Murder, zombies, and…feathers? Welcome to our homestead. Our five acres is wild, messy, and completely ours, a far cry from the suburbia we left behind. The air is fresher, the sky wider, the land less tame. We have woods with the towering trees, open meadows of tall grass, and even a shallow pond affectionately nicknamed The Puddle.
Yet the same wildness that drew us to this property also comes with a few… drawbacks. A whole host of evils, really: evil sticker plants (field sandburr stickers, also known as sandspur), evil thorn vines (likely some kind of greenbrier), evil snakes (copperheads), and evil bugs (mosquitos, sand fleas, wasps, and ticks).
So I began to research. What could we do to temper some of the evils we encountered?
Well, for starters—we could get chickens.
I loved the idea of chickens dotting our homestead—after all, what says “homestead” more than a flock of clucking hens?
Ironically, however, I am allergic to chicken eggs. Super allergic.
So in addition to chickens, my family voted to get ducks which could also help with insects and even some small snakes. Our plan was simple: we could sell the chicken eggs while my family enjoyed the duck eggs without jeopardizing my health.
So the very same week we brought home three bottle-fed lambies, we also picked out eight chicks—four Isa Browns and four White Leghorns—as well as six Khaki Campbell ducklings.
And let me tell you… that was its own learning curve separate from the sheep.
Multiple friends had warned us how messy ducklings are.
They were not exaggerating.
At first, the ducklings and chicks shared a brooder. But the poor chicks were endlessly splashed, and duckling poop appeared everywhere—even minutes after we replaced the bedding. Before long, we had to separate everyone just to keep the chicks dry.
They all grew quickly. But the ducks grew twice as fast.
Within weeks we were able to move everyone outside into our makeshift bird enclosure, using some kind of metal contraption we found on our property.
Each morning we let them out to free range across our five acres, and each evening we coaxed them back with feed and secured them safely for the night to protect them from the numerous nighttime predators.
Since then, we’ve lost three chickens and two ducks… gained seven more chickens… and then lost another three chickens.
Along the way, we’ve learned a few things:
Chickens are simultaneously dumber than you can imagine, smarter than you’d expect—and yes, surprisingly dinosaur-like.
A pile of feathers? Never a good sign.
And just when you think it’s over, chickens can sometimes claw their way back from the brink of death, earning themselves the nickname “Zombie Chicken” in the process.
And ducks? Well…duck society is not for the faint of heart. Murder, suspicion, intrigue—they live it daily. They will quite literally try to murder each other. (In unrelated news…we may have discovered that the proper ratio of drakes to ducks is roughly 1:6 or 1:8—very different from the two drakes and four ducks we ended up with from our straight-run batch. Whoops.)
We’ve watched chickens take luxurious dirt baths while the ducks splash happily in their kiddie pool.
We’ve even witnessed a duck slurp up a snake like a noodle.
And somewhere along the way, we realized something unexpected:
We genuinely love having chickens and ducks roaming and foraging across our property each day.
And just like that, our little homestead had two very different flocks—one feathered and one hoofed.
Now that you’ve gotten a glimpse at our feathered flock, you can follow the rest of our story.
Potter's Sheep 