{"id":7891,"date":"2013-02-24T15:25:05","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T22:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=7891"},"modified":"2013-03-12T08:03:03","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T15:03:03","slug":"slimming-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=7891","title":{"rendered":"Slimming Down."},"content":{"rendered":"

Nope.\u00a0 Not about weight loss.\u00a0 Surprise, surprise.<\/p>\n

But even if we aren’t trimming calories, we are cutting back on the chores.\u00a0 It’s always fun to have new projects and new additions.\u00a0 But after a while, you have so many things going on that the daily feeding and watering creeps up from 15-20 minutes to 30-45 minutes.\u00a0 When you have to stop at the barnyard gate, picturing all the separate pens in your head and reviewing whether or not everyone got grain and fresh water before you can go inside, it’s a real drag.<\/p>\n

So it was a relief to let the Welsummer rooster and hens out of the back pen where they’d been confined, laying purebred Welsummer eggs for me.<\/p>\n

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And Thunder and his Silkie girls got out of their pen, too.\u00a0 Which is good.\u00a0 Because one of the hens is no longer laying as she is trying go broody.<\/p>\n

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Now the Silkies and the Welsummers are back with the rest of the free range flock.\u00a0 No more need for laying pellets and feed troughs in the big barn.\u00a0 No more need to rinse and refill water buckets or gravity waterers in pens.\u00a0 Just one big free ranging flock that gets a few handfuls of scratch each day and has an automatic waterer in the chicken coop.\u00a0 Easy peasy.<\/p>\n

Of course, all that extra effort was worth it.\u00a0 We set 56 Welsummer eggs and 51 Silkie eggs into the incubators.<\/p>\n

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Incubators. The ultimate in home decor.\u00a0 A must-have conversation piece for the dining room.<\/p>\n

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Chicks are due on March 17th, people.\u00a0 Easter chicks!<\/p>\n

There’s no special care needed in the kidding barn, either.\u00a0 You remember, of course, that the piglets have been moved to the garden<\/a>.\u00a0 Since they managed to turn their pen into this….<\/p>\n

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….in just 5 days, we moved them to a new spot in the garden.\u00a0 We also doubled the size of their pen and figured out a way to move it that did not<\/em><\/strong> involve loose piglets.\u00a0 Since they have plenty of fresh forage now, they won’t need any extra feed for a week or so.<\/p>\n

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Although they greatly enjoyed the scraps I brought home from work yesterday.\u00a0 Thanks to BF for all the yummies!<\/p>\n

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I’m bringing some fresh spinach to work for you in exchange for the scraps.\u00a0 Fair trade.\u00a0 The system that worked before government subsidies and big agriculture.\u00a0 What’s old is new again, people!<\/p>\n

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But the piglets aren’t the only ones out of the kidding barn.\u00a0 Charlotte and her kid, Cassie, are running with the rest of the goats so we don’t need to feed and water them separately either. \u00a0 Charlotte turned out to be a completely competent mother—-she doesn’t allow anyone to hassle her kid, she’s a great nurser, and she staked out a nice private, warm, fluffy spot by the hay roll to bed down each night.<\/p>\n

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Tonight the chores were back down to a manageable 15 minutes.\u00a0 Which means I’m losing right where it counts.\u00a0 As a matter of fact my barn BMI looks so good, I believe I’ll have time for $5 movie matinee on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Life is good, people.\u00a0 Life is good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nope.\u00a0 Not about weight loss.\u00a0 Surprise, surprise. But even if we aren’t trimming calories, we are cutting back on the chores.\u00a0 It’s always fun to have new projects and new additions.\u00a0 But after a while, you have so many things going on that the daily feeding and watering creeps up from 15-20 minutes to 30-45 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7891"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7970,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7891\/revisions\/7970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}