This week on the farm

We started the week with the discovery of why the swamp cooler hose suddenly keeps getting leaks. George has been chewing on it.

George as a day-old. He now weighs between 200 and 300 pounds.

He managed to chew it completly in half. So we have had to add water with a hose all week. Thankfully it has been a few degrees cooler this week than last week.

Then two of the rabbits got out. Still don't know how they did it. They are ones heading for the butcher. Jim caught them ok and we made an interesting discovery. These are genteler than past "bunnies" have been. Our Pure Red Satin Buck died last year so we bought his grandson off of the young man who does our butchering for us. This young buck is an escape artist, which is the only reason he was still alive for us (We traded a doe for butchering services who our friend bred to some other buck. This buck got out of the pen on butcher day for his litter mates and so survived.) Past bunnies would have fought much harder than these two did. Once they were in hand, these little bucks just quieted down.

So, Red Satins are beautiful but high strung and harder to handle. This fits with my memory of French Lops (a gentle breed) that I raised as a child.

We have had three broody hens. This week two of the eggs hatched, so we now have two fluffy chicks :-)

From the color of one of the chicks, one hen laid the egg (The Plymouth Rock or the Lace Wing Wyndott), another brooded them (Buff Orpington), and a third is raising them (another Buff Orpington). Hillary was wrong; it doesn't take a village to raise a child. It takes a village to raise a chicken!

Actually, the broody hen is now mothering them too. So those two poor chicks have two mothers bossing them around.

The cow is overdue to calve. With this heat and my sympathy for how she feels we have been letting her graze in the main yard every day. This way she can go to the coolest part of the property when the heat gets too bad. It also means she is decimating our hay stack.

After supper Tuesday a neighbor came into our yard and informed us our cow had just strolled past his house. We hadn't got around to shutting the gate after Hubby got home or to putting her back in her pen. She hasn't been acting the least bit interested in doing anything but eating hay or visiting with the rabbits (the cool spot). Who knew she would suddenly get an adventurous streak?

She made it almost to the end of the block. The children walked down and headed her off. She just turned around and went back home. Almost trotted. Goofy cow.

Me and Joy (19) milking

We can't wait for her to calve. We are really missing the milk, butter and yogurt. We also really don't like this buying both hay and milk! Gets expensive!

Joy, however, has informed me I am not allowed to milk until after Baby is born. As you can see in the picture, Rosie is a short cow with a broken (low hanging) udder. I am afraid I can't get down that low without help and getting back up after milking would be nearly impossible. Plus, though Rosie is the gentlest cow I have ever met, she is large livestock. If she were to be startled for some reason, I couldn't possible move fast enough to get out of the way.

So the kids will be doing the milking for a while:-(

That is, if she ever actually calves.

She was due July 27.

Yeah, yeah, I know. "A due date is not an experation date. It means baby can come two weeks either direction."

It's still hard to wait :-P