Wed. August 13th… Today is the day to hatch eggs! We hope……

I got up this morning completed all my usual tasks, then went to the basement to check the incubator and the duckie and found the new duckie dead. The enclosure had water, was at 99.5 degrees and there was food. Short of staying up all night long or doing CPR, don't know what else we could have done, or if that would have even helped. Vicki thinks this part of farming is hard. (me too sometimes) A lot of the time, after dealing with this I just feel like sitting and sipping coffee, clearing my mind and thinking of pleasant things. It’s like Garth Brooks so eloquently states in his song, The Dance. “I could a missed the rain, but I’d a had to miss the dance.” You can’t experience fulfillment in your life, if you don’t allow yourself to be filled, because of your fear of the filling. You miss it ALL!  You just run and hide your head in the sand to keep from experiencing all the bad in life, yet, how much good can you see with your head in the sand. Get out and experience the pain of the rain, on the way to the greatest dances in your life.

The other eggs have not hatched out yet. (and may not)  They are only due to hatch today, so we will patiently wait to see if we are lucky enough to have anymore burst forth chirping and we will hopefully end up with a bunch of lively little furballs chirping all over the place. It would be nice to raise another little gaggle of duckies like the rat pack.  

Today we plan to go to therapy, then work on the barn again. We definitely will finish the wire today and erect roosts and start on nesting boxes. This time I will not have any fronts on the box that they can use as perches overnight and poop into the nests like they are doing now. I will install perch rails in front of the nests, far enough away that they can use them for a place to land when they fly up to the nest, then hop into the nest or roost in front well away from the nest box. In any event, they should be in the new area tonight or tomorrow night at the latest. Then we will concentrate on finishing the barn outside and then inside. (doors, windows, etc., etc.)