The Mountain Blossom Homestead

04/15/2021

The first three of our hobby chickens have spent their first night, morning, and afternoon in their coop~ they’re already taking great to foraging out in the grass

04/03/2021

Best way to start your morning? With a chicken on your shoulder.

04/02/2021

While out running some needed errands yesterday we found out our local feed store had a Buff Orpington roo that had been specially requested by someone, but then abandoned soon after the store had him in stock. I was looking for a roo for my girls so I brought him home 🥰

04/02/2021

Doing some work with my shoulder chicken~

04/01/2021

Tractor supply is mistreating many of their baby birds with their new brooding system, and we need to let them know this system is causing serious harm to these animals.

Demand that Tractor Supply Company change their in-store brooding practices

03/31/2021

I love this derpy little nugget, but she gave me quite the scare last night x.x while foraging in a pile of treats was ignoring the treats and just eating wood bedding... I separated her and treated her for crop compaction. While having her in the recovery tank away from her flock I discovered she’s having some vision loss in her right eye. I don’t know if it was something she was born with or if it has some environmental cause, but I’ve made the difficult decision to make this girl a house chicken rather than a pasture chicken. As she grows I’ll be getting her a small indoor coop, getting some chicken diapers, and taking the long and tiring road to litter train her. While it’ll be fun to spoil her and laugh at the surprise of guests when they see my pet chicken I can’t help but feel bad that she won’t have the same free pasture life as her former flockmates.

03/30/2021

There’s no better feeling in the world than a baby animal trusting you enough to fall asleep in your hands. This is what makes homesteading worth it for me; being able to hold these lives in my hands and let them know, no matter what the fate of that animal is in the end, that they were loved for their entire life.

03/29/2021

After another long and stressful power outage that lasted most of this morning, we’re finally back to a tentative normal. As far as we can tell the wind storm is finally over 🙌

03/29/2021

Getting all my ducks used to being bathed and inspected. While not all my ducks are show worthy, they all need to be comfortable with these thing in case I need to treat for an injury or they have a vet visit.

03/29/2021

Had a blackout last night. The ducks were fine but the chicks were a real concern. I’ve never been more thankful for having gravity fed water, a gas powered heater, and a lot of clamps and thick blankets laying around 😩we moved them into a smaller stock tank brooder we hurriedly set up in our bedroom because it’s the room that stays the warmest, filled up a couple huge bottles with the hottest water we could get out of our heater, and made a little half-tent with my dog’s favorite blanket. It worked great until the power came back and we were able to move them back to their normal brooder around 3am.