Last time I talked about hacking back the plants that were fouling the electric fence. Well, Kristi has come down with an increasingly bad case of Poison Ivy. Ouch. She's smearing goop of several different types, anti-itch stuff Calamine lotion. None of it helps yet you have to do something. Two weeks and it should run its course. As of today, one week is done.
The new electric fence works great. To solve the problem of getting power to it I used a long roll of insulated wire and ran it from a section of fence that was working. Of course that fence was on the far side of the gate that the goats need to go through to get to the temporary area. So I would coil the wire up and leave it out of the goats path. Entice all the goats by shaking my feed bucket (this drives them wild) when they were all right up next to the fence, swarming and jumping like sharks in chum, I flung the gate open and ran for the area I wanted them in. All 35 goats stampeded right after me. Once they were in there they quieted down and started eating. I will admit that I sat in there with them for a couple of hours watching them eat, but I had an ulterior motive. This portable fence looks different than any other fence that contains the goats. That means that they are going to test it. Our vegetable garden is only 20 feet away from where they were so there would be some temptation to go eat all those pretty plants. Sure enough, one by one goats would brush up against the fence and get a strong jolt. I snickered at each one. With all the trouble the goats are to maintain, and all the problems they have caused us I get a cruel pleasure watching them get shocked. Billy goat backed into the fence, got zapped and he immediately bolted into the center of the field and was looking around, craning his neck trying to find what creature hurt him. While I was watching at least 10 goats came into contact with the fence with various reactions. Alas I had to cut my fun short as I had to bake a cake.
We are continually coming up with new areas that we can move this fence and have the goats do our mowing for us.
It looks like our chickens are about ready. So this weekend will be the unpleasant and necessary chore of "processing" them. We are slow at getting this done so it will likely take both days to do 30 birds. Then we can clean out the barn stall where these chickens are and that will help reduce the flys.
I had another run in with a corn snake on Wednesday. I had blown my buttercream frosting having overcooked the syrup beyond the softball stage, I was using an old candy thermometer that came from somebody elses house and it didn't read properly. That meant that when I added the hot syrup to the egg yokes the syrup immediately solidified into hard lumps and the eggs were ruined. You'd think we would have a virtually limitless quantitiy of eggs with all our chickens wouldn't you? Well it's extreemely rare that we run out but sometimes they aren't in the house. I went out to get some from the coop and as I reached for the door, I saw a corn snake slithering toward the door. Without thinking i reached out and grabbed it. By this time it had gotten about half way into the coop. Now it's dark outside and I couldn't see the largest part of the snake which was already in the coop. I had grabbed the last third of the creature. The first two thirds was entwined in a wire rack that was originally a hay feeder for the goats and is now used by the roosting chickens to sleep on. I couldn't pull the snake out through the wire and it was struggling to get away. I couldn't turn the light on without letting go and then it would be loose in with the chickens. What to do? I reached down and grabbed my phone, turned it on and speed dialed Kristi in the house. So she came out, turned the light on and I was able to extricate the snake from the wire rack. Kristi pointed out that this snake was smaller than the 2 that we had seen mating the other day. Great so how many do we have here? No wonder Eatz (cat) is always freaked out. This snake was more aggressive than the others have been which basically would patiently wait for me to let them go. This one struck and tried to bite me. I adjusted my grip to right behind it's head and went to release it. I'm sure it's back stealing eggs already.

Next post - chicken processing fun.