Sophie takes a wander, chicks have a new pen

After all the drama on Saturday losing my Brave One to the Killer Lester, I wanted Sunday to be a nice relaxing beautiful spring day...which it was until I let the dogs out again.

I try to keep them on the back 40, knowing that the chickens are usually out front. SO Lester and Sophie and I are walking down to the creek, right before the whistle blows at 5pm, dinner time. That has always been the plan, take them out at dinner time knowing they'll come back when they hear the whistle. Problem is, they are both going deaf. Lester's inner clock tells him it is 5 pm (even when it's only 3:30) so he mostly comes right back, no problem.

Sophie, on the other hand, disappeared. Two hours of searching, and no Sophie to be found. She has done this before, and usually comes slowly wandering back; but this time, it's getting dark and there's no Sophie. Luckily The Husband was on dinner duty, so I had all the time I needed to search... No Sophie...

Finally, and I don't know what inspired me to do this, I drove around to the road behind us, which I had already done a few times, and I parked the car. I thought I saw something Sophie-colored in the field, but I got there and it was just a broken tree trunk. But then I look around and there she is, way off to my left, down in the mucky, swampy part where I never would have seen her from the road or from anywhere else for that matter!

She had mud up to her knees, all 4 of them, so I think she might have gotten stuck in the mud, although she was not stuck when I saw her. And do you think she'd be happy to see me? No, still just poking around down there! Eventually I convinced her to follow me back to the car, and ride home, mud and all. Could be she was exhausted from unsticking herself from a mudhole, could be she's getting a little senile and didn't know where she was (or who I was ?). I dunno. All I know is that I was VERY happy to have her back!

And those short ribs The Husband made were perfectly done—cooked to perfection and much welcomed by a starving and exhausted me.

So after that horrible experience on Saturday with the chickie babes in the dog crate outside, I will be using the crate only as their night-time roosting spot from now on. They can have the Chicken Hospital space in the garage with the heat lamp until they get a little bigger and are ready to join the others in the coop. I spent the last 2 days creating an enclosure for them on the side of the garage. It's not pretty, but it is safe as far as I can tell.

This life on the farm ain't all it's cracked up to be! I knew it would be hard work, but I didn't know it would be so stressful. It is really hard not to get attached to these chickens! Who knew? And who knew these 2 old dogs were going to give me such a headache?