Sunday, April 19, 2009

The SUN!

New baby #1 - the buck kid. Today is his 4th day and he is so glad to be out in the sun stretching his legs and springing about!
New goat kid #2... awwww, she's tinkling! How cute is that? (Thanks Furry Husband for that picture!) Such a pretty doe kid.


Thought this was cute - since the sun is shining today, we opened windows. First Itty Bitty Opal Kitty jumped up to watch the birds at the feeders outside, then Mojo and finally Robinella Buzzer-bomb....

Some of our chickens. We have 7 but think 2 are roosters... there are 2 that are bigger then the others, they have bigger combs and Furry Husband caught them giving each other the whale eye in a stand-off for a few seconds just like in the old timey Warner Bros. cartoons.
I'm holding out that maybe they are just amazon hens... we won't keep two roos. We'll take one back to the feedstore where they will sell him to someone wanting a rooster.

Furry Husband built this "chicken tractor"... the idea being it's small enough to be mobile so you can move it all around and let the chicks scratch and dig and fertilize all over vs. one spot. Course sometimes we let them out to roam, eat bugs and other general chickie things too.
.
Chickens can be a bit hard on anything you WANT to be there... they raid gardens and eat grass seed and dig up mulch around plants or trees scattering it to kingdom come. It's nice to have a pen to keep them contained.
.
When we had chickens before? We had them all out in our yard to scratch and peck and eat bugs. One of our cats caught a mouse... let it go and before the mouse could run away, one of our hens came swooping in and swallowed the mouse whole!! Tho' she ran around with the mouse's hind legs and tail sticking out of her beak for a while while the other hens chased her trying to steal away the prized snack. Gross.
.
They are complete little carnivores. I could definitely see the connection scientists say is evident between dinosaurs and birds after that. Don't ever drop dead of a heart attack in a chicken pen...
Split Pea Soup is enjoying the sunshine too!

2 comments:

Kelley said...

Very nice pictures of the new babies!!!! She is a pretty one. Is she a keeper?

LOVED the chicken/mouse story... yet another reason I'm not that hip on the chickens. : ) But I do love their eggs... and meat....

Shanster said...

Maybe... we will keep Spot's doe kid because she is our best bred doe and I want to keep her line. Since we have Chocolate and Rosie who is a daughter of Chocolate... I have a young doe from each of girls to step in line.

Furry likes Rosie and I like Chocolate so I don't know if we'll sell either of them as a milker... if we did, I could keep the black and white doe kid.

Having kids is the hardest part about owning goats...so many decisions to make and you hope the ones you can't keep go to a good home!