Not about goats this time...

I realized that the last few posts have been all about, or at least in part, about the goats. I figured I would remedy the situation with this post, as to prevent a feathered-friend uprising.

We recently cleaned out the bedding in the chicken coop and put in fresh bedding to start our deep layer system. We just keep adding fresh bedding, and as the lower bedding composts under it, there is heat provided for the birds. Less work for us, benefits for the birds. Hooray! We also put down food grade DE as a preventative measure. We've not had any issues with any creepy crawlies yet.

A few of the girls being nosy, and trying to check in our the renovation process.

Since we've hit freezing temperatures, we put out our chicken water heater base.

We don't have any lights installed on the coop for winter laying, but are girls continue to lay well just the same.

Before we got rid of our rooster, we noticed that he was being a bit hard on some of the hens. They were missing quite a few back feathers, and they were molting on top of that. We had an issue with some of the Barred Rocks pecking on the red spots where the rooster tore feathers out. It seemed like we may have naked chickens going into winter. Well, with help of some Blu-Kote, we were able to get the hens to leave the bare spots alone. Feathers are finally coming back in!

This isn't a dirty chicken, her feathers are just tinted from the Blu-Kote.

I think something else that may have helped with their feathers is black oil sunflower seeds. I read somewhere that they helped with new feather growth. So I started bringing out a few handfuls for them to scratch up. Even if they aren't a huge help, they sure do love them.

Big Sister loves to help us with the chickens. She goes out and sings to them, pets them, and just watches them.
The picture above is reason number 1,487 that I'm glad we moved out here.

Getting the Goats Ready for Winter

We've been preparing ourselves to care for the goats this winter. Both of our girls were bred, so we are preparing for both of them to kid in March, as well.

The first thing we did was buy almost 80 bales of alfalfa hay. We were lucky enough to get some second cutting hay. This wasn't a great year for hay in our area, so we feel fortunate that we were able to get this hay. We'll probably try to get a few more bales before too long. We don't mind having a little extra.

We stacked the hay bales on pallets to keep it on the floor. I admit, I love the smell of good hay.

Since the goats will be kidding in March, we're also constructing a pen in the barn for them. We'll bring the goats in at night during the colder parts of winter, and keep them in there closer to their kidding dates. I need to get a baby monitor to make sure we can catch the kids as we will be practicing CAE prevention with our goats and their kids.

Mr. Homesteader and Big Sister taking measurements for the pen.

We are also in the process of winterizing the goat shed. We cleaned out the old bedding to put in fresh bedding while we were out there. The old goat bedding was spread over part of our garden space. Hooray for free fertilizer!

Here is Mr. Homesteader cleaning out the old bedding.

I will try to document more of the progress with the goat pen in the barn as well as winterizing the goat shed. I know Mr. Homesteader and my father-in-law will be working on the barn pen this week.