Here We Grow Again

It's been a little over a month since my last post but in that tiny amount of time, we have been busy little bees. For starters, we tried our hand at building a chicken coop. What began as a modest structure for three hens, thanks to the lack of written plans, ended up a McMansion for like 13. Turns out, when you don't actually know what you're doing it's pretty easy to build the complete opposite of what you had in mind. Still, it's been a month now and we still have all six gals, so ostentatious eye sore or no, we consider it a success (all our neighbors swore we would lose at least half by now to predators).

A bit less exciting would be the story of how I almost killed all six of our goats a few weeks back. I chalk it up to still being a city slicker, though in truth it was probably due to my alter-ego, Short Cut Sally. I was in a hurry come feeding time and assumed that the 50 pound bag on the ground was the same 50 pound bag of goat feed I bought the day before. Having never used this kind of feed before, even though the electric green hue of the pellets looked a bit alarming to me, I reasoned that I just bought a 50 pound bag of feed, and here at my feet was a 50 pound bag of what looked like feed. Besides the unnatural color, I should have been tipped off by the refusal of the three small goats to eat said pellets. And I admit that when I noticed this I actually said aloud to myself, "Hmm. I wonder why they aren't eating it". The problem with most animals is that they trust us, which means that even when their jackass owner feeds them rat poisoning, they'll eventually eat it. Which they did. Let me say for the record that I did not purchase this poison. I think it's hideous and anything that causes death by internal bleeding should be outlawed, unless of course it's used on people who abuse children or animals. No, it just so happened that the feed was in the same barn as my dad's ground squirrel poison. And Short Cut Sally didn't stop to check the bag. She poisoned all of her goats instead. To make a long story short, only one of the goats got seriously sick, and that was terrifying and I definitely learned my lesson, but in the end, everyone survived. I can't even imagine what I would do with six dead goats. Those things are not small.

The last addition to our little farm family is the Blue Heeler lying next to me right now. Jack found him a week ago in an industrial part of town and we've put up flyers, posted on Craig's List, and reported him to the pound but so far no one has claimed him. We're pretty sure he belonged to a homeless person because he is so well-behaved and docile (unlike our other two banshees/dogs). He is so incredible, in fact, that we considered starting a business called, "Homeless Guy Dog Training." But in all seriousness most people are scared of homeless guys, so we decided against it.
Here is his picture. We named him Kevin. He is perfect in every way except when he pees on the rug. And when he bites us.