norseofcourse's journal - spring and show update

The quail are doing well. I got one quail egg a day for three days, and since then it's been 3 quail eggs a day - eventually I should get 5 to 6 a day. There's a bit of size and color variation. Most are beige with black splotches, but one day I got one that looked pale green with brown splotches. Haven't got another of that yet though.

I found an easy recipe for New York style cheesecake, and divided it to make a small batch using two quail eggs for a test. It made two servings, and turned out really well. The eggs were interesting to crack - the shell wasn't too bad, but the membrane just inside the shell was tough compared to a chicken egg! Next time I'll crack them across the blade of a knife or the edge of a spoon.

The sheep are also doing well. I need to separate Elding this weekend, unless I want really early lambs! I want to move lambing up just a bit this year, so he might go back with the girls on the 1st of November.

Things have been going fairly well, I was up to 4 quail eggs a day for awhile, and yesterday I got 5!

But today, when I went out after work to check on the quail, one of them was hunched in a corner of the cage. I looked closer and the top of her head was a bloody mess Her body feathers showed signs of being roughed up, too. I rigged up a small cage to put her in, and called the person I'd gotten my quail from. She said it sometimes happens, and she usually just puts them down, but I could try to save it if I wanted.

She wasn't actively bleeding, so I put antibiotic ointment on the raw area, and put the cage in my back covered porch. Gave her food and water. If she's eating and drinking by morning and looks like she has a fighting chance, I'll give it to her. If she looks worse, I won't let her suffer

I feel bad. They've been fine since I got them, and they have about twice the cage space here as they had at the sellers. I keep their food and water full, and they have a sandbox to dustbathe in. I toss in handfulls of grass sometimes, and I'll start doing that more often. I started reading about feather pecking, and there's a few other things I can try too. Sure hope the weekend goes better than it's started out...

The injured quail made it through the night, and she's eating and drinking. She alternates between doing that, resting kinda hunched up, and preening. I hope she makes it, she certainly looks in better spirits than yesterday, but the injured place on her head still looks ugly. I'll need to make a bigger cage for her, this little cage was just makeshift to get her out of there in a hurry.

I put some branches, and another sandbox, in with the other quail. They all look ok, although one has a tiny bald spot on the top of its head. I'm looking into other options, possibly a deep litter system instead of keeping them on wire like the seller has hers.

It's a chilly, windy, cloudy day. I hope we have a nice long fall before winter hits...

The injured quail is still doing well, eating and drinking, but I think it's going to take a long time for the injured area on her head to heal up. The skin will have to grow back, and a vet tech friend of mine said her feathers won't grow back until she molts - and they may not even grow back at all, if the follicles that grow the feathers got damaged enough.

For the 5 other quail, I redid their cage with a deep litter system, kind of makeshift for now. I put plastic on the bottom and up the sides a little ways, then newspaper in the bottom of the cage, and put in a lot of pine shavings, corn cob pellets, hay sweepings, a bit of sand - and they had a ball! They scratched and pecked and rolled in it, it was so fun to watch them. It works for now, but they're ripping up the newspaper, and I know the plastic won't hold up to their claws. I want to build another quail cage, up on legs so it's easier to access to care for them, and I'll make it with a solid bottom and sides. The only problems so far are they keep kicking bedding into their feeder, and the eggs are a bit harder to find. But they are clearly more content, and hopefully busy enough that no one else will get pecked and hurt.

Today I ate the first of my zucchini from the garden! (yes, I know it's mid-September ... I planted really late, then the weather didn't cooperate for it to grow much, then when it finally started growing, the first few zucchini grew to about 3 inches then stopped. At least I didn't lose them all to squash bugs like I did last year.).

The sheep are doing well, hoping to have them sheared soon. I separated Elding from the others, so he's in a separate paddock till closer to November. He doesn't seem upset, so I'm pretty sure no one had come into season yet.

Kind of a boring update I guess - but sometimes that's a good thing!

The injured quail is continuing to do well. I'm seriously considering bringing the rest of the quail into my enclosed back porch for the fall/winter. There's an outlet I can use to add a few extra hours of daylight so they'll lay longer into fall/winter, and their water will be less likely to freeze (especially important if this winter will be as bad as some are saying). With the deep litter system I'm using now, the smell seems to be way down, so that's less of a concern.

Elding is doing well on his own. I keep watching him and the ewes for any behavior changes that might indicate they're starting to go into heat. I was thinking November 1 to put them together, but I might push that up just a bit to October 25, for mid-March lambs.

I've got my hay in for the winter, so I feel good about that. 260 bales, which is more than I had last year. I am hoping it won't be a bad winter again, but I'm glad to be prepared.

A friend lent me a book on soapmaking, and two on cheesemaking. One of the cheesemaking books has some good information on using sheep's milk for cheese, and they have a recipe for feta that only takes one gallon! It's Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll if anyone wants to check it out. Hoping to have some spare time in the next month or two so I can make both soap and feta.

The leaves are starting to turn. The corn and soybeans in the fields are ripening. Fall is here, and I hope it's a long, mild one.

The shearer is coming Thursday! I'm only going to have her shear the four lambs and Elding. Although I may possibly have Rose sheared also, if her wool is long enough (she shed out really late this spring/summer), as I really like her nice grey color.

It will be interesting to see the lambs without all their wool. I am especially looking forward to seeing Rose's ewe lamb, she seems to have a good stocky build, so I'll be able to see if she really does, or if it's all fluff.

Pictures to come!

Shearing went alright, except for one slip where she cut a substantial chunk out of Elding's ear . The others went ok, and I did have her shear Rose.

Rose's lamb does have a really nice build. I got a few pictures (my camera was acting up), but I haven't gotten them onto the computer yet. The twins were a bit leggier and thinner, but not bad considering I'd checked eyelids and just wormed them two days before the shearing - and they're already gaining now. We found a couple roundworms in Brosa's lamb's stool, so I'll worm him again (I used Valbazen two months ago when I wormed him, and his eyelids aren't too pale, so I'll use Ivermectin this time).

The injured quail is doing well. The skin on her head has grown back, and some feathers have been coming in. And she even laid an egg yesterday The others have stopped laying eggs (less daylight), so I'm moving things around so I can bring them onto the back enclosed porch for the winter. I don't need them to lay all winter, but I would like a few more months of eggs since they're young and I haven't had them very long. I'm seeing websites that say they'll lay for a little over a year, but I'd like to give them a break before that, maybe January/February or so. I need to read more about molting.

I've been trimming tree branches in the yard and the pastures. I have lots of trees, and quite a few need trimmed or taken down entirely. So I'm doing it gradually, and dropping the branches where the sheep can eat off the leaves. They love it! They come running when they hear the chainsaw or sawzall, and follow me around as I'm using it. Pasture clearing and free food all at once! LOL

We seem to be losing daylight in the evening faster and faster. It's noticeable in the morning, too, but I miss it in the evening more. And winter solstice is still nearly three months away...

I moved the other five quail into the enclosed back porch last week. It was a big change for them, but they're settling in now and I hope they start laying eggs again soon. The quail that was injured is laying an egg nearly every day.

Elding's been staring at the ewes a lot lately, I bet they're starting to come into heat. 18 more days before he goes back in with them!

I need to run something by everyone here, and then if it's a bad decision I can blame y'all!

I have four lambs that were born this year. Three boys (wethers now), and one girl. The boys will go for meat - one in my freezer, because if I don't do it now it will only get harder, and I need to find out now if I can actually eat something I raised.

The other two wethers shouldn't be hard to sell for lamb. They were just sheared a couple weeks ago, so I'm letting their wool grow out for a couple months, till it's a nice length for a good lambskin. If I'm going to have them processed, I want as little to go to waste as possible, so I'll be sending the skins to be tanned.

So that leaves the ewe lamb. Yes, I could have her processed, too, but she's got such a nice chunky build, solid and good conformation (as does her dam). Her dam also has nice milkable teats and produced well during my milking experiment this summer. It would be nice to find someone who wants her for their flock, but the market for live sheep isn't all that big around here. And Icelandics aren't one of the more commonly kept breeds either. So my chances of selling her soon are low.

I could process her like I'll be processing the wethers - however, it will take a couple months before her wool grows out enough, and I'm planning on letting Elding, my ram, in with the others in a couple weeks. She will be old enough to get bred soon - and something in me just doesn't want to process her if she gets pregnant, even if it's not that far along. I don't have a place to separate her from Elding - she will go through the electric fence wires

Or, I could keep her, at least for awhile. Yes, I realize that this is just "kicking the decision down the road" in a way. If I kept her, she would get bred back to her sire. I realize that means her offspring would have to either be processed or sold, so I'd be facing the same decision next year. But that also gives me more time to sell her without feeling like I have to hurry to decide.

I was going to go down to 4 sheep for this winter (Elding and 3 ewes). If I kept the ewe lamb, I'd have 5 for the winter. That's the same number of sheep I kept over last winter, and I have plenty of hay stored. So that's not a worry.

It's only one sheep, but it feels like a hard decision. Are there any points I'm overlooking?

Ultimately, I would say keep her.....There, you can blame me!
As long as her good qualities out way the bad and you are prepared to deal with her offspring, why not?