Well it appears the battle is back on.  I made it a point to check for our banty Brahma tonight when I locked up the chickens.  No Brahma.  So check one more chicken gone to predators.  The worst part is it was our favorite chicken.  She was incredibly mellow with lots of personality.  So I lifted one side of the trap only this time and baited it with dog food.  Hopefully, I won’t catch a bunch of kittens.  I fed the baby chickens some zucchini that was going bad (they had some salami too, any one care to guess which one got ate first and they kept stealing from each other?)  (yep, they like protein over veggies!!)  The chickies have killed all the grass in their enclosure so I have been making it a point to give them veggie treats from the garden.  I never have any compost cause the chickens eat it all.

I made $8.64 for the month on an average 27 hens laying (all my hens are now in except for the blue layers and they are still babies). (for the year my net income is -$6.55/month (I gained a whopping $2/month). (For the year I am -$58.92 total).  I had $36.88 in expenses for feed (200#) this month.  I had an extra $31.98 in expenses for heaters for my new chicken waterers.  For the year, my monthly expenses are $54.80. We collected a total of 361 usable eggs (44 more than last month) averaging 13.6 eggs/day collected (for the year the average is 11.9). The chickens ate 0.47#food/egg (for the year are averaging 0.67#/egg) In September it cost $0.09/egg or $1.08/doz for feed (my yearly average is $0.14/egg or $1.68/dozen. This is a penny an egg better this month.)  I thought I would start tracking how many total pounds of food are consumed each month so everyone can see what happens as Winter comes and the chickens have no outside food to supplement. 
I went out with Sarah tonight to lock the chickens up.  She had to collect eggs and I watered the babies.  They caught on in one day using the new drippers.  Those 12 chickens drank 5 gallons of water in just a few days.  She noticed that the Brahma hen was missing from inside the coop.  We looked all around and could not find her.  She has gone broody so we are hoping she is outside hiding somewhere.  Other wise  I will have lost another hen.  I will set up the trap again tomorrow night.  The coyotes are howling every night and seem to get closer every day.  I may have to go out and call some coyotes in next month.  By mid November we will have to start locking the sheep up every night.  We think the next batch of lambs is due around December. 
I worked on the wiring inside the Library today.  I thought it would be simple.  Not so…  I crawled under the house, I could make a small fortune using it as a haunted house.  Spider webs were thick.  I had to use a rake to sweep them out of the way.  The heating guys ran a large 16 inch duct under the house, it is insulated and was supposed to have two inches of space between it and the ground.  I made them go back under the house and dig it out, but did not reinspect it.  So now, I get to crawl back under there in the Spring so there is air all around the duct and the insulation won’t get damp.  I ended up drilling a few more holes to run wire.  Sarah was sick so I went to town and detailed Annmarie’s car.  It was pretty dirty after using it as a pickup during Round-Up. 
So far the sheep have not gotten out of the pasture.  I am crossing my fingers on this one. 

The weather was gorgeous today.  Sunny, warm but not too hot, mid 70s made for a nice day.  Hard to believe it is Fall.  They came and slaughtered our two sheep today.  It took them 30 minutes from the time they pulled in till they pulled out.  Amazingly quick.  I learned a few more things today about the slaughtering process.  Organs and fat can go to the rendering plant.  Heads and hides cannot.  This mobile slaughter discards the hides.  So I will be reading up on how to tan a hide with hair in place.  I could conceivably tan 5-10 hides/year.  Will definitely need to look into it.  It would be great to decorate our medieval pavilion with all animal skin rugs and bedding.  Especially, since our sheep are actually an Old World animal.  The real question is how much time does it take and how hard is it?  I will have to find out those answers. 
I locked the sheep back up in our front yard again today.  I remembered this late in the evening when I was looking out all the windows to see if the sheep had breached my fence repairs from Yesterday.  I had completely forgotten they were trapped in the yard.  The grass was getting fairly long and I would like to get one more mowing in before Winter sets in.  That way I can use the hose to spray off the sidewalk and back porch before the snow flies.  I figure one week on the yard and they will have it all eaten down again. It sure beats mowing, but it is hard on my roses. 
My light in the chicken coop is not working.  I went out there tonight and changed the light bulb and checked the timer.  The timer works and the the light does not.  So tomorrow I am going to have to get another fixture.  I am thinking about just intalling the one in the ceiling and running a temporary power cable.  The trouble is I want to get the power wired in the Library tomorrow so that pushes the chicken coop work back farther.  A new portable light fixture is a five minute fix.  Will most likely go for that tomorrow.
I got the Library all empty again and worked on cutting the outlet holes and running power wire from the switch to the outlet.  What I forgot was there used to be a door in that space and there are some extra 2x4s in the wall.  I had to cut a bigger opening twice, had to drill two seperate holes and peel the skin off of two kuckles then fish the wire down from above by blindly sweeping with a fish tape.  That four feet of wire took me about 1.5 hours to complete.  I also put in a support for the overhead light box. I smoothed all the sheetrock under the stairs and removed the scraps from the ceiling.  I can start mudding this space next week.  Trying to get everything done before Thanksgiving.  I even turned down two extra shifts at work today. 

Okay, I am almost positive I have the ram pasture fence problems fixed.  I spent the last five hours restretching fence across the creek and adding new panels over the creek in two locations.  I cut the panels to the shape of the creek all the way to the ground!
 I have now figured out that I am not really a fan of high tension wire.  It must have inline tighteners placed or it just goes limp.  The tighteners are around $15-20/each and you need one for each continuous stretch of wire.  So on a 6 wire fence it adds up fast.  They also make a spring you are supposed to insert for another $15.  The lesson here is you want a very long stretch of wire.  I have been thinking about using the high tension wire for my vineyard.  I will definitely use the tighteners and leave the wire loose at the posts so I can tighten it whenever I want. 
So the butcher called today and said they would be out tomorrow to slaughter Speckled Butt and Hershey.  So I herded them all into the loading pen with food.  I had all the sheep in there.  The problem is there was no real way to sort them out.  I had to stand by the gate to operate it.  I got it down to three sheep, then Speckle Butt leaped up at the gate opening just as I was slamming it shut.  Now the sheep managed to be about five feet off the ground and weighs in around 150#.  It would have taken me down!  I couldn’t get the gate shut fast enough and he escaped.    So I just locked up the barn lot and came inside to get more help. 
It looks like fence repair will have to be an ongoing effort every year.  I had to fix another gate today also.  I was hoping to leave it alone for the next twenty years…  guess that won’t be happening. 

I made all three buckets, the nipples are installed.  I put the one in for the baby chickens.  I have to move some more stuff around inside the coop to make room for those.  I think I am going to stick one inside and one outside.  Still contemplating where the outside one is going to go.  I think directly above the chicken door and ramp.  I dug out 50% of the bedding.  The coop smells like ammonia, which means the bedding is too wet.  So I dug out half and will finish the rest this weekend.  Then I will have to purchase some more bedding (more cost to my chickens!).  On the plus side the chickens are starting to lay eggs!!  I collected 20 eggs today, not too shabby from 27 chickens. 
The sheep are still getting out.  That is on this weekend’s list also.  To top it off the sheep get out of our pasture then the lambs crawl under a second gate and get out in the car area!  The adult sheep cannot crawl under the gate.  I think I have it figured out, will know after this weekend.