The eggs collected have passed the two-dozen mark. In the days since my last post, it looks something like this:
8/3 - 2
8/4 - 3
8/5 - 2
8/6 - 3
8/7 - 2
8/8 - 2
8/9 - 2
That's a total of 16, which puts us well on our way to our third dozen since mid-July. Two of those ended up going to Ripley because of thin shells that cracked on the way to the house. Time to dig out the oyster shell.
Meantime, I had to teach the rooster to roost in the coop again. The coop had been a hard sell since the varmint attack that took one of my Easter Eggers and cost him a few tailfeathers. Over the weekend he found a piece of drainage tile (about the size of a cinderblock) that I'd been using as a doorstop in the barnyard and decided that was going to be his night perch. So over the weekend and through Tuesday, I had to take him off of the tile and put him in the coop. Last night he got the idea and settled in the coop.
Other ongoing things:
The two kid does were tattooed by a family member the other day. He was going to disbud them, but their horns have gotten so big, we're going to have to have the vet come do it. My daughter has been feeding them in the tack room since we weren't sure that they've been getting enough milk from their mother. Now they try to get in whenever I go in. They're kind of runty looking, and now we're wondering if the mother didn't know something we didn't back when she was neglecting one of them.
Ripley has the "shake hands" trick down thanks to my wife. We're working on her herding talents, but she gets a little too enthusiastic, so now she's learning "Easy." She also has too much fun chasing the chickens, and was a threat to the rooster when he was trying to roost on the tile. Time for the spray bottle and some leave-the-chickens-alone lessons.
Coming soon: taking my daughter and her knot project to the State Fair. And wondering if I'll come home with any more livestock. We talked about bringing a pig home from the swap meet... but that's another story.
