I'm just sayin'.......It's a little windy!

I know that I posted this picture earlier, when we were moving the chicken barns, but I wanted to point out my big barn in the background, with the green doors. It is a nice steel building, although I have always hated the green doors, it is very sturdy and large and one of the newer (relatively speaking) barns on the property.

Well, it got a little windy on Thursday.

The winds were howling most of the morning, and continued to intensify as the day wore on. Rain was coming down in buckets, dumping 2 inches of rain with more to come.

I heard an unfamiliar sound while I was doing dishes, so I looked out the window to see the barn doors starting to bow in the wind. By the time I ran out to see if I could somehow secure them, they were already loose from their tracks and starting to let go, I tried to see if there was some way that I could save them, but I was no match for the heavy doors and the strong winds that were pulling them in and out. The horses were right near this barn so all I could do was run the horses into their barn to get them out of harms way and stay there, trying to keep them calm while listening to the sound of cracking and tearing wood and steel.

On the ground, in the right bottom corner of this picture, is one of the massive steel doors that are (were) on the east side of the barn. The other is flapping happily in the "breeze".


On the south side (where I am standing to take this picture) the doors started ripping off and then decided to do a little flip and come to a rest on the roof. Doors have no place on a roof!Unfortunately this is the barn that all the big chickens were hanging out in until their own barn is renovated, so after it got dark and the chickens were roosting in the dry part of the barn, I had to go and do some chicken wrangling, catching them all up while they were sleepy and moving them to another barn.....one that had some doors.

Although things got pretty scary for a while, once things calmed down we were able to get a better look at the damage, and it looks as though we may be able to salvage the doors ( the green must go though), we will need to replace some bracing and obviously the tracks and rollers are no longer useful.....also there is a little matter of removing them from the roof.

I'm just sayin' it was windy.

More chickie pics

The chicks that I ordered from Farm & Fleet came this morning, healthy and happy. I couldn't keep all of this cuteness to myself, so I wanted to share more pictures. The purple on their heads is just the hatchery's way of marking them for Farm & Fleet to keep customers orders straight. Luckily they were not much smaller than the first batch of chicks, so I was able to mix them together without any problems.

Here are the Barred Rocks chicks......or baby penguins....whatever.

These are the Salmon Faverolles.

Faverolles are very friendly, they lay tinted eggs, and lay pretty well even during the winter months.There is something a little odd about them though.

If you are freaked out by chicken feet, I know a lot of people are, I am going to give you the opportunity to look away.....

wait.......

wait......

Don't look.

They have an extra toe. Fun huh? Well I told you not to look!

In sheepy news: bellies (and bags) are progressing nicely. We still have at least 2 1/2 weeks until the earliest possible due date.

Willow is likely to be one of the first ewes to lamb.

"Do you have to take pictures of everything"?

The chickens are moving!

Since my chicken flock is growing exponentially, I had to reconfigure my poultry accommodations. I have always been bothered by the fact that my original chicken barn was in the front part of the property, because it just didn't look like it belonged there and was very inconveniently set up. With all of my new chicks coming, I will have to renovate a second chicken barn and utilize it for the new girls. I had an area behind the sheep barn that I thought would make a great place for a "chicken village". It could be fenced with a nice size "run" area with a gate to let them out into the pasture for bug patrol. The only problem was that the prospective 'village' area was devoid of any chicken buildings. Lucky for me I have neighbors with lots of 'man toys' and some time on their hands before planting starts.

So if a building is not where you want it, well you just pick it up and move it!

This building has worked pretty well, but we are going to add more ventilation and redo the floor.....forklifts and an old wooden floor....not such a good match.

This smaller building needs new wood siding, some insulation, and probably a couple of windows, but it is still in pretty good shape.

And voila (my very french Canadian father is going to get mad at me for not putting the proper accent on voila) New chicken village established!

Hopefully the weather will be more cooperative in the next couple of weeks so that we can work on the buildings and get the chickens settled back in. For now the "big girls" have the run of our 54x72 foot barn and the baby girls are in the nursery in the garage, but the babies won't be able to stay in there long. I am hoping to do weekly photo updates so you can see how amazingly fast chicks grow.....of course, that is until the lambs start coming, then you can expect to see a lot of lambie pictures.

Accidental chicken overdose!

I was expecting my order of chickens to arrive today from Murray McMurray. The delivery date that they gave me was for today, but I was prepared even if they arrived early on Sunday. What, you ask? The United States postal service doesn't deliver on Sunday! Correct you are, but last time we ordered chicks we were also expecting a Monday delivery, so I felt safe going ahead with my plans to be in Wisconsin that weekend picking up sheep from Nancy Larsen. Sunday morning, on the way to Nancy's, I got a call from my husband, who was a mite panicked, telling me that the post office had called and wanted the chicks picked up. He was panicked because he had no idea what to do with a box of little peepers. After a bit of long distance instruction, he carried out his duties as a chicken nanny like a real trooper, and everyone was fine and healthy when I got back.
I was ready this time though. I had my baby pool all disinfected, filled with pine shavings, heat lamp at the appropriate distance, waterer was ready to be filled with sugar water and electrolytes, chick starter feed had been purchased. Ha! They won't catch me off guard on Sunday!

Soooo, Saturday evening as I was just getting ready to head up to bed (9:30- that's late in Iowa), our phone rang. When I picked up the phone a voice said (with a chorus of peeps in the background), "This is the Milan Illinois postal sorting station, I have a box of chicks here...would you like to come and get them?". Good thing my husband is a good sport, it's about a half an hour to the postal station. As we drove to the station, I couldn't help but wonder how many other middle aged couples were driving to a post office to pick up chicks (not that kind) on a Saturday night for fun. We know how to party.

This is how the little darlings came to us.

This is a Speckled Sussex chick....no names yet.

Above is a Blue Laced Red Wyandotte.

Rhode Island Red (above). This little girl with the fancy hairdo is my sister's Silver Laced Polish chick...she is going to be an uppity city girl....Don't tell, she's not supposed to have chickens in town!Another Blue Laced Red.

In all I ended up with 15 chicks from this hatchery....the reason I specify from this hatchery is because I have more coming. Being the completely right-brained individual that I am, I have zero math skills, coupled with the fact that I love colors and variety, I went a bit overboard picking chickens and didn't add up the fruits of my ordering frenzy until after the fact. I have 10 more coming on Wednesday that I ordered through Farm & Fleet (Cackle Hatchery), 9 more from Ideal Hatchery in May (don't judge me, I had to get those, they lay the chocolate colored eggs and I don't have any of those). I also am on a waiting list for a few others..only five..but they may not come through. So do the math if you want, but it is a bunch of chickens to add to the 25 that I already have.
My next post will probably be about how we spent the day on Sunday preparing my new "chicken village".

"Boy, this being a baby gig is exhausting"!

"You think you're tired"!

It's a shearing miracle!

We had an appointment with our shearer for this coming Sunday, so when I got a call yesterday from my shearer at 3:30 wanting to know if he could come after work and shear, as much as I hated the thought of scrambling to catch everyone up and dragging the boys by their horns(literally) from their pasture in the back up to the ewe barn in the front.......I couldn't pass up an opportunity to shear earlier than I expected, especially when it was a beautiful day and fleeces were dry. Since Gary was out of town I enlisted the help of my sister, who was kind enough to come directly from work to help (apologies to her husband who apparently missed out on his pot roast and mashed potato supper because his lovely wife was helping me).

Rocky was the first victim...er....vounteer.

This is our shearer Wayne with Rocky. Rockmiester was very cooperative, and as I have mentioned numerous times, he has wonderful fleece. I was happy to see that his fleece was pretty clean considering the long winter we've had. BTW, are those Zubaz, Wayne?

" This is so humiliating".

This is the "inside" of Rocky's fleece....which now belongs to Elizabeth B. in Michigan.

For those of you who have not seen a sheep sheared, it pretty much comes off in one big piece.. of course the fibers are all individual...but they kind of hang out together....so it's not really one big piece, you get the idea. This one belongs to Diego...or did.

Yes sir, yes sir 15 bags full.

Almost all of these fleeces will be making the trip down to Abi's fiber studio, so that someone (Abi) who knows what the heck she is doing can process it all for me.

Her are some of the girls all nakeded up. I piled tons of straw in their barn (and in the boys barn too) since we ended up with rain and colder temps tonight.

Yeah...I am fairly confident that the girls are pregnant...call it intuition.
As expected, my Ag gulmoget yearling is several shades lighter :(. Although still an enjoyable color, I really liked his dark lamb fleece....not sure about those wonky horns though...boys! And why do their heads look ginormous after they are sheared?


In other news.........

Emma is happy to report that she has a new Jolly Ball.


My neighbor, that I buy hay from, was nice enough to hang on to this pretty 4th cutting alfalfa for me so that the ewes would have some good stuff before my pastures come in. I get very excited about nice hay....especially if I am lucky enough to get it at the end of winter....for $3.50 a bale.
"I did NOT like Wayne at all".