Rain

Last night we had a huge rainstorm. It was accompanied by tremendous amounts of lightning and thunder. The storm must have been directly overhead. Findlay was sleeping inside our room as usual, but even being in the same room with us was not enough to keep him calm with all the noise. He kept walking around to Paul's side of the bed. I guess he had to get the real "alpha dog's" reassurance and not just mine. Eventually, I moved his dog bed right beside me so I could keep my hand on him, and every time there was a clap of thunder he would jerk his whole body. I had never seen him so scared before.

When we checked the rain gauge in the morning, we had gotten 2.9 inches of rain. You could see in the backyard that there had been rivers of water flowing from one side of the property to the other.


Our burn pit (which is about 2-1/2 feet deep) was completely full of water.


It looked like there were oil slicks on the water.


When we looked more closely, the oil slicks turned out to be thousands of little bugs floating on top of the water. We have no idea what they were.

Heinous Guineas

Yesterday, my sister wanted to know how the "heinous guineas" were doing. This picture should confirm that they are indeed heinous. The guineas are starting to practice their calls and other vocalizations. I'm not sure what they're so excited about in this clip, but they do this every evening. The distinct two-syllable call is from a female guinea. The males can't make that sound.

Horses and Goats

One of our neighbors is keeping their 4 horses and 1 goat on our property. They are very fun to watch, especially the goat who is quite friendly.


Shortly after the horses were moved over to the property, another neighbor and her 2 kids came over to look at them. We had gone into the house to talk for a while, and the little girl, Lizzy, came running in to tell us that one of the horses was pregnant. We told her that that wasn't the case, but she insisted that not only was one of the horses pregnant but was giving birth at that very moment and one leg was already out. I won't go into any more detail except to say that one of the horses is a male.

Guineas and Chickens

We've been slowly introducing the chickens and the guineas to each other. At first the guineas were very afraid and would go to the top portion of the coop and hide. The chickens seemed to be more interested in eating the grow feed, so they pretty much ignored the guineas and went straight to the food hopper. You can see they are mingling together in this picture.


This is the top half of the coop looking straight down. When we first opened up the cage to the chickens, the guineas would line up next to the stairway and look down at the chickens. They would hang their heads way over, and it was pretty funny to see from below.


We left the cage open one night and Buffy, the alpha chicken at the top of the pecking order, went up there to be with them and show them who was boss.


Last night was the first night the guineas slept outside. Previous to this, the chickens (all 19 of them) were crammed into one coop and the guineas in the other. Guineas naturally sleep out in the open like this, so soon the chickens will be able to use both coops again. Unfortunately, the guineas got quite a scare this morning when some javelina broke into the chicken yard. Two of them flew over the fence to get away from the javelina, and they were making quite a racket this morning trying to get back into the chicken yard. Thankfully, they all survived. Findlay didn't make a peep while all this was going on. He's not a good watchdog. Maybe he's deaf -- or scared!