Wendigo makes a good welcome mat as she sleeps just outside the door to the house. Brandon has been expanding our stone pathway. Some day we may have enough stones that we could walk to the barn or the car without tip-toeing through the mud puddles. Some day.
I think Wendigo's favorite person is our mail lady, Terry. Terry brings dog biscuits, and she is friends with all the dogs on her route. Wendigo gets so excited when she spies Terry's jeep, that she shakes all over and drools. I've seen Terry give Wendigo an entire jar of treats. Probably because she's afraid to hold any back with such a drooly giant pouncing on her!
If Wendi is our welcome mat, that must make Puck the entry rug as he lays just inside the door.
Puck, can I wipe my feet on your fur? No?
Sometime during the summer, Brandon and I used four long hog panels, and created a small fence in the brush, for the goats. I thought that we might be able to move the four panels around and concentrate the goats where we wanted them to eat. It worked too - for about two hours, then the goats escaped. Sigh. Moving the panels was a pain in the neck too, so that experiment didn't last very long.
The small fenced in area soon grew up in weeds and brush goat food. I decided to give it another try recently, and used some zip ties to strengthen the corners, then lead the goats, with a promise of sunflower seeds, back inside and tied the panels closed.
Wendigo patrolled the perimeter of the fence for a while, then left the goats on their own so she could take a nap on her lounge chair. Shouldn't she be on guard? It's a good thing she makes a pretty welcome mat.
The goats were nervous to be left alone out there in the weeds, but stayed busy munching everything in sight. After about four hours, there was hardly a leaf left! Their bellies were sticking out so far they looked pregnant as they waddled back to their barn to be put to bed. I was encouraged, but still not sure that the heavy hog panels are the best thing for me to use. Walking the goats with Peaches on a leash is the easiest way for me to let them eat some weeds, but I don't have the time or patience to let them eat for hours. We are years away from having the whole place fenced in with woven wire. My goat day dreams are starting to have multi strands of electric wire.
We butchered four roosters on Sunday. Some of these roosters were hatched here, under one of these yellow hens. They were small, and hardly had any fat on their organs. It's hard to know if my hens are too fat, so it's nice to get a peak inside some of the flock members. I don't think I'm feeding them too much. Those giant meat babies in the brooder are going through bags of chick food faster than any birds I've ever raised. They better taste delicious!
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