Down on the Farm this week

Wow - it's been an eventful week for us on the farm.


1) I went out to do the chicken chores last Wednesday and found a poor hen in the hen house being tortured and picked on by a couple of the others. She was curled up in a ball to protect herself from the pecking. Every time I would open the door, the bullies would scatter. When I'd close the door (and peek through the hole), they'd return to poke, peck and pull on her. I separated her and put her into a cage, gave her food and water, and hoped she'd recover.

Here she is here:




Well, she didn't recover. When B.Rube came home the next day, she had deteriorated further and he did the humane job of ending her misery. One chicken down.

I have no idea why the others were picking on her. I wonder if she was injured or sick already. You know, the natural order of things.....


2) On that same sunny day, I finally let the sheep out in the pasture. Just for the day.
When I opened the gate, they all just BOLTED for the open field....





and they ate and ate and ate and ate, until they could hardly move. They made their own way back to their winter mudpit, barely, and collapsed in a heap.







3) The next day, we discovered that one of our ewe lambs had a huge lump on her neck. At first, I thought it was a milk goiter (caused by excessive milk from mom), but when we felt it, it was super hard. So, we worried that it was a disease called CL, common in sheep and goats, and very contagious once the lump opens up. B.Rube took her to the auction on Saturday morning and sold her. One lamb down.


4) Our baby bunnies are out of their nest, finally - after almost 3 weeks - and hopping all around the cage with their mom. There are 6 of them. We just bought a big rabbit hutch from Craigslist this week and will be separating the boys from the girls in the next week or so.


5) B.Rube has been looking for a used horse trailer for a while now. They're expensive and hard to come by. He wants the trailer to be able to transport our animals to auction, the pigs to the slaughter house (and maybe the donkey to birthday parties... ).

Here's the horse trailer...