Friday, May 18

Hello,

We got our 60 or so chicks yesterday. They are mostly layers but there's some white rock. We've heard it's supposed to rain tonight and maybe hail. Today we did a whole bunch of different things, fixed the door between the goats and the rest of the barn, made the grain container on the milk stand better, cleaned up around the house, weeded some of the garden, and in the afernoon David and I went for a boat ride on the lake. We saw someone working on the lake shore of our neighbor's cabin area with a bobcat. Mom and Andrew went to town this afternoon and got a whole bunch of groceries. We have one of our new chicks that doesn't look real good. One leg is bent out from under it.

Just an update,

Peter

Chicks, geese, and piglets

Hello again,

Our chicks have been hatching pretty good. We've had two rotten eggs explode in the incubator. Kind of a mess. We have gotten two piglets now too. Here's some pictures:

We have hatched about 20 chicks and have only lost a couple before they hatched. We have saved ourselfs a bunch of money by hatching our own Buff Orpingtons.

Here's the piglets. One was 22 lbs and the other 20 lbs. We payed a dollar per pound for them.
There is the one that is kind of orange.
Our geese have been setting on a nest for a while now so we should see some goslings some time soon.
Samson likes to keep a close eye on the piglets. They got out twice today because they broke the wire that we put up to keep small pigs in.

That's all,

Peter

How to make a small camp stove

This is a video of me explaining how to make a small campstove out of things you might have laying around.

Peter

New Kid

Hi there,

Just yesterday we got another set of twins. One of those died. We have 9 goats now but almost had ten. We found it laying on the ground, not able to stand up. We brought it inside and gave it milk with an eye dropper and got it to swallow but it didn't last through the night. We were planning to have one of us get up every hour but when Jonathan (scheduled to get up at 11:00 pm) found it, it was already dead.

This is the now kid that survived. It is doing pretty well.

Here's a better picture.

This is the mother.

Here is what I made for the turkeys to live in. I built it yesterday

There is a perch that runs across the middle of the pen that also holds the sides from bowing out.

Here is some chicks we hatched from the incubator. They are the first and second chicks we hatched.

This is the third one. We have hatched almost seven now. Two are still cracking open their shells.

Here is the setup. We keep the older ones and the younger ones separate so they won't peck each other. Each bucket has food and water in it.


Here's a picture of some of our ducks. I think we lost our male goose somewhere. He hasn't been around lately.

I guess that's enough for now,

Peter