Spice, one of our dairy does was due to kid on Tuesday.  So since we both work we induced labor on Friday afternoon. So the waiting game started. After the shot she would kid within  24 to 36 hours.  Through the night every 2 hours we would take turns checking on her. Each time she would just look at you and seem to ask "what do you want? " and go back to sleep. Dawn broke on Saturday and still no kids in sight, morning turned to afternoon then til evening and still nothing. We knew we were in for a long night. We did our evening chores and we could see she was thinking about it.  Around midnight I went out to the barn and sat with her. I could tell she was getting ready but how soon? About 1:30 as I watched her falling to sleep I gave up and went to bed. Michelle would check at 3:30. At 3:35 my phone rang, I jumped up with a start. Michelle called, it was time. An hour later Spice kidded and gave us two nice does. Another 2 hours and we finally got some sleep. Until the next one...

Little Brown, one of our ducks now knows there is no place like home. Little Brown had a full set of flight feathers. She had never offered to fly off property. Well last Sunday, during a snow storm, she took an unauthorized flight. When we went out to feed them, she was no where to be found. We thought she would turn up the next day. But days passed and we gave her up as missing. This made us very sad since she is our best setter for eggs, hatching 90% or better.

Well Friday morning, as Michelle started down the driveway to leave for school, there was Little Brown. Sitting at the bottom of the driveway. Michelle quickly backed up and escorted her into the coop area. We were so surprised to see her as she had to endured sub zero temps while she was gone.  When I go home that afternoon she was in the doorway of coop 1. Slowly I made my way there hoping to close the door and trap her there till dark, so we could trim her wings.  She would have none of that, she opened her wings and tried to take off. I managed to catch her, now I needed to trim her wings. This is a job usually done by two people, I got her trimmed and back into the coop area. She is now a "BD", (Bummed Duck) since her flying days are over.

Just before a resent cold snap we decided to move the geese back with the bucks so that the geese would have shelter from the cold and the wind. To that end we moved their heated water bucket to the bucks area. While hooking up the power from the bucket, Peter accidentally left the door open the the control panel in the buck barn. The panel houses the controls for the lights, battery charging and the radio. After we finished hooking it all up we left knowing the geese would be fine in the area.  While leaving the area, Peter noticed that he forgot to put the radio back on for the bucks. I told him to just leave it till evening chores.

It is now -9, dark and the wind is howling!  We get out to the bucks barn and try to turn on the lights. The word here is "try to". The bucks were busy, first they ate the sheet of paper with the battery info on it. In the picture you can see what was left. Then they chewed the wires for the radio and the lights. Thankfully they stopped before they got to the solar controller. We think they got a shock from the battery. Peter tries to get into the tractor barn to get tools to fix it. The locks were frozen solid and the torch would not stay lit. Goat on a stick was sounding very good by now. 45 minutes later, Peter got the lights working. The radio would have to wait for replacement parts before it would work again. The moral of this story is goats love wires and NEVER leave anything open!