Motherly Chicken ~ Goat's Milk

We have one hen that refuses to leave her eggs.  My 14 year-old daughter wanted to let her sit on some.  It's colder now, so it's probably not going to work out too well, but we do have heat lamps.  We marked the eggs and it takes about 22 days to hatch, according to my husband.  We don't even know if these are fertilized, but will soon find out.  This hen is so motherly, she picks up straw with her beak and puts it in her nest underneath her.  My daughter and I saw her lay this egg right in front of us.  After my daughter marked it, the hen went back in the roost, and pushed them around with her beak, and sat back down on them.


We are getting about 2 quarts of milk a day from Peanut.  My daughter is enjoying it very much.  In fact, the goat does not even kick when she milks her, and she doesn't even use the hobble. 


We re-purposed an old wooden coffee table that was stored in the garage.  We butted it up against the side of one barn, and next to an old extended cattle feeder.  It's working out perfect for us.


With the goat's milk, we are saving $5.00-$6.00/gallon for organic milk.  We use about a gallon a day with our large family, so this is another step towards self-sufficiency.

Sunflower Power

I used pieces of cheese cloth to cover the head of my sun flowers, and tied it on with string saved from feed bags.  Hopefully the birds won't get to them anymore.

I'm now on the hunt for recipes using sun flower seeds.  I mentioned, to the family, that foxtail grass seeds, and the other red flower we found, is edible.  My  husband looked at the kids and said, "you guys can all take the first bite." He's just a big chicken when it comes to foraging. Although, he is up for mushroom hunting.  We may be taking a mushroom hunting class to familiarize ourselves with what is edible and what is not.