This Christmas we gave my daughter... two more goats. It was an offer we couldn't refuse. The people we bought her doe (Clover) from are scaling their goat operation way down (their daughter is getting ready to head to college), and so we bought our doe's mother (Ellie) and a cousin (Ebby).

Ellie is a County Fair veteran (although not our county) and has won multiple awards. She's described as a "primper," basically a ham of an animal who somehow senses that it's time to be "on" and performs well while showing. The only thing is, she hates being trimmed. Oh, well. So does one of our wethers.

Ebby is, I think, the same age as our doe, so is an unknown quantity. Thing is, she was in heat when we brought her home, but isn't now.

The thing is - all of this means that, if we breed all three (which I believe my daughter plans to do), we could have as many as a dozen goats by summer - twins from two of the does and triplets from a third (triplets run in the line), plus the three moms and the two wethers.

My daughter does not plan to keep all the offspring. Or so she tells me.

When I was carting in food to the lot of them yesterday morning, I got the feeling that, even though I had some reservations about this, it was the right thing to do. It was a feeling I've only gotten a rare number of times since adulthood. So I'm happy that I've done something right for my daughter.

Even if it means lots of goat milk fudge and goat milk ice cream and yes, perhaps even some goat chili, in my future.

I have no idea what any of this will mean to the chickens. And speaking of, eggs collected last week: 42. Look for a year-end roundup next week.

Frozen in more ways than one. temperatures plummeted over the weekend and when I gathered yesterday's eggs, they were all frozen. Some had split and had frozen albumen oozing out. One popped in my hand, as it was just about to crack from the internal pressure.

The other incident involved the sitting Wyandotte. As I mentioned last week, I put up a visual barrier to keep her away from the Silkie/Cochin chicks. That part worked, but she still went over the wall, getting out from the little nursery I'd made so she could go outside. Then, when she came back inside, she either forgot where she was or couldn't get back in to where the nest was (I suspect the former), and ended up in a nest box with two eggs. By the time I discovered her, the clutch of nine was stone cold.

So it doesn't look like they'll hatch now, but I'll give it a few more days just to make sure. Net time I won't mess around with trying to move the broody into a separate nursery - I'll just put her on the low nest box. There will be other opportunities, no doubt. A total of four Wyandottes, plus whichever of the Silkie/Cochins turn out to be hens. And collected 49 eggs up through Saturday.

The only other incident of note was that one of my daughter's harness goats was limping the other day, favoring his right front leg. Other things were going wrong, so this was icing on the cake. Fortunately, he'd okay now. The way I have the goats set up, they spend a day loose in the barnyard, and a day inside their stall (while the doe gets to wander the yard). I think having him confined for a day helped. Things are fine now. Except for the eggsicles.

Temperatures are dipping, but the lights in the coop are keeping production up; 59 eggs this last week.

My daughter's doe came home pregnant on Saturday. I was up (relatively) early to try and get some things done for her arrival. Last minute touches on the big goat gate (fixing some flaws which a test involving the two wethers showed). Then I had to add a bottom slat because, once in their pen, the wethers were able to squeeze underneath to get out.

Then the time came to build another portable barrier and separate the broody hen from the others. I originally moved the nest box she was in into the now subdivided nursery, but realized that it would be too tall for the chicks to get back in once they hatched. So I took the unused plastic container I'd converted (with handy doors on the top), filled it with straw, and then set about the risky business of moving the hen.

I reached in and lifted her wings, keeping my hands cupped underneath in case she had any eggs there. Took her out. Like before, she pecked at my hand, but once out, she stayed squashed down like she was still sitting. Moved the eggs. Then put momma back in. She spotted the eggs and settled right down.

The next morning was a problem, though. She was off the eggs to go eat and was extremely upset that she couldn't go outside. She managed to hop over to where the Cochin/Silkie chicks are, upsetting their food while looking for an escape route, and starting to peck at them in frustration. So I let her out, thinking: okay, she'll come back when she's done.

She did, but when she did, she came back to the wrong place. I found her in the old nestbox, but in the wrong section. Her old one was empty, so she sat in the one that had eggs in it. I know, chickens can't count.

The next step was to create a barrier that would prevent her from getting in with the chicks. I happened to have a Dell computer box I'd brought home from work, so I cut it up and stapled it to the new barrier. It won't keep her from knocking it down if she gets a mind to challenge it, but I'm counting on the fact that she doesn't have a mind, and that simply the visual of the barrier will keep her in place. All seemed right with the world this morning, and it looked like she'd gotten into her food dish, so maybe it worked. Just a few more days and then things will get really interesting. The chicks should hatch this Friday or Saturday.

This morning the rest of the flock (with the exception of the two surviving Reds) saw their first snow. I opened the door and they all stood at the edge of the coop, looking at me and clucking like, "So are you bringing breakfast or what?" I tossed their scratch down in the usual place, but there were no takers. They all chose to stay inside and scratch around in the straw.

The fun just doesn't stop...

Now we're up to Day 12 of the broody Wyandotte experiment. During this last week a number of interesting things have happened.

First, the number of eggs in the clutch grew from 9 to 11, and then dropped down to 9 again. This was an easy call. While the Wyandotte was off the nest, one of the other hens was jumping in to make a deposit. But one egg broke, and another one simply disappeared, so we're back to 9. At one point I caught one of the Red Sex Links trying to get into the nest to lay - I kept taking her out and putting her in another box. Finally, I put her in a box where some other eggs had been laid and she settled down. I need to get the nursery partitioned off so I can move the mother and nest box before the chicks start hatching.

For a while I wondered if there would be any chicks. I made a crude candler by cutting out a square of cardboard that goes over the reflector on the light in the coop. I candled at about Day 5, and the results weren't encouraging. About half the eggs showed highly defined pores (see the candling photos here at Easy Chicken to see what I'm talking about), and the rest didn't look like there was anything there. I did the same thing this morning, and it looked a little better. Two were porous and showed little else; two I couldn't tell what on earth was happening; and the remaining 5 (including a couple of the porous ones) looked like the good egg pictured on the right bottom of the (see the candling photos Easy Chicken candling page. Their photos are at two weeks - mine are at the 12 day mark. So there may be a few more chicks in the mix by the end of next week.

The Silkie/Cochin chicks are starting to grow and spar and have discovered the mini ladder in the nursery that I keep for them to perch on. They're getting a little ragged looking, but I think that comes with the breed traits.

My daughter's doe is still at a relatives, hopefully trying to attract the attention of one of their resident bucks. I had the details on the goat gate finished, but it didn't stand up to the acid test of the two wethers trying to escape, so I've got to reconfigure it a bit this weekend, and that should take care of the problem. I need to get my daughter out to clean out the new stall so we can put hay in and get it ready for the hopefully pregnant doe... if and when...

Finally, the egg tally. The last partial week of November brought in 20 eggs for a total of 206 (counting the ones in the clutch). Production is pretty consistent 8 eggs a day. I think the big difference from October is the fact that the lights are back on - that's when I hit the big drop off in production. I thought it might be from the cold, but it's been as cold as it had been earlier, and still a bounty of eggs showing up. Light is the key. Well, one of them.

One final note. In the mail I got the results of a recent blood test from my doctor. My cholesterol was way down, the good cholesterol was way up, and the doctor was way pleased. I was a little nervous about this test since eggs have made serious inroads into being a part of our diet, but I think this proves what many doctors and nutritionists have known for years - that physical activity can set things into balance for you. And my personal physical activity has certainly increased, what with hauling wood and building gates and toting feedbags and carrying bales and pitchforking manure... Yup, the chooks give me eggs, but they've given me something else, too. And it's appreciated.