Today we got four eggs from our hens, including the first blue egg to be picked up before it cracked in the cold! Keala is our only hen that lays blue eggs. She's from the eggs we hatched last summer from one of the kids' friends' chickens. She's clearly an Easter egger cross as she has a gorgeous dark beard (hence her name - Keala after the woman who played the bearded lady in Greatest Showman). Anyway, starting next month we will be setting all of her eggs for hatching. We want more blue and dark brown egg layers in our flock! Now if she'd just start laying her eggs in one of the nest boxes instead of on the ground.
I have an appointment to bring Henry, Sage, and the older six kittens to the vet next week. Once everyone is updated on shots and medicated for their various ailments, we can start getting them spayed and neutered. Henry and Sage are at the top of my list for that, but both have underlying health concerns at the moment. After they're done, the barn cats will need to be spayed too. I just hate to spend hundreds on them with the very real risk that they could run away, or get hit by a car or taken by an eagle or something. On the other hand, I don't want a ton of barn kittens either. Spay surgery it is.
The new betta fish (Valentino) is doing well. It's nice to see some color in that aquarium. I've been considering adding more fish but I don't like the selection available at the only nearby pet store, or Walmart. Turns out that neither will special order fish for you. I was looking online today and wanted to get khuli loaches again and another weather loach, some glass catfish, and some ghost shrimp, maybe a female betta to go with Valentino. Shipping fish is expensive ($30), so the order would have to be pretty big to make it worth the shipping. But I don't want loads of fish. I was thinking five glass cats, five khuli loaches, one female betta, one weather loach, and a small group of ghost shrimp. With shipping this would put my total just over $85. It doesn't seem worth the cost of shipping. It'll have to wait. Maybe I'll get lucky and find some locally. Or perhaps someday we can find a pet store further away and make a day trip of it. For right now it's just not in the budget. Something to day dream about between research projects I guess.
We're expecting another snow storm tomorrow. It should give us another 3-6 inches of snow. Followed by more snow next week. I joked that by the time it starts to thaw, the rabbits in the colony could probably just hop right over the 4-foot fence. The snow has already blocked the gate from opening, so we have to do all the feed and water refills over the edge instead of walking in.
We didn't get any Valentine's bunnies, so our next possible litter date is the 22nd. I'm not hopeful, but I'll be getting nest boxes ready tomorrow just in case.
For anyone holding out for winter sowing posts - I promise, I'm getting to it... It is definitely on my "to do" list in the very near future!