It does help ! AND - I've got a guy who buys from me fairly regularly who is coming by tomorrow. I'll bet the feed bill goes down a little more when he leaves!
My greatest neighbor in the world is getting me some tractor tires today. He has a friend who has a tire store, so it's a win-win for the store owner, and a win-win for me because they're doing it all for me! I gave my neighbor my AMEX card to complete the transactions so I'm going to tell him to fill up his truck while he's out doing this for me. They truly are the best neighbors in the world!
One of the goats I sold yesterday was Sparkle's kid - so now I'll be milking her daily. That's one of the reasons I like to keep doe kids a little longer - because I can leave them with their mother and just milk when I want to. But, I have found that I can get away with skipping a milking or two without too much loss of production. I try not to do it often - but sometimes 'stuff' just happens, lol.
Hot, hot, hot again today. Calling for 95 today - plenty of humidity to go with it and absolutely dead still out there - no breeze at all.... It's July!
UGH! I totally got stood up yesterday. Goat buyer didn't even show up, or call, or text, or send a smoke signal or anything. DH and I wanted to do something together - like a movie, or lunch out, or shopping, but NO! We sat here allllllllllll day and waited for a discourteous, disrespectful, person who couldn't be bothered. Okay - rant over - sigh...
Wow-ee - found a big ol' rat snake in a quail pen.....and one less quail. The snake was about 5 1/2 feet long and mean! I was trying to get him out of the cage and that nasty critter struck at me twice! DH was standing behind me and unfortunately, he got smacked in the face when I threw my hand back to get away from the snake, oops. And, I squealed like a little girl! Stupid snake got in there, ate the quail and then was too fat to get out of the cage. Stupid, stupid! Anyway - he was relocated to the pasture across the street. Hope he stays away.
I got the last of the figs in the dehydrator yesterday. It was a really weird fig year. But I'm not complaining cuz some figs are definitely better than no figs! And, my other little tree of a different variety is going to set a small crop this year. I can't remember what type of fig the baby tree is, but the figs are much larger than the ones from the other tree - which are smaller than usual this year.
I'm milking Sparkle daily now and she's really not impressing me much. I'm getting a bit over a half-gallon daily, but I think she gave more last year. I'll blame that on the heat too. Cocoa is still nursing two little bucks, but she wants to be milked. She runs in the milk room every time the door is open and jumps on the stand so I've been letting her. I'm probably getting a pint or so a day from her while she's still with her boys. She's easier to milk than Sparkle because she's got big orifices that the milk flows out of so easily. I'll probably wether her boys and pitch them out in the pasture and keep milking her when the boys are weaned. If I do that I'll be getting a gallon + daily and maybe, just maybe I'll try my hand at soap making.
It's been really hot lately... heat indexes in the 100+ range every day. Actual temperatures have been 96 or 97 daily this week. We're supposed to be at 99 for most of the weekend and early next week... Sigh.
This kind of heat is so hard on the critters. I found three hens dead the other day. Black chickens and this kind of heat just don't go well together. They had plenty of shade in the pen they were in but these three were in a corner of their shelter, on top of each other, and very, very dead. Ugh. I put the remainder of the Black Orpingtons in a different pen where they really can't even get into the direct sunlight. That'll teach 'em, lol.
Even with losing three hens the others are back in high gear. Some of my young ameraucana pullets are laying now. I've got 7 of them and I've been getting 4 or 5 eggs a day. They're small eggs, but they're so very tasty, lol, and my customers love the novelty of the green eggs.
My weekend was so exciting! My daughter called me Friday about noon and said she, new hubby, and kids were coming to my house for a mini-vacation! I was so excited! They got here Friday evening. Saturday morning we headed for a harbor side recreation area about 45 minutes away. Lots of carnival type rides, great seafood restaurants and souvenir shops. Only draw back was the temps. All that concrete and no shade... Actual temp was over 100 and heat index even more. DH doesn't do well with all that heat, but lasted longer than I thought he would. We were there about 5 hours including the time we sat in a great air conditioned restaurant for lunch. My grandson was terrified of the rides, but he kept getting back on. Kudos to him for that!
We sent DD and S-I-L to the greyhound track this afternoon while we stayed home with the kiddos. Best solution for all of us. Kiddos spent some time in the back yard with the water hose and an oiled down tarp - slipping and sliding all over the place with dogs running along and amongst them. It was hilarious! Then we had watermelon slices with juice running down our arms and ate until we couldn't eat any more.