The puppies are huge. Their eyes are still blue, but starting to darken. Realised I don't have a good photo of Lisa, the little girl we're keeping. Will have to add some of her on another day. Probably as I'm keeping her, I haven't taken photos to post to sell her or send to her new family. They're such fun. They come running when I call "puppies". Teaching the 4 named ones their names. Betsi played with them again yesterday.
Yesterday I moved the cattle. Daisy May should be bred since she went in with Parrot on August 1 and I haven't seen her come on heat again. Now 3 months later, I've put Dolly in with them, but had to move the Scottish Highlands out so that Gabriel didn't impregnate her. He's not a happy bull ! He's pacing the fence line, but there is the channel between them, so 2 fences. Think Dolly is on heat as Parrot tried to jump her when I bought them back from milking today, but she wouldn't stand for him. It took about an hour to move them all. The most difficult was Gabriel, as he just wanted to be near Dolly. Have him, Little Red and Seasaidh in with the horses, then the 2 heifers, Immanuelle and Eleanor in the back pasture by themselves, they get to walk the channel, and Daisy May, Dolly and Oliver (renamed from Doofus) in the main pasture with Parrot. Every morning I let the 3 cows out into the hayfield to eat, the 2 Jerseys and the Scottish Highland. Then I do the milking before letting them back into their respective pastures. Little Red is still very skittish, but gave her grain in the lower barn today while I milked the other 2 so that she gets to know that the lower barn is a nice place to be. Dolly is very dominant with her, batters her in the side with her head whenever she can. Bad Dolly.
Cooked a chicken yesterday. One that I butchered. Not bad. Served with mashed potatoes and peas. Very different from a store-bought chicken. Much smaller breasts, huge legs and wings. Very dark meat, but cooked up tender, and very flavourful, so I was pleased.
From this coming weekend, Herbie gets Sundays and Mondays off ! This week, he only got Monday off, and it's thrown off both of our schedules. I thought Tuesday was Thursday, and tonight he went to bed before 5pm. A little late to be able to spend some part of the week-ends with his daughters. Wonder why companies don't consider their employees parenting time.
Success ! I made great venison biltong. John and Angie gave me a hind quarter of a deer. Took me hours to cut it up, removing all the silver membranes around the muscles. 11.4 lbs of meat, plus 1.8 lbs of ground meat I fed to the puppies. Read a lot of recipes, and then winged it - and it turned out great. I took all the trays out of my 2 dehydrators, and strung the biltong up to the top shelf, letting it hang down. The Excalibur doesn't run if there isn't some heat, and it's shorter than the LEM, so those pieces dried quicker than the thicker, longer pieces in the LEM. But the flavour is great. I toasted the coriander and crushed it in my pestle and mortar. Yum. Let Angie try some, she thought it was citrusy, and Betsi, she thought it was great. Herbie loves it too. I slice it and hand it to him. I'm eating a piece every evening. Won't last long. Gun season opens on Sunday, so think I'll have to go bag me some deer !
Only finding 1 egg a day, and no duck eggs for the last 2 days :(.