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<\/a><\/p>\nBut after the first few kicks she settled down and proved she has the makings of a great dairy goat.\u00a0 Nice work, Charlotte.\u00a0 And while I was testing Charlotte, Cassie was testing me.\u00a0 She tried to see how badly I would panic and how desperately I would search if the first kid of the season went missing.\u00a0 Can you find her?<\/p>\n
Not funny, punk.\u00a0 Not funny at all.<\/p>\n Yesterday we got a chance to test our Silkies’ magical powers of broodiness.\u00a0 One of our Silkie hens was setting in the nest box each night when we collected eggs.\u00a0 So we decided to give her a nest box of her own with some of the Silkie eggs we collected when the temperatures were in the 20’s.\u00a0 We figured those eggs may not even be viable so we could afford to give them to her to see if Silkies are as broody as people claim.<\/p>\n Um,….fail.<\/p>\n In other nesting news, the Muscovy ducks that were born here but migrated to our neighbor’s pond have returned home for breeding season.\u00a0 Freddy, our stationary male, has been happy with the presence of the new females.<\/p>\n But he is not enjoying the visiting male.\u00a0 Who, figuring turnabout was fair play,\u00a0 arrived to scope out the females that have remained here.\u00a0 He’s really testing poor Freddy’s nerves.\u00a0 And they engage in a fierce tail-waggling competition each morning.<\/p>\n While the males are otherwise occupied, one of the females has tested the chicken nest boxes and found them perfectly suited for her needs.<\/p>\n Setting us up for another season of trying to keep the chickens out of what is now the duck’s nest box.\u00a0 And failing that, finding lonely chicks wandering around the barn yard, having hatched out under the duck after 21 days, and been left to their own devices as she waits for her ducklings to hatch at 35 days.\u00a0 Good thing day old chicks are easy to pawn off on visiting children.\u00a0 Oh, it’s soooo cute!\u00a0 Don’t you want to hold it?\u00a0 Don’t you want to take it home??????\u00a0 Hang on, I bet I’ve got a box around here somewhere….<\/p>\n Not everything has proven to be aggravating, though.\u00a0 The bucks have put The Other Half’s new goat trough to quite a test.\u00a0 We used to feed the bucks with individual hanging troughs to keep the pushing and shoving to a minimum.\u00a0 But the troughs always got knocked down and someone was forced to walk through the buck stench to rehang them, while the bucks excitedly danced around on toes and brushed their extreme stinkiness against barn coats.\u00a0 But the trough has held firmly to the fence, withstood the daily butting, and even drains perfectly on rainy days thanks to holes he made on the bottom.\u00a0 Excellent work, The Other Half.<\/p>\n Although the new feeder has not resolved one old problem.\u00a0 The way TS immediately puts his face in the trough and refuses to move it.\u00a0 Just the way he did with his old trough.\u00a0 So that he ends up with as much feed on his head as in his trough.\u00a0 Some problems (and some bucks) are just too tough to fix.<\/p>\n We’re down to the last hay roll.\u00a0 Which passed its initial taste testing.\u00a0 So far no signs of the mold, dirt, or unappetizing stemminess we found in the first hay roll.\u00a0 It has also been chicken-approved by those ladies who refuse to use nest boxes.\u00a0 Poultry handbooks will say that chickens require private, quiet, and darkened areas for laying their eggs.\u00a0 Guess that means Stellaluna is a bit of a showboat.<\/p>\n Speaking of showboating,\u00a0 someone in the brooder room has been testing his crow.\u00a0 Apparently not all those Silkie chicks were pullets.\u00a0 Look out, Thunder<\/a>.\u00a0 This little guy might be putting you to the test in the future!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n