Support your local feed mill!

So I love our feed mill.  They're like fifth generation, family owned and operated, and their feed is the best I can find anywhere.  I always haul feed in my van with the back seats out, because I would rather stab myself with a fork than back up a trailer.  This leads to some "that's a funny looking truck, wink!" commentary but it certainly isn't the strangest thing they've loaded feed into.

So today they were loading me up with feed, and I notice that one of my front tires is obviously short on air.  Yipes.  I have an emergency pump, but that thing takes about three years to work.  No worries, says toothless feed store guy (I don't know any of their names work with me here).  You can use our air pump.

The other one looks a bit low too, says current manager.  Best top it up first.  So we do that.  Then we try to do the other side.

AND IT EXPLODED.

Like kaboom and gravel flew everywhere it didn't just blow out it blew up.  And we all just stare at it for a second.

"Do you have a spare, darlin'?"

I realize that calling people darling or sweetie or whatever is kind of a southern thing, but I really hate it.  Makes me want to punch the dang guy in the mouth.  But the speed with which a swarm of feed mill dudes descended upon my car, pulled all the feed out, got the spare out from under the car, found a better jack, jacked up my car, and switched that tire out makes me very glad that I never have.  I surely could have done that myself, but it would have taken me at least an hour longer, and I would have been metaphorically dead afterwards.  As it was I still had enough energy to get the feed back out of the van and put up so we can take it to its appointment at the tire place tomorrow.

So support your local feed mill, darlings.  And if you're local to me, go to Big Spring Mill in Elliston.  They will save your bacon when your car explodes.

Goats: occasionally too smart for my own good

Now I love my goats.  They make me laugh every day.  They do however tend to develop some behaviors that also make me want to scream.  The most frightening at this time revolves around these kinds of latches:

And the fact that goats can open them any time they wants to.  Let's just make this clear: any time she wants to, a goat can get into 2/4 of the kidding stalls, the coop, the stall off the milk room, and THE MILK ROOM.  Did you know I keep feed in the milk room?  Fortunately none of them have figured out how to get open the twist top bins I use, even by knocking them over and jumping on them.  I am also grateful that, generally speaking, they only want in when I'm in there (they know I can get the feed cans open).

So now all my doors and gates have hook and eye latches higher than the goats can easily reach, too.  Or close with a carabiner.  Heaven help me if they figure out how to operate a carabiner.  This is also conclusive proof that goats are smarter than sheep - the previous owner of our property ran Katahdins, and found all these latches to be perfectly adequate.  He also kept several of the tube gates shut by hanging the chain on a nail.  Yeah, goats figured that one out in about five minutes.

Things I never expected about chickens

1. Different breeds of chickens don't just have different personalities... they have different voices.  Wyandottes chatter.  Faverolles grumble.  Silkies almost coo.  Easter Eggers glare at me and hiss.  I don't think they like me.
2. Ever hear the phrase, "madder than a wet hen"?  It's true, they do get pretty cranky when they are wet.  Unless they happened to grow up in a brooder full of ducklings.  Then they lie in the mud with their "sisters" when it gets hot.
3. Two roosters do not crow twice as much as one rooster does.  It is more of an exponential equation.  We have three roosters and the crowing basically never stops.
4. You quickly learn to recognize roosters by their crow.  Punky Rooster (silkie) greets the day in a clear, piercing tenor.  Chick Jagger (Wyandotte) is our bass - he almost sounds like he's howling.  Chikki Hendrix still has a derpy cut off crow that we had hoped he would grow out of.  Inexplicably the hens seem to like him best.
5. You also quickly learn to ignore all the dang crowing.  They start about an hour before the coop lights turn on at five, but as long as the windows on the coop-ward side of the house are closed, I don't think anybody even notices.
6. Pecking order makes no sense.  Punky manages to be head rooster despite being literally half the size of the other two (and most of the hens).  Perhaps they remember him feeding them when they were babies.  Perhaps they are in awe of his singing voice.  Perhaps he triples in size when no one is watching.  We will never know.
7. Supposedly, a hen's comb and wattles suddenly grow and turn red (as opposed to pink) right before she starts laying.  Chickens are also jerks, and we have been waiting nearly a month for those "any day now" hens to quit being freeloading slackers.
8. It is somehow always surprising when the layer pellets run out.  Not the scratch corn, because I have yet to come up with a method of keeping my millions of ducklings from breaking open the bags and throwing crazy scratch corn parties.  But there always seem to be tons of layer pellets until suddenly there are none at all.

In summary, chickens are endlessly entertaining, and I think every household should have at least six hens.  The eggs will be the best thing you ever tasted, and you will get bonus free chicken TV, all for the low low price of every bug they can reach and those magically disappearing layer pellets.

The three pound king of the barnyard.