Eggciting News!!!

Here it is, folks... the very first egg at Butterscotch Farm!!!  ♥️♥️♥️

Various Updates

Happy Sunday!!  :) 

It was finally warm enough today that I could hang out in the coop with the chickens for a few minutes when I got home from church.  They seem to be doing very well, despite several below freezing nights last week.  

Here's Mr. Floofle...veeerry slowly continuing his journey toward full roosterhood.  He's still only about half the size of my big rooster, lol.

Snow White:

Snow White again.  The "hairdos" on these birds are awesome!!  😂

This one is Blackbeak.  I can only tell her apart from Snow White because she has a darker beak, and because she always pecks me, lol.

Speedy.  Don't tell the other reddish-brownish hens I said this, but I think Speedy is the prettiest of the three hens who have this coloring.

Frosty.  Her toes are curled off to the side, so she's a little gimpy, but it doesn't seem to hold her back at all.  She has a lovely iridescent sheen in her black feathers.

Not much else is going on, except that Nala is in heat quite a bit earlier than I expected... and I'm going to have her bred!  I will keep everyone posted, but if everything goes according to plan, the first litter of Butterscotch Farm Collies should be arriving right around the beginning of April!  See the tabs at the top of the page for more information.

Getting Creative

First, an update on Breeze... she is doing awesome!!  

So far she seems very similar to Thane - affectionate without being too pushy (though of course as I'm typing this, she is trying to climb into my lap, LOL!!), fairly calm, not overly inclined to bark.  She figured out the dog door and how to get up on my bed within the first day.  She gets along with the other dogs, and likes to play with them.  

I'm excited to continue getting to know her.  :) 

In other news, you remember how my goats decided to scorn their fence and become free range? Well, that wasn't ideal, but was fine as long as they stayed close to their pen.  But they've been wandering more in the past couple of days, and I wasn't happy about that.  So today I got creative, lol.

I worked for a few hours this afternoon on this project... and I will keep adding to it over time, because I doubt it will keep the goats contained well at its current height. But it's a dual-purpose little pen - it should help to keep the goats in place, AND provide stuff for them to munch on, lol.  

I'll let you know how it goes.  :P

Anyway, happy Monday!!

Introducing Breeze!

I had a delivery yesterday, all the way from Arkansas!!  Meet Breeze, the newest addition to the Butterscotch Farm Collie family.  ❤️

She was very nervous right after getting dropped off by the ground transport company, but after less than 24 hours, seems to be settling in very well here.

(The mark on the side of her face is a scar - she survived a copperhead bite when she was a tiny puppy!!)

I didn't let her meet Nala face to face last night... since Nala used to fight with Thea when she first arrived, I want to make sure I transition Breeze in carefully, and don't allow any opportunity for conflict.

This morning, though, Nala was bouncing playfully around Breeze's crate, so I decided to try introducing them... and they seem to have hit it off quite nicely!!

She LOVES playing chase games with Thane and Nala...they run around and around and around the dome, lol.  And I'm wondering if Breeze is faster than the other two, because she is usually at the head of the pack.  

And if you're wondering why she looks so scrawny, it's because she had puppies a few months ago, and mama Collies always "blow" their coats after having a litter.  Her coat will come back over the next couple of months.  I'm guessing she will probably end up with a similar amount of hair as Thane.  

So I'll keep you guys posted... but I'm excited to get to know this little girl!  :D 

Happy Friday!!

Free Range

These four hooligans have decided that fences are for losers, and that the (figurative) grass is much greener on the other side of the fence.  And my solar-powered electric fence charger has done little to disillusion them of this idea, apparently being under the influence of Seasonal Affective Disorder.

So my goats have been spending the past few days very happily stripping the bark from the trees around their pen.  

I'm quite impressed by the effectiveness of their teeth!  And I have noticed that they are expressing a strong preference for Beech and Pine, but don't have any interest in the Birch.

There's not a ton I can do to fix this for the time being, except perhaps to cut lots of fresh branches to pile inside their fence.  I may actually try this approach starting in a week or so, as I plan to cut down lots of trees this winter anyway.  Obviously I will need better fencing in the spring, but first I'll need to decide if I'm keeping the goat pen where it is now.

(And I should note that the goats have 24/7 access to hay and water, and are given a generous serving of grain every morning, so it's not like they're escaping because they're hungry, lol.  This is just what goats do, apparently.)

In much more sad news, I came home to a dead hen yesterday... Houdini, the solid gray one.  There was no obvious cause of death... she was just lying in the middle of the floor of the coop.  I'll be keeping an eye on the other birds in case it was an illness of some sort.  

Anyway, I hope everyone has had a good start to the new year! Happy Saturday/almost Sunday!

Happy New Year!!

This seems appropriate... I'm ushering in the new year by fixing the final mistake I made in 2019, LOL!!  I didn't snowblow the other day, even though we got about a foot of snow, because I figured my truck could handle it.  Well, predictably, I got stuck in my driveway last night.  So this morning I'm digging my truck out.

In a way, though, it DOES seem appropriate to welcome 2020 while doing hard physical labor... and while watching the last of the stars fade from the sky as the dawn light creeps across the sky above me.  I have a lot of plans and dreams for this year, and almost all of them will take hard work and the grace of God to achieve.  

It's also appropriate that I started my day by reading a couple chapters from the Bible...a habit I had fallen away from.  (If anyone is looking for ideas for daily Bible reading, this is the perfect day to start going through the Bible in a year!  I'm sure you can find schedules online for how many chapters to read each day.)

Well, time to go feed the animals, and then back to my digging!  :P

Happy New Year!!