I meant winter ! We have a couple of mornings of hard frost and I mean completely white fields , alpacas huddled round hay feeders and chickens who won't come out - eerily reminiscent of last year , please not as bad again!
Conversely the days have been warm and sunny , is the grass still growing ? should we start Vit A D & E injections now or wait a month ? so many things to think about . Everyone is looking very well , and I am pleased with the overall herd health going into the winter . We have 3 pregnancies , and lots of girls who are desperate to be mated , as DH will testify , but I am holding off until the spring , to allow some a break , but mainly to align our breeding programme and get us back on track for spring cria in 2012 , it is just too cold up here on the hills to contemplate cria later than August at the very outside .
Soap box over !
Amazingly I lost 2 chickens on Sat , and neither to a fox - the trap continues to catch lots of things , mainly the dog and a few chickens , but no foxes - anyway , one died of old age , fair enough , the second was taken by a bird of prey ! I saw it happen and I was gobbsmacked!
Seriously thinking of buying more chickens , mainly because my egg customers are beginning to complain that my supply is not ample enough, I can see us being overrun soon.
2 comments:
Speaking of birds of prey, when we came home with our 5 week old Lab puppy just over a year ago, we were playing with him in the back yard when we saw a large hawk circling. We got him inside in a hurry. He's about 80 pounds now and much too big for a bird to carry off.
I imagine it was sad to see the bird fly off with your chicken.
Glad to hear the egg business is going well.
I miss frost. I know it's cold, but here it's been too bloody hot the past few days (we're talking high 90s in old money).
And I'm a bit concerned about DH's role in the matings - what have you got the poor man doing?
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