Livestock and Deadstock
It's been a rough farm
week.
- one of the hives was pronounced
officially dead, which stinks. E still needs to take it apart and see if we can
figure out why - dead queen? mites? foulbrood? Hopefully it's not disease and we
can dump our new package of Russians in there to clean it out and feed off of
the big honey supply the hive laid up before they kicked the bucket. We've never
lost a hive before, so we're bummed. I'm glad we ordered new bees for this
spring!
- one of the goats had an
abscess, and it looks for all the world like CL, which is a chronic thing she
could give her kids if we let her raise them. Once the abscess heals, we'll get
her tested, and if she tests positive we'll have to bottle raise her kids. At
least she'll be kidding in the summer, which makes bottle raising them easier.
I'm thinking of finding her a new home in a CL-Positive herd if our other doe
tests negative - I don't want to risk her getting infected. If they both test
positive - who knows!!!!
- the chicken
deaths seem to have stopped - we were losing one every few days for the past two
weeks and probably lost six or seven total. Respiratory thing probably. and
their immune systems are suffering from the awful weather keeping them confined
to the barn... the americaunas were hit the hardest as they seem to be the least
hardy birds we keep. Everyone else is happy and healthy and running around now,
but we will probably need to build up our flock numbers again. I have to remind
myself we can never order ENOUGH
chicks...
In better news, the pigs were
moved/wrestled into the second to last garden we need turned over, and are
happily digging up all the nasty deep taproots in there. My second quilt of the
year is chugging along nicely - I'm quilting it by hand so I can do it while I
watch tv at night. All three Nigerians are headed to thier new home this weekend
- it'll be strange to have so few goats. I think the last time we had two was a
couple of years ago on the rented farm, when we had just Daisy and Darwin, a
pair of pygmies.
We just wrapped up
our taxes tonight, and we've been lounging non-stop on our new-to-us big comfy
couch! I'll be back with pictures once the temperatures come up again - right
now it's in and out to do the chores and that's it. :)
.
Posted: Mon - March 5, 2007 at 09:41 PM