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!

Hoof Trimming Time

Here's what the goat hooves look like before & after having been trimmed.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

The rain has stopped, hopefully long enough for the animal pens to begin to dry out.

The good thing about after the rain is that it's easier to trim goat & horse hooves while they are soft. I really should take advantage of this opportunity. I already did "the girls" feet the other day when I was milking them. Now for everybody else, ugh.

Except the horse, I don't even think about attempting to touch his feet, I have a farrier for that. Although, he hasn't called me for our standing 2 month appointment. Maybe because I said I was going to try to sell my horse? But, that's another story for later.

I really must get to the straw today, at least in the chicken coop. And, it's time to clean out & refill the nesting boxes. The eggs stay cleaner that way, less egg scrubbing for me & the customers are happier.

We used to free-range our chickens & they were so happy. Unfortunately the predator problem became so bad that we went from 40 down to 12 chickens a couple years ago. We would let them run during the day & then lock them up at night. Sounds easy right? It was for awhile. But , then the coyotes got smart & would come by during the middle of the day when they were out & nobody was watching the flock. Not to mention the hawks, roaming neighborhood dogs, etc.

And then, we had a new problem. Some of the roosters decided they didn't want to be locked in the coop at night & began taking their harems of hens up into the trees to roost.

We tried to get them down & lock them up, but some would just move out of our reach up into the treetop. Those were the unlucky ones, because by morning they would usually have disappeared. At first I wasn't sure what was snatching them. Then one night I saw a HUGE owl perched & watching from my neighbor's place & I knew who the thief was. (These owls can get to be as much as 3 feet tall with a 5 foot wingspan.) Then just to be sure there was no confusion the owl(s) began leaving their calling cards. I would come out in the morning to find blood dripping down one of the telephone poles (corner posts for one of our goat pens), feathers on top of the pole & a chicken head on the ground. Not a sight for the faint of heart. It was even harder when it was one of our pet chickens.

Someday I hope to have a fence around our property to help cut back on the coyote problem. Then I would like a few more coops so the roosters will each have their own place to retire to every night & maybe that will help with the owls.

The chickens used to strut around & make us laugh. They are quite comical if you have ever taken the time to watch & observe them. The hens would walk across the driveway to get to the coop & lay their eggs, then back they'd go to taking their dust baths & sunning themselves. (that's why the chicken crossed the road- to lay an egg! LOL)

I would often sit outside in a lounge chair & read a book while the hens would peck the ground nearby, & some would even perch on me. I miss those days, the chickens were happier then.

I used to be able to say the eggs were from rang-free chickens when I sold them. We even tried buying the organic food for awhile but it was too expensive. Now I can only claim that the eggs are fresh, from cage free hens. The yolks aren't as orange anymore either, but they are still fresher than anything you can buy at the store.

Speaking of fresh....one day while I was gathering the eggs, I had reached under a hen to retrieve them. She stood up as though to let me get at them easier, & lo & behold she laid an egg right in my hand! Now that's fresh! ha ha

Another time, we found 2 tiny little eggs and upon cracking them open we discovered one had only yolk & the other had only white. Now, how did that happen?

And, had I documented it properly, I'm sure we would have had the second biggest chicken egg on record. It was huge! We never figured out which hen laid it, but I'm sure she was sore! That one was a triple yolker.

Anywhoo....Farm chores await. Even though it's Saturday & I'd love to sleep in. :0( Work, work, work. (I've decided God gave us the farm because He doesn't want me to be bored & lazy. Lol)

The farm is finally starting t turn a small profit for us, as God keeps sending customers our way. So, I guess I can't complain. Now, if we can just figure out this small business thing, hmm.

Toodles!

Rain, rain, go away, come again another day!

Here in AZ we really don't get alot of rain, so when we do receive some precipitation it's wonderful. Except, it either comes down in droves & washes everything away, like cars, trees, etc. (flash floods), or it sprinkles.
It has been sprinkling off & on for a couple weeks now & I am officially tired of it.

I really must go & track down another bale of straw for the critters again. It seems everyone is running low on straw as of late. My neighbors are out (we usually buy surplus supplies from each other in a pinch), and most of the feed stores are out too. I did find one that still had a few bales left last week (sure wish I had bought more than one bale), even though I dislike shopping there since they are often very RUDE to their customers. But, priorities, priorities.

The animals are tired of the rain too, I'm sure. Az dirt doesn't soak up the rain like other places, so we have muck & mire everywhere on the farm. Yuck.
The goats are managing to stay fairly mud-free, due to the fact that they are skilled hay wasters & are tromping around on their fodder. But the horse is muddy & wet, and most likely a little cold. I wish I had a barn!!

Ah....a barn. I love the idea of having a barn to shelter the animals in when the weather is unbearable. Well, mainly in the fall & winter.
But that is my dream for right now. To someday move to a place where they have 4 distinct seasons, a possibility of having a white Christmas, 5-10 acres of farm & pasture, an old farm house (hopefully not too run down), and....a BARN! A big beautiful old barn that smells of hay & straw, with a loft & stalls. Maybe someday, God willing.

I remember when I was younger, my dreams were different. I wanted to be a supermodel or a famous movie star.
Now, at 38, my dreams have changed. All I want now is to be warm & dry (in a barn) with my family (my hubby, our boys, & my animals of course) & know that God is working in our lives (in a barn). Lol
I guess I'm being selfish since I am putting my dreams before what God wants for us, but I can dream can't I? If I never achieve my dream, that's ok too. I have told God that I don't want a mansion when I get to Heaven, I want a big red barn! With all my animals there.

So, meanwhile back at the ranch.....I have to bundle up & get started on the farm chores, I'm already running late.
The "girls" have to be milked. The goats, horse, chickens, ducks & turkey have to be fed & watered. And eggs need to be gathered.
I have customers coming to buy eggs today & pick up their milk from the goats they lease from me. Not to mention I gotta get the boys off to school.
Whew! I'm already tired just thinking about it! But, I really do enjoy it. And, it's a wonderful feeling to be so close to your food source & to know it's healthier for you than the stuff at the store.

Toodles!