Saturday Chores

This started out to be a cold morning. I had one duck egg frozen right to the ground. I spent some time whacking chunks of ice out of water troughs. It is funny to watch the sheep try to drink from a frozen trough. They try to put their faces into the water as usual, bump their noses & then try licking. When I break up ice on a trough I usually throw it to the side so the water doesn't refreeze as quickly as if I leave the ice floating around inside. Of course, the ducks don't care how cold the water is - they jump right in for a swim as soon as I walk away. Fortunately, many of our troughs are tall enough that the ducks can't jump in so everyone has fresh drinking water.

Once the sun came out everyone was happy. This bull had a ball tearing up a hay bale & throwing it on his back. There is a cow simply lounging on the other side of the bale eating rather than trying to impress us with her strength & enthusiasm.

I cleaned a bit in the chicken house, carefully shoveling chicken floor dirt into a large bin that will get hauled to the compost pile. Even though the birds are never contained in the chicken house, they love to congregate there, especially on windy days. They leave lots of nice organics on the floor.

I turned two compost piles as well as a new raised bed. I was pleased to see worms working everywhere. Fortunately the chickens were no where around to see those worms. They usually stay close to me when I work as sometimes I will flip over an old log or loose board. They go nuts scratching for beetles & worms. This time the chickens were busy going through some old hay I'd raked out of the barn.

Pig Update: I wanted to move the larger pigs to a different home. Since I was the only one here, I lined up a wall of a wheelbarrow, a feed barrel, a trash can & a sheet of wood paneling. I managed to lure the pigs with a bucket of scrambled eggs. The makeshift wall was enough to keep them from getting distracted & running from me instead of too their new digs. I had pulled their feed & water troughs out for a good washing so instead had placed an empty paper feed sack to pour their eggs on. They slurped up their eggs & then played a serious game of keep-away with the feed sack. It rattled & ripped as one would grab it & run. The other would grab it, get it out of his friend's mouth & then shake it until it tore. I pulled my phone out of my pocket to video this stunt. I lost track of one of the pigs as I knelt down for a good picture. Before I knew it, he had me by the knee. He did not break the skin but did leave a nice red reminder not to get distracted by their antics. They had the bag shredded in less time than it took me to wash their troughs!