A Journey Through a Different Way - Funny Story Pg. 69

[Zookeeper9000]

Hey Lady I haven't been on so I missed the pic's of the place and the animals, rats LOL. I am just starting to get back on after a knee replacement surgery that I had on the 25th of Jan, that with the power of pray is going beyond well.

I will keep praying for you as you remodel it is not one of my favorite things to do but sure do love the results. Hang in there and enjoy that new bunny.

 

[WriterofWords]

I'm going straight home so I can see all the Photobucket photos!

 

[Jenifer72]

I loved reading some your posts on here but for some reason I can't view any of the photobucket pictures! I want to see!

 

[ruth]

Hi all - it's been several months since I last posted and to say I've been busy would be the understatement of the year. Let me see, how can I recap the last several months? I guess I'll start with myself and family since there are so many new people on BYC and they don't know me. My name is Monique Wagner. A couple of years ago my husband and I bought a farm and bit off a whole lot more than we could chew. I started this Journey Thread intially to show how we were raising our baby chicks but it developed into a sort of blog where I post updates from the farm. If you haven't read through all 63 pages you can pretty much start right here:

Family updates:

So that you can put a face to a name, here's a pic of myself and my two daughters and my granddaughter on Mother's Day in May.

My Granddaughter, Khloe, just celebrated her First Birthday on July 30th:

She loved her cake.

I initially bought this toy box as a plain, unfinished box for her mother's 1st birthday 30 years ago. For Khloe's 1st birthday, I finally decorated it and made a seat pad and pillows for it. Nothing like taking 30 years to cross something off your "To Do" list. I even wrote a little story about "Khloe's Toy Box" and it made my daughters cry because it brought back such fond memories of them using that box all these years.

Farm Updates:

We've had over a dozen baby goats born these past few months including this little guy "Cowboy":

Cowboy just doesn't seem to be growing. He's several months old but has kept diarrhea off and on since birth. Nothing we've tried works for long but he's hanging in there. I just love the little dude.

If you remember Lambo, He's now Lambo the Rambo and even much bigger than when this pic was taken. Since he was raised by the dogs he now thinks 1. either he is a dog and they are his bi_ _ ch or 2. They are sheep and are his ewes. We are trying to find a suitable mate for the guy cause he's really starting to tick the dogs off - actually they run from him.

I think I posted this past winter that we lost our beloved male Sebastopol. This spring the female started laying eggs and went broody and sat on a nest of duds. I had some ducklings hatching in bator so I slipped 5 under her and she took to them right away. She lives with the goats and I was afraid the little baby ducks would get crushed by the goats so I moved her and the new babies into my tack room/milking room/hatching room. Well one day I went in there to find her pacing back and forth in front of the chick hutch just screaming and carrying on and slamming her beak into the wire. It took me a minute to figure out what was wrong. I had hatched several more little ducks a few days after giving her some and they were in the hutch with some chicks. She could hear and see them and thought they were hers too. I took them out and she has raised all 10 ever since. They follow her all over the farm, are now grown, and they think they are geese. They will even chase and hiss at other animals, even other ducks, just like "mama". Since Loosey Goosey wouldn't let her ducks mingle with our other ducks, our other ducks have taken to following her little "Flaggle" as I call it (Flock of ducks/Gaggle of Geese=Flaggle). Now she can be seen going back into the stables at night with about 20+ ducks following her.

Loosey Goosey and her little Flaggle over the past few months:

My peafowl all turned 2 on the 4th of July and celebrated by hatching little peachicks of their own:

We tried raising Cornish Crossess but could only bring ourselves to process two of the dozen. The rest are still alive and free ranging our farm months later. I really thought, from what I read, that they would drop dead at 10 weeks or so but ours will probably fly right across the 10 month mark. But, the two we did process were delicious:

I'm also making ricotta cheese from my fresh goat milk and fresh herbs:

We have quite a barnyard mix of birds these days and they follow me like I'm the Pied Piper. If I throw down some scratch, and they real "crack heads" - this is what it looks like:

The meangerie of free ranging layers give me a nice assortment of colored eggs:

And, at the end of a long day of hard farm work - I can now relax in my garden bath I'm still working on:

So that about wraps up the past few months here on the farm at Bethel.

Y'all come back now, ya hear?

For a link to our farm website:

www.bethelplantation.com

 

[speckledhen]

That granddaughter is so sweet! Thanks for the update, Monique. Look forward to seeing many more pics here.

 

[ruth]

Quote:
Thanks Cyn - she's just the happiest baby ever. My other daughter is expecting her first child and I can't wait. This old farm needs grandchildren running around and playing. Of course it would be that both of my daughters are just the biggest germaphobics around and cringe at the thought of their children even crawling on "clean" floors much less around here and playing in the coops. But oh what fun and big plans I have for them. It's great being a grandmother. "Sitty" is the term I use. It's Lebanese for grandmother.

 

[RedStickLA]

Hey Monique! Glad to see you back!

Sounds like things are going great on the farm. Cindy told me you have another bunch of kids hitting the ground. WOW I am having the opposite problem...I can't seem to get my girls bred!

That grand baby is adorable ! And Congrats on the "one on the way"! I can’t agree more… being a grandmother is pretty great.

How is Rex doing? Did he heal up ok? He is such a sweet boy.

Mitzi

 

[ruth]

Hi Mitzi - so good to hear from you. Yeah, Rex is good but we keep him and Addy away from one another.

Cindy told me you were having trouble getting goats pregnant. I told her to tell you to bring them over here for a bit. I've got Fertile Myrtles and Fertile Merls and possibly some immaculate conceptions going on. Goldie gave birth 5 months, almost to the day, that she last kidded. Her sister, Gazelle, is about to do the same. And you know, when you and Cindy were here disbudding their last babies, that I had the big boys separated. I told Cindy I found one of the females backed up against the bucks fence the other day so I think that might be a clue as to what is going on here. At this point I think every female is pregnant again and we are very careful when rotating which group is getting let out so I'm not sure what is going on. Maybe it's "in the water" - bring your gals over.

 

[RedStickLA]

Yes she told me you said that

Well I may have to do that at the rate it is going! Or at least get a couple gallons of that water from you!

We are in the process of fixing up some pens to have a couple of her boys come visit for a couple of months to see if we can get it done sooooo

It's crazy I am trying so hard to get mine bred and you are having so much trouble keeping yours from NOT breeding! If yours are breeding through the fence maybe you could attach tin sheets along the bottom to keep that from happening?

 

[ruth]

Quote:
Hi Mitzi - well Gazelle gave birth today to two little boys. Along with Goldie's little boy last week, we seem to be on another "boy" roll. In the last round of babies 8 out of 10 were boys. John was wondering if the father determined the sex of the babies and I got to laughing, I dunno, but who da daddy???? If it's Big Jack, he's been separated since the last round of babies were born so can't figure out how he's "doing it" and if it's Little Jack, he was only about 4 months old and small since he was one of the quads but I don't remember him being allowed access to the mamas when they kidded in Feb. and March so not sure how he could have done it and now, it's starting to look like some of the other females are either pregnant or getting "fat" and I know Little Jack has been kept separated along with all the other boys. I even took the new baby bucks away from their mamas at about 3 months so I'm pretty sure it wasn't them.

Luckily we did have a family here on tour a couple of weeks ago and when their kids (children) saw the little bucks, they instantly wanted them and next thing you know, we're loading up a kennel with 4 little bucks for them to take home. They bought Bella's triplet sons and Gazelle's boy.