Birds

I love birds! I've been enjoying all of them this spring. I took some pictures.

 Robin - a very common bird around here.

Bluejays - not so common. These are some of my favorites. Blue is my favorite color, and I love their black markings.

Male pheasant - I rarely see these, but sometimes I hear them.

This is a cardinal - sorry the picture's so fuzzy :-( It has some black markings on the face and a red crest. These are pretty rare, but I've seen 4 this spring.

Downy woodpecker

        We had a redwinged blackbird in our trees yesterday. It was doing its mating dance. It would chirp a bit, then it would squawk and fan out all its feathers. It was interesting.

This is my life list - list of birds I've seen

1/13/10                                                                        Sparrow                                            

1/27/10                                                                        Junco

4/2/10                                                                          Robin

4/5/10                                                                          Canadian Goose

4/?/10                                                                          Downy Woodpecker

4/?/10                                                                          Chicken

4/13/10                                                                        Blue Jay

4/19/10                                                                        Pelican

4/19/10                                                                        Red Winged Blackbird

5/5/10                                                                          Eastern Bluebird

5/5/10                                                                          Goldfinch

5/6/10                                                                          Pheasant

5/7/10                                                                          Crow

5/11/10                                                                        Oriole

5/12/10                                                                        Trumpeter Swan or Egret

5/15/10                                                                        Tree Sparrow

9/4/10                                                                          Bufflehead or something

12/4/10                                                                        Male Pheasant

12/10/10                                                                      Pileated Woodpecker

4/14/11                                                                        Bald Eagle   

3/?/11                                                                          Owl

5/3/11                                                                          Sandpiper

5/11/11                                                                        Brown-Headed Cowbird

5/11/11                                                                        Rose-Breasted Grosbeak

5/12/11                                                                        Wood Ducks, Male, Female

5/27/11                                                                        Mourning Dove

6/11/11                                                                        Swallow

6/11/11                                                                        House Wren

6/15/11                                                                        Flicker

April-June, 2011                                                         Cardinal

Almost summer, 2011                                                 Great Blue Heron

Early summer, 2011                                                    House Finch

Summer                                                                       Cedar Waxwing

7/11/11                                                                        Belted Kingfisher
4/?/12                                                                          Purple Finch

Chicks 3

Now our chicks are almost grown up.

This hen adopted all 70 chicks! Sometimes I see them under her wings! She is VERY protective. She sure took it out on one of our cats the other day when she snuck up one the chicks with obvious motives.

This is our exotic chicken.

Two roosters fighting

Baby Goats!!! :-)

One of our goats had babies last Friday.

The mamma (Daisy) stands by their pen almost every minute. She licks and talks to them. We seperated them because we want to milk Daisy. If the kids suck her even once we won't ever be able to put them in the same pen again. They will want to suck even if they're older. We feed them with bottles. 

 This one's a male. We don't take too much thought into naming our bucks. I just call him Bozo, but B calls him Jack and L calls him Bucky.

 This one's Rosie.

This one goat has been very curious about the babies. She even jumped into their pen a few times.

 We have been feeding these two milk as well as water now.

These are our two newest additions to our herd, Cappy and Lizzie.

 

 Lizzie - I adopted and named this one. We used to bottle feed her, but her mother (Lady) has fairly small teats and was a pain to milk, so we're letting her suck. She's still very tame, though, and lets me hold her.

If I stick out my chin and make sucking noise she sucks (and chews) on my chin. I've found she's getting some teeth :-S

Cappy - B and L named this one. He was just born in this photo.

We've made a couple changes to the kid pen. The kids started jumping out of it and sucking on their mamma, so we made it taller. We also put a little hay manger in it so they can gradually start eating hay.

The Death of the Dishwasher

        Our dishwasher broke down in July of 2011. We decided to do without it.  As a result of the tragic death, there were some changes.
        Of course, we had to start washing dishes by hand. As there are six people in the family we made teams. B and L (youngest two) wash after breakfast. A and I wash after lunch. We alternate drying/washing every day; we both prefer drying. Mom and Dad wash after supper. Mom washes and Dad drys while mostly A and I put away leftovers and wash counters and sometimes make Dad's lunch for the next day. B and L usually somehow drift away after the table is cleared :-) Somtimes there are some dishes to wash between meals. Someone usually does that for 'before supper prep.' work.
  
 Pros of washing by hand:

• Money is saved: instead of putting it toward fixing/running the dishwasher we can put it toward things such as our mortgage.
• We have more visiting time together. That could be good or bad: depends on what mood I'm in :-)
• It's good to experience something different and it makes me thankful for what I do have; usually I would take the dishwasher for granted. I used to hate loading the dishwasher; now I am the dishwasher.

Cons:

• It cuts into time that I could be doing something else, such as finishing school. In the evening we don't have as much free time together.
• It's a little more work, but that doesn't hurt; it's probably good.

Conclusion: I think it is good that the dishwasher broke down, even if it doesn't seem so good sometimes.

Chicks 2

Here are our Rhode Island Red chicks. We have 24 of them. (We have 45 Dark Cornish.)
We had to seperate the two breeds. The Rhode Islands were looking for mamas and crowding under the Dark Cornish, who didn't take that very well. There was some pecking going on.

 Rhode Island Reds on left side of box

Both chick breeds are already developing wing/tail feathers!

P.S. I'm extremely lazy about getting my posts posted, so now all the chicks are out in the chicken coop in a closed off section. They also have lots of adult feathers. The exotic chick looks like it has major hat hair!!!

Skirt 2

Another skirt I made (with the addition of my new boots, of course ;-)

Chicks!

We got some new chicks! They are the Dark Cornish breed. The top picture is of our free exotic chick. When it grows up it will probably have a HUGE tuft of hair over it's whole face so that you can hardly see it's eyes! :-) We are expecting to get some Rhode Island Reds soon, too. I'll have to make a second post.