Ott'a Here

No, I'm not leaving for some wonderful vacation on a island with white sands and fruity drinks bedecked with paper umbrellas.  Heck, I can't leave the homestead for more than 24 hours.  Besides, I don't do fruity drinks; I'm a whiskey kind'a gal.  And given the recent string of 97+ degree weather, I'd be more apt to splurge on an Alaskan cruise than a tropical island.

So even though I haven't been "out", we did have a couple of our livestock get out.  Fortunately for me, it wasn't on accident.

Maypop, the last Boer doeling, left for the FFA barn this past week.  She was not very happy about it either.  Her mother, however, didn't seem to mind that much and as a bonus, I've been able to get her on the stanchion and get some of that milk her kid is no longer drinking.  Now MY kid and I are able to enjoy some fresh milk.

And since the temps have been in the "It's so hot I'm rendering" digits, I had to let the little chickens out of the kidding pen in fear that they would cook into a stew.

They weren't quiet sure what to do when I opened the door, but as soon as the goats saw the open kidding pen, it quickly escalated into a crazed-caprine-stampede, every goat trying to be the first in the pen in hopes that there was bowl full of grain in there (which of course, there wasn't, but that doesn't stop them)  The chickens flew out of there like they were thrown from a catapult.  I  had been hesitant to open the door for fear of them getting pecked to death from the older birds but since we're down to only two roosters (one of them being Twinkle Toes, a gimpy one) it helps a lot; no gang of roosters to chase down all that new chicken booty.

Once they set foot out of the pen, they kind'a huddled together still inside the main barn aisle but soon hopped down to terra firma.  Smaller goats came to check them out, and the chickens hurried under then barn in fear of the small, bouncy ones.

Is it safe to come out??

OMG!  It's one of those bouncy things!!

Run away! Run away!!

All day the chickens popped in and out from under the barn, going a little farther every time and by the end of the day they had found the chicken water bucket and the grain bucket.  Come dusk, they managed to huddle together near their old confines so I simply scooped them up in one fell swoop and put them back in the pen for the night.

I probably won't put them in the main coop for a while in fear that the older hens might pick on them in the close quarters.  Then I'll have to break them of the habit of roosting in the kidding pen and try to get them to voluntarily go into the main coop.

It's a never ending chicken drama here.