Estrella Polar Pyrenean Mastiffs
Unhinged Acres
It all started with a birthday chicken. I had been wanting to start a homestead but we had a lot to do to prepare first. However, fate decided to do its own thing and it just so happened a Polish Rooster Chick showed up on our property one day, happened to be my birthday. I told a friend if they could catch it we would keep it and this chick just walked right up to him, here I thought I was gonna get a good laugh seeing him chase a chicken around our property.
We couldn't have just one chicken so we got with a friend who had some Silkies and picked up 4. After figuring out how we were going to start with our small setup and learning as much as we could on how to care for chickens we decided to add a couple more. Someone in 4h was downsizing their flock and had shared they were placing 6 so off I went to pick them up. 2 years after our first chicken we decided to really expand! We purchased a 14' x 20' building that we setup as a coop and planned to free range our older birds to start and add chicks of several breeds. Over the course of 6 months we added over 200 birds!
Some of the chickens we have:
Silkies
Ayam Cemani
Light Brahmas
Splash Partridge Brahmas
Dark Brahmas
Barred Rock
Speckled Sussex
Leghorns
Black Copper Marans
Buff and Lavender Orpingtons
Wyandottes
Australorp
Frizzles
Welsummer
White Legbars
Barnevelders
Deathlayers
Golden Phoenix
Easter Eggers
Olive Eggers
Mille Fleur d'Uccle
General Barnyard Mix
Our Turkeys:
Blue Slate
Royal Palm
Red Bourbon
Black Spanish
Our Peafowl:
We also have Indian Peafowl, a Black shoulder purple Peacock and two standard peahens.
We are currently in process of building an aviary for our peafowl so they do not become a nuisance to our neighbors so stay tuned for pictures to come! They currently reside in our adolescent poultry run since they are still young.
Our Goats!
After we got our birds situated a friend we know in Utah was downsizing her herd of show Nigerian Dwarf Goats and asked if we were interested since she knew they were up next to add to our hometead. We of course said yes! So we drove out to Utah to pick them up and bring them home, however of course nothing goes as planned and our goat building was delayed so our puppy yard had temporarily turned into the day time pen for the goats and our shed got some pens added for night time.
Hopefully by the end of September 2023 our building will arrive and we can begin the setup for the goat area!
We started with 7 does, 3 babies, 1 yearling and 3 older girls. The hope is to breed at least 3 at the end of the year for our first kidding to be in 2024.
What will come in 2024!
Once we have perfected our goat area and make adjustments for the birds to include completing the build for our aviary we plan to add Cornish Cross and some Broad Breasted Turkeys to the flock to provide food for our family and for the dogs. After goat kidding we hope to begin making goat milk based products we can use for the dogs and for the people! We have some close friends interested in using what we produce to also make other products such as goat milk soap and more.
We are working to get our egg selling license so we can begin selling eggs direct to consumer as well as donating to our local food pantry and offering a self serve egg stand where those who need eggs but can't afford them are free to take some. We wholeheartedly feel if we can give back to the community we will.
While our dogs aren't currently out with the animals once we have our fencing complete we will be testing out which of the Pyrenean Mastiffs have the best instincts and behavior with the animals so we can begin putting them out on rotations for night watch.