The Buck Arrives, New Puppy, Barn Kitten, More Eggs, Bending Rebar

So much has been going on lately! We were given a new puppy, an 11 week old Japanese Chin that is absolute adorable. We named her Posey. We also rescued a barn cat from the Humane Society to help us get a handle on the problem we are having with mice stealing our grain in the barn. Her name is Alma and she is a very cute but slightly feral 4 month old grey tabby.

Today the buck arrived to breed our Boer goat Bee. We also got a delivery of 50 bales of hay in the same trailer that the buck came in. The chickens have started laying more and there were 5 eggs yesterday up from one egg a day previously.

The logger came and did a final walk through on the land. We mapped out the areas where they will cut trees and clear land for more goat pasture and garden area. Then there are all the other things that come up or need to be done on our little farm, like Don finding a creative way to bend rebar to hang a heated water bucket using the tractor or me finding a stash of acorns in my muck shoe on the front porch this morning.

Meet Posey, our new Japanese Chin puppy. She is 11 weeks old and already owns my heart <3 p="">

This is Alma. She is a 6 month old silver tabby that we adopted from the humane societies "Barn Cat Adoption" program. They ask farmers to keep their new cats in a large crate for 2 weeks so that the cat become imprinted on her new surroundings and doesn't run off. They even lent us a large wire dog kennel for this purpose. In the photo below Don used his hay pull to pull the crate up into the hay loft where he set it up.

Don pouring out some fancy grain free cat food for our newest employee and resident mouser.  

 This is her home for 2 weeks in the hay loft until it starts to feel like home to her. We left the small crate with a bed in the large dog crate so it would be like a little den to her. You can just barely see her peeking over her bed in the back of the pink kennel.

 The hens have ramped up their laying from one egg a day to 5 eggs today! We have a light on a timer that turns on at 4:00 in the morning to help give them enough hours of light a day to lay. It is safer and kinder for the birds if a very low watt light goes on in the dark hours of the morning and does not stay on at night and suddenly go off as the he's are trying to get up onto their roost. They don't see well in the dark and the light going out abruptly may cause them to injure themselves as they try to get up onto  the roost or prevent them from getting up on the roost at all.

 This girl prefers to use the milk crate instead of the nesting boxes on the wall. 

 Collecting eggs in the nesting room

 The girls and boys wandering around the barnyard and venturing out into the road.

 Our beautiful helper Clara. She is such a cheerful, hard worker and a real Godsend to us. 

 50 bales of hay all loaded up into the hayloft!

 On the left is Bandit, the young buck that we had brought in to breed to our girl Honey Bee

 Bee and Bandit 

 Bandit getting used to his new surroundings

Scarlet, on the left, is Bee's daughter and she is too young to be bred this year so she is being kept on the other side of the fence line. She is not liking being separated from her mom.

 Don needed to bend some rebar to hang a heated water bucket in the second goat paddock so he improvised by using some holes in the bucket of his tractor.

 It ended up working perfectly!

Somebody decided to store some acorns in my barn shoes that were on the porch overnight. There were a couple of them up in the toe part of the shoe :-)