Animals...

I have had an interesting weekend with my animals.  It started Friday afternoon with a wonderful hatch of 15 new quail chicks.  It was so sweet to see them all hatching and to have so many at one time.  The sweetness was short lived.  They started dying off one by one...some didn't make it out of the incubator.  Several looked healthy and ran around their house.  I was left with just 6 when I went to sleep last night.  Brad gave me more sad news when I woke up this morning.  None were alive.  I have been racking my brain all weekend...cleaning their brooder area/monitoring temperature...I am at a loss.  One thing that occurred to me is I had a handful of birds hatch the day before and there was not time to sanitize the incubator in between...Maybe they picked up an infection.  I bought a new incubator and will try to keep this tragedy from happening, again.

Our donkey is a mess.  He is rotten!  Now, I am mad at him.  He wasn't happy anywhere we tried to keep him...in a pen alone or in a pen with goats.  We ended up giving him free range of the property..7 acres to himself.  Well, he is a bother at feeding time.  We give him treats of fruit and animal crackers.  He has his hay...all the grass/leaves, etc...We have been in a habit of giving him sweet feed with corn (just a bit) so he doesn't feel left out at feeding time...Last night while he was eating his feed, my Nubian, Buckeye, came to see what he was up to.  Howdy picked up Buckeye atop his neck with HIS MOUTH and shook him vigorously.  I was a wreck.  Thank God, Buckeye is okay.  He is the gentlest thing you would ever meet.  We are going to have to make arrangements for Howdy as Brad is now worried about the kids...