Chick Check, Week Six (and goat luv'n)

The Cornish are getting close to butchering size, although it does seem that their growing spurt has slowed down a bit.  It's hard to tell now that they are in the larger enclosure.

Pics of chicks at two days and three weeks.

And now, at six weeks:

They have gone though a fifty-pound bag of crumbles in exactly seven days.  I've also been supplementing their crumbles with any whey I have left over from my weekly cheese-making, usually about a gallon.  It's not much, but better than a sharp stick in the eye. 

On the goat front, this past Wednesday we came home from a morning homeschooling outing to a very vocal, very anxious little goat.  Annette was trotting around the goat pen, tail-a-flagging and yelling to let us know that under no circumstance was she going to let us leave without a visit to our buck, Pan.  Who, if you haven't already heard me say it like a hundred times already, stinks to unimanginable degrees.  The Army could use him as chemical warfare.

It was a pretty uneventful event though.  I went inside to take off my "goin' out" clothes to don an old pair of jeans, ratty long-sleeve shirt, work gloves and muck boots.  Put Annette on a lead to take her to the red light district and we were in there for maybe five minutes.  She got what she wanted and when she was satisfied, made it perfectly clear she wanted to go back to her pen and out we went.  Pan was busy pissing on himself so I got her out without having to wrestle Pan to keep him in his pen.  I didn't have a single thread of clothing or even a glove touch Pan so I was spared the buck-stench.  If only all breedings could be this easy.

Nettie was bred last month, Annette this past week, now all I have to do is find a meat-type goat buck for Ishtar and I'll be finished with breeding for the year.  If I can't find one for stud, I may (I can hear Paul yelling already) see if there are any Boers at the sale barn, use him and then take him back and hopefully get him sold again.  Although that may change once Paul has a chance to read this blog post.