Twitterpating

Our barn is currently a in a flurry of baby-making.  Okay, that's sounds a little odd, now that I re-read it.  No, the barn is not making little barns.  Rather, the animals who live in the barn are making little animals.

It's not feeling all that spring-like to me just yet (still too stinkin' cold for my taste) but the animals all seem to know.  Somehow, they all just know.

We currently have a mama cat with three new kittens.  Then there are two mama ducks sitting on large nests, hopefully to be hatching in early to mid May.  The other duck is laying up a nice clutch, too, it seems.  Sadly, our best mama duck had a mishap in the road, so her nest is, well... a black bantam silkie hen (as in, chicken) has adopted those eggs, which are about four times the size of the silkie mama's own eggs.  We'll see what comes of that.  There's another black silkie sitting on a clutch of her own eggs, and one more who's sitting on... nothing.  I maybe should see about finding her something to hatch, poor dear.  Yet another silkie has been confined to a cage to "get over it" because she has it in her little bird brain that one of the duck nests is hers and is causing all sorts of havoc.  The duck mamas don't care to share (silkies don't mind, obviously) and eggs tend to get broken in the scuffle.  To add to all that, we're expecting layer chicks by mail in mid-May.

So, Lord willing, next month we'll have a whole mess of chickies out there.  Fun and chaos. I love spring (the warm part, that is).

And you would think that with all this laying going on, that I'd actually be getting some eggs to eat.  Not so.  My six layers sit on the feathery duffs all day, eating bon-bons and watching soaps, as far as I know.  I might get two, or at most three, eggs from them each day.  Boo.  Guess who's heading for the canning jars?

But the biggest thing is that right now, I'm trying hard to keep my eyelids from rebelling so I can stay up and keep checking on a Strawberry, the goat, who should be producing some kids any minute (or hour) now!

Back out to the barn...