Thomas the Ramming Ram

 Nathan got published! http://www.powerhousegrowers.com/aquaponics-a-diy-approach-to-organic-gardening/
Look at how fast SoZH is growing! I guess it's to be expected based on the size of his dad...here he is snoozing on my knee in the sun:

He still isn't quite fully feathered and he likes to stay warm however he can.

I think Squishy is getting tired of having him cramp her style...I took over chick warming duties for a bit.

The dogs have been very helpful with chores lately.

Rearranging the wood chip pile:

Speckles helped, too. Her foot is finally looking much better! Took long enough...

Abby helping to clean the chick coop.

The goats have been helpful, too. 

Cleaning some fall brush.

Looking hopeful as I walked by with a handful of kale for dinner (our dinner...but they love it).

I noticed that they need their hooves trimmed so we'd better do that soon. I would hate to start having hoof problems with them! Oprah and Amelia (previously "no name")'s feet are looking good. They're in the electronetting paddock that we've been moving around the orchard so they can eat the nice grass there. Once they've spent another week or so back there, it's date time with Thomas! 

Thomas has been getting antsy. First he escaped from his paddock through a gate that he's always pushed on (we've since fixed it). Nathan came out of the greenhouse and found Thomas just standing loose out there, looking a bit confused. Thomas converts any emotion into the same action: ramming. Hungry? Ram. Thirsty? Ram. Curious? Ram. Annoyed? Definitely ram. I ran to get some grain while Nathan distracted Thomas to keep him away from Nathan's mum and grandma who were sitting nearby. You have one guess as to what Thomas did when he saw me coming with a bucket of grain. Yep....I dropped the bucket and hopped over the fence into the horse paddock. Luckily Nathan is braver (we'll call it brave) than I am and he managed to call Thomas back into his paddock.

Then, yesterday evening, while Nathan was at work, we noticed that the horses and cows were all in with Thomas and Zeb. Our landlord noticed first and commented that it was nice that we were letting the animals all intermingle. Nope, not on purpose...the fence at the back had come down. I started running around the outside of the paddock so that I could get to the opening to try and call the horses and cows through. Our landlord headed right into Thomas' paddock. I warned him that Thomas has been pretty 'ram-my' lately but he said that he'd gone in recently without any problems. He got to the broken fence first and Nathan's dad and I started pushing the horses and cows that way (we were along the edges of the paddock - easy escape from Thomas plus he doesn't seem to notice that you're in there if you stay on the edge), so that after they went through, the fence could be patched up behind them. At first, Thomas and Zeb just stayed off to the side away from the action....but suddenly Thomas must have felt some emotion and you can guess what happened next. For a big ram on stick legs he sure can move...he took off right towards our landlord, who was holding the fence open in the middle of the field. I have never seen someone climb an 8 foot deer fence so quickly. I wouldn't even call it climbing...it was more like his legs became springs. One second he was on the ground and the next he was up the fence, straddling the brace. I'm pretty sure I heard a shriek first, but in case he reads this blog we'll say that he jumped in manly silence. Even though I realize that Thomas could really hurt someone...I was laughing too hard to do much and wondering whether filming with my phone would be appropriate. Eventually we got it all sorted out but wow...it is worth having a ram just for the life-endangering entertainment value.

Family Day

Squishy's been getting pretty antsy in her pen so I let her and SoZH come out for a sunny afternoon. I was worried that the other chickens would pick on the chick and that Squishy wouldn't protect him - I kept a close eye on them the whole time. 

The other chickens were very interested at first but Squishy is a good mom; she chased everyone away - except for the baby daddy himself. I think it's unlikely that roosters know when a chick is theirs, but ZH was sure nice with his son.

After scratching around and eating some cucumbers, it was time for a dust bath.

SoZH wasn't sure what was going on at first.

He kept trying to cuddle up to mom and she'd shove him away with her feet. 

Adults only in the spa.

Then he suddenly caught on to how good a sunny dust bath feels.

Pure dusty bliss.

A little splintery, but mostly blissful.

Family at the spa.

Meanwhile, goats were hanging out in their favourite spot.

They go up on that table to sun themselves, chew their cud, groom themselves, wrestle each other...

Abby used to think she was the only table hopper on the farm.

"Wheee!"

"What??"

Speaking of "what??". 

Little Brown (probably the chicken with the most original name of all) seems to be going full kamikaze on Ryan.

Winterizing

 We left for our trip in summer and somehow came back to winter! Actually, I think it became winter while we were away...specifically while we were in our tent without jackets, hats or sleeping bags. I'm not sure how we thought that camping with only hoodies and a duvet was a good idea when going 5 hours north at the end of September...but we all survived. 

 Abby and Ryan seemed pretty content riding in their crates. Not having to share the cab with muddy dogs was fantastic.

We saw lots of bears.

Fishing for her cubs.

This guy got tired of us pretending to be wildlife photographers. He sauntered right over to the truck and posed for us (I think people must feed him). We decided we'd better drive away when he looked like he was about to jump up and stick his head through the window. Sometimes it's hard to remember that good photos aren't always good ideas...

There were tons of eagles - everyone loves salmon.

We went whale watching.

Giant humpback mouth.

We also got to see Steller sea lions swimming around! 

Ryan wasn't interested (or invited to join) in wildlife viewing.

As soon as we got home, I rushed to check on Squishy and the 2 eggs. We got home on day 24 of brooding and the eggs should have hatched on day 21. It was dark out so I reached underneath her and felt...an egg. I was so disappointed thinking neither egg had hatched, when suddenly I heard a little "peep! peep! peep!" and out popped one little chick from underneath Squishy.

Little Son of Zebra Head (I'll just assume he's a boy for now) is adorable. Squishy is being a good teen mom and showing the chick where to eat and drink while keeping a watchful eye on the dogs and other chickens. 

I moved the pair of them into the new barn today so they'd have more protection from the wind and rain, and Squishy had a chance to dust bathe for the first time in a month. She got so overzealous that she kept stepping on her little chick. I don't think he knew what was going on when he kept getting dirt kicked all over him. 

New Barn pretty much finished. It isn't the most beautiful thing...but it's functional. The only problem is that since it's only 3-walled and fairly high, it's still drafty inside. We're thinking of building a half wall at the back out of bales of hay and covering them with a tarp for extra wind protection.

Squishy and SoZH's new digs.

Their neighbours:

I built a pen in the barn yesterday and Maggie and May are sleeping there now, until Thomas and the ewes move in at the end of the month. We've been letting the goats out to free range during the day and it's been working well. They go back in their stall on their own throughout the day for a rest and a drink. There is so much for them to eat on the farm that I can't see them trying to get out of the perimeter fence (famous last words). Once the ewes and Thomas and Zeb are in the barn, the goats can have the sheep shelter that we'll set up in the side yard for them as a warm overnight spot.

Oprah's scratching post - unfortunately I had to dismantle it to build the new pen. 

Ewean's foot is looking better after antibiotics but it still isn't healed. We gave her another injection yesterday and we'll check it tomorrow. This constant rain isn't helping it dry out and heal. 

Zip Zap

We got our electronetting! It's definitely not the cheapest fencing available but it's so easy to set up and portable that I think it will be really handy to have. We used our farm stand money to buy it - along with the goats, 2 tickets to the agricultural exhibition we went to a few weeks ago and soon, a larger freezer.

Now we can just move the sheep or goats to wherever we want them to mow/weed. 

The energizer box that we got can either take D cell batteries or a 12 V battery. We're using the D cells now and even with some vegetation around the fence we're getting a charge of 4000 to 8000 volts...enough to make poor Abby yelp and run across the orchard when she touched the new fence.

Our cheapy fence tester 

 The sheep enjoying the first row of the orchard. The first time Oprah got zapped, she unfortunately ran forward right over the fence (it bent under her weight) and the others followed (of course). I think my mistake was not leaving the fence open to their regular paddock. If she'd had a safe escape route, she would have just gone back through there instead of through the fence. I changed the fence set up and so far so good - I've seen each of them get zapped on the nose and then jump back and continue grazing away from the fence. The goats will definitely take a lot of training/observing before I'll trust them in there...

We're still having troubles with Ewean's foot. She came to us limping (dumb new sheep buyers! we've learned our lesson - she was likely a cull animal and we bought her with foot rot already present) and throughout the summer we've trimmed her feet regularly and treated them with a copper naphthenate spray. Her left front never quite heals, though, and now I've seen her grazing on her knees occasionally. We really need to get it under control before the wet season when it could spread to the other ewes and to Thomas. We're going to give her some injections of penicillin and then if it's still bad after a week, we'll try foot baths in zinc sulfate with pasture rotation (the foot rot bacteria dies in the soil after 2 weeks if there are no sheep in the pasture). If it hasn't cleared up by the end of October after that regime, we're going to have to think about butchering her. That sounds harsh for a foot issue but we got our sheep for meat production, not pets, and foot rot is a pretty serious condition to deal with. You don't want it in your entire flock and you don't especially want susceptibility to foot rot being passed on in your breeding animals (there is likely a genetic component to how susceptible an animal is). It's also a painful condition for poor Ewean. 

On a happier note, I took the (totally back to normal) goats for a little walk this morning! At first they just wanted to follow me (the lady with farm crack in a bowl).

Naughty jumping Maggie (but so very cute).

Suddenly they realized they were walking right by all of these tasty blackberry bushes.

It was easy to lead them back to their yard with some grain after awhile - I guess grain still beats tasty leaves. 

So thirsty after their adventure.

Chewing their cud in the firepit.

Squishy's still diligently sitting in her nest. This morning I went to candle the eggs again for the last time so that I could double check that two of them are unfertilized and then take those out of the nest. Since we're going away for a week I don't want to leave them in there to rot and possibly explode after the others hatch. Unfortunately, there were only 4 eggs left - Squishy seems to have eaten one of the fertilized eggs. Maybe it cracked and broke, or something was wrong with it...or she just decided to eat it. Let's hope it's one of the first two options. She's only 6 months old but I think she'll be a good teen mom.

I 'chick-proofed' her brooding area with chicken wire over the too-large x-pen gaps, hardware cloth underneath to prevent predators digging in, and chicken wire across the top of the xpen so nothing can climb or fly in. I really hope at least one of the two remaining eggs hatches normally!

The Ameraucana chicks are getting big. I think they might actually be called Easter-Eggers since they're crosses of the different Ameraucana colours instead of being the 'right' colour types. I'm not that much of a chicken nerd (yet) that I care. I also think that three of them are boys. That I do care about...Gus and Skyler are definitely girls but Hank, Saul and Walt are looking iffy.

Taking a communal dust bath.

I was building a new compost bin (very fancy, I call it 'le palet' style)

and I noticed this little meeting taking place. I think Abby's explaining the ways of the farm to the chicks...mainly "I'm in charge, here, and don't you forget it".