Before lunch we.....

Today we had a very busy day (finally outside without rain).  First we moved our 250 laying hens to new grass and let them out to roam in the fresh air.  Then we moved our next batch of 70 broilers to new grass under the chicken tractor.  After that we fed the hogs and checked on our expecting mother.  She is busy building her nest and we should have piglets by tomorrow afternoon.  That was before breakfast.  Then we fed the chicks (70 broilers and 215 laying hens) that are in the coop.  After that we had to run our cattle through the chute to pregnancy check them.  We are going to be breeding our open (not bred) cows in August so we need to know who is in calf and who is not.  In order to check for pregnancy we draw blood from the cows tail and send it to a lab.  They check for a pregnancy protein and then report back to us.  I am hoping that all the cows we checked (12 to be exact) are open as we breed artificially and if they are bred, I did not do it, so we must have been a little too late removing the little bulls from the herd (if you get my point).  Anyway, as long as we had everyone in the barn we ran the rest of the bred cows and steers through the gate just to get a good look at them.  That was a 2 hour ordeal, then we washed 20 dozen eggs to pack for sale at Polly's Market.  After Lunch we moved the cows to new grass (a new pasture on the other side of the barn).  They seem to be very happy now.  After a homegrown dinner of hamburgers and salad, I mowed the grass while it was actually dry.  At dusk David and I went out to shut the chickens in for the evening.  Now here I sit thinking on the day and what we will get into tomorrow.