Cages, gardening, goat transfers, power

Since Mama is trying to grow out chicks and ducklings in totes in the garage and those totes are proving inadequate, I took on the project of wrapping a larger rabbit cage we have with wood to make it both easy to access from a standing position and to make it more snake-proof. The issue we have with the rabbit cages we use for chicks is that the doors on those cages do not close in a way that prevents snakes from squeezing into the cage. To remedy that, I built a wooden frame around the cage which included a tighter sealing door to access the cage. Mama was very pleased with the cage once retrofitted and quickly moved the ducklings into that cage - which I placed in the garage. Since that was a success, I used the pattern and built a second such cage from scratch that could be used for the chicks. I was more pleased with that cage that the retrofitted one, but we will use them both. Now the chicks and ducklings both have larger areas to grow while we decide what to do with them in the coming weeks. For now, both cages are in the garage so Mama can tend to them more easily and keep the little ones in a warmer area than either of the coops provide.

Mama and Grandpa worked several hours in the garden Saturday. After I tilled a couple large areas for them, they planted corn in one fairly large area and multiple vegetables in another area. The garden is now full except for an area that has been set aside for corn to be planted in a couple weeks. On the advice of a friend who has a large truck garden, we are spacing out the corn so, if we do get any to harvest, we can have two smaller harvests versus having to deal with all the corn coming at one time. Peas and green beans were also planted and I will need to purchase a couple fencing panels to allow those two plants to climb as they grow. There was some urgency to the planting because the forecast predicted thunderstorms for Sunday afternoon. Those forecasts were accurate and we had almost an inch of rain in a couple hours along with marble sized hail. That gave the garden a thorough soaking. Any watering through this week will have to be done by Grandpa and Mama. I have left the gardening to Grandpa and Mama because when I involve myself in any portion of that labor, Grandpa tends to back away thinking he may offend me by doing things differently than I would. I would not be offended, but in order to keep him in charge of the project, I stay on the sidelines. In truth, he is much better at those labors than I am, so I do not want to discourage his help in any way.

Saturday morning, with the help of Grandma and Grandpa, Mama and I transferred our four nanny goats into the paddock with Midas. I let Mama try to make that transfer her way, using feed attempting to lure the nanny goats across the yard to the buck paddock. That was a “do not attempt this again” type of failure when the nanny goats bolted in all directions after seeing Midas in close proximity. We eventually got them back into their paddock and made the transfer the routine way, by loading them into the back of the truck, driving them over to the other paddock, and offloading them into that area. Midas immediately mounted Dolly. The rest of the nanny’s ran about as if they were in a playground or on vacation.

However, Mama realized that night that she had made a serious mistake. Two of the female goats we placed with Midas were actually his offspring. One was his daughter and the other his granddaughter. Not a good thing to do in any breeding program. So Sunday afternoon, after church, Mama Victoria and I moved those two into the small enclosure beside the buck area. Mama is trying to locate a buck to put with the two of them so they can be bred as soon as possible. We will have to wait to see how that turns out, but she has already drummed up a couple strong leads. We did not put the larger nanny goats back into their normal paddock for two reasons. One, we want to give the bottle babies and six-month-old does time to grow without the larger females bullying them. Second, we want to see if we can get a buck to put with them. Keeping them isolated means we do not have to move them again to do so.

We lost power in the thunderstorms Sunday afternoon. That happened about 4 pm. Mama was outside when the nearby lightning strike and thunderclap happened. It was one of those horrifically loud thunderclaps that make you jump in surprise. It rattled the house, the windows, and our bones. The lightening appears to have struck the substation very near us, putting us and our neighbors in the dark. That is not so much an issue when the ambient temperature is seventy degrees, but it does shut off water to the house since we are relying on a pump in our well to get us that water. Without water, toilets can only be flushed once or twice, depending on the residual amount of water and pressure in the well tank, so it is something we needed to pay attention to. More concerning to Mama was the fact that without power we could not warm the milk to feed our bottle babies.

Mama stayed home from church to wait for the power to comeback on. It was restored to us a little after 7 pm. That made for an interesting evening for Mama, Grandma, Grandpa and Victoria, but we made it through.