Well Billie Jo has gone to her new home. She now lives in Arkansas with a small herd of Lowline cattle. Thank you Dewayne and Cindy and I hope she makes you a nice little homestead milk cow.
The only real downside to selling her so soon is now I have to milk Olive twice a day. Bobbie Jo, our other midsize Jersey should be giving us a calf in the next month or so. It will be her first. Assuming all goes well I will milk her and give Olive and me a break. Olive didn’t get dried off as long as I would have liked so she could use the extra time to put on some weight until the next calf.
I have some eggs in the incubator. I started a few goose and turkey eggs and then a week later I added some chicken eggs. The turkey and chicken chicks should start hatching about the same time with the goose a couple of days later.
Bees! Mom had a huge swarm in one of the oak trees in her backyard. It was too high for me to reach and the limb was too small to climb out on. I set the swarm trap up neat the swarm but once the storm ended and the sun came out they left. I’ll have to move the trap to it’s usual location. I probably should have put it there in the first place but I was hoping closer would be better. Guess I was wrong.
The storm I mentioned hit Thursday night and it dumped between 5 and 6 inches of water on us in a short time. I didn’t notice it until Sunday afternoon but it washed out my fence along the power line. I have know idea how the horses, hogs, and dogs didn’t find it and go roaming. Just lucky I guess.
While I was repairing the fence I noticed that one of my 2 remaining hives did not have bees coming and going. I opened it up and it was empty. No pile of dead bees or any sign of problems. They just left. I wonder if they were the swarm I saw last week. Looks like I now have 4 boxes to fill. The last hive is full of bees or nearly so. I might try to do a split. That is something I have never done. I’ll need to check and see if they are making queen cells. If they are I can move about half of the bees into another box along with the queen. The existing hive should raise a new queen and the new hive should continue on as if it had swarmed into the new box. In theory that’s the way it is supposed to work. Well see if my bees read the book.
We also lost 6 chicks to the flood. A hen hatched 10 chicks 2 days before. She hadn’t set up for the night in the same place twice and unfortunately the night of the storm her resting place flooded. Fortunately for her and 4 chicks there was a board laying next to her and they were able to get up onto it. Sad way to find things first thing in the morning but you can’t be everywhere all the time. I don’t think anyone expected that much rain either.
