SSDreamin Blessings and curses

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Today is my friend's memorial. My MIL helped me develop a strategy to deal with J. My biggest struggle is I am a non-confrontational person. We decided that, if she ambushes me at the memorial, I will do my best to keep my cool, tell her I would very much like to talk with her - face to face - about some things that are bothering me and we should come up with a time & place to meet, but B's memorial isn't it.

On the home front, the weather was sunny and 40 degrees yesterday, so I worked with the animals a bit. I worked on lead training April. She followed me everywhere WITHOUT the lead on, but turned into a mule once I attached it Jim acted a bit jealous, so I did some light work with him. I did some very minimal halter training with Flank too. He has adjusted to wearing the halter, but fights pretty hard when you hook a lead to it! I also did some feet work with him. Last night, hubs and I tested out our milk stand set up on Ice Cream - it was a comedy of errors! We need to do some major reworking on things, and in pretty short order too! The meaties are enjoying their new home - we used pine pellet horse bedding for them, and it is working great! The smell has been very minimal! Hubs stopped by the farm store and bought DS a new Easter Egger chicken. Unfortunately, none of them looked like an owl this time, so that was a bit disappointing. He also brought home a baby duck! The lady said it had hurt its foot, and the other ducks were picking on it. Since hubs only had the one chicken, she said she'd give him the hurt duck to keep it company. They are great 'friends' and the only issue we've had is that the baby chick keeps trying to stand on the ducks back while it's sleeping - the duck wakes up, takes off, and the chick goes for a quick ride before falling off!! The duck has a very slight limp yet, but is doing great! It's a whole lot quieter in the house with two instead of just one lonely chick too!

You need to get a video of that.

Omg yes a video!

Sounds like a really great plan to set an appropriate boundary for the situation.

J was on a trip to the Bahamas, so I didn't get ambushed. Set up a time to talk - for April 3rd. I will be very emotional at that time (DS#1 had his accident on the 1st & passed away on the 2nd - I usually try to avoid confrontations or people in general until at least the 5th) but it needs to be done.
DH redesigned the milk stand. We tested it today. It needs a few tweaks, but should work fine. We've never put Ice Cream in a head stall before, so that was fun! She is still producing mostly colostrum, so we have a bit of time yet. It's funny that we thought we had it all worked out last year, and now realize that it was ALL wrong! DH had to raise it up a bit, which meant he had to build a step for her, because she's too short to get up there without one. Basically, we have a goat milking stand, for a 700+ pound goat
The duck and the chick are best buds now. They now always sleep 'hugging' each other - the chick puts her head on the ducks back and the duck wraps it's head around and rests its bill on the chicks back. It's adorable! We found out the duck is an Indian Runner duck - they look so funny, I can't wait until it grows up!
The meaties have just about out grown the isolation pen. Unfortunately, their normal pen is still buried under 3 feet of snow, out away from any 'paths' we've cut. It's not nice. fluffy white stuff either. There are at least 4 ice layers embedded in it
Speaking of thick layers of ice, DH asked me to chip out a path to the grill the other day. We all REALLY wanted something on the grill! Hey, long winters get to ya after a while! So, I chipped away a twisty path (mind you, the grill is 3 feet out the back door, 2 feet off our usual 'path' to the chickens). It took about an hour, and we had to step over and around 2 huge ice boulders, but we grilled out Never mind that the pork chops had ice crystals on them almost as soon as he pulled them off the grill (the weatherman's forecast of a balmy 45 degrees was wrong - it was 39, with a windchill of minus 50, or at least that's what it felt like standing out there - but the smell was soooo yummy!) and we had to reheat them once we got them in the house, but WE GRILLED OUT!

OMG - porkchops on the grill are one of life's great pleasures! Glad you got to enjoy that - sort of, lol! Hope your talk with J goes the way you want it to.

You should get a pic of the duck and the chick! So cute!

That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm thinking it would be good for the POW.

Ugh. My camera keeps focusing on the 'door' of their cage and when I open the door, they both jump up and run over! I guess no picture's of duckling and chick
DH came home last night with 6 buff chicks - me thinks he thinks I don't have enough to do! Said he plans to also get a couple more ducklings - so the one we have won't be lonely
Need to call the vet out for Ice Cream. Something is just not right with her - her poo stinks to high heaven (not the normal cow poo stink), she isn't producing very much milk and she now has bald spots in several places (2 on her spine and one on her back). She's not off her feed, but better to be safe than sorry.
Also, with all the talk of snow, hating snow, wishing the snow would end - I took a picture for you: This is my front yard on March 24, 2014. Notice the bits of grass struggling to show through down in the corner, along with BARE sidewalk? Well, we got 3 more inches of snow last night, so all of that is gone again. Several more inches expected over the next couple days! I am thoroughly sick of winter!!!

I'm glad we don't have that much snow! At least we only got a couple of inches, and it will all be gone in just a day or 2!