Hens are teasing me!

I got 9 eggs last week, but none for the last 3 days. I even heard a laying cackle yesterday morning but haven't located the egg. I am tempted to pen them up in a stall in the barn at night, and not let them out in the morning until they pay their debt to society - in eggs!

No duck eggs either. The ducks sound like they're laughing at me too, every time they quack.

In other news, Ezra the baby goat isn't such a baby any more. He's quite interested in all four does, and spends a lot of energy playing head-butt games with his wethered "cousin," Hickory. Ezra is 9 weeks old now and ready to go to his family, as soon as they can come get him. Although I must admit the thought occurred to me yesterday, that I would love to get a doeling sired by Ezra out of Viola. I could really use some of Ezra's dam, Little Bit's, nice udder genetics to improve on Viola. I know Viola was in heat in July, and I wouldn't doubt she's already bred to Hondo (Ezra's sire). Maybe ask for some return breeding rights for Ezra from his family. I do know that Hondo's dam, Cat, had a pretty nice udder as well though, so maybe that alone would be enough to improve Viola's daughters. Breeding to improve is very much a game of patience, because any doeling born this winter wouldn't freshen until a year or more later, so I won't know what if any improvements there would be for at least 1.5 years.

I decided to give the meat rabbits one more try. Now that I'm the one feeding and watering everything, it's much more likely for livestock to survive than when we were depending on older kids to do it. I bought another New Zealand White buck, a big sucker they had named Clyde. I put Hasenpfeffer in with him last Thursday, and another doe this Thursday. Next Thursday the last doe goes in and 2 weeks after that Hasenpfeffer will kindle if she's gonna.

Dead worms, dead duckling, dead tired me.

The second shipment of worms was also DOA. Finally arrived August 2nd, again almost a week late. So once again, Amazon got back a box of stinking putrid worms, and I just asked for a refund. I haven't contacted the person on the local CraigsList that's selling worm tea yet, just haven't remembered to when I had the energy to deal with it.

And our very expensive Ancona duckling was dead when I went out to do chores this morning. No idea why.

Still no eggs from either chickens or ducks. They still eat and they still poop all over the place, but no eggs for all the food and mess they leave. Oh yeah and they invade the garden and eat everything growing there before we even know there's anything worth harvesting. They were fighting over an acorn squash today, not the first time, and we've yet to get the first edible thing out of the garden. We put many tons of composted cow manure on it, plowed it, cultivated it, disked it, planted it, and now, the chickens eat it all. So annoying.

The farmer next door has been spraying his cotton every week lately, which makes all of us here feel completely rotten when the chemicals make their way to us. The only thing we've found that helps us is to wear breathing masks with activated carbon in them. But I've not managed more than the bare minimum since early July because of breathing chemical soup.

And the pump on our washing machine died. Greg ordered a replacement today which should be here in two days, but in the meantime we're very close to being out of clean laundry. I was close to getting it caught up, then this happens.

We're still fighting the flea infestation in the house as well. Between the house cat sneaking outside and the barn cat getting inside, we got invaded by blood-sucking pests. I vacuum as much of the house as I can, as often as I can, and empty the canister outside. Haven't done so in a couple of days though, so it's past due again.

Some days I just want to sell all the livestock and give up. But what would William drink if we didn't have milk goats? He doesn't tolerate store-bought cow's milk well at all. So, I keep on keeping on taking care of critters. But I'm so tired all the time, and hurt all over a lot of the time. Very discouraging.