Wow this blogathon is almost over. I sure had fun participating in it. I would have posted earlier this week but until yesterday I only had 2 furry friends on my farm. Now we have 125 feathered friends. Wow, this is an exciting time for us, we have never had chickens before, they sure are some kind of cute.
Our two dogs are Bandit and Robber.
Bandit is my son’s dog that he got from the SPCA when my son was 8 (he’s 15 now). He is very obedient and would do anything for a treat. He had been abused before he came to us so he is a little wary of men and small children stress him out so he tries to avoid them if they come around. But if he can’t avoid them, he just tries to ender the torment.
Robber is my daughter’s dog, and we picked him up at a farmers market. Earlier that day my husband had said if we had another dog we could name him Robber, little did he know what he was setting himself up for. Willow had been wanting a puppy for a while and free was a good price. Now I wouldn’t go as far as to saw he is a stupid dog, but lets just say he is not motivated. He is very much a patient, loving, take me as I am because nothing you can do will make me change kind of dog. He loves everyone equally and doesn’t take it personally if you want to stick your fingers up his nose or in his eye balls, he is the kind of dog you could lay on top of and he wouldn’t mind at all.
Both dogs are great hunters, and they love to catch mice. They have also got a squirrel, a muscrat and a couple birds since we moved here. I was a little worried about the chicks but they seem to know that they belong to us and so they are good so far.
Now to the chickies.
Wow they are sweet.
We brought them home at around 3 pm and by 6pm we almost had our first fatality. I went in to check on them and saw a little one all wet lying on its side not moving. In fact I had picked it up and was going to throw it in the burn barrel when my son walked past and asked me what I was doing, I opened my hand to show him the chick and its beak moved. So we took her inside and wrapped her up, and rubbed at her for a couple of hours and she went from being virtually unresponsive to chirping her head off. When she finally went to stand up her one leg was not working, and she kept falling over. I was worried that we had brought her back to life only to have to kill her. But little by little she get better at her movements and all of a sudden she jumped right out of the box we had her in , so I took her out and put her in with the rest of the chicks.
She is good as new. So thankfully we still have 125 chickie babies!
I feel like a mother hen though. I could hardly sleep because I was dreaming that the coop caught fire, then that they froze, then that the heat lamps were to hot and the cooked. I got up this morning and looked out and I couldn’t see the light on in the coop so I rushed out to see, but it was on, it was just to hard to see because it was daylight. I don’t know if I can handle the stress!! Worrying about my kids is hard enough now I feel like I have 125 more children to keep safe.
Do I ever feel like a farmer now!!!!
Cultivate your “Inner Farm Girl” Visit: www.maryjanesfarm.org