All good here. Staying safe at home.Some good news... today is shearing day for the sheep and I was not invited to participate. I’m also hoping I won’t get invited to help with Haying this year! Unlikely, but a girl can dream. Yesterday I was offering 10:1 odds that DH won’t be doing any of the Mowing, Tedding, Swathing, or Baling this year, as BIL has commandeered the tractor and thanks to Covid one of his cousins has been here proving what a better farmer she is than us. I’m sure some of you will remember my picture from last year after (now) “Andrew” (His dad was using it when it happened) broke the Tedder? Random chains and haystring attempting to hold it together... our Mechanic/Welder/generally awesome guy is currently stuck in Australia. He has dual citizenship and has decided to basically skip winter entirely. Looks like that’s not an option this year though! I suppose it is nicer to get trapped in Australia for the winter over Canada though, even if we do have the best weather in the Country here.
I will be moving my last hatch of chicks to a foster home this weekend, and the 5 girls from my second and third hatches will be going out to their forever home on Saturday as well. This will put me plausibly close to the appropriate number of chickens for the insurance policy. The two “extra” girls from the first Hatch will be going to the home of the people who bought chicks from me last year, as they had a mink Attack which killed one hen and injured another. Their Rooster (the one they kept complaining of but never returned, if you recall, the kids picked out the birds) alerted them to the attack and they were able to drive the mink off with their dog. They now are very fond of the Rooster. I’m hoping they will also be ready to take them this weekend. Then I can hopefully send in my first hatch cockerels (Sausage, Fat Sausage, Tall Sausage, Loud Sausage, and Big Sausage) to “meat” their destiny, and redistribute the meat chicks in the two tractors.
“My” geese are growing up quite fast and are now almost half the size of their parents. I say “my geese” because although they are wild, they are cleaning up some of the leftover chicken feed nicely and are starting to tolerate my presence more. Also, by claiming them as mine, it keeps grubby not-so-little hands from trying to turn them into Christmas dinner!
I am also fairly impressed with the meat chicks survival instincts. Last year when I ran the Rangers, they were a fair distance away from my laying Tractors, so my Roosters aren’t totally used to seeing me move them. I’m quickly running out of space and grass around the little meaties, so today I had to move them quite a ways and right past Chickie Hawk. I released the littles and they all ran out looking for their breakfast, then right back under the tractor when they didn’t find it. Fine. I sprinkled some feed where I was moving it to and that got them out and occupied. I started to move the tractor and Hawk did his “alarm” growl. And, I was again surrounded as they all took cover in the back of the tractor. Ok, I can wait... in about a minute or two they venture back out in a rush. Hawk growls again at this sea of strange tiny velociraptors, and back under they go. It took about five repetitions of this and two feedings to get them moved the full 25 feet. If he wasn’t growling at the littles he was growling at the moving of the low meat tractor.
I think that more or less covers what I’ve been up to lately, and I hope everyone is doing well and Staying Safe, especially all my chicken friends in the USA.
I know it's part of farming but every loss hurts. You are a great chicken keeper & your chickens are very lucky to have you.
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