Big Fat Yankey

Poor girl, shouldn't tease her for being pregnant!
Expecting early June kids, EXCITED!!

Quick Cat Repair

 What a week!!

Rufus had a little abscess on his side, I missed getting a picture of it, but basically it grew to be the size of about a golf ball but more oval shaped. I could feel it petting him, it was soft but firm and would not slip around under this skin (which is what happens if it's a little fat ball). Not sure how he got it, could have been a cat bite (he arrived with a good scratch on his nose) or an insect bite, or something else.

The best treatment was to just leave him be & let it burst on it's own, which it did, and now he's feeling  much better. I thought he'd be on the other side of the barn as soon as I got him with the liquid bandage, but he really didn't seem to mind. A ball of frozen ground beef really helped with that though!

Burst Abscess

Sporting some bling of his own

Quick Goat Repair

 Around here we spell "trouble" H.A.R.R.Y.

Not sure what he did to himself, but looks like he might have ripped it trying to crawl under the fence or something.

Iodine & liquid bandage again, I should just start bringing them with me to the barn every day!!

(I keep everything in the house so it stays at an even temperature)

I will probably have to clean up the ripped skin in the future, but I wanted it to stop bleeding before I did anything else. 

Quick Chicken Repair

 I've run out of good animals names and the new hamburgs have been saddled with "Spotty" and "Dotty". Yep... Poor things.

'nyway, the hamburgs have a neat high-stepping gate, but dotty has been spending a lot of time, either laying down or when she does move she's REALLY picking up her feet, so I noticed quickly something was off. The trick was catching her!

I was told by her last owner that they were great birds, always running around the barnyard. I will tell you, my chickens who run around the barnyard, who peck and scratch in the dirt, wear their nails down very quickly. Dotty's nails are not nailed down. Nor are her feet those of a particularly young bird.

Regardless, first of all her nails needed to be cut. This is just like trimming a cat or dog's nails, try to avoid the quick. So her toes just got a little trim, as soon as her foot heals she should be out scratching around.

She also had a few small cuts in her foot so I used iodine and then my liquid bandage to cover it. She's still hopping around quite a bit but looks a whole lot more comfortable and has been out & about out of the barn finally.

Spotty & Dotty are just attached at the wing-tip though, I've never seen anything like it. If Spotty goes out to get a drink or go look for food Dotty will start screaming bloody murder for him to come back. So at least I don't have to lock them in a little cage to keep them breeding pure, as they're doing that on their own.

Cupcake liners

Cupcake liners are something I never remember to pick up at the store, so I made these homemade ones on the weekend instead! Very simple, I did find making the edges not straight (I made them wavy) made them bend easier.

http://oneordinaryday.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/white-chocolate-mocha-cupcakes-with-homemade-liners/

Pasture Clean Up

Wasted Hay
Texans look away.

Quite a bit was still frozen in the middle
Something the article suggested would happen

Making little bunches to pick up

 Overall the winter bale grazing went well and we'll do it again. Next year I'm going to combine it with restricting access to one bale at a time, as well as keeping the cattle penned away from the feed over night. (This is based on another study I'll share later)

In the mean time, I have to clean up the hay rings left from the hay out in the field. There was only one bale the animals didn't eat and it was very very mouldy. Probably bales wet from the edges of the hay pasture.

The original article says that a few inches of hay is fine, the grass will come up through it, but anything deeper needs to be chopped or moved.

Ideally we'd be keeping the animals off the acreage we'd used to winter bale graze, with limited space and no fences we're not able to do that this year, so manual labour is my only solution.

Or this one I spread around to even out the nitrogen

Most of the bales got eaten completely down
and don't need any attention

Pastures are coming back nicely
and hopefully well fertilized for this summer! 

Trouble goes by the name "Harry" around here
On the ground they want nothing to do with it
but now it's all piled up on the trailer... 

Musky in the Egg

Muscovy ducklings right before they were about to hatch!

 We started off this spring with 3 duck nests with 29 eggs. Well the cows got one nest (it was in a bad spot anyway) and then Andy let the PBPs out and they got the other nest; but Daphne picked a great spot up in the loft and after 35 looooong days (for me!) they're hatching!!

I candled all the eggs the day before they hatched, because I wasn't quite sure of her hatch day I've been keep careful track of when they're going to hatch.

I could see movement in 5 of the 7 eggs, and put Xs on those ones with a sharpie. The 6th had a duckling in it, but he doesn't seem to be moving, so that one has just a / on it & I put it back under mom just in case. The last egg was rotten and got buried in the compost.


One thing I learned this week is that duck eggs take a long time to actually hatch! I thought they'd be more like chickens who barely take any time between the first pip and when the chicks are out & running around, but they can take as much as 24 to 48 hours between that first pip and actually hatching.

Once they do hatch they're absolutely adorable!! Little tiny muscovy babies, we're all so excited to see them.

I put food and water up there as soon as the babies started hatching, because they're up in the loft they aren't going to able to keep using this as a nest spot for the ducklings as they grow (because they can't fly up there with mom). I didn't want mom trying to take them too far for food until I get a chance to move them all once they've all hatched.

Daphne's pretty pissed at me for mussing with her but she actually looked relieved (if that's possible for a duck) and stopped hissing at me as soon as I brought the food up.