Now the eggs are staring to roll in - roll being a relative term. Three a day Saturday and Sunday which means the two surviving comets and the australorp are laying. But do you suppose there is any physical similarity between any two eggs so they could be matched as being from the same breed? Nope. Three different shades of light brown, three different shapes, two different laying places (I caught one comet in the cubbyhole by the door, and I suspect the other is laying there, too).

Next project: quality of eggs as related to consumption.

If that were all, things the world would be spinning in a greased groove. But alas, that's not my lot in life. Ripley disappeared on Saturday morning and has yet to turn up. Now GP's are prone to roam - it's so much a part of their character that some people refer to them as "Disappyrenees"). It comes out of their instinct for protecting herds of livestock, but what I've read tells me that this is seen in adult dogs, not pups. I suspect Ripley wandered away as part of a puppyhood indiscretion or curiosity and either got lost, got in over her head somewhere, or was picked up by someone. Or some combination thereof.

So calls have been made to the Pound and the Humane Society, and Reward posters are going up around the neighborhood and other key areas. Hopefully she will return to assume her duties.

The irony being that we really needed her around on Saturday to help herd the kid goats and perhaps help to distract my daughter's two cart goats, who are undergoing intensive training in preparation for the fair at the end of the month.

Doggone it.

Update, same day, a few minutes later: Behold, the power of blogging! No sooner does the news of the missing puppy hit the net when I get a phone call from home saying that the errant hound has returned. It turns out she was at the farm across the street - we had called over there Saturday, nobody had seen her at that point - perhaps she hadn't been gotten there yet. Anyway, my wife and daughter drove the goat cart over there and dropped off a flyer, and apparently they used it later to make a photo ID on their new arrival. Dog home and kenneled, world now spinning in greased groove. Note: dog to have appointment with leash and spray bottle to learn not to cross highway.

Have a good day, everyone!

Three eggs in two days. One on Wednesday, and two yesterday. The first was by the hen that has been laying already, The second egg was larger and rounder, and the color was a smidge darker. One of the Golden Comets, but which one?

The eggs were also found in a corner of the coop that was popular with my first flock, a little area next to the door. After finding egg number three in a bucket that the cover had fallen over, I put the cover down on all of them. The next day they laid elsewhere. So I flipped back the cover - since the bucket is black, maybe it's dark enough for them already. I'm already thinking of a couple of refinements I could make by adding pieces of wood. We'll see how the time goes... as seen in my other blog, I'm a tad busy at the moment.

As for which of the Comets is laying, unfortunately, the choices are down to two. One of the Comets had been acting strange the last few days, preferring to roost in a place other than the coop, and developing a scaly white crust on its comb. It was dead on the floor of the coop this morning. I'm doing a little research on what the malady may have been. This thread on the Backyard Chickens board names favus as the culprit, but most of what I've found focuses on the cases found in humans.

Although now that I think about it, my assumption could be wrong. Perhaps a Comet was the first layer, and this larger, rounder egg is from the Australorp. I assumed the latter was laying first because the breed is known for being prolific layers. I guess I'll have to wait until the third hen starts to lay and see what the egg looks like before the final verdict comes down.

Puppy update: Ripley is starting to show more herding instincts, now toward the goats. When the two kids are away from the others (out of the barnyard when the others are in, out of the stall when the others are in there eating), she will go over to them and gently paw and mouth them until they go where she thinks they should be.

Ripley was also upset with me this morning. I had a doctor's appointment, so my daughter was going to let the chickens out this morning. Usually I go out and feed her, then say, "Let's go to the barn." So this morning I want out and fed her. She started heading for the barn, but I got in the car and left. Talk about confused...

Over the course of the last week, I built a new nest box for the chickens. I used three of those five-gallon buckets that things as diverse as paint, spackling compound, cake icing, donut filling, and pickles come in and built a frame to hold three side-by-side eighteen inches off the ground. I got three in black so the inside would be dark. Put on a perch so the birds could look inside. Also put on a curtain made from a plasticoid feed bag, but I draped it back when I put it in the coop so the chooks could see what it was. Put straw in the buckets, and two golf balls in each to give them the idea what the whole contraption was for.

(Perhaps I'll post some photos of the contraption when I get the chance if you promise not to laugh at my woodworking skills. My dad was the genius carpenter, but I didn't inherit much of his talent.)

I wasn't sure what the birds would think after installing it on (as I recall) Thursday night. But by Friday, they had been busy knocking out golf balls and kicking out the straw. I think I need to add a restraining panel, just in case.

Saturday, I made two interesting discoveries. First, there was an egg in one of the buckets. Hooray! Not only does this double the number of eggs I've collected thus far, it also tells me that at least one bird has figured out what the nest box bucket is for.

The second discovery was less settling. There was a rat in the coop. It didn't see me - and all I could see was the rear end and tail. It was stuck in the chicken wire I'd put up to keep varmints out. My theory is that it squeezed through to get in, gorged itself on spilled chicken feed and scratch, and when it tried to get out, it was too full and got wedged into the wire.

Ran to the house for my varmint dispatcher, my Ruger .22 pistol, came back out and capped it at point blank range. The worst part was pulling the corpse out of the wire without ripping it in half. My son, who was around at the time, thought the pistol was cool, and my daughter, who was working goats, was fascinated by seeing the dead rat. She had kept a domestic rat as a pet a few years ago (she called it Dinsdale, after a Monty Python sketch), but what impressed her with the corpus rattus was it's size. It had free run of the barn, after all, and may even be the rat that chewed its way into one of the plastic containers I was keeping chicken feed in to - oh, the irony - keep the rats out of it.

So check one egg, scratch one rat.

Meantime, Ripley the dog is showing herding instincts toward the baby goats. I go out to feed her in the morning, but she won't eat until after we've been to the barn and I've opened up the chicken coop. She also likes to herd the chickens out of the coop in the morning so she can chase them - I'm not sure about that latter behavior, but I know it's not malevolent because she play bows before running after them.

This dog's coat is really amazing and sheds dirt on its own - or the process can be hastened with a brushing. She's also quietly intelligent. Because of her size and puppy clumsiness, she might be seen as stupid, but she's already mastered commands like "sit" "come" and "mind your manners" with nothing but praise offered.

I think I could really get into owning this breed of dog. I can see why many people who own one end up getting another in spite of their grown size.

I wasn't expecting anything for a while. It was surprise enough that the rooster crowed after only being in the coop for a few minutes (as previously chronicled - and ended up crowing five or six times before I shut the door and left them to get used to the place).

Day three of their stay, one of the Golden Comets dive bombed Ripley just to show that she wasn't afraid of this big, lumbering ball of fur. Dive bombing is my term for when a hen leans forward, fluffs up her feathers, spreads out her wings like an F-18, and runs straight for whatever it is she's trying to teach a lesson. It works wonders on cats and it even turned Ripley away. She's still thinking they are playthings.

But yesterday was the big surprise. Going in to check the coop before locking them up for the night I found... one brown egg next to the bucket I put in for them to use as a nest box.

Huzzah to that. My reading and previous experience said that moving hens around like that could set their laying back a month because of the stress of moving and getting accommodated to new surroundings. Guess one of the Comets - or maybe the Australorp - decided differently.

Or maybe it was a leftover egg. We'll see.

Meantime, on the goat front, the two yearing does are slowly starting to make friends with Ripley. Yesterday both of them approached her and she looked up at them and they almost touched noses. So that relationship is progressing, and will continue to do so as Ripley grows.

Yesterday was also Ripley's first trip to the vet. My daughter took her and came back with lots of medicine - heartworm, flea and tick, wormer, doggie toothpaste. One of those medications is going to have some really disgusting side effects, but I don't know if I'm ready to divulge just what those are yet. Trust me, you don't want it to happen to you. Or your dog.

Chickens are back at the accidental farm.

Friday I took a day off work and my daughter, a green-thumbed writer friend, and I went down to Mount Hope for their thrice-a-year swap meet. I got up early in the morning to put the finishing touches on the coop, and sprayed the place with bleach water just before we left. Getting out of town proved to be filled with tension and intrigue. For the second time in recent months, my father-in-law's pickup broke down - one block from where it broke down on me last time - and had to be towed. We ended up taking the writer's VW Golf down to the event.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when we arrived. There were puppies in abundance of all different breeds, including new "Designer Breeds" (that just a few years ago were called "mutts" or "mixes"). There were lots of rabbits and ducks, a few people selling firearms, and eventually, plenty chickens - but they were mostly banties.

In fact, I only found one person who was selling regular (or "large breed") chickens. My speculation is that there's a boom in banties because they're small, meaning lower maintenance and higher cuteness factor. And if you're into having chickens for the decor and ambiance, the tiny eggs aren't an issue.

So checking out the one large breed seller, I managed to find some chooks to restock with. I tried to pick out the best looking birds I could find, the younger the better. I ended up with three Golden Comets, one black Australorp, two Ameraucanas, and a Rhode Island Red rooster. Then I went and picked up a couple of Silkies from a couple of enterprising young men who also tried to sell us a beagle puppy. The Silkies are small recent hatches; the Ameraucanas are spring chickens; the others are about a year old, and should start laying once they get used to their new surroundings (this might take a month).

We got them all boxed up and crammed into the Golf and home in good order. Fresh straw was spread in the coop, fresh food and water given, and scratch thrown down. Then I locked them in for the rest of the day so they would know that this is where they were expected to roost. To my surprise (and some delight), the rooster started crowing right away. It wasn't a very pretty crow, but he's gotten better at it over the last few days. He just needed a place to call his own, I guess.

The goats didn't care much about the new additions - most of them have had chickens around. Ripley was fascinating to watch. Saturday when I went to let the chickens out for the first time, she made her way in and play bowed to them, then crouched down, waiting for them to come over and play. When they didn't she chased them - but not aggressively. My daughter said she herded them out of the coop. Then she tried chasing them around the barnyard, again, in a casual, playful lope. The thing is, chickens scatter when you try to herd them (in herding competitions, ducks are used because they tend to clump together). Now she had two groups of chickens and couldn't figure out what to do. I think she wanted them all back together.

So the future will hold watching Ripley to make sure her play or herding doesn't become too aggressive, while giving the chickens a chance to settle in and start doing that laying thing again. My writer friend took lots of pictures of the goings on, and is writing up her account of the expedition - I should have a link to both soon.

Meantime, it turned into a new chicken weekend. My wife, daughter and I took my mother to a house warming party on Sunday, and the hosts were given an unusual gift by family members - two hens and a rooster. Guess I'll have a new role as a chicken consultant coming up soon. I'll have to dig up some of my chicken books to loan out to help them through their crash course in bird keeping.

Slowly, things are being retooled at the Accidental Farmer's place. In the chicken coop, a couple of potential predator entrances have been boarded up, with two to go. The gate I built for the milking room/nursery has been taken apart and is being reassembled, albeit in a somewhat shorter form, but I think I can still make it work.

Last Wednesday, I took another important step in protecting the assorted flocks (okay, goats are a herd, not a flock, but stick with me on this). My wife and I travelled to the far away town of Hanoverton and ended up brining home a Great Pyrenees puppy. After some thought, I named her Ripley.

Okay, she won't be chasing off possums and raccoons any time soon. But she's already leaving little deposits around the barn that might make them think twice about intruding. Ripley also has instincts for wanting to be around the goats. She was dead tired from her trip home in the car, but when we took her out to see them, her ears perked right up and her tail started to wag. She loves to watch them, almost to distraction - she gets engrossed in what they're up to and doesn't hear us talking to her.

Right now she's a little wary of the big goats because the cranky old doe with the two kids keeps chasing her off, and butted at her a couple of times. But she keeps wanting to come back and be around the goats. I'm thinking that her instincts will overpower her wariness of the goats as she gets bigger.

Plus, when my wife and daughter were attempting to bottle feed the two kids a couple of days ago, Ripley wanted to jump right in and be in the middle of things. She was licking their little goat ears and behinds, and was generally trying to nurture them, even though she's still a puppy herself.

She also seems pretty intelligent. After just a day or two, she's gotten the hang of "sit" and "come" (when she's not engrossed in goat watching, or practicing the breed's famous "selective hearing." I think the potential is there.

I've given Ripley her own page on this site; you can go there now to see pictures and learn why I named her Ripley, and a permanent link will be placed in the menu.

So now my farm to-do list looks something like this:

1. Clean up the tack room and make space for the spring order of hay.
   
   
2. Rebuild part of my restraining fence over the manger that the goats knocked down over the winter. (My father-in-law did this for me - thanks, Henry!)
   
   
3. Refloor the back half of the chicken coop to make certain that it's secure from any rodential predators. (Half done)
   
   
4. Design and build a new goat gate.
   
   
5. Possibly working on my dear spouse to see if she could be convinced to keep a dog.
   
   
6. I also need to build some new nest boxes.
   
   
7. Put up chicken wire across the roof of the coop to keep the birds out of the rafters.
   
   
8. Make some bleach water and spray the chicken coop with it, with time to dry before restocking.
   
   
9. Clean up the tack room.

All in all, not too bad. I'm wanting to go to the swap meet in Mount Hope this weekend in the hopes of finding some started pullets. With any kind of luck and good timing, I should have the coop mostly finished (re-finished?) in time for their arrival.

Then we can see how they take to their watchdog - and the dog to them.