Last night we had another set of twins born to Prudence. Once again a black and white combo (it’s like a bunch of Oreo cookies around here honestly!). They were born very quickly as I was doing chores. I walked by her on the way in and noticed that she was off by herself in an oddball corner then when I was done with chores I went back by and there were two new little lambs with her. Seriously, less than half an hour passed when they were born.
Both little rams were up and going right away and everyone has already bonded nicely. Which is good as it’s starting to get a little crazy in the pen with all the lambs running around.
The lambs have already formed a gang and are roughhousing all around the pen. There’s chase (which usually elicits a round of chain reaction pronging as well as running), practice headbutting, king of the mountain, and random jumping.
I was able to get some better photos of the little ewe born to Katherine on Monday morning.
She’s a very chill wee lass who seems to exude the demeanor of, “Yeah, I got this,” at the ripe old age of twelve hours.
Currently, chores consist of checking food and water for all livestock, checking for babies, and checking on the pullets. They are in the coop with the rest of the hens, but in their own little enclosure. Don’t worry, they have plenty of space, they just all pushed to one side because I changed out their water and that was very scary for them.
They are past the terrible stage of looking like baby dinosaurs and now just look like the little hens that they are. The pullets are fully feathered and are starting to fly out of their enclosure when one of them is feeling saucy. They will start to do that more in the next week, and I will probably even open a crack in the enclosure just so that they can start exploring around the coop. I didn’t get Murray McMurray chicks this year as I was late to order and I wasn’t sure that I could get someone to pick them up. Then I went into our local feed store and they had 2-3 week old pullets for 25% off, then 50% off. They already had feathers and were past the super delicate phase of life, so I got them and put them straight into the coop with a heat lamp. As you can see, they are doing just fine.
The rest of the chicken flock has been having a party laying eggs. I’ve been getting between forty and fifty eggs a day for the past month or so. I have around 50 hens that are of laying age, so just under an egg a day per lady. This was the haul from last night.
Forty-four eggs. That’s a lot of quiche!
Sarah Jane Humke 