The boys have now been introduced to the animal crew here at Little Pond Farm. Candy hopped over to the fence to say hello. Pip and Caper looked as if they had a long conversation with her. The boys also like watching the chickens. The dogs have sniffed noses with the goats and those interactions have been amiable. I have a feeling that once I’m satisfied that Lily won’t chase the goats, and give her more leeway, that she and the boys will figure out their own way to play.

Steve, my crack IT guy, is hard at work installing the camera, making it goat-proof (not easy!) and dealing with software issues to get the goatcam up and running.

Until then, here’s a picture for you.

Pip and Caper, eight-week old Mini-Nigerian Dairy Goats, arrived yesterday. Marty drove them down from Village Haven Farm in northern Maine. They settled right into their new stall. Perky, curious and totally adorable. I sat down with them.

Caper is getting a scratch on the neck. He likes that. He’s the more forward of the two. Pip, the one with the caramel splotches, is a tad shyer. But I think he’s going to be the one who gets into more mischief!

Give goats a shelf, a ledge, a manger to squeeze into, and they will.

Caper is checking out the goatcam.com camera. It should be working in a few days.

Meanwhile, I am training Lily Dog to be calm around the goats. This involves patience, lots of little hot dog pieces, and a training tool called a clicker. And, I’m spending a lot of time sitting in the stall with the boys. Wouldn’t you?

Commercial egg producers  like to say that eggs are all the same, regardless of the hens’ housing. However, egg producers also recognize that some eggs sell for a premium. Eggland’s best came up with feeding additives to change the fatty acid content of their eggs. Eggs labeled “free-range” sell for more money. Pastured eggs sold at a farmer’s market often go for a couple of dollars more than a supermarket dozen.

The problem is, how to assure the consumer that their expensive eggs aren’t from a typical factory farm? Certainly, all eggs look the same, whether laid by a pastured hen or by one kept in a cage. A researcher in New Zealand has come up with a test to verify what type of housing an egg was laid in. It turns out that a pastured hen, eating a wide variety of food, produces a very different egg than the caged hen. A synopsis of the article can be read in this poultry industry on-line newsletter. Awhile back, Mother Earth News did it’s own analysis of pastured eggs and came up with similar results.

Those of us with backyard hens knew this already, but it’s nice to have scientific proof.

Hens crave sunlight and dirt. They like each individually. In the winter, a chicken will bask in a warm ray. A hen closed up into a coop will take a dust bath in shavings. But, for a hen, nothing is more luxurious and satisfying than sunlight and dirt together.

I have two new hens (more about them in a later post!) named Philomena and Agnes. They are twenty-weeks old, and until today have never been outside. The man I bought them from on Sunday housed them indoors, warm and safe from predators. I’ve kept them inside and isolated for a couple of days to make sure they won’t bring diseases onto the property.

Today, while the older hens were outside foraging in the lawn, I let Agnes and Philomena into the yard of the big barn. They each took two steps onto the hot, dry soil and collapsed! It was quite the dramatic flop into the dirt and I imagine that a new chicken keeper would have panicked.

Here they are, in a pile of feathery ecstasy.

There’s a health reason behind this chicken “spa treatment.” Dirt worked under the feathers and rubbed onto the skin, kills external parasites. Sun bakes out diseases. My old poultry books all talk about how the “village hennery” will have healthy chickens if there is access to a clean yard and sunlight, but diseased birds if they are holed up in damp, dark quarters.

My new girls certainly don’t think about that – they simply instinctively know to sprawl out in the sun and relax.

On Saturday, there was a break from this dreary rain. I went to work in my vegetable garden. Lily did her work of keeping the squirrels off of the feeders and keeping the rabbits out of the meadow. Scooter did what he does – he sprawled out in the sun and relaxed. I was bent over the lettuces when I heard Lily do her alert bark. It wasn’t the “a dog is on the street” bark, or a “the FedEx truck is here” bark. It was a “there’s a predator” bark. I looked up just in time to see a very big bird flying not even ten feet off the ground, away from us and into the woods behind my small meadow. Lily stopped at the fence line. The bird did not. It couldn’t fly fast through the low branches, but it sure didn’t stop. I hurried out of the garden to look for Scooter. He was unconcerned and still having his sunbath.

That afternoon, we were back out in the yard. Lily came bounding and prancing out of the meadow. She had something in her mouth. I traded her a dog biscuit for it. It was a huge. The tip was damaged. I think that Lily must have just about caught that bird in the morning. I think it’s a wild turkey feather. They’re bad-tempered birds and can be aggressive. 

Here you can see how big the feather is compared to Scooter. He’s one lucky dog to have Lily protect him. GOOD DOG, LILY!