Well, today is primarily a sad day here at Deerfield. Whitepaw, the oldest of the cats around has not been feeling well lately. She hasn't been able to eat, but she's really been wanting to. She went to the vet last week and he gave her some shots and stuff, and she ate for a day or so, but since then has only seemed to get worse. I took her back to the vet today, and he found a tumor on her jaw that has grown into the joint, essentially freezing her jaw shut. He said he could give her some steroids, and that might give her some temporary relief, but that he thought the best thing for her would be to put her to sleep. I called David, and he gave his consent, and so sometime between two and three this afternoon Whitepaw left this world. We had a burial for her. It was very sad, even for me who was probably the least attached to Whitepaw of the Deerfield human residents.
The other happier news, is that Winona has hatched at least two of the eggs under her, and we are hoping for more. As soon as she is no longer sitting on them (which she is still doing last we saw) we will get some pictures of the new mama with her brood. That is also exciting as it is the first time we've used a hen to hatch eggs, so we will get to watch her raise them.
Also we completed our second chicken tractor today, so we can finally get the vastly overcrowded birds out of the brooder that they have been in for entirely too long. We still need to build a couple more for when they are full grown, but this will be a definite improvement.
And so the cycles keep on going. . .
Jeff
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3 comments:
Sorry for your loss.
Sorry about Whitepaw, but glad to hear about the new chicks. I've never seen a hen raise her chicks. I guess I never thought much about hens as moms.
momD
So this morning's count was 5 chicks under Winona. I suspect that will be all we will get, but we decided to let the remaining eggs wait until tomorrow morning.
jd
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