Elsa, Iris, Oreo, Blue, Daisy, Giggles, and Hazel. 

Madam and Owly are my favorites! They are Americaunas. However, they are nicknames Easter eggers because they can lay pink, blue, or green eggs. Madam and Owly are best friends and VERY social! They actually let you hold and pet them because they love it! Where one goes the other follows and it’s so cute! Owly is more vocal and loves to cluck and make a long growling almost kind of sound. Madam gets very jealous when you pay attention to another chicken and will yell for attention until you pet her, hold her, or talk to her. They both love the spotlight! Goldie, Madam, Owly, Bella, Karen, Franke are all 5 months old. 

I also love our silkie named Baby. She lays very small cream/tan eggs. Silkies have black skin, black meat, black bones black feet, etc. They have fur instead of feathers and are flightless.  Chinese eat them because they think they are healing due to them being black under their fur. Baby is so little and honks rather than clucks. She will be a year old in April.

Bantams lay small cream-colored eggs and we have 11  bantams including our rooster named Roo. We have had our oldest 3 for a year but think they are older. We hatched 16 and gave away 4 roosters because you can only have one rooster because they fight. 

Fun Facts!

• Our chickens LOVE mealworms, raisins, and apples, and dried oats as a good treat and our ducks love lettuce and dried corn.

• An unknown fact for many is that you shouldn’t actually feed ducks bread or crackers because it makes them sick!
• Every 1 male duck should have 3 to 5 females so they don’t over mate. Per every rooster, you should have 10 hens
• Both chickens and ducks don’t have to have a male to lay eggs unless you want babies!
• You should ALWAYS wash your hands after touching a chicken or duck to prevent disease!