It’s been an eventful week since I last updated, both personally, with my surgery recovery still in progress, and with the farm. I’ll try to catch y’all up as best I can!
This past weekend, my brother came over on Saturday and helped us get a fenced-in yard built for our goat girls. We used some recycled T-posts and cyclone fencing to create an outdoor space for them right off of the back of the barn. It spans the width of the barn, and stretches out about 25 feet from it. The girls are very happy with it, although, we are still working on giving them free reign access – we need to procure some of that plastic orange snow fence to create an “aisle” going from their stall in the barn to the outside door. Otherwise, they like to explore all of the places they shouldn’t, and we don’t want them getting hurt by climbing on lawn equipment, or getting into things that could otherwise harm them. Also, preventing them from pooping on everything is a definite plus! But they have enjoyed supervised time outside – they never stray far from me. I can actually take them on walks outside the fenced area and they heel like a well-trained dog!
We don’t have anything for them to really climb on just yet, but I am going to be trying to track down one of those large wooden spools from the utility company. In the meantime, the girls are obsessed with the chair I was sitting on during feedings for their first week with us. They play Queen of the Chair, and Heidi is all too often the victor:
Please excuse the wind noise in the video – it was quite breezy out yesterday!
They are doing much better with their potty issues, and I think their diarrhea is cleared up completely. They’re eating more hay, too, so that’s great as we gradually wean them off of milk replacer.
We are having some behavioral issues with our biggest goat, Winter. She’s quite the bully to the other two; she’s sort of the Lucy Van Pelt of the group. I’m just not equipped to handle re-training her, what with being a newbie at this, and with everything else I have going on. I’m not even sure that you can train out behavioral problems with goats. So I’m trying to figure out a good solution.
The chickens were also the recipients of my brother’s assistance – he built a nifty guillotine-style door in the chicken coop to allow the chicky-doodles access to their fenced yard. Now we just need to rake and rototill the yard to make it more appealing to them. It was quite overgrown, and although we’ve weed-whacked, it’s still pretty scary to little junior chickens. But they are getting curious about that sunshine, and we are bringing them out and sitting with them in the yard to get them warmed up to the idea.
We did have a sad moment on Saturday, as one of our Buff Orp hens was found dead in the coop. She was still warm, so she had passed fairly recently. When my husband lifted her up by her legs, a lot of yellow discharge came out of her beak, meaning she likely died of a sinus/respiratory issue, to which chickens are quite prone. I’ve been watching the rest of the flock very closely for any sign of sneezing, discharge, or other indications that someone else is sick, so that I can quarantine them, but thus far, everyone is happy and healthy. Our Rhode Island Red hen will tell you all about it:
We also re-homed four of our roosters with a fellow who works at the local TSC and is looking to start breeding his own birds – so our Rhode Island Red, Buff Orpington and one of the Welsummer roos went home with him last week. They are going to have a lot of hens to keep watch over and with whom they will be able to breed. I’m hoping that they produce some great chicks for them.
I need to get back on my seed-starting tasks this week – some of the seeds I’ve already started are sprouting, huzzah! I’ve gotten behind because, well, I guess I didn’t take surgery recovery very seriously the first week. I guess it really is necessary to rest and have some downtime – go figure! I’ve been fighting a plugged right ear, and resulting earache, for the past several days, and prior to that a lot of nausea and weakness. Hence, I’ve only been doing what is absolutely required to keep up with the things depending upon me, and not wanting to add more to the list immediately. Thankfully, the nausea and weakness seem to be over, and the earache is improved (or, at least, well-controlled with Sudafed and Advil!) so I am hoping to get back to my regularly scheduled programming in the next few days.
We’re about to get hit by what sounds like a major thunderstorm, so I’m going to wrap up here before Nature decides to close this blog posting on my behalf. 🙂 Have a great day everyone!
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