Eggs (week ending 7/9): 38Last weekend wasn't so hot farm-wise. It was marred by the disappearance of a chook I had nicknamed Caesar. It was the Buff Orpington rooster, and had yet to crow or show interest in the ladies, but he was already slightly bigger than Roger, the RIR roo. Of course his color and size made him regal looking, hence the name. And he vanished without a trace. Maybe a hawk got him, but that would have been a real load to carry.
Eggs (closing month 7/16): 32
Eggs (year to date): 1311
It's probably time to declare another predator war. Of the 9 White Leghorns I had in the spring, I'm down to three, and of course two of those are roos. I can only account for one, which I put down because it was crippled. The others, with their easy-to-spot white color, have apparently all become predator fodder. The only sign thus far was a scattering of white feathers near the gate to the barnyard.
I did sort of accomplish one other thing. The two kid does kept slipping through a small hole in their stable and getting into the feed room where they would help themselves to hay and trample what was left into oblivion. I solved that problem with one piece of wood and three deck screws. The fun part was watching the bewildered look on their faces as feeding time came and they discovered that their access to the goodies was cut off.
That wasn't to last. They figured out that they could jump up onto their choice of two narrow ledges and still make their way into the feed room. TIme for come discouraging chicken wire. I think between that and the heat and the disappearing chickens and the plummeting egg count, there were a few mornings in the last week that this whole farming thing was starting to Not Be Fun Anymore. I'd been in that territory with tropical fish before, only it took about 15 years for it to happen. I haven't quite had the chickens for two years, a little over if you count my daughter's goats.
That would change, thanks in part to an incredibly busy weekend. First up was a visit from a semi-relative who has been one of our goat-mentors. He brought with him his tattooing kit so we could mark my daughter's four kids with their Ultra Secret Serial Numbers. This meant gobs of green ink flowing, my father-in-law and I holding the kids, and a little blood when the tattoo stamp came off. Lots of bleating from the kids, which was soon forgotten.
Not to be soon forgotten, however, was the additional procedure that the two little bucks went through, involving a tool that looks kind of like a pair of pliers that holds a very small, very thick rubber band. I'll spare you the details other than to say that in the next few weeks a very couple of very important pieces of their reproductive business will fall off and their careers as reproducing males will be over. They will henceforth be called "wethers." We also wanted to de-horn them, but will have to call the vet to do it. We suffered a couple of major delays and the little soon-to-be-ex-bucks horns are too big to simply iron off. They'll have to be cut off before the dehorning takes place.
After washing off blood and green ink, next up was a trip to Tractor Supply - where my daughter and I spent almost twice what I had budgeted because we had to buy some new collars for new and old goats. We borrowed a set of clippers to trim the goats down but didn't get to the act - I think that will be done without me by my daughter and other helpful relatives.
Returning home, my daughter gathered a crew of cousins to paint her newly-built milking stand for her goats. She had a hodgepodge of colors left over from a project she did in high school, and the end result, in her words, is a milking stand that looks like it came from the circus. Hey, at least the wood is protected. The builder (not me) used mostly scrap lumber from the farm to build it, and it is solid, solid, solid. In his words, "It's going to take an army and two small boys to move this thing."
That of course necessitated finding a place to put the stand, so I decided to declare the nursery pen the new milking room. This means I would have to muck it out again and throw down some Dry Stall - but first things first. After toting 340 pounds of assorted animal feeds and softener salt (a new record for the trunk of the Oldsmobile) into barn and house, I got the roll of chicken wire I'd bought and put some up along the ledges of the feed room that I suspected to be the main access point of the two kid does. During this process I found a cache of 6 eggs that were laid in such a secret spot that I suspect even the chickens forgot they were there, and another 3 in an easier-to-find place. It boosted the week's egg count and my morale.
The chores continued the next day. The kid does were still getting into the feed room, so it became a wood and wire and tile block fortress - and those last preparations did the trick in keeping them out. Then there was mucking out what will become the milking room - it didn't take as long as the last time I did it, thankfully. I spread out some dry stall and will put straw down after the army and two little boys move the milking stand in. I put up some nails for my daughter to hang tools and tack from, and made a special feed mixture in an old sealable 5 gallon bakery bucket that will keep the goats busy while they're being milked/having hooves trimmed/being sheared/whatever.
So by late in the day I finally got to the normal coop chores of refilling nest boxes with straw and hanging up new flypaper. I think the drop in production is a passing thing - my Red layers are in molt right now and it looks like the Wyandottes are starting to think about it, and the new layers haven't started laying yet. So aside from the observed disappearance now of both Beaker and Muhammad Ali - yes, it's time for another predator war - everything in the barnyard seems to be proceeding normally. And I passed my last morale check, so everything is good...
...except for this whole issue with the large blank spot in the blog entries. I'm pretty sure my code is okay because it looked fine until my previous post. My code hasn't changed since then, so this makes me think it might be a Blogger issue. I'll check when I get the opportunity.
