One of the (thousand) times I was walking the puppy today, I was pretty sure I heard what sounded like an eggaluyah. But since I had the (naughty) puppy with me, I didn’t want to take her into the coop to find out, so I just told Frank. I was right. (I speak chicken!) The hens are finally laying again. We’ve done everything we can think of. They have a light in the coop. They have high-protein pellets. They have scratch grains. I bought soybean meal last week, and have been feeding that free-feed. Who knows what actually did the trick, but whew. Store bought eggs suck! Even when we pay extra for organic and cage-free, they don’t compare to the eggs our girls lay.
Keith (our hay guy) brought over a hundred bales today. We were completely out, and had to go by his place last night for enough to feed this morning before he showed up. The good news was that he showed up today. The bad news is that he is out of hay. It’s only December. He has a lead on a couple of people who have hay, but for far more than he was charging, and different size bales. I’m not sure what we are going to do. Hay is officially Frank’s problem. (la la la la I can’t hear you.)
The pigs are still bored. I think they are jealous of the new puppy. Bjarki hasn’t played with them in two days, and leaving them a ball to play with by themselves is a very poor substitute. We picked up bagels last night when we were in town, so they’ll get a bit of a treat for the next few days, but still. They are bored, and made it clear to me all day long. Bored now. Let me out! They have completely broken the heater thing in their water trough, so it doesn’t hold water now. Frank had to bring out buckets of water for them several times during the day, and I’m not sure how he’s going to solve that problem either. (Water — not my job!)
I think everyone knows that we have (yet another) snow storm on the way. Sue and his crew tried to convince me that we do grain in the evenings too, not just the morning. (Uh, no. But nice try!) I had just put all of their hay in their pen, but they kept calling out to me, wanting something, probably grain. We need to look into hay extender pellets and alfalfa pellets, we think. We give just a bare minimum of All Stock to them each morning. With hay in short supply, we certainly can’t increase grain safely, and don’t want that because it’s not good for them, no matter what they say. I think I will get some beat pulp too — Minx loves that. I also think we need to try to get the hay feeders set up in each pen. Last year, we had three of them running, so we could free-feed hay, and it worked out really well. Oh, yeah. Hay in short supply. (la la la la not my problem)
The cutest puppies in all the world were just so darn cute today. When Keith brought over the hay, I was inside making breakfast, and Frank had both pups out with him, and I was watching through the window. Bjarki was such a good boy — went up to Keith, didn’t jump, ears back all submissive, tail wagging … and Keith walked right past him to the new puppy, and Bjarki just collapsed in dejectedness. Poor pup! It reminds me so much of when I had Valerie, when Jeremy was just 2-1/2 years old. So many of the same issues. I’m making sure to give Bjarki lots of attention and praise too. Deeza is so cute, though, just like Valerie was, so wow is it tough to navigate these waters! They are doing so well together.