I would like to go on record blaming JOE for this new development.  I work with JOE, a nice guy who needed to get rid of two Courtnix Quail.  I took them off his hand last night.  They traveled in a box in the trunk of my car.  I talked to Annmarie this morning and told her about the quail and how I could build a small box 2 feet x 2 feet and 8 inches high to house 25 quail.  She told me that the quail cannot live in a box.  So after further study of the chicken coop I am going to build a 2 foot x 4 foot x10 inch cage.  I will cut a hole through the outside wall into a new 360 degree covered outside area just for the quail.  I can add a brooder space above that cage and some storage space above that.  The nice thing is all this is built on the walls on the inside of the coop.  I was not using that space at all so I get to use it for something now.  Pretty cool.
I am thinking about learning to pickle eggs and using the quail eggs for that.  So once I get it perfected then everyone will be getting pickled eggs as gifts!!
I will go cut my chicken sized door into the outside fence tomorrow.  This will keep the sheep out of the chicken yard.  The sheep keep knocking the waterers over.
I sanded and mudded the sheet rock in our library today.  I really think I will be done by Thanksgiving.  That is my story and I am sticking to it.  I will finish getting the wall paper off tomorrow and repair the closet ceiling.  I want to have the room painted and wired for our company.
I will post pictures of my new quail project as I start working on it!!!  I love new projects.

I made -$42.67 for the month on an average 27 hens laying (all my hens are now in except for the blue layers and they are now four months old, so in two more months they should start laying, beginning of new year). (for the year my net income is -$10.16/month (going negative again.). (For the year I am-$101.59 total).  I had $46.18 in expenses for feed (250#) this month (50# more feed than last month and about $10 more).  I had an extra $63.99 in expenses for a new chicken light and 440# of wood pellets to use as litter inside my coop, it should be enough for the next year.  For the year, my monthly expenses are $72.03. We collected a total of 358 usable eggs (3 less than last month) averaging 13.6 eggs/day collected (for the year the average is 12.1). The chickens ate 0.59#food/egg (for the year are averaging 0.64#/egg) In October it cost $0.11/egg or $1.32/doz for feed (my yearly average is $0.14/egg or $1.68/dozen. This is starting to creep up due to my feed costs increasing.  It will get pretty high when the snow hits.)  
You can see I was down over $42 this month due to purchasing the light and litter.  Those needed to happen.  I have been seriously considering the automatic chicken door again.  We found the motor only online for $75.  I can install it inside the chicken coop (they recommend you attach it to a timer, I may attach it to a light sensor, but I may need an electronic switch if I do that, will require more research.)  In May I had 33 chickens laying eggs, 6 months later and I only have 27.  The predators brutalized me this year.  I am going to pick up some more live traps.  I need to knock down the predator issue.  This will of course just put me farther in to the red.  But I expect this to be all needed hardware.  
I will get babies again in January.  That way they will be laying come Summer.  I may even wait till February, so that they will be able to use the yard when they get big enough.  I want to buy another 24 pullets.  That will put me over 50 hens.  That is the max I can have in my coop, plus I will be getting over 3 doz eggs/day with that many chickens.  
I will still need a chicken size door on the outside of the chicken run.  I will leave it open all the time except when we leave town.  The sheep keep going into the chicken yard and drinking all the water, knocking over the water dishes and eating all the grass.  Another chicken door will stop that.  
So know that I have my plan for the next year we will see how things go…

I took a break on Saturday and went pheasant hunting.  There was two of us and the weather was cold, dreary, foggy and wet.  I was hoping it would keep the pheasants from jumping too early.  We took Bailey with us.  She loves to hunt, but doesn’t understand the concept of staying close.  She gets locked on a bird and nothing else in the world matters.  After the first hour she started to tire and it was much better.  My hunting partner shot a young rooster and I missed a clean clear shot at an older one.  The pheasants wanted to jump early and were very spooky.  We saw over 30 roosters.  The only ones we almost stepped on were hens.  We spent four hours slogging all over the property.  I was very tired, a little cold and very wet from the knees down.  It did start to rain the last hour we were out.  I came home, warmed up in the shower and then laid down on the bed to just “stretch out”.  I woke up 1.5 hours later after hearing this voice call out my name repeatedly.  I thought it was a dream.  Annmarie was going to town and could not find me.  She had hunted all over the house (except our bedroom) and was outside calling my name.  I gave up on being productive and went to town with her to run errands then we had dinner with her folks.  It was a very nice day.  Gotta get a lot of chores done today and some quality time with the wallpaper.  I only have 23 days before our company shows up for Turkey day.  The count down has begun!

Here is the flock minus two.  The three dark brown ones in the middle are boys.  The farthest one is a wether (castrated male), the white faced middle boy is our up and coming ram (Lucky is his name because he is not getting eaten), he is in training and learning from our current male.  Lucky imitates our current ram.  It is pretty funny to watch.  Oreo is the large ram in the front of the trio of dark colored sheep.
On the far right and far left are our two new female lambs.  They should be ready in the Spring to start having babies.  We decided to not dock their tails.  Everything I have read about hair sheep says you do not have to do it, so we didn’t.  I will know in a year if it was a mistake or not.  All the sheep we purchased already had their tails docked.
The larger central three sheep are our ewes.  They are all three pregnant at this moment.  We should be getting lambs from two of them in November and one in December.  Now, we are locking the sheep up in the barn every night so we can find the lambs.  Hopefully, this will also prevent the coyotes from killing the newborn lambs (lost two last year this way).

Here is the back side of the barn.  You can see all the critters running around together.  The dogs were in the yard just so the sheep didn’t get spooked.  The dogs can run around with everyone also, but one of the pregnant ewes head butts our chocolate lab when she isn’t looking.  It causes chaos.  I wanted some relaxed pictures.  The lab and rug rat dog do not attack the sheep, cats or chickens.

The cats don’t do well with the chickens when the chickens are small.  They look like food (quail) and get eaten.  Once they are adults then the cats will leave them alone.  It is pretty funny when you are trying to feed the chickens bread.  The sheep come over to eat bread, the cats come over to eat bread, the dogs want bread and the chickens all scramble around trying to get whatever is left over.  I put in the bridge for the humans but one of the lambs taught all of the sheep to use it so now everyone uses it, even the chickens.  Go figure…

Here is the closet before I got started.  You can see I have the power pulled and my sheetrock patches in place.  The wallpaper is killing me.  It is taking forever to get off.  Hence my desire to do something else (closet).

Everyone was gone today (still are) so I made great strides on the library closet (pause while I remove bandaids from my finger tips, too hard to type).  I wanted to get the pegboard up in the closet, but I needed to close in the return duct going through the closet.  As no lumber is straight anymore and no wall inside any house is square or plumb it was quite the endeavor.  Yes, I did make a substantial blood sacrifice in the process.  Any carpenter will tell you that it is essential when working in tight spots when nothing is straight, level or plumb!.  I can finally feel my fingertips on my left hand now.  I smashed them good.  I was wondering if my primer’s stainblock guarantee covers blood?  I tried to hide it all, but I think there is some showing.  On the bright side, I only had to go to the hardware store once.  I needed some longer screws.  I had too short and too long, not just right.  Besides, the hardware store guy, (name edited for privacy sake) buys eggs from me and I needed to deliver them.  I randomly drop in with eggs every once in a while.

Here is the duct before I got it covered.  This is a return duct to the central heating system.  It pulls from the living room goes under the house and comes back up here.  It goes into the library ceiling for about four feet.  So we won’t be able to raise this ceiling unless we just want to box in the duct.  I don’t really like that unless it is a basement so we will just live with the ceiling a foot lower in here than everywhere else.  It is hard to tell since you have to go under the stairs to get into this room.
The blue bag is powdered milk for the baby sheep.  Enough there for the next three years at the rate we use it.

Here is the finished enclosure.  Not too shabby.  I still need to throw some primer and paint on things, that will happen after I get the sheet rock up.  I want to prime and paint all in one step.  I hate having to keep washing the walls all the time.  It does get tiresome.  Annmarie is picking up some paint tomorrow.  Sherwin Williams sent us a coupon for 30% off and I had been thinking about getting some more paint, so that just cinched the deal.  I had them mix it up already.

Here it is finished.  I even hung one basket to make sure I had the pegboard far enough away from the wall.  I have a few small pieces of trim to install.

No more excuses to not tackle that wall paper.  I tried scoring it and using Downy and water on it.  It helps, but it is still taking forever.  Someone suggested I use a heat gun.  I can borrow my father’s and give it a try.  We have company coming the week of Thanksgiving and they will be sleeping in this room so I am sure they would like some light.  So I need to get all the wall paper down, all the mud applied to the walls, texture applied, primed and painted then wire in all the outlets and the light.  As an added bonus, I am doing the small area under the stairs at the same time.  It just needs some new tongue and groove wood and lots of mud.  I will take a picture of it soon.