its a ‘no photo’ day

Today was the first day that we’re trying out the new work schedule. I went in to the office around 10:30 this morning and we attempted to work on the goat shed and pen earlier in the morning. We worked on cleaning it out for about 2 1/2 hours and I totally forgot to take any photos. Had my phone in my pocket and everything. Just never took it out. Not that you haven’t seen this process before, but we had a few new things happen that might have been interesting to share. I’ll just have to give you the breakdown.

We have the three goats now, and those 2 little one’s sure pee a lot! With all of them spending a great deal of time in the shed, due to the monsoon rains or the winds that precede them, that’s a lot of pee in a little shed. So it was really starting to smell and cake up – that’s when you know you really need to change out the straw. So, we set aside this morning to clean out the shed and pick up the wet hay from outside. Ended up taking out two truck loads FULL of the stuff. There’s still more to do on the outside, but when we realized that we didn’t have enough time to get it all done, we focused on the shed and the area directly around their feed station. There’s probably another good truck load that we can get up from the outside. Although~ we’re thinking of moving the 4 nude hens and Vicente (the rooster) over to the goat area. If they would turn the straw on the outside and get the bugs, keep it from matting down, that would be great for the goats, the chickens, and us! We’ll just need to get some help to move the Chickshaw over to that area. It sustained some damage a couple of times in the winds (when it was empty – no chickens were harmed in the damaging of the Chickasaw), so now it doesn’t roll so easily. We’ll see what we can do to make that happen. This was the big project today.

In other chicken news…. Sue found a little chick, from the most recent Red Ranger delivery, that was a bit gimpy this morning. She isolated it immediately, and – as of feeding time, around 3:30 – it looked to be doing quite well. So, she’s thinking of adding it back into that flock tonight. Also, we have another Banty that has gone broody, before we realized it. I candled the eggs and they were well on their way to being chicks, so we’ve decided to let her finish. We’re setting up a condo of broody hens and we’ll add her to the 2nd level tonight. If I remember correctly, there were only four eggs; if they all hatch that will be 10 new banty chickens. We’re not sure the type of chickens the Sister hatched, we’ll have to wait until they get bigger… but those are all our very own littles. Then, as mentioned on an earlier post, we’ll have the Easter Eggers coming later in August. I found out yesterday that Sue ordered an additional four Whiting True Greens, to come along with the eggers. Whiting True Greens were bred by a guy, named Dr. Tom Whiting, who was looking for a specific type and quality of feather for making flies for the fly fishing industry. Who knew? The “true green” part refers to the egg color, but they are really more olive in tone. I still think they are gorgeous! There is also a Whiting True Blue, whose eggs are really a very pretty light blue color. The True Greens are supposed to be prodigious layers with a high food to egg ratio. Sue thought they’d be fun to try, so by next spring we’ll be able to post some interesting egg colors!

That’s it for today; tomorrow and Wednesday are the same ol’ schedule, then Tuesday and Friday we’ll be working on the chestnut orchard – I believe. I’ll let you know when we figure it out. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!

Today’s Weather: Looking at the ol’ weather station, we’ve had a 1/2 inch of rain in the last 24 hours. I think we received most of that this afternoon; Sue said it was absolutely pouring about chores time. Currently we have a 54% chance of rain. It is 71° with 82% humidity. Wind is 3-5 mph out of the southwest. Over night low is predicted to be 66° – high tomorrow around 86°, looks like they’re saying it’s going to be sunny for a few days now. Want to see some really wacky Arizona (fire created) weather phenomenon? Take a look at this “Firenado” that turns into a Waterspout. Taken along the Colorado River.