My farmer daughter has gone away for two nights on a fishing holiday with some women. I offered to help with the farm while she is away, so together with her partner, Jason, we are getting it done. Night time tuck-in looks like this:
Ducklings - they are sleeping in the green cage and the green cage spends the days outside and the nights inside the trailer with my daughter and her partner. Jason cleans out the green cage and sets it up fresh inside while the ducklings cuddle with me under a towel. Then they are transferred into their clean pen with their water momma (hot water bottle) and settled in for the night.
Goats - they need their bedtime snack of alfalfa pellets and sunflower seeds. This entices them into the goat shed where I pour their snacks into the trough and close them in for the night. Three down, a hundred or so to go.
Purple Coop - they are the first of the chickens to head to bed. We bring in their chicken food at night to keep the rats away. Close the little door and the big door for the night, sometimes counting everyone. Thor is currently sleeping with the Purple Coop gang, so he is then captured and chucked in the door last. About 30 more down, dozens to go.
Next to go to bed is the M*A*S*H pair - Hot Lips and Hawkeye. Once Purple coop is in bed, we like them to be in bed as well as they are otherwise the only other free range chickens out. They sleep in the A frame coop so are tucked away up top and the ramp pulled up, and the door to the coop closed for the night. Two more down, dozens to go still.
Then I head over to the barn on the other side of the creek and tuck in the chicks. We are at the tail end of a hatch, so we have four fluffy new chicks hunkered down in a small brooder box with a heat lamp, and there is another chick recently hatched and still damp so sleeping in the incubator tonight. There may be others pipping their way out tonight.
From there I head to check on the momma duck sitter. She is a broody silver laced Orpington who is sitting on a clutch of 9 duck eggs that are due to hatch out this coming weekend. The geese have beat me to the tent and are standing in the doorway. I am in shorts in a tank top. The geese have teeth...so I have to pass on checking up on broody momma.
I zip up the tent on the geese who sleep in there for now, and head to the Serama pen. They have to be carried into the coop tonight. They should be sleeping on a roost, but they had not yet been installed in their new coop so I did that today. They were preferring to stay out in their new caged pen instead of going into the coop. So I take them one by one and chuck them into their finished coop. I take Mel first as the ladies don’t mind then once he is in there. Pluck, pluck, cluck and they are all in their little coop.
Close the door and head to the school bus where the Ritas and Rockettes are with rooster Pongo. Looks like they are all in so I lift the feeder trough into the bus and close the back hatch door and then close the side doors.
Time to head back to my RV and settle in for my own night! Nash needs feeding and I need a snack before bed. Tomorrow morning comes early on the farm, and Jason is heading to the city so I am on morning wake up duty, letting out all the souls I locked up tonight. I also have to check on the two mink traps I set tonight. Bastards. They killed three chickens this past week. I will get them. I will.
