Love is in the air...

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day! :0)

This is a picture of a heart made of soap suds. I was washing one of our milk jugs out the other day, & when I went to rinse it out.....there was the heart. I couldn't resist taking a shot of it & sharing it. It was completely unintentional, so I like to think of it as a little love note from God.

On another note, Coco, our Nigerian Dwarf has been in heat. That is the only time you hear her vocalize & boy can she yell! It didn't seem to help having Dinner in the next pen.
I can't wait until the end of April when we will be breeding her to my friend's buck. If all goes as planned she will deliver end of September/beginning of October.
We hope to have milk from her for our customers. But, she can be quite jumpy since she wasn't socialized with humans before I got her. And, she is so low to the ground I will practically have to lay down to milk her, haha. (I hear Nigerian milk is sweeter, but I also think it depends on what they are fed.)
Nigerians breed year round, which means nearly every month Coco is yelling her head off for a couple days. The rest of our girls are Purebred LaManchas, which only have a breeding season in the Fall. I guess that makes things a little quieter & easier.
We are planning to add more milkers to our herd. My husband says he wants an Alpine, which surprises me because he has always said we have too many! Lol

We shall see :0)

Toodles!

Sleeping "Booty"

Do you ever have those days when you just want to stay in bed? I suppose alot of people do, but I feel that way everyday. I love my sleep & it seems there is never enough to go around.
I am by nature a "night owl". I used to stay up late & sleep in. (sounds like most teenagers we know) I remember when I would think "the night is just getting started" & it was 10:00!
Well, life can change that.
I married a "morning person" & had children. That combination right there will kill any chance of sleeping in. What was I thinking?
All kidding aside, as much as I love my husband, I loathe "morning people". Why do they have to wake up so cheery & wake everybody else up? Namely the "night owls"?
So, now I find myself at a time in my life when I could sleep in more & more frequently if I so choose. The boys are old enough to get themselves ready for school, & even get themselves there without my assistance, if needed (they should be, they're teenagers). And, I could prepare my husband's lunch the night before.
So, what's wrong with this picture?
Well, I have to admit, I would miss the mornings with my husband & talking with him before he leaves for work. I wouldn't know if the boys ate breakfast, or if they dressed warm enough.
Oh yeah, and there's that "farm" thing, darn!
Having farm animals is a wonderful experience, but you don't get to sleep in when they have to be fed & milked, the eggs need to be gathered, and you have customer's coming by. Trust me, I've tried it.
I always feel like I've missed out on something, everybody has gone off to work & school, & the animals are waiting impatiently to be tended to. You don't want to milk a seriously ticked off goat, they cop an attitude & end up kicking over the milk bucket.
Then, if the customers are coming by in the morning, you are rushing trying to get everything done before they arrive. And, if you only manage to get the very least done, you still have to finish after they leave.
The chores seem to drag on forever on those days, and then before you know it....it's time to do it all over again before bedtime.
Alas, I fear I must continue this charade of acting like the "morning" person I am not. Things just seem to go a little smoother.

Nap anyone?

Toodles!

A mercy killing

Well, I had to do my first "mercy killing".
Poor Nemo needed to be put down. I hated to do it, it broke my heart, but her wing was turning funny colors. It may have been only bruising, but I feared it was gangrene. Next time, if there is a next time, I will do things differently. I hate to lose a good laying hen.
Still no "dangerous" critters in the trap. I'm beginning to think Dinner may have pushed her into the fence & her wing got caught, then some predator probably came along and took advantage of her state. I will probably never know.

Vampire Bunnies?

Well, Nemo is still with us, even though I now fear we should have treated her amputation with more care. I'm wondering if we should have pulled the skin over the exposed amputation site & stitched it up like a real amputee. Then again, doctors don't just do that, they also close up the arteries etc., no loose ends y'know. We could have cauterized the exposed wound but my husband feared it would have caused the hen even more pain than she was already in.
What to do, what to do, sigh.
I guess all I can do is pray & wait. In addition to the treatment I mentioned yesterday, I have also added pro-biotics.
If she gets an infection now, we will be unable to save the meat, as the infection will no doubt have entered her body. Ugh! I hate it when things like this happen.

Still nothing in the trap, cat-wise anyway. Just bunnies. And, unless they are rabid flesh eating vampire bunnies, I highly doubt they are the culprit.
My mom wonders if it could be a bobcat. It could be, since we had one running through here a couple years ago. It might have to be something stronger than a regular house cat, to have pulled hard enough to bend the fence. If that's the case, my trap is too small.

Sorry nothing much to report from yesterday, as I was in the dentist's chair being "tortured" for 2 hrs., & when I got home all I wanted to do was sleep. Well, I can't say I was really tortured, but nobody likes going to the dentist.
And, then they hit your wallet. It's like adding insult to injury.
Not to mention the fact, that I do NOT like the Epinephrine to be added to the Novocaine & the dentist had forgotten. Whoa! Was I feeling sick! Not a normal reaction, I've been told.

So, housecleaning today, & customers coming by.
And making yogurt & cheese, maybe I will take pictures.
At some point I am planning to include recipes, & a bit on "farm fashion", LOL.

Toodles!

Chicken surgery!

We had an interesting afternoon yesterday. It's one of the busiest days of the week for us, what with church and all, & we ended it with having to do a chicken surgery. Lord, what is this "day of rest" You speak of?

Walking by one of the pens in the late afternoon, this is what I found. You can see the feathers are stuck to the fence. What you can't see from this pic is all the feathers on the ground outside the fence, the evidence of an animal presence where the dirt is all stirred up, & part of the chain link is actually bent outward where the animal in question was trying to pull the chicken through the fence.

Horror of horrors! This is the poor little hen who was attacked. I found her in the wooden doghouse, hiding with a broken wing. Actually, what was left of her wing was a bloody dangling mess. You can see the rooster & one of the other hens in the background, watching. If only chickens could talk!

Assuming she would have to be turned into tomorrow's chicken dinner, I carried her up to the house with my heart in my throat. When I walk in the door & say "Honey, we have a problem!" my husband knows I'm gonna ask him to do something. I wanted him to take her out back & do the dirty deed of chopping off her head. I can't do it personally, no pun intended, I'm a big chicken. But, after a close inspection & some deliberation, we decided to amputate the wing below the break. We hate to lose a good laying hen. Here in this pic you can see what's left of her wing after the amputation.

Here we have placed her in the sink & applied DE (diatomaceous earth) to stop the bleeding & hopefully prevent infection. We only had pool-grade DE on hand at that moment, but since she isn't eating it, it should be fine.

Here she is bandaged up & re"coop"erating in the hospital (a rabbit hutch we keep in our house for these situations). She will be monitored closely for signs of infection, given daily DE treatments along with antiseptic spray & bandage changes, and doses of herbs to boost her immune system & prevent infection. We try to give every animal a fighting chance to survive & thrive, when possible. And, we try to do everything as naturally & organically as possible.

I think we will call her "Nemo". If she survives this she will still be able to hatch her own brood of chicks come spring & add to our flock of Dominique's. She will be retired from showing, but I don't think she will mind.

Back to the elusive animal predator.... my husband thinks it's a Tomcat we have seen around. Since the chicken appears to have been "caught or grabbed" by something that could reach through the fence, it seems like a possibility. In fact, now that I think about it, my neighbor lost a rooster last week when something "pulled" it through the bars of the cage. A coyote can't do that, but a dexterous cat can.

I set our live trap last night to try & catch the rascal, but ended up with only a rabbit so far. I'm 'upping the ante' & getting some tuna!

So, "Dinner" will be pardoned. He is our year old Boer buck who lives in the pen with the chickens where the incident happened. He loves to stand on top of the doghouse, pretending he is a mountain goat, & jumps off into the group of 5 chickens wherever they are gathered. Of course they screech & cackle as they scatter, and Dinner thinks it's so much fun, he does it again. And again. We call it "bowling for chickens".

I have always feared he would someday hurt one of the chickens. So yesterday my first assumption was that he had finally pinned one of the poor things against the fence and caused the injury. I moved him to a new pen, all by himself. But, it was time for a move anyway, he is bigger now & should be joining the other bucks soon. My baby is growing up!

Toodles!