Baby Chick Update

About five weeks old. Those awkward teen age weeks.

Tomorrow is the first day of Spring but the weather man says winter is going to hang on little longer. The Farmer's Almanac, www.almanac.com, says that April and May will be wetter and warmer than usual. I sure hope so. These chicks are getting pretty big and I'm anxious to get them outside. 

 

Aracana chicks week two.  The dark ones kid of remind me of pheasant chicks.

The Aracana chicks are still cute but so much more active then the older ones ever were. They fly around the cage and have a fit every time I change their papers or give them clean water and food - which is twice a day.

 

Between calving, rain storms, snow storms and work I've not had a lot of time to drag the old rabbit hutch out from behind the barn.

 

The whole area behind the barn is covered with those horribly invasive honeysuckle bushes.  At this time of year you can just pull a lot of them out of the ground they are that shallow rooted, but there are plenty of big ones that have to be chopped and  the roots dug out.  Add to that all the fallen branches from dead wild cherry honey locusts and  ash trees that didn't survive the drought and you can see it is quite a project.   The ground is so wet that I can't get the tractor through so its going to be brute force or nothing. Brute force is the watchword of my farm exisitance!

 

Angus bull calves born March 12 and March 14, 2013

And speaking of calving, we had five calves born in five days last week.  All did pretty well except the fifth one.  Angus Heifer 05 gave us a fright calving late Thursday night, a nice bull calf. All seemed well Friday but Saturday he went missing.  The herd came to the barn to eat and the calf wouldn't cross the creek.  Mom was not terribly concerned and doesn't have a lot of milk, which explains to some degree her lack of interest.  He has had a pretty bad week of rain and cold but enough milk to keep him alive. 

 

The Angus have been used to being up on the high back pasture, but tramping forty some acres to find them gets old, so they are now confined to the six acres near the house with barn access. The hope was that they would bed the calves down in the barn at night. Some nights they do and some they don't, even if its raining.  So, yesterday I rebuilt the inside of the barn to give them easier access to the calf pen - an area of clean dry straw that's a little hidy hole for the calves.  The entrance is right inside the big barn door and the calves can sleep warm and dry and safe from cows laying on them. Happily, both calves spent the night in the calf pen, and seem quite content with it now.

 

The other cows and their calves are remaining on the road frontage pastures with good woods for cover. There are two heifers and one bull and so far those calves seem to be doing well.  My AI's cows are due this week, then we should have about a three week break before the rent come.