Week Seven.. Chicken Move Out

Wow time is flying by, it is week seven already of my internship. We started out by moving the broiler birds out of the barn and onto the pasture.  We found these chickens running to the new patch of pasture and it makes moving them more enjoyable because they have such a positive reaction.  This breed of broilers is a very aggressive forager and we find ourselves moving the chicken tractor multiple times a day.  We ordered another 50 meat birds and should be picking them up this week.  This time we ordered Cornish giants.  I placed another set of eggs (41 to be exact) in the incubator on 7/19. Hopefully we have a better success rate with this batch.  Greg and I built a permanent brooder so that no predators can go after the newly hatched chicks and we started building the second chicken tractor for the Cornish giants.

      When I returned this week, two more calves had a slight fever due to a naval infection.  This week Greg taught me how to draw medicine with a syringe and how to properly inject the calf by checking to make sure you don't pierce a vein before injecting the medication.  On one of the days we where giving the calves shots I had to hold one calve by myself as Greg ran to the medicine cabinet to grab something he had forgotten.  As Greg came back the calf was startled and tried to ran away as I was holding it.  The calf managed to knock me onto the ground causing me to land in a pile of cow manure, but I didn't let go and held onto it until Greg finished giving it a needle. All we could do was laugh.  I showed him who was boss.