Homestead Diary, November 10 - 13

11/10/11 - Recd. herbal wormer in mail today and began using it. I first tried easy and sprinkled it on their food. No go, of course.

11/11/11 - New tactic with herbal wormer. I mixed it with water and sucked it up into a syringe, and drenched them. Messy but effective, though Japanzy (my problem child) is still pouting and glaring.

Sam found the first batch of chicken eggs from our new girls in a window well this morning. Wahoo! There were four. Going to look for some wooden eggs for the nest boxes while running errands. Thinking about just locking the girls in the coop until they begin using the boxes, but that will make for a very lonely little renegade hen. We have one out of three Silver Spangled Hamburgs left, but like the others she refuses to go into the coop at night. She will, however, sneak in during the day to eat and drink.

11/12/11 - 3rd try at finding a dosage method for the wormer. Mixed powdered herbs with a bit of rolled oats and added molasses until I had "crumbles". They ate it all up. Nice, pleasant experience that I will be repeating tomorrow. Ordered new microscope for us to use. Can't wait to let the kids look at some stuff, and will be using it to do fecals next weekend if it comes in time. Perfect science experiment for the kids.
Couldn't find wooden eggs (or any other) in town, so purchased some air dry modeling compound and made eggs from that. When dry will put in nest boxes. Still getting eggs in the window well. :)

11/13/11 - got the rest of the hay last night. 15 more bales of timothy/orchard mix. It's beautiful, and I feel spoiled by it. I'm sure the goats will agree wholeheartedly if they ever have to eat anything else again.
Fed the final dose of wormer today. I wish that I'd taken the time to do or get done fecals first, because I've realized that I won't have a real way to see if it has done anything. However, since I'm hoping to have them in good shape as they head off to be bred (they'll be away for the month of December having a long date with a couple of handsome bucks), I felt it was best to try it now.
The wormer seems to have given Cupcake clumpy poop, so I'm watching to see if that goes away. We've never had that before and it showed up after the second dose. However, the other girls are fine.
It's been such a gorgeous day today that I had to find reasons to stay outside. Got the hay stacked in the barn, cleaned the goat room, swept up straw and hay off of the floor and put it in the chicken coop, let the kids cuddle the newest bunnies who opened their eyes within the last 24 hrs., hunted for hiding places for eggs but didn't find any.