Fast growth!

What a difference a week makes!

Photo Friday

2-week-old American Chinchilla kit. There are 8 others in the nest box.

Have a great weekend!

This, That, and the Udder

In my last post, I talked about the swarm of honey bees that took up residence in our empty hive. You can see here a few workers moving in an out. The photo doesn't really show how much they've cleaned up the old hive. Free bees are a pretty great thing!

Our doelings are growing quickly. I'm so happy to have these girls here. I have high hopes for when they freshen next spring. You can also see our new batch of egg layers in the background. They are growing out nicely. We normally let them free range, but we have a fencing issue that makes them an easy snack for one of the neighbor's dogs. We're ready to fix that fence, and they'll be out of the run in no time.

If you have plans, don't count on 'em

As I'm approaching my impending date to kid baby #4, we have been trying to get things as well under way as possible. Something that has slipped away from being done was cleaning out our beehive. We had the hive die over the winter, and we moved it to accommodate the county coming out and fixing our drainage tile. Well, it never got taken apart, cleaned, and put away. Instead, it sat, like a fully functioning hive against the barn. It was just missing the bees. We thought about buying a nuc this year, but because of my impending arrival, we decided to leave that off our plates for one year. Do you know what happens when you decide you aren't going to do something? Well, you have a swarm arrive and take up residence in said hive. Sure it's more work, but at least we got some free bees!

Now we just have to figure out how to move the whole hive to someplace a bit better suited for the beehive. The fun never ends around here!