We may be in our 20's but we are definitely homesteaders to the bone. We just were late to the party on realizing that. But thankfully the latest trends are not what I am talking about. Although in the homestead side, it looks like we may be with the Silkie chickens. Ive seen a rise in their popularity. Any who that's also not what I meant! I'm apparently easily distracted today but we are going to just dive in and maybe this will work out.
There has been a trend happening a lot lately at our house and Im not going to lie when I say this trend needs to stop! haha. The animals are breaking out! Meaning I am running way more than I have ever thought. But these are not some nice easy strolls. They are the ones where you are panicking and praying you can keep pushing through!
I told you a little bit ago how we had the great chicken escape. Where a whole flock got out and thankfully our neighbors were able to help get them back into the coop. That was probably our biggest amount of animals loose at one time. I will say that was a great challenge but the biggest one happened a few weeks ago. Our female goat got loose!
Snowball our female goat that we currently have managed to pull a fast one on me, Mandy. I tried to fill up her water by carrying in her bucket that I had just filled. I thought I had shut the door but it swung back open and out she went. After a solid 20ish minutes (Im truly guessing on that time as I had no idea what time of day it started and ended) we finally got her back into her pen. Heres the thing though she has the biggest set of horns on any of our goats. She has the biggest amount of weight on her too. Snowball is truly the biggest goat in all plus we had just bred her so I am pretty sure she was pregnant. My daughter helped set up the blocks while I went in for the grab. This has been one of the shorter versions I have said so far on this story.
These last few weeks though we have been having many chickens getting loose from one pen and one pen only. The bachelor pad. Its this group where we have a lot of roosters together because in a few months we will have females of the same type of chickens ready to have a coop with them. First off we love hatching eggs but also want a rooster with each group for protection. We have hawks, opossums, raccoons, and more. A rooster will easily help just try to fight off any predators. Any way we have a whole flock called the bachelor pad. These boys have decided to fly up and out of the pen maybe 1-2 chickens a week. So not too bad but in reality we don't want to have any chickens out. The thing I am noticing a lot though is that everyone gets out when its only Mandy home. When Jeremy is at work it seems that everyone wants to get out to play. When he is home they are fine to stay in the coop most of the time. Isn't that how it always works?
To fix this issue we finally decided to clip the chickens wings. I went outside to check everyone had feed and was doing alright when I noticed that one of our roosters were out and walking. But these guys are really interesting. They don't try to leave, they just literally walk around outside of the coop but stay close. I managed to get him back into the coop and finally clipped everyone's wings.
I am about to go make my afternoon rounds so we will have to wait and see if that plan worked. I am not sure I am ready to run after anyone else today! Im getting a tad tired! haha I know very well that I will need to continue to run after animals but this week I can have a slow week!