New Kids on the Farm

"Japan" (named Japan when she was born because the marking on her side sort of looks like Japan's flag. She was named before that country's recent tragic troubles) is a 75% Boer / 25% Nubian doe and she just had two new kids a little bit ago, both girls! One black and one light red one. These two new girls might be keepers, time will tell. These are Japan's first kids.

Suspicious - Farm Photo of the Week

Yea, the other goats wanted me to ask what you are doing? And why did you not bring treats??

Eggscellent Eggs

"Cinnamon" the chicken must be eggshausted these days. She has laid an egg every day but two since she suddenly started laying the last week of January. So far we have got 36 eggs and I find that to be eggstraordinary considering they are all from one single chicken. She has only missed two days since she started but she even made up for those days by giving us two eggs the day after one missed day and a large double yoked egg after the other.

We named her Cinnamon because according to the people we got her from she is a Cinnamon Queen chicken. She is our first chicken so we don't have a lot of experience with them yet but I would definitely say if you want lots of eggstra eggs this would be one of the good breeds to get. We were not even sure if she was going to lay eggs since we didn't know how old of a girl she is. You can read my other post about when we first got Cinnamon by clicking "here."

She is really an eggsceptionally calm and friendly chicken and will even take food from our hands. So what is on the chicken menu today? Let's see, there is always chicken food from the feed store available but we have also been giving her some other treats. Today it looks like a tomato, some salad mix, a handful of multi-grain cheerios and a piece of whole wheat bread (I only give her bread every 3rd day or so and not too much.) Oh and her yogurt, I can't forget that because it is her favorite, she loves the stuff.

All her veggie treats are under the bread and cheerios but she goes straight for the yogurt first.

I am a little concerned about her because she has had a persistent "messy" bottom, though she seems healthy otherwise. She has a good appetite, is active and laying eggs every day. No rattles to her breathing or discharge of any kind. I read on the backyard chickens forum to try giving her some plain yogurt for this but so far even though she loves it and eats a couple spoonfuls almost every day it hasn't helped the messy bottom situation. I read it could be mites and all chickens are very prone to them so I bought some powder for that. We have washed off her backside twice with warm water when it got more messy and smelly (add "washing a chicken's butt" to my list of things I never thought I would do before country life!)

She is really a wonderful chicken and we like her so much and are very happy to have her around. I never knew chickens could be so personable. We would like to figure out what we need to do to help her with that little back end issue. So we could use some help from all you experienced chicken owners if you have any suggestions or know what might be causing this, any advice would be very much appreciated. I try to avoid using antibiotics if at all possible but could it be time to try something like that or is this not that abnormal for certain individual chickens? Her eggs are always very clean.

Goat council bill gored in House says CJOnline.com

Not long ago I wrote on this blog about bill HB2099 which was for the creation of the "Kansas Goat Council" and a new check off fee for every goat sold in Kansas. You can read about it by clicking HERE. I am relieved to report that as the bill was written it does not look like it is going anywhere. I wrote KS Representatives and got the following email statement back from Rep. Jerry Williams.

“Jennifer:: The hearing was held on H B 2099 today in AG Committee. One for the Bill and several NOT for the Bill. I can NOT see this Bill going anywhere. My feedback has been NO to H B 2099 and I agree with the NO group. Rep. Jerry Williams “

Quite a few goat breeders braved some very bad weather that day to go to the committee meeting and have their say about this baaaaaad bill. According to several of them there was only one individual that testified in favor of the new bill and that was the district representative of Jerry Miller, Mr. Seward. Mr. Miller, who is the Kansas Meat Goat Association President was not able to attend the meeting but apparently submitted amendments, the details of which I do not know. Several Kansas goat breeders, both of meat and dairy goats testified against the bill, all making some very valid and good points.

They must have made quite an impression as the following article (link below) was written about the meeting over HB2099 and this writer did a very good job of highlighting just how strong the opposition to this bill was.

Goat council bill gored in House | CJOnline.com

The article is very well written but is wrong about one thing, that the fee would just be for goats going through slaughter houses. As the bill was written it would be for all goats sold, even private person to person sales. If I hear any thing else about this bill I will pass that information on but as it stands right now it does not look like it will be passed. Just another example of why it is so important that people get involved and let their represenatives know how they feel and that we need less government in our lives.