Weeds and Boris.

The good news is Boris is doing very well, he's about fully healed at this point and only occasionally stumbles. The bad news is, he's the only chicken we have left. Between sickness, fatigue, etc, etc, we didn't get the electric fence up yet, and what was probably a fox again came and took all of our laying hens leaving Boris uninjured, but panicked. The Lady of the House found him panting and hiding in the shadow of the house, he's not well enough to fight a fox again, though the fact that the fox left him indicates that most likely it's the same fox that didn't want to tangle again, and left him alone. I feel really crappy about myself because I let the fact that I've been very tired lately get in the way of setting up the electronetting, and lost 4 hens because of it. The first one, happens. The other four are entirely because I didn't do my job. We're fortunate to be in a situation where we will be able to get more laying hens that are being de-acquisitioned from a friend's flock. Before we do so though, I'm getting that fence installed and running because I don't want to do this again. On the up side though, the world is turning green.

Boris's stand.

This has been an eventful weekend, and at least some of what got done is what we were aiming to get done. One of our two seedling trays has been started, and I'm really happy about that. The reason I haven't gotten the second one started yet is because I don't have enough things that need started yet! I mean, I could start amaranth inside, and probably will start some in the second tray, but I realized we are basically out of tomato seeds after I failed to properly save tomato seeds last year. Yay for toddler sleep induced haze! 

That said, there are other things we got work done on, and things that happened that were a huge surprise.

Misidentified predator, and garden successes.

Well, it turns out we've been blaming the wrong predator for at least some of our chicken deaths. Yesterday the Lady of the House  heard the turkeys giving alarm calls, and saw they were up the tree. When she looked out in the back yard, there, in broad daylight was a first year coyote. She didn't get a photo of it as she was busy chasing it off, but fortunately neither of the turkeys, nor the remaining chicken were killed. We're going to have to do some strong behavioral remediation for this coyote, because as interesting as they are, we Really don't want them around the homestead when we have livestock. At beast they'll scare the rabbits into not wanting to breed (gee, maybe that's why they haven't been accepting breeding) and at worst they can do a Lot of damage as is clearly evidenced by the nearly exterminated chicken flock. At least we know what we're dealing with because a coyote is very different from a fox. Fortunately they're smart enough to be easy to scare, and lazy enough to not want to go to much trouble. But now, let's talk about the garden successes.

Chickens: Good news and bad news.

Extra post for the day because a lot happened in the last 24 hours, and I figured I'd make a quick update. Last night the Lady of the House heard peeping from inside some of the eggs under our Australorp. I heard it this morning, and when I checked in a few of the eggs this morning they have outward facing cracking on them. You can see one of them bottom right of the picture Above. I'm not sure how many will hatch, and how many of them that hatch will survive, but we shall see. We already had one egg that didn't make it, and the photo of that and some less good news will be below the cut. The one that didn't make it will be at the bottom of the post so you know where it is, and can read the rest first.

Dawn's kits, and still waiting.

Dawn gave birth Tueseday night, and when I got home I reached in and felt around. I felt a couple moving kits, and Dawn was unhappy with what I was doing so I left her alone, and checked again in the morning. When I checked then I found one cold and dead normal kit, one dead kit with the back of it's head missing and the brain showing, and two normal healthy kits. The rabbit with the part of the skull has anencephaly which means a large part of the brain or skull missing. The Lady of the House promptly did some research, and found that there may be some correlation between tomato blight, and the kinds of birth problems we've been seeing. There is some correlation between feeding alkaline plants and the kind of problems that we've been having so we want to do more research into that.

Developing personality in the growing out hutch

Life has been continuing with only slight changes for us. We moved the babies to the growing out hutch finally, which they definitely seem to enjoy. It is a really joyful thing for the Lady of the House and I to watch the babies realize I can run, and jump, and do all of these fun things.