And if you ask those who know me I’m also a dollar short. Due to the late night Friday I completely spaced out last night and forgot to write this blog post.
So I sit here listening to the wind outside. The weatherstation shows wind gusts at 54 mph . I don’t mind all of the rain, we have been needing more precipitation, but this wind makes any attempt to work outside miserable!
This week I noticed that I was getting less milk from Skeeter than normal and then her milk output took a dramatic drop. Where I was getting almost 2 quarts per day, I am now getting less than 1/2 quart per day. It took me longer than it should have to realize that the feed was the problem. Last fall I bought 3/4 ton bales of hay and the first 2+ bales were good hay, not too much grass, good alfalfa, maybe a few weeds, but overall good hay. The last 1/3rd of the last bale was lots of stems, powdered leaves, dirt and rocks. Not the good stuff that milk is made from.
I did consult with the Vet. and she came to the same conclusion, so I opened a new bale and I hope to reverse the damage done by the bad feed. I guess that just like in humans, good food makes you feel and perform better. So kids…. DON’T EAT JUNK FOOD!
I was in the goat shelter last night checking water levels and if they needed more hay, when I saw something on the floor that looked like a plastic ribbon. I am always finding things in the pen that the goats should not eat and I regularly pick up broken glass and plastic and metal bits. This was none of the above. This turned out to be a snake that got crushed and dried inside the hay bale. I was going to take a picture of it and post it here, but either the cats found it and thought I got them a treat, or the wind just blew it away.
I am also trying to discover if Rusty is stealing milk from Skeeter and I need to separate him from the others. That will mean either putting him in with the big boys, or fixing the old chicken run to contain him and his mama. I took the gate down and moved it to plug a hole in the boys fence last year, so I need to find or build a new gate and fix the fence where Rascal broke out. But not in this wind!
Egg count for the week of 2/9/2014 thru 2/15/2014:
- Eggs gathered 64
- 7 dozen sold
- 6 cartons filled