Chicken Scraps Blog

     Here's a 10-minute video I put together a couple days ago.  It is a tutorial on hand-milking a goat, and includes washing, dealing with kicking (Nelly rarely kicks on the milk stand, but she does not like any change in her routine, so me constantly getting up to move the camera, and narrating was disturbing to her), and straining.  Enjoy!

     Two days ago, I finally got started on a project that has been put off quite long enough- a goat milk stand, or stanchion.  It took only a couple hours after the wood was cut, and probably would have gone a little faster if I knew more about carpentry.  But it is fully functional, and looks decent (yay!) and so I'm very happy with it.

Sometimes it is helpful to be able to just set a bucket of milk on the ground in front of your calf, and walk away while he feeds himself.  Since calves don't naturally know how to drink from a bucket though, they have to be taught.  Last night, as I gave Chipotles his first lesson in bucket-feeding, it occurred to me to have Evan record it on video, so that others could perhaps profit by it.  Enjoy!

Here is a video tutorial I took with Charlie on pick-up day , designed to go along with my 5 Basic Commands blog post.  Enjoy!

Well, today was the day the puppies were unconsciously waiting for- pick-up day! First (Friday) came Mrs. G. for Selah, in her silver car... Since Selah will only be in the next town over, we might be able to see her occasionally. Then Saturday morning came, and in due course five more silver cars or trucks rolled down our driveway one after the other, while I bathed, dried, fluffed fur, clipped nails, and checked paperwork.

The puppies are eight weeks old as of Saturday.  I couldn't do a post that day because we were at church almost the whole day for a wedding and  helping to clean-up afterwards.  This morning I let the puppies out for some exercise, but I think it was not very good timing, as William and Justice (my 8 and 6 year old brothers) were hanging out laundry, and the puppies very quickly discovered how much fun it was to steal some small article, and run off triumphantly with it to go play tug-of-war with his or her siblings.  Of course, my brothers enjoyed chasing puppies with the laundry much more than hanging it out, even though Justice was shouting that "the puppies are stealing!  The puppies are thieves, the puppies are thieves!"  (Star was the worst about taking the laundry, and they all had a great time pulling it in different directions.)  Savana came out and took these pictures for me shortly after the laundry-stealing ceased.  (She says they are...

Well, I couldn't resist posting this- Chicken Scraps Blog now has over 10,000 pageviews, from over 20 different countries, including:  USA, Germany, France, United Kingdom, China, India, Chile, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Phillipines, Russia, Austria, Japan, Venezuela, New Zealand, Namibia and Australia. While this number seems pretty big to me, I know that it's really not all that huge compared to other blogs/ websites, which get that number of views per day .  I don't mean to brag, just thought it was interesting (and kind of funny) that there are people from so many different countries who have visited this little blog!