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We have officially started homesteading, animals have arrived!

Well as usual I am a little behind the power curb as far as getting the blog out before we are too far behind!  We got back to the states on the 4th by flying into Chicago where Terri’s mom and aunt was there to pick up us and the dogs, from there we basically drove through the night in order to get to the homestead as soon as possible.  Once we got there were really have not stopped!  Since we were scheduled to get the pigs in the next week or so and I only had a few days before I needed to sign in to Washington DC one of the top priorities for me was to get the electric fencing up and do some fence repairs for the “training area” for the pigs.  A training area is where you teach the pigs to the electric wire, it is a relatively small area with electric wire run around two or three of the sides with a hard fence to back up the electric wire so that the pigs relate the wire with both an unpleasant shock and a physical barrier to the point where they do not challenge it anymore.   I set up two strands of electric polywire to a solar powered charger.  As of yesterday, Terri went to pick up Lexi from school and the piggies on the way back.  She has since  introduced them to China (one of our bulldogs) and their pen.  As it turns out I left too much room between the wires and they have already figured out how to escape, looks like I am going to run a third strand between the other two!  Here is a picture of China introducing herself to Ham Solo and Chewbacon (blame Lexie for the names!)  Both pigs are currently about 35 lbs and are feeder pigs.  Meaning we will not keep either of them, we are only raising them to butcher for the table!  The plan will to butcher them ourselves right around hunting season when we will already be butchering the deer.  This should also give us a little extra fat to use with the ground venison.  We may decided to do one at that time and the other one later but we will see!

China Introducing herself

 Besides the Pigs Terri decided I could go ahead and order the chickens to arrive before I came back my week long or so trip to DC (should be returning in the next couple days).  She also said I could go ahead and order the guinna hens this year!  I am pretty sure that the number of ticks we have been pulling off of our bodies had something to do with that! The Chickens arrived this past Thursday, 50 of them!  So far we have lost three of them but that is sort of to be expected with mail order chickens, the stress on one day old birds is rough.  Terri did not know she was going to by wiping baby chickens buts the first couple days when she volunteered however!    When you get mail order chickens the stress will give some of them a case of the runs, when it sticks to their vents (exit point for chickens) it can gum up, sealing their bottoms so they can not get rid of waste and can die (think that is where we lost at least one of them) so you have to wash them a couple times a day until they settle down..  Here is a picture of the but it is not a great pic, I will try to get some more this next week. 

50 Barred Rock Chickens fresh from the mail!


I just received an email stating the bees should be shipped by this Tuesday or Wednesday.  Looks like I will be racing them back!  I am scheduled to leave DC Wed. morning via a UHaul full of things we had in storage!  This trip I should be back about 2 ½ weeks so Look forward to a few more posts and hopefully some more pics!!  

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