Chicken Time

I know I'm jumping over the vacation (those posts are in draft mode), but I had to update with the culmination of much of our summer's work--the chickens are in the coop!!

Although the weather was sprinkly, we selected this morning as our chicken day, and we weren't going to let a little rain (and mud) stop us from finishing our task!

First up--kittens. Awww, they've grown so much! We were actually (don't tell the kids) tempted to take one home with us. Why? You might ask. Well, the answer is voles. Yes, adorable little field mice-like creatures have moved under our barn and are the leading cause of the disappearance of our veggies--poof, gone!! I'll update more on that later. However, we thought perhaps a cat might help keep this population under control . . . to be continued . . .

Our arrival time coincided with feeding time for two orphaned baby calves. Maybe not orphaned . . . but abandoned? Anyway, these two little fellows (I assume they were fellows?) get a gigantic bottle every morning. I think S said they were two months old? It is good experience for our boys to try bottle feeding an animal--it's a little different than feeding a baby :) As you can see, they started out with some very knowledgeable helpers to get them started on their calf feeding career. Too cute!




Just out for a walk with the cows . . . as you do . . . :) So our next challenge was finding the birds we'd previously tagged, convincing them they wanted to be caught, cutting the tags off of their legs, and inserting them into our giant dog kennel.



There was quite a line of capturers--fishing net and all--heading for those birds! It really didn't take much time at all with all that help. At that point, we discovered we'd only originally tagged six chickens . . . we upped that number to seven to match our nesting boxes, and into the kennel they went! The birds weren't exactly happy, but they rode contentedly (at least they lived) back to our house on the luggage carrier attached to the hitch of our old van.

Before we left, we learned that two more newborn calves, twins, were due to arrive at S's farm that same morning. We stuck around to "help" her build the pen to contain them. She was very kind and kept assigning us tasks so we'd feel like farm hands. Again--good for the kids! Graysen mostly went crazy driving with S's middle daughter. I heard her say, "I'm way more fun to ride with than my sister. Watch this!" and off they went zooming across the lawn. In the distance I hear the echo of Graysen's, "That was awesome!!" Even Buck got a fun ride by S's elementary school-aged, golf cart driving crew. They had to pick up a pallet for the swinging door to the calf pen from another part of the property, so off he went with his tiny blonde driver at the wheel :)

After the posts were dropped in place, the fencing wired up the middle, and the pallets in place to block the big cows, Brennen and Caelan helped throw down bedding from a fresh hay bale. Soon after, the calves arrived--still sporting their umbilical cords from the day before. It's amazing that a 75-lb. baby can look so little! Let alone two; that poor mama cow :)




Finally, we decided we'd better get home and get lunch rolling. We ended up needing to go to the feed store for a few more items, but the transfer from kennel to coop went fairly smoothly (with Brennen's help :) The feathered girls will be locked in the coop for two days to acclimate, then they'll be allowed to play in their fenced in yard. Hopefully they'll begin laying eggs soon!


























Oh and did I mention that S and her three girls sent us home with TONS more veggies? So many in fact, one of our stops was to get some . . . ahem . . . canning supplies! What?! Me? Us? Can? Well, S makes it all sound so simple, I guess we'll give it a whirl! That would make us better farmers after all ;)

It's a good thing we took out the seat just in case we needed to put the chickens in the kennel in the van. We ended up needing that open space for all our veggies!!