Ryan and the kids picked up six chicks today. On the way home, Delia was holding the box of chicks and said “I want chicken for lunch today.”
Henry wants to name two of them Wubbzy – the yellow ones, even though we’ve told him they’ll grow up to be white.
We’ve got two white leghorns, two americaunas, a barred rock, and a gold laced wyndotte.
Henry just said “Me love dis day. Dis day is good.” How cute is THAT?! What’s amazing about it is that it’s our first day back at home and he hasn’t even asked to play the XBOX. He was talking about it the whole time we were gone. He is in the basement playing house because we are hot after being outside! This day is indeed good!
Our chickens have been really prolific as of late. We have 4 remaining young chickens ( 
) and they’re all laying 5-6 eggs a week, and one of the old chickens – probably the black australorp – is laying too! She’s 4 years old, so that’s pretty good.
We ordered our chicks the other day. We got: 2 white leghorns, 1 Americana, 1 barred rock, and 1 black australorp. We’ll pick them up on April 21st.
I mostly got the stalls mucked out. They’re really smelly so I’m going to let them dry and air out before I put new bedding in there. Brad and the goats have been living outside in the pasture for a week or so, but I’ll feel better with them in the stalls while we’re in Tampa, hence the stall work. Man were they gross. I pulled 4 or 5 trailer fulls out of there and dumped them back on our Pile Of Nastiness. The trailer was really waited down and I went over really bumpy terrain, and my shop-made trailer hitch held up! Apparently my welds were stronger than I thought.
I gave the goats some alfalfa pellets in the potato shed and sat with them while they ate to get an idea of how much they’d go through at once. They’re so fun and friendly. They’d go and eat a little, and then come over and cuddle with me, and then eat a little more. Banjo is still the friendliest, and Moon is definitely the dominant one. Poor Brad wanted to eat the alfalfa so badly, but he’s not allowed to.
I cut open a new round bale today. There’s still quite a bit left of the last one, but I want to take that whole pile out to the pasture on Thursday so they can eat on that while we’re gone and won’t need to be fed more for a while.
Emily and I cut the goats’ hooves. They weren’t very cooperative, but we got it done. After that I put the new latch on the gate. The big wooden post Delia and I put in the ground has loosened up so the gate is kind of wobbly, and it was getting hard to chain it shut like we used to, so now we’ve got an easier to use latch. I had to use the torch to make some modifications, but it’s on there now and works very well.
Brad’s nails had gotten out of control. They were really long and curled around and it was getting to the point where he was going to be crippled if they weren’t trimmed. The problem is he’s touchy about his legs, and whenever we’d even make a gesture toward them, he’d flip out and run away or nearly knock us over. I decided to build a chute to restrain him so we could safely get him trimmed. Using only materials I got from the dump (with the exception of about $5 worth of screws and bolts from the hardware store), Delia and I built the Llama Salon.
It’s 25″ wide, 65″ long, and 70″ high. Brad walks in from the back, and then there are two moveable boards at the front that can clamp down (lightly!) on his neck right by his shoulders so he can’t walk forward and also can’t thrash the front of his body around. The rear of his body cam move some, but he can’t spin around, which is what he’d do when we’d try to do it before we had this chute. He’s then tied in the front with a lead rope so he can’t move backward.
The Llama Salon made it a LOT easier to get the job done, though it was still FAR from easy. Let me tell you something: llamas are strong. Even with his neck immobilized, he was able to completely throw us around when we’d grab one of his legs. He’d also cush (that’s what it’s called when llamas lay down – don’t ask me why) when we were trying to grab his feet. The funny thing is he was like an Irish dancer while this was going on. The front of him stayed completely still while his legs were flailing around like crazy. He kept eating his hay even while flinging us around. We finally just grabbed onto one front foot and held it as still as we could and held on until he mostly gave up thrashing it around, and got his nails trimmed down. The back feet were another story. We finally gave up trying to hold them after getting slammed against the walls of the chute a few times, and then we discovered we could trim them while he was standing as long as we were quick about it.
On the last nail, some blood was shed. We cut him a little too deep and he started bleeding pretty badly. It slowed down but never stopped, so I went over to a friend’s and got some blood stop powder, which did the trick.
So now Brad’s nails are less of a disgrace! We’re going to try to trim them back a little more next week, and then hopefully they’ll be somewhat slow growing so we don’t have to repeat this process too often. Nobody enjoys it.
The round bales we bought are really tight and it got to be hard to pull hay off as I got in to the center of it. I worked for a long time with a pick axe and a long barbell pole trying to break it apart, but it just wouldn’t give. I got two big hooks on a chain at an auction or some place a while back, so I dug them in as deep as I could and pulled them out with my tractor. The hooks pulled out the first time, but on the second try, it pulled the core of the bail neatly out and now I can easily pull out large hunks of hay to throw in the 4 wheeler cart to bring to the horses.
Delia can drive the 4 wheeler by herself, and helped me deliver hay to the horses.
Henry actually posed for some pictures today! Usually he hides his face or runs away.
Brad and the goats spent the day in the pasture today. We’ve had them in there several times in the past month, but today they really seemed to be comfortable out there. Sancho chased them a little, but he seems to be accepting them more too.
We just put up pictures for December through February. They’re here.