Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloweenie

This year's theme for Halloweenie is just buggy.


Clifford politely tries on the costume we purchased for him to wear out trick-or-treating but ... 




He had already planned his Halloweenie costume. "Alms for the poor, good citizen?"

Meanwhile K.C. is not sure if red really is his color, but he is rockin' his man bug costume. "That, that, dude looks like a lady!"


And Harry .. well he is just as adorable as always, but he'd rather no one look. 


"What you lookin' at ... Punk?!" 


"I'm sexy and I know it."


"Hey guys look I'm a tofu dog!"


Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Lots of Little Boys

Cinna and her three boys.
Our fall kidding season has started off with lots of little boys! Perhaps I should be disappointed with this, as it is always nice to have doelings, but to be honest I'm not the least a bit disappointed. The two does that were first up on our kidding schedule are both first fresheners and just the fact that they were able to kid (freshen) without complications and are now in milk, is enough. Besides 100% of our sales from wethers goes to charity and that is always a good thing.

Serengeti and her little boy.


Sunday, October 14, 2012

The Girls are Growing Up

The junior shepherdess is somewhat obsessed with poultry. OK, maybe not somewhat, more like totally. She is always telling me random facts about chickens. You probably remember when her mom, the shepherdess was trying to explain "chicken math" and one addend was a group of ten chickens that got into the truck after a trip to buy me hay at the local feed store. I don't know what got into the mind of that shepherdess but she went for a truckload of hay and came home with a truckload of chicks. "Just say NO, woman!" Well, the chicks are growing up and yesterday they decided to start laying eggs. I have to admit it was pretty exciting to see what the junior shepherdess found in the nesting box. Two small eggs nestled in with the normal sized eggs.

The first eggs of a pullet (ours are shown on the left in green and tan) are about 25% smaller than normal but they will slowly become larger.

All the hens were so proud. All of them kept singing for hours. The old hens won't admit it but they were strutting their stuff too. You could hear some of them boasting how they were the ones who taught the pullets how to lay their eggs in the next box. The Diva said, "Well, you know you have to have your tail feathers at a 73 degree angle to the edge of the nest box so that your egg is cushioned just right when it lands so it won't get cracked." Maybe that is another example for the term Mother Hen.