It’s been terribly hot here in Michigan, just in time for my brother from Australia to visit.  It’s their winter and they are sweltering here.  The yard looks ok, I have been watering every night but it was nuts trying to get the yard in shape as well as clean house in this weather.  Everywhere else looks bad, the pasture is dried up, the corn is rolling up in the fields and the soybeans have stopped growing.

My sister-in-law loves horses and was missing hers as they have been on vacation a month or so. She spent some time with Lucky, the foal, getting him used to a lead and handling his feet.  He managed to injure a front foot some way, he’s limping a bit but we couldn’t see anything in his foot.  He’s still playing though so it isn’t bad yet.

My brother raises cattle and he kept asking where the cattle were around here.  Unfortunately they are east of here- most of the cattle raisers- and my brother drove in from the west.  He kept asking why people kept so many horses, ones they didn’t even ride- like me.  We are just horse crazy in Michigan I guess.

My turkey that was sitting hatched only 3 chicks.  I found 4 other eggs with chicks half hatched and dead.  Their fluff was dry, they just didn’t emerge.  It was near 100 degrees the day they hatched so that may be why.  I had to put her in the pen that my frizzle chickens are in and let them out for a couple days because the momma cats were way too interested in the turkey chicks.  It was so hot in that pen as it faces south that we hurried up and build a new lightweight pen we could put out on the grass in the shade.  Momma turkey isn’t too happy about being confined but it will have to be that way until the chicks are a bit bigger.

I do have a hen with 3 chicks she has been leading around and nothing has gotten them yet. That’s a Black sex-link hen; all these supposedly non - sitting hens keep sitting this year.  I have birds sitting everywhere, the two other turkeys are trying to nest again as are the ducks and I actually have an Issa Brown hen sitting on eggs. 

We sold all but 2 of the Guinea fowl off as we thought they were ganging up and attacking the turkeys and ducks for their eggs.  Turns out it may have been 2 Isa hens, I saw them chase a duck off her nest quite viciously and when some eggs were broken in the process they ate them.  I think one of them may now be the Isa that’s sitting.  There is a combination of eggs under her- duck, guinea and chicken so who knows what will hatch.

 We have 9 barn kittens around.  Some are tame and some are not.  I am going to have my husband take them up to the stockyard and try to give them away soon.  They are cute to watch but they are underfoot everywhere and Steve is worried he will run over one in his electric wheel chair.  He doesn’t even like going near the barn now because they are all around the door every time any one goes near it.

 My mom was up here yesterday with my brother and she was amazed that the chickens just chased and picked on the kittens whenever they got near them.  It’s a bit scary to watch but the kittens never seem to get hurt, just scared and that’s what makes them leave chickens alone when they get older.  They may have left the turkey chicks alone but that turkey was awful close to the front of the barn where the cats hang out and I want to raise at least a few turkeys this year.

 I only picked up 4 eggs yesterday between the heat and the birds all trying to sit and out of 16 hens that isn’t good.  My young hens are getting big, in a month or so I’ll hang out a sign and sell off some of these older hens  I think I’ll stick with ten hens, that’s plenty of eggs for us and even to sell a dozen or so a week to my friends at work.  I have two Rhode Island Reds, 2 Black Jersey Giants, 1 ameraucana and 5 Isa  Browns in the young bunch.  We sold off all the extra young hens and a trio of gold Sebright bantams last week, getting the numbers down so we can afford to feed all of these.  I still have 4 sizzle-frizzle roosters I need to sell anybody out there want one?