Today on the Farm

The best laid schemes of mice & men... thanks to the warm weather I've had to move the horses out of the sacrifice (/diet) paddock because there is a foot of mud in there. This is always going to be a problem in Spring/Fall because we're keeping two big animals in a small area. However, by the end of November the ground is suppose do to be frozen, and probably a few inches of snow on the ground already.

Torrential downpour has filled the ditches,
ducks are happy!

So they're off enjoying their freedom instead of coming in from the rain.

The goose has gone M.I.A. Not that I'm sad he's missing, which probably happened because despite my suggestion he go into the barn he decided to bite me instead, but I am concerned about the possible predator activity. He couldn't fly so it's not like he's gone off somewhere.

I'm hoping to add some more goslings soon so we can collect down, but I think we'll start from chicks this time so we can tame them. We will wait until the spring to buy them because I'd like to make a separate coop for the waterfowl. They're not making a big mess in the coop at all, and they occupy space that the chicken's don't (on the ground). So we could continue to keep them all together indefinitely, but I'm worried the ducks may get nasty once they have ducklings to protect.

Steak is "happy" to be back with mom, I think he mostly just missed having other cow around again. The cows were smart enough to come in out of the rain, and spent the last 2 days sleeping in the barn.

Clearly did not loose a lot of weight in weaning

Yankey has turned out to be quite the bully! I've had to separate Billy at night because she was picking on him too much. Unfortunately she came back into heat, so now we're on a stud-search, which means waiting longer for milk.

We've been getting a great supply of XL & Jumbo eggs from the new chickens, a dozen a day! So I've bought some cartons from Berry Hill & we may open up our egg shop to the public a little early then planed. Or start holiday baking REALLY early.

I moved the piggies into the middle stall in the back of the barn last night, so Maddie can have his stall back. We're not letting them out any more, after they took off after our neighbour's in their horse-drawn wagon last weekend (a piggie chase ensued as they ran off down the road). They've got a lot of space to run around in the barn, and we'll fix up the sacrifice paddock fence first thing in the spring (we'll probably expand it too).