Eggs (week ending 9/3): 10
Eggs (week ending 9/10): 15
Eggs (week ending 9/17): 15
Eggs (year to date): 1524

We got through the fair without much incident, other than the fact that the goats have brought home the cough that they seem to get every year. We're not sure if it's from being around other goats, the sheep, or the streams of people who come through the barns to pet whatever animals will let them lay hands on them. Antibiotics may be in the future for them.

On the chicken side, not much progress in the egg department. My single surviving Banty hen has started laying again - I've gotten 4 eggs a day for the last couple of days, including finding another secret laying location in the tack room. I'm still not happy with these numbers considering I've got at least 17 hens. But the Wyandottes are coming out of molt (it looks like), and the pullets from the Class of 2005 aren't laying yet. I thought the two Buff Orps were laying - they may be the ones visiting the tack room. That may be the case. I don't think the White Leghorn hen is anywhere close to laying - she's still small and immature looking. I don't think I like this breed if it takes them that long to mature.

While the other goats were at the fair, the two little wethers who stayed behind, Cabrito and Sirius Black, bonded with the chickens. I found that they had slipped under my goat proof gate and were staying with them in the coop one day. Since Cabrito keept getting out of the barnyard, I left the gate open so he and Sirius could go and browse at they pleased. I came home from the fair to feed them on another day and didn't see them. So I called the chickens, who were all resting in the shade beneath an overhang of the barn. The chickens came running... and so did the two little wethers. They were under the barn with them, resting and chewing their cud, I guess.

Now that the herd has been reunited, I think their little goat identity crisis is over. They remember they are goats now, and are back with the herd - not the flock.

Because of the fair and other things, I haven't had the chance to do much on the chicken tractor. The parade float has now been dismantled, so there's wood aplenty for me to use. All I need is time. It'll be a couple of weeks yet before I can get serious about it, I think.

One other odd incident. The other day when filling the chicken feeder with layer feed, I heard a rodent-like squeaking. I looked around and found a mouse stuck through the chicken wire, rear end inside the coop. The rear-end looked like it had been picked at by the chickens, who no doubt thought the mouse might be a tasty dietary supplement. But obviously they couldn't get the mouse out of the fence, because the mouse couldn't get itself out. I tried to free it, but I realized I couldn't do it without tearing the mouse in half. Since it was morning, I was unable to do much more because I had to get to work, so I figured I'd get to it when I got home.

Alas, I wasn't able to get to the mouse because of events when I got home from work. So the next morning I checked on the mouse. It was dead - but it was now stuck the other way - with it's head and torso inside the coop and the bottom on the outside of the chicken fence. This has to mean that the mouse freed itself, and then turned right around to try and get more spilled food and got stuck all over again.

And I suspect that the food it was eating was a contributing factor to the fact that it kept getting stuck.

So mice ain't smart, folks. No matter what you see on the Tom and Jerry reruns.

Eggs (week ending 8/27): 23
Eggs (to 8/31): 20
Eggs (month of August): 114
Eggs (year to date): 1489

I'm snuffling a bit today. I'm at the peak of my allergy season - ragweed, I suspect - but thanks to a couple of great Rx's, have been largely asymtomatic. Until yesterday, when I was watching, and then helping my daughter show her goat herd during Open Class at the county fair. This wouldn't have ordinarily bothered me, but this event was held in the show ring inside of a horse barn - and I'm fiercely allergic to horses (as opposed to being only intermittently allergic to cats). So my sinuses were overwhelmed, but it's still manageable. Without the Rx's, my sinuses would have slammed shut long before the fair.

By the way, with Open Class now over (and awaiting the 4-H competition), my daughter is now in a quandary. She was going to sell her two kid does, but one of them won Junior Grand Champion for Alpines and then went on to bag Junior Grand Champion for All Breeds (Junior indicates that the doe in question has not developed enough to breed, and therefore, produce milk). The same doe and her mother also took a blue ribbon in the Mother/Daughter contest. She was also told by the judge that this doe and the sister were both good looking animals. So now she has a champion to breed. But what about the almost-as-good sister?

I'm so glad that there's another chicken blogger out there now. I mentioned Amy Stewart's blog in my last post, and since then she's had a couple of great entries. The first is an amusing post that should diffuse the myth that, when you keep chickens, you get free eggs. Folks, when you keep chickens, you need more reasons than eggs. Another post references Mother Earth News in a discussion of how free range eggs are better for you than storeboughts. Glad to see it documented, but hey, I knew that already... just from looking at those lovely orange colored yolks.

(I was glad to see that Mother Earth News is keeping this story open as part of an ongoing research project. There was only one line I really disagreed with on a first quick reading of the full article: Hens housed in free-range conditions are able to consume large amounts of grass, clover, weeds and insects in addition to grain. This is because I have also seen my hens eat feathers, small toads, and small mammals (moles, voles, mice, etc.). Diverse natural diet, indeed!)

Regular visitors may have noticed that The Accidental Farmer now allows readers to leave comments. I held off on this for a long time because I didn't think the technology to keep things archived and spam-free was where it needed to be (more details on this can be read on my other web site). But now I think everything is where it should be, so I've activated them.

This prompted a couple of changes. I've added an explanation of what a chicken tractor is to the glossary page. In the process I discovered that my Farmer archives were opening up the archives from my main site, so I fixed that problem as well. While I was at it, I added the aforementioned Mother Earth News page to the list of Chicken Resources (thanks, Amy!).

And the chicken experiment continues, but went awry this week. My goal is to see if the birds will run from A to B to C, perhaps repeat it once, and then dither. A couple of days ago they went from A to C and then dithered. Yesterday they dithered coming out of the coop, some going to A, some to B, some starting for C, and some coming to me for a handout. They're either not capable of such advanced learning, or else my teaching method needs a little work. I will continue and see what happens.