Never enough
hours in the day! We are SOOO SORRY for neglecting our blog duties. We have been very busy around the farm but I promise we will do better.
In case you haven't heard, it's hot! And in case I forgot, I have text message weather alerts that come to my phone that love to remind me. As if reporting the upcoming temperatures wasn't enough, they add fun descriptors too - "Thu: Hot and Humid 102/78; Fri: Hot and Humid 98/68". My phone may end up somewhere in the pasture, depending on how far it flies when I throw it.
We are keeping a closer eye on our critters with the heat. The ones we need to watch the closest are the boars. Right now we are pasturing them and there is no natural shade around. I have some shade structures set up which may or may not be sufficient but since they can't really sweat they probably need something more. Mud wallows are ideal but I don't really want a bunch of mud holes all over the farm, since we move them fairly often. So, I'm trying a Pig Pool:
This was Max's pool but I gave him a bigger one. I put this out yesterday afternoon but I've already swapped the pools again this morning. The bigger pool has taller sides so we'll see if they can get in/out but at least all three would be able to fit.
Here is a random pic of a cow. She hasn't calved yet, hopefully soon though. Our cows are looking skinny so I was out taking pictures of them and testing the Brix levels of the grass. I need to calibrate our refractometer since this is the first time I've used it but I was getting readings of 4-9 Brix readings. Which I thought was low but Jamie thinks that is not bad. She's probably right.
