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". 

Fall Grazing

Three of the 5 eggs (one got..squished) under Squishy have chicks growing in them! We shined a really bright flashlight through a little hole in some cardboard and into the egg ("candling"). It was so cool seeing the veins and eyeball and everything, and seeing the chick move in the egg. If things go well, 3 chicks could hatch on September 20th-21st!

The goats are settling in well. They've stopped calling for their mum all the time and now they call for us to give them more blackberry branches and grain. They're both eating out of our hands already.

The sheep have pretty much eaten all the grass in their paddock and the one behind them. They can't be let out into the 'main' area anymore since they go right through the fences and in with Thomas...so today I brought them with me to water the orchard. There is lots of nice grass in there and they were pretty excited to taste it all. They only tried to eat the pear tree leaves a few times...The goats would demolish a young orchard like that in about 10 minutes!

Maggie getting braver

Our pumpkins are finally turning orange!

Staying Put

I had to lift Squishy out of her nest this morning to eat and drink. As soon as she was done she ran back in. She sure is dedicated. 

Our one and only watermelon is finally ready! It's really good...but I don't think I'd bother trying to grow watermelons again. So much work for so little!

Moody Broody

Squishy (the all white chicken that almost got squished as a chick) has decided that she is going to hatch some eggs whether we like it or not. She made her first nest in a box in the barn/shed (the 'hidden nest #1' photo from a few weeks ago) and even though we took all the eggs away, she was determined to sit in it. I moved the box to the ground and blocked it...she made a new nest behind it, complete with chest feathers that she'd pulled out (and no eggs) crammed against the wall. When I'd take her out of the barn and block the door, she would quickly eat and drink then run back to the barn making a screeching noise, jump over the barrier and go back into her corner. She tried to sleep in there at night, and even though we locked her in the coop, she was right back to her corner in the morning when let out. I decided to let her do what nature was clearly wanting her to do; I made her a new nest in a more appropriate dog kennel away from the other chickens and put 6 eggs under her. I locked her in the dog crate for the first day so that she didn't try to get to her old nest and today she is happy to stay in there, even with the door open. She has some food and water in there but she doesn't seem to want to leave the nest for even a second. In a week I'll shine a light through the eggs (called "candling" them) to see if the embryo is growing (and to see whether Zebra Head has been doing his job!).