On Monday my mom and I started to drive to the ranch. Sadly only a few minutes after we left home my mom’s tire started hissing so we drove to the tire place and asked my dad to come get us.  Once we got home we waited for an hour and we were just about to change plans when we got a call from NTB (National Tire and Battery).  They said that our tire was fixed so we asked my dad to drive us back to NTB.  When we arrived my mom and I hopped into the car. Then I remembered that we had the turkeys with us too!  The turkeys are a wild breed and are about 6 months old.  We had two Rio Grande poults in the back of the car, a jake and a jenny, which my mom had gotten the day before.  I had been too busy thinking about the ranch and I had totally forgotten about them. 

Finally we were back on the road and I fell asleep. I woke up again and we were at Cowboy Headquarters (which is in Athens). I decided to stay in the car while my mom went in but she was gone for a very long time. Then she came back and said for me to go in with her and we ordered 100 pounds of sand, turkey feed and some hay for the turkey nesting boxes. 

Time had gone by so fast (it was already 2pm) and we were just getting started. Once we got to the ranch, we unlocked the ranch house and got to work. By then it was lightly raining but I could tell we were going to get SOAKED. First we caught the chickens and put them in a run-down dog kennel that fell apart three times before we could get it in the back of the Can-Am. The first load of chickens that we caught was our rooster Lavy, who’s light purple, then Debbie and her two babies.  Once we got to the other side of the ranch, we put the chickens in one of our two new chicken tractors. The second group that we brought over was all of the bantams and Easter eggers. The Easter eggers, Cash and Ravy, went into the tractor with Lavy’s flock while the bantams had their own tractor.

Once we had put the chickens in their tractors, I went into the barn to get out Dancer’s food, Equispot, treats and water. I had just put all of Dancer’s stuff in the back of the Can-Am when I saw a horse waiting at the cattle guard.  At first I thought it was one of the neighbor’s horses but then I saw her feet/hooves and knew it was Dancer.  Quickly I grabbed her stuff out of the Can-Am and brought it over to her.  By now it was pouring and I was soaked but I didn’t care because Dancer came all that way to see us when it really hurt her feet.  I gave her practically the whole bag of treats (which had like 30 treats left). 

We left to go change and get the coop really cleaned out for the turkeys. The reason we cleaned out the coop was because chickens can carry a disease called Blackhead which doesn’t hurt chickens but can be deadly to turkeys. We were in the coop for about an hour and I was proud of our work.  We raked out all of the chicken’s wood shavings and threw them outside the coop.  Then we moved the smaller coop to the side of the chicken run so the turkeys had more room to run and play.  We then put 100 pounds of sand in the smaller coop and made the nesting boxes bigger for the turkeys.  We scraped all of the chicken manure off the top of the small coop and put a branch where we thought the turkeys could roost.  We washed and refilled all of their food and water tubs then hung them up.  Finally we put the turkeys in the coop and slowly introduced them to their food and water. Once all of that was done we gave the chickens food and water and picked up Dancer’s food buckets and made sure she was doing ok.

When we got back and everything was locked up we walked back to the ranch house and went inside to change but right before I opened the door my mom said to come back. We both heard a big truck motor coming down the rocky road to the house.  We decided that it was the oil guy.  I changed clothes, stuffed my face with a marshmallow and jumped inside the car.  My mom locked the house and hopped into the car too. 

On the way home I slept the whole way until we stopped at Starbucks and mom got me a drink.  Then a few moments later we were home and I was so happy I jumped out of the car and was about to go inside when the door slammed on my finger.  First I tried to go away from the door and I heard a popping sound.  Then I just stared at my thumb.  Finally I opened the car door and came to my mom crying.  She took me inside and got me to ice my finger.  The next day I could bend it because the swelling had gone down and my dad said it wasn’t broken.  It still hurt really bad so we went to CVS and bought a thumb stabilizer.  Hopefully my finger will feel better in a few days.