The pullets are now 11 weeks old, and should start laying in the next couple of months.  I did find a tiny tiny egg in a nest one morning, but I can't imagine that any of these new girls could have been responsible... it's still a mystery.  
At 4 weeks the meat chicks got moved outside into their tractors.  This summer we are raising the white rock X variety.  So far they seem so very different from their slow-growing cousins.  They have indeed grown much faster than the dual-purpose, so much that at 4 weeks they are a couple of pounds already.  Their feathers are slower to grow in, and it's been good to have them outside because they seem to be feathering up more fully now.  They have enjoyed being outside, running around and chasing bugs so in that regard they seem like any other chicks.  They are also quite a bit more docile, which makes it easier for the husbandry - they're not running away and crashing into things when you try to change their water

We're still waiting for the crias to be born - we have 4 more to go.  We also did some breeding this month, using 2 studs from Canadian Comfort Alpacas.  Next summer should be exciting - it will be great to have some new bloodlines brought into our herd.  We're planning on starting a new home for the males, carved out of the back end of the hay barn.  The young boys are just about ready to be moved out of the ladies' area - they're starting to get frisky.  So that is a priority for the next few weeks, along with getting some electric fencing up.  The coyotes have been particularly bad again this summer.  It's hard not to hate coyotes.

So much has happened over the past 8 months and so the blog has unfortunately dropped out of the schedule.  We've been so busy!
* We built a duck house for the waterfowl to overwinter in because there was no room for them in the barn this winter.  We were so happy we did because the temperatures hovered in the minus 20's for the bulk of the winter.
* We brought in 4 new alpacas (including a yearling male!) who made themselves at home with our herd after a very short time.
* We brought home 3 bottle lambs from a nearby farm.
* Daisy had a cria (in the picture) 3 months earlier than we had anticipated - which meant she was pregnant when she came here (which we had not at all expected!)
* 4 more cria are expected within the next month!
* We've been operating a stand at our local Farmer's Market, which has been an amazing opportunity to not only introduce people to our farm, but to meet many of the people who are moving into town with the expansion of the surveys.
* Shearing day has come and gone, and so now we're busily working on our laundry balls and dog beds plus all the other odds and ends we produce here.  Our goat's milk soaps have been popular as well (which is gratifying because we love them, too).

We'll be a bit more diligent here.  The winter (and recovering from it) was so brutally hard that it didn't leave much time for anything but keeping the water from freezing over and clearing snow.  The spring was late and summer was late but now it seems that things are back on track.

Our barn cat, Clementine, passed away today.  We had trapped her on Monday to take her to the SPCA for the trap/neuter/release program.  This is a program where wild cats are neutered for a very low fee, with the understanding that the "caretaker" will monitor the colony and take responsibility for them.  Since we've had an influx of wild cats to our barn (the result of a neighbour moving - they had fed the wild cats and the new people don't) we've had an explosion of kittens.  We've trapped a bunch and taken them to the SPCA for adoption, but this girl was friendly than most and our resident cats didn't mind her.
She had her operation on Tuesday and seemed fine.  Wednesday she seemed a bit under the weather but nothing unusual - the day after the surgery is usually hard.  But today she seemed really lethargic and sick.  She was virtually unresponsive when we went to check on her.  We rushed her to the SPCA and left her with them for assessment.  But apparently shortly after we left she passed away.  They think that likely she had some kind of underlying condition - life is hard, after all, on a wild cat.
It's the challenging part of the trap/neuter/release program.  These wild cats can have any number of diseases and immune system weaknesses.  They have surgery, and then they are released back to the wild the next day.  They are released that early simply because the caretakers (ie us) don't always have the means to care for them post-op.  Not everyone has a shed or garage where the cat can recover outside the cage without risking injury to it or the person.  So when the cat is released post-op, it can go off and recover well or it can go off and die quietly because some pre-existing weakness means the cat can't recover from the surgery.  
There is no way of knowing how many of the TNR cats do survive.  But the program is a necessary one because it is the only real way to control the feral cat population.  We got Clementine neutered because we believe it is important to keep wild cats from having litter after litter after litter.  It's just really so sad that in doing the right thing, we didn't help her.

After our visit to Shears To You Fibre Pros we have decided that we know hopefully enough about skirting the fleeces to enter the Alpaca Ontario Sort-a-Thon.  This event is a first ever for AO, and the premise is that anyone with fleeces to sell should send theirs in.  Sorters will sort and grade the fleeces, and they will be sold.
We'll tackle 2 or more of the 11 that we have each night after work.  We're going to do it at the kennel - cement floors and enough space to work around the skirting table.
This table (and another like it) was built by US!  We built it based on the tables we saw at Shears To You - basically 2x4's and 14 ga. wire.
The Sort-a-Thon is this weekend coming, so it's a bit hectic trying to get ready.

Tonight we are supposed to have a hard frost so we pulled the sweet potatoes that were extending above ground.  They look awesome!  They need to cure and supposedly we should wrap them in newspaper then wait 3 months for the full flavour to develop.  Lets face it, we won't be waiting.  We'll be eating these soon!

Yesterday we took our latest batch of chickens up to Country Poultry Processor, which is 2 hours away from us.  Knowing we had all day to kill, I had arranged for us to visit Shears to You Fibre Pros in Palmerston, ON.  They were only a 30 minute drive away, so after an awesome breakfast at Diana Sweets in Listowel, we went to the fibre mill.
We had an informative and interesting tour of the mill and learned a lot that will help us produce a better product ourselves.  Then we spent some time with Dar and Lee who own the alpacas on the property, learning about good nutrition.  It was a really helpful and gratifying visit, and we both want to extend our appreciation to the ladies at Shears to You!

Thanksgiving Monday: The way that our barn is setup, there is one gate area where the boys and girls can see each other.  In order to minimize how frisky the boys get, we've been hanging blankets over the gate to block out the view.  We decided to do some arts & crafts, and to weave some fabric through the gated area to make the "curtain" more solid.  The other side of this gate doesn't have any fencing on it, it's simply bars.  We wove fabric through it, too, but it's a lot less structured. We'll see if it can withstand Dixie and the insistant boys!

Update on Tuesday:  Our good looking gate totally withstood the boys through the night.  But it lasted only 2 hours until Dixie chewed through the un-fenced portion and snuck out to be in the paddock.
Today, she had absolute full-moon fever!  Lately she has been breaking into the duck pen so she can check out the ducks and swans.  Then she hops onto a rock and hops out of the pen into the driveway.  A convenient way to escape the confines of the pasture!  We had fixed the vulnerable fence area which seemed to keep her out.  But today, when confronted with the newly shored up fence, Dixie jumped over another portion of the fence.  Back into the duck pen, back over the fence along the driveway and freedom! One of the boys caught her and put her back into the barn but didn't put her in the locked area - he just shut the barn door.  As soon as I opened up the barn door, she took off running.  And run she did - it was an excellent game, apparently.  She had 3 of us chasing her, and she managed to keep out of our clutches.  We were scared because she kept getting closer to the road, and showed no sign of listening or stopping.  Finally, I crouched down and called her - and wouldn't you know it she came galloping right up to me.  So once again she was tied up.
Sometimes we get discouraged - she seems to take a step forward and 2 steps back.  I try to remind myself that she is just 1, that she is a ruckus-y teenager almost.  She can be so GOOD and then the next day be back to chasing lambs and escaping the field.  
Slightly disheartened, we left her under the lean-to with the animals.  But then FULL MOON FEVER hit the house dogs!  Michele was letting them out of their run - and normally they would run right back into the kennel.   But today, not a couple of hours after Dixie's mad dash for freedom, all 3 of them took off running.  Running up towards the road!  Almost the exact route that Dixie took.  I wasn't there at the time, so I heard about it 2nd hand.  But the same guy that caught Dixie once also caught Duke the Great Dane.  Chaos all day - and then we realized that it will be a full moon tonight.  So there you have it.  Full moon fever makes dogs run for freedom. 

Today when I went to go and move the tractors with the 2nd batch of meat birds, I noticed that one of the boys in the rooster flock was slow to move.  When I looked more closely at him, I noticed that his comb and wattles were deeply red, almost purple.  He was eating and scratching though, just moving slowly.  Later in the day he was still dark red and lying down in the coop.  He didn't even seem nervous to have me crouch beside him and look at him.
Of course I googled the problem.  Most of the posts on sites like Backyard Chickens suggested heart problems or circulation problems.  I worried that he might die of natural causes (which would be fine) but that the meat would then be wasted, especially if he passed away in the night or midday when noone would find him for a while.   So we called Michele's friend Marvin who is a sustenance hunter.  He agreed to put the poor guy out of his misery and then make use of the meat in exchange.
I feel badly that I don't have the strength to cull the birds myself, but I hope that whatever made the rooster suddenly fail won't affect the meat at all.  Marvin will let me know, so I'll post the answer then.

The layers have discovered the chicken tractors.  They have learned that every time the tractors move, there is leftover food in the space it had occupied.  They run out and scratch through the bedding and food that the meat birds have pushed out of the coop area, and clean it all up.  They will keep revisiting the area throughout the day, looking for treats.  Since we put the meat birds on a homemade diet, there is a lot for the layers to discover - oats, wheat, millet, flax, corn, sunflower seeds and roasted soy.  It's like an all-day buffet, and the ultimate in reduce / reuse / recycle!

We had a local guy out to see if he could assess the coyote activity around the pasture.  He said there is definitely sign of them, and pointed out areas where gaps between the bottom of the fencing and the ground was large enough that a coyote could fit through.  Some of them we had known about, and some problem areas were new - hidden by the overgrown pasture behind ours.
So we spent 2 weeks filling in post holes and filling in the gaps, using manure and bedding.  In some areas, we used broken cinderblock and rocks, just to fill the gaps securely.   Of course as the manure composts, the levels will drop and we'll likely have to redo some areas.  But for now, there doesn't seem to any area where anything can slide under the fence.  Dixie and the animals have been out in the pasture with us, and this is Dixie, relaxing in the shade of the straw, helping!