Animals, Animals, and more Animals

We discovered Oreo likes bread after the kids dropped a slice when they were headed to the pond to feed the ducks.

As you can see the goats are abused and neglected....not!

We went to a presentation at Leah's school last night, she "published" a book along with all the other kindergartener's. All the kids in the class except 2 either wrote about their families or their cat. One child made a cook book and my unique little muffin wrote about Spring. She did a great job presenting, she has no fear of crowds. At the end of reading her book she read about the author as follows: "Leah is 6 years old. She lives with her mom, her dad and her brother. She has 1 dog, 3 cats, 100 outside birds, 2 chinchillas, 2 goats, and 10 house birds." The audience all had quite a laugh at that one and probably thought what a bunch of crazies. For the record Leah's hair is wet, not greasy. John gave me grief for posting this picture.

Here is the accurate animal count as of today, it seems to change regularly: 31 laying hens, 1 rooster, 18 partridge, 3 quail , 6 bantam hens, 2 ducks, 4 turkeys, 24 meat birds, 2 goats, 2 chinchillas, 3 cats, 1 dog, 1 parakeet = 101 if I added correctly.. ok yes maybe we are nuts!

Our only rooster. Leah named him "Bob". We have not named the hens because there are too many. We've yet to hear him cock-a-doodle-do.

Finally, a little more room to roam. We plan on making a bigger run for them but this works for now. John is going to make some nesting boxes tomorrow because these gals should be laying by July...just in time for our farm stand.
We have 8 more Barred Rocks but they are in another pen because they are a little younger.

One of the turkeys

Annie

These are the kids catch and release tanks. Top one is for frogs and the bottom one is for snakes.

Quail egg count is up to 3
look how tiny

chicken egg, bantam egg, quail egg

Below are a few pictures from a field trip Leah's class went on today. One more field trip to go and 1 1/2 weeks left of school...the count down is on. I look forward to the kids being home and not having to have a stringent schedule of wake-ups, kid pick ups, bath & bed times. I enjoy the casual times of summer but usually by August we are all ready for school again.


I learned today that the red flap under the beak of a rooster is called a wattle. This obviously is not a rooster but I thought it was cool because this was the cows stall this hen was nesting in.

I want a couple cows grazing in our field! Maybe next year when we have more cash & time to put up fencing. Our to do list before winter is very long.

Some people drink sheep milk, I did not know that either.

I'll end the note with a simple recipe. Last night I marinated some deer steak in this and John cooked it up tonight. I will use again and it will be easiest to find if I have it on my blog and maybe you all might like to try.



Teriyaki Marinade

• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 2 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
• 1/3 cup orange juice
• 2/3 garlic clove, minced
• 3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper (optional)