More cleanup and repairs this weekend, primarily in the tack room where the hay for the goats is kept. General cleaning and tidying up, lots of old paper feed bags to the burning pile, reorganiztion of the feed bins, and driving new nails to hang things on.

The electricity is back on in the barn. That's a welcome thing. I reset the timer on the light in the coop, but haven't seen any eggs - because we're so far removed from summer now, I'm not sure that I'll see any now before spring. But if I have a spare pair of fingers, I'll keep them crossed.

Saturday I started picking up the pieces after the goat invasion. I had already removed the chewed up nest box, so I pitchforked out all of the old litter and threw down a fresh new layer to start the winter off. Cleaned up the feeder and filled it, and dunked the water can in a bucket to start soaking off the bird residue. There's a water trough just outside of their coop that the goats use, so they'll be able to get water.

A quandary when I came to the goat gate, which was sprung off of two of its hooks and had one spacer slat broken off. I decided that, since the birds were capable of flitting up into the rafters of the coop, they could fly over the bottom half of the main door to get into the coop. I tried this and they had no problem doing that.

Ahead: what to do with the coop. I have two choices. First, I could scrape off the walls and put up more chicken wire so they can't get into the rafters and bomb everything with their waste. Or I could build a straw bale chicken coop in another part of the yard, and surround it with goat fence so the goats don't eat it down to the ground. Whatever the case, I've got the winter to ponder the choice.

My wife says she misses the fresh eggs. Me, too.

From memory, at last count I had the following chooks still hanging in there: Hens: two buff orpingtons, a white leghorn, a barred rock, a silver laced wyandotte, the while Silkie/Cochin cross, and a couple of Red crosses. Roosters: Rhode Island Red, Silkie/Cochin Cross, the mystery Bantie, and two mutts, one kind of a calico cover, the other a rusty salt and pepper color. Then there's what is supposed to be an easter egger, but I can't tell what it wants to be. It has no pronounced comb, but it has longer tail feathers. I don't know. That looks like a count of fourteen to me.

McMurray Hatchery now has Marans, the breed that lays chocolate brown colored eggs. Add them to my list for spring: Cuckoo Marans (the hens resemble barred rocks), another set of New Hampshire Reds, and some easter eggers that I know for certain are hens, and easter eggers. Round out the balance of the order with meat birds, and I'll be set,

Until then, more work. And decision making.

Yes, I'm a vile person. I put Google ads up on this site. I've been watching my traffic carefully, and what do you know, a lot of people come here for chicken information. Since Google reads the site and places ads by contextual key words, this was another way to provide more links to people looking for information on everyone's favorite poultry.

And a way to make a little extra money - heh, heh.

Actually, I probably won't make chicken feed off of this little venture. Although if I make enough to some scratch for them, I'll be happy. We'll see where the experiment leads.

One of the events of the last couple of weeks was a stealth goat attack. My daughter went out to feed the herd, couldn't find several of them, and found them trapped inside the chicken coop. They'd gotten in somehow and couldn't figure a way to get out. So while they were there, they knocked down everything I had up out of the way of the birds, ate my egg production calendar for 2005 (except for a couple of small scraps and, I'm assuming, the little wire thingy that bound the pages together), and chewed up the main nest box.

Surveying the damage last weekend, I took out the remains of the nest box and did a little cleanup. The birds have started to nest in the upper rafters of the stall, so I need to put some chicken wire up to keep them down on their roosts where they belong. After I scrape the walls (I could tell that they'd been eating under the mulberry tree - ecccch).

If I go that far. I'm also thinking about building a separate coop with a removable lid and attached run outside of the barnyard. It's all percolating in my head, and I've got some time to think about it. While I clean up the damage.

(In case you don't get the gag that is this post's title, go here)