Yesterday morning I noticed Calpernia acting a bit anti social, she wouldn't even get up for treats. After some frantic googling and texting my farm friend I concluded that lambing has begun. The thing about that is that it can often take a couple days between the time it begins until we have babies. So all day yesterday I didn't leave, set alarms at two hour intervals to check on her. No babies. Then came bedtime.
I "slept" on the couch because I didn't want to wake Dylan up every two hours when I went to check on Calps.
I have ten baby chicks set up on the dining room table, as cute as the little babies are they do not create any kind of nice sleeping environment. They peep non stop, and quite loudly sometimes if their siblings have upset them. So when I say I "slept" on the couch mostly I mean I layed on the couch listening to chicks and googling what to do should lambing not go smoothly.
Earlier yesterday morning I went out to collect eggs from my hens and discovered that my older hens had pecked one of the younger hens nearly to death, poor girl was barely moving and covered in blood. I googled what to do, most things suggested I kill her, but I was home without Dylan and I don't have the heart for that (clearly I'm not a real farmer yet). Instead I cleaned her up, disinfected her and mashed up some chicken feed and water and fed it to her. I'm happy to report that although I'm not entirely sure if she'll make it she is now up and moving and separated from those mean old granny hens.
Calpernia still hasn't produced any babies. Im both excitedly awaiting their arrival and hoping she never has them so that I never have to deal with any possible lambing problems. Shoving my hand up a sheeps vagina is really not something I ever imagined myself having to be prepared for. So fingers crossed I don't have to. It also may be the one activity I actually can't do with my long witch nails.
Sometime between four am and six am I had two hens escape, and my dog got into a fight with some kind of creature. So there I am, six am looking like some kind of sleep deprived mud witch running around chasing chickens. I was only able to get one back into the coop, so I guess now I have a free range hen. I checked all the chickens thinking maybe that's where all the blood on Rocky came from, it wasn't. So somewhere there's an animal that clearly lost a fight with my gentle giant, who is obviously not so gentle anymore.
Today we plan to manually drive a whole lot of twelve foot fence posts into the middle of our main pasture to seperate the yaks from the Highland cows we just bought. Get y'all selves ready for some "hairy coos".
I'm wishing I had worked out more in my previous life. Remember the days when I wasn't constantly muddy and smelling of poop? Those were nice times. For the first few weeks, when I had to run into town I'd shower, change, do my hair etc., now I've run out of time and shits to give, I go into town in my muck boots all covered in mud and pick up whatever weird new thing I've discovered I need for the critters. That's just who I am this week.
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