What's Up at WRLG
FARM BLOG
FROM THE FARMERS POINT OF VIEW
Spring is trying to arrive....but is still finding it difficult to get a foothold. I found this pot of what I believe are daffodils in the debris I was cleaning up in the front yard. The fact that it survived is amazing to me, between all the disruption of the siding and windows being replaced last fall...I am lucky to have anything growing in the raised beds next to the house. Here is the middle of the month update on the farm: 11 of the Sexy girl laying hens were killed by a weasel three weeks ago and only the sexy girl who was in the basement survived. She was in the basement as she had been sick and is just now improved enough that she can venture outside. With the loss of the 11 sexy girls I have ordered 20 more laying chicks...they are Rhode Island Reds which I have had before. But with the mass death I have had to rethink my chicken house plans. I decided that the old chicken house where the sexy girls were was not secure...obviously, needed to be replaced. But because any structure on the ground will become a haven for rats unless the ground is dug out and filled with stone...otherwise it won't be rat or weasel proof. I talked to my friend Patrick who did all the work on the house and barn and asked him if he could build me a chicken trailer,like the one I bought in 2018. He said yes!!!!!!!!! The new chicks will arrive at the beginning of April and will live in a brooder in the basement for at least a month. Hopefully the trailer will be done by then and I can put the new chicks in there, otherwise I will need to move them into a bigger brooder in the first barn till their new home is ready. Update # 2: Sparkle the donkey is doing much better! I think after December of 2022 when she had abscesses in her front hooves and was severely under weight we began to feed her low carb senior horse food (along with treating the abscesses) . Unfortunately I didn't notice the signs of the lamintitis even after her weight was back to normal. So I kept feeding her the same amount of grain and that really caused the problem as carbohydrates can cause the inflammation in her hooves to get worse. Now she only gets a taste of her grain and she is feeling much more like her old sparkle self! So, as my parent's would say"onward and upward"....we will hopefully march into spring and not have a late freeze like last year. Comments are closed.
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Mary Will Sussman Archives
December 2024
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