Catching up a little

Life has gotten a bit crazy with school this week, so I have gotten a bit behind on posting here. So I am making one giant post to catch up.

On Sunday we watched (and helped a little) as the goat from our goat share program gave birth to two beautiful kids! In case you don't know what a goat share program is: it is where you buy an interest in a herd of goats and pay a monthly maintenance fee to the goat keeper to take care of your goat. Since you technically own an interest in the herd you can pick up fresh, unpasteurized milk from the goat you own. Plus, it is a great way to stick your toes in the water and see what it really takes to own a goat so if you ever decide you want to bring one home you would have a clue what to do with it. Our goat(named Iris)is part of the herd at Turtle Haven Dairy Goats in northern Brown County in southern Indiana (about 10-15 miles from our place) and it has been a great experience! You can watch the birth here:



The chickens have had an exciting time this week as well! It has gotten even colder (last night it got down to 4 degrees!) so they are still in the house. But now they are too big (and they FLY!) for the tub so I made a brood pen for them in the spare bedroom we have been using for storage. Here are some videos of the move to the new pen and stuff. Enjoy! They moved into their new digs on Wednesday, so they are 10 days old at that point (now they are 12 days old..)



"Chick cam" is such a fun way to see their world! (you can find the first one in an earlier blog) If I had the time and resources I would love to stream a 24/7 chick cam to this blog, but don't look for it any time soon. Until then, little videos like this will have to do...



We switched to red lights because it allows the chicks to rest better and also keeps the incidents of picking (which can lead to cannibalism) down. They also sleep for longer periods this way.



In this video you can see the setup I came up with. I describe what I did in the video. So far it is working well. I hope it stays that way because this is as good as it gets for them until they can move to their permanent home in the barn once the weather gets warm enough. We love the little poof balls, but not enough to let them run wild throughout the entire house (although those who know us would believe we would do that!!!)