Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Laboring Day

So.  Did you all enjoy your "Day off"?  You know.  Labor Day.  When (some) people don't have to go to work.  When (some) people go to the lake and picnics or just sit home and laze about all day.

 
Silly humans.  You know that rarely happens.  Even if you're not "working", you're probably cooking a feast or packing a picnic or doing something or other requiring laborious tasks so you can enjoy that "Day Off".  Seems we got it all backwards, hugh?
 
Well, we were up with the rest of you on Labor Day.  Paul was brush hogging the entire "long weekend", and Rhiannon and I busied ourselves with school work, barn chores and house chores.  But at least we were able to stick around the homestead.
 
Don, the FFA Boer goat we brought back home, is doing much better now.  He's still really skinny, but his bottle jaw is gone, his eyes are much clearer and he seems to be more active.  We had him in a quarantine pen but finally moved him back in with the rest of the herd a few days ago.  Of course, he's getting butted and pushed around, but he's holding his own and learning who to avoid and who he can snuggle up to.  Rhiannon has been loving on him something extra, but it does make me kind'a sad.  Rhiannon knows that he's a butcher animal, and I remind her of that on an almost daily basis, but why, why, WHY are the nicest goats the ones we're going to eat?!?  Is it just the Universe punishing me for being a carnivore?  Oh, you're going to kill that goat??  Well then, let's make sure he's the cutest / nicest one then so you feel like complete shit when you put a bullet in his head.  Oh, and this goat over here, the one you've spent countless hours with, trying to get her to be tame & gentle so you can milk her?  Let's give her a total piss-on-you attitude.
 
Rhiannon says she loves her goats, but she also
says that she really, REALLY loves BBQ goat ribs.
We also cleaned out the smaller pen this weekend and got it ready.  Ready for what, you ask?  For CHICKS, of course!  I placed an order (late, imagine that) for some Creepy Meats and some replacement layers.  A year & a half ago I bought 20 (or so) Rhode Island Reds to replace our dwindling layer flock and I haven't been very happy with them.  They are noticeably smaller than my Barred Rocks as are their eggs.  And the fact that one, or more, of them are eating eggs is ticking me off.  So in my order of chicks, I got ten more Barred Rocks and ten Black Australorps, two of my favorites & IMO, best of the brown egg layers.

The chicks should be here any day now and even after ten years of chicken-raising, I still get excited when they arrive.  Eight weeks from now when I'm cleaning out chicken crap every single day, the tune will change, but until then I will enjoy the little shitting machines balls of fluff.  And post picture after picture of cute chick antics.

3 comments:

  1. We spent the weekend cleaning and working in the garden. Too hot and humid to even grill out. We just chilled at the homestead, at the end of the day. Then our one daughter left, heading back to college.

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  2. Great to hear you're still up to your ears in all the critters on your homestead . . . and will be all the more so as soon as the next batch of 300 chickies arrive. Oh, wait. You said you're only getting 20 layers . . . and how many meat birds?

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  3. Love my barred rocks! They are my favorite chicken. We are planning to get some new ones next year. Or, we are going to put some eggs in the incubator. Not sure which one we are going to do. We have chicken mutts right now, but hey, they do the job.

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