MEET THE REST OF THE CAST...

Well, in addition to Becky and I and our five kids, we also have a few critters here on the homestead. After all, we are trying to start a farm. First, you need to meet our two faithful sidekicks, Maverick and Tyler.

   
      Maverick is my two year old black lab. What a great puppy. Becky swears I love him more than I love her. Not more, just different. lol. Anyway, he's pretty good but still can't be trusted out of his cage when we're gone. Can someone say separation anxiety?  And then there is Tyler.

 

He's Becky's Boxer mutt that she rescued from the pound about ten years ago. Holy Smokes! This guy is one mess after another. And what's worse is that he's going deaf and blind and just doesn't care much anymore what he was told to do or not to do. The problem is he's a lover.  Anyone that comes around he is right up in there business trying to get acquainted.

  

Next, is Sugar. She's our bottle lamb that we bought from a friend.  She's two this year.  We have plans of breeding her and starting a small flock but for now she's our pet lamb with an identity crisis.  She thinks she's a chicken.  She has spent quite a bit of time in the yard with the chickens.  Let's move on...

This is a picture of the inside of our brooder house.  I just moved the broilers outside to their portable pen since we are going to be pasturing them Joel Salatin style. We ended up with 38 broilers, 25 Rhode Island Red hens, and 11 Buckeye hens.  I decided to try the Buckeyes since they are said to handle Ohio winters better than other breeds.  We raised some Rhode Island Red hens last year.  We did fairly well with them for first time chicken owners.  We learned quickly that you don't want to keep the hens and multiple roosters together too long.  Our poor hens ended up missing feathers that never did grow back properly. Lesson learned. But here is a picture of them in the first chicken tractor I built. It was much too heavy to move with any kind of ease.  Another lesson learned the new one is much lighter.  Unfortunately we aren't getting too many eggs out of these old girls anymore.  Just great. Especially when they just recalled some 300 million some odd eggs that are linked to over 2000 cases of Salmonella in three states.  You gotta love our industrial food system. 

So in all we have two dogs, one sheep, eleven old hens, eight old roosters, thirty-eight broilers, and thirty-six new hens.  Until the next post....