Well our flock is growing! One of our hens came down with a case of broodiness. Instead of trying to coax her out of it, I just let her sit on some eggs. I gave her 10 eggs to start but at one point I counted 17(!!!!) eggs under her. I candled them and they were all at different stages of growth so I only let her keep the biggest ones. And a few days ago we gained 4 fluffy little chicks!
We recently had a second hen become broody, too. She has a bunch of eggs under her and I need to candle them and make sure she is only sitting on those that are at the same developmental stage.
Even with these broody girls not laying, we still have a lot of eggs to sell!
While our chicken flock is growing, our sheep are growing bigger every day!! One of them is getting a little mean, hopefully he doesn’t get too bad and we can let him fill out some more before we process him. We are still mulling over the kind of ram we would like to buy. The sheep we have are Targee cross, and we are thinking about going with a Rambouillet ram. {Though, personally I would love sheep that are not just white.) A wind storm took out our sheep tractor. It ended up being a fairly easy fix replacing one caster. While we were fixing the wheel, we took the time to patch up the holes the sheep could get through at the same time.
All good things must come to an end. While it was rough with the bugs, birds, and irrigation issues, we did get plenty of corn for our personal use. We ate A LOT of corn. We also canned a lot and froze some still on the ears to have this winter. We were able to sell some to people who didn’t mind needing to break the ends off. But we are very optimistic about next year. We have learned other organic methods of pest control, and are discussing new irrigation strategies.
This winter we are finding ways to relax and enjoy our hobbies, potentially market them. We are hoping to start selling homemade baked goods and homemade hand soap. These are both things we enjoy doing. This will give us an opportunity to do our hobbies more often.
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