Thursday, May 21, 2009

Update

Our chickens are doing pretty well free-range. They get let out in the morning and tucked away at dusk everyday. We did have an incident with the neighbor dogs cornering one of the hens a few days ago, but we chased them away and the hen was okay. Other than that, they are doing great. They sure put on the miles everyday wandering the farm. We barely have to feed them chicken feed anymore, since they are foraging for themselves. The farm cats and Maggie are "chicken-proofed" and leave them alone. So far they are still laying their eggs in the nesting boxes and not hiding them on us. We are doing better than we thought keeping up with the egg consumption. With the 4-5 eggs a day, we find ourselves having Brinner more often. (Breakfast for Dinner).
Recently we had the heifers and steers dehorned. We had 8 done and my Dad had about 16 to be done. We moved some of the older heifers to bigger lot and turned them out with a bull. We named him Napoleon. Even with the milking cows gone, this spring has been extra strange for all of us. Usually this time of the year, my parents and we are busy with planting crops. My parents have decided to rent out the cropland to area farmers this year. We don't need all the crops like we used to when we had the dairy cows, and we still have a lot of feed in storage from last year to feed up to our remaining heifers and steers.
The sheep are still waiting to be sheared. Been playing phone tag with the shearers and hopefully soon we can get them sheared and let them out on their pasture.
We planted gourds and melons last weekend and one the goals this weekend is getting the rest of the garden planted.
Zachary is been busy in the wood shop, building a giant arbor bench for my parents.

I think that is all the news. Maybe we should post more often...

3 comments:

Julie said...

Great picture of the chickens! Love it!

Christy said...

Sounds like a good spring so far.

Joe and Christy said...

Cute picture--with a little training you could have a synchronized scratching team!

Christy (the second)