Success, weekend updates

Our chicken flock inspection went off without a hitch last week. The inspection team showed up about 9 am and worked through the forty or so chickens in our coops – as well as the quail we had on hand that morning. Mama had to catch each chicken herself because the team was not allowed to touch the birds. Something to do with liability should any of the birds be harmed. Even though I was working from home I was not able to help because of meetings I had to attend that morning. So, it was a bit of a hardship on Mama, but she muddled through and the entire flock we successfully tested by about 10:30. I do not know if we will ever use the certificate to market our birds, but now we are authorized to do so. The ducks were exempt from testing. I am not sure why, but we were relieved to hear that bit of news.

Friday evening, Mama and I met a coworker of mine at her house to see her bourgeoning quail business. Having only been in the business of raising quail for a few months, they now have about three hundred birds in their care. An additional two hundred and fifty eggs are scheduled to hatch mid-week. They have the flock set up with groups of mixed males and females to give them fertilized eggs, large groups of females only just to produce eggs and even larger groups separated by age as the quail rapidly mature. Mama and I bought three mature females to place with a male we had so now we have two cages with a male and three females in each cage. Those six females often produce six to eight eggs per day. It seems that the females are capable of laying more than one egg per day. Too bad we cannot find any chickens that can do that. I would be thrilled if our ducks would lay one egg per female per day, but we count it a blessing when we get more than two eggs per day from our ten hens. We will go back at some point to buy more mature quail, but for now, as we raise the five we hatched, we are full up. So far it looks like we have three or four females in our chicks. Mama is excited about that.

Also on Friday, Leoni came by to visit and to drop off our Little Boy Blue. We negotiated on the purchase of the young buck many months ago but Leoni wanted to show him in the circuit she shows her goats in. As she expected, our Blue Boy did very well taking first place and Grand Champion in his class at three different shows. He was housed with Samuel and Midas in their small pen Friday afternoon. The three bucks got along well instantly. Like they had known each other all along. All our fretting about the butting and shoving that is normal for such an integration simply did not happen. That was a huge relief to Mama. What did happen was that all three bucks immediately began to stink themselves up to compete for the attention of the four female goats in the paddock beside theirs. A wonderful aroma now graces the breezes blowing through our trees.

Saturday morning as Norman started installing a new countertop and sink in our kitchen, l took two of the nanny goats we bought thinking they had been bred, to the goat sale. It has become abundantly clear that none of the four were able to maintain their pregnancies due to the nearly starved condition they were rescued from. Mama and I realized we might take a loss selling the two but the trade off was getting them with a buck to be bred – without any assurance that that would be successful – and feeding them out for another six months while we waited to see if they had any kids or taking the loss on the two just to reduce our headcount. We erred on the side of cutting our losses and in the process did take a loss. We bought the females for $200 each hoping we could get babies from them. That did not happen. We sold the two of them for $266. A net loss of $134 plus four months of feed.  Not too bad, actually. It certainly could have been worse. They were two goats we did not plan on keeping even had they given us offspring.

When I got back from the goat sale I changed and went to church for bus calling. I went with Pastor to visit some of our bus kids then he and I went to look for homes out in the country to see if we could talk to anyone about the Lord. Instead, after stopping at four homes and finding no one home, we were pulling onto the county road and felt the unmistakable sensation of having a flat tire. It did not take up long to change the tire, but Pastor, knowing he was headed to Ada, OK to preach Sunday night, decided it was time to get some new tires on the van. He dropped me back off at the church before he headed to the tire shop.

Back at the farm, I helped Norman pull the old sink counter and cut and install the new countertop. I will have pictures of the finished project later. While Norman was working on hooking up all the appurtenances of the sink, Mama and I left for the church picnic. It is an annual event so lots of our church family look forward to it. The weather was perfect!  After Pastor and I finished cooking all the hot dogs and everyone had taken time to eat, we presented the gift we had voted to purchase for Pastor and Joyce for their twenty-year anniversary serving as Pastor of the church. It was a brand-new Polaris Ranger 4x4 crew cab side-by-side. They were completely stunned by the gift. I was extremely pleased that the entire church had kept the secret until we made the presentation. The look on their faces was well worth it.

It is a gift that will serve them for many years to come.