No Big Deal?

My friend Kris told me she was going to watch the eclipse with her horse.  Animals often have an interesting reaction to such phenomena, so I thought we should have an eclipse party in the barnyard.
I read that some native americans observe the eclipse by staying inside quiet (but not napping), fasting, and just generally paying respect.

Just before the beginning time, I took my recycling to our recycling center.  My buddy was there and we were talking about the eclipse.  He told me an old farmer was in earlier with a story about the 1979 eclipse.  The farmer said his cattle went crazy and were going in circles.  I was getting excited about what might transpire in the next 3 hours.

 Here is what the animals did, here.  The sheep hung out in the barn with no noticeable reaction,  The geese were out and about with a similar reaction, and when it got, not dark but eire blueish grey, a couple of the chickens that were there for the party, got quiet and roosted outside for a little while.
Maybe the sheep were just paying respect.

I thought 88.8% would be a little darker than it was.  I wonder if the 1979 eclipse was a total eclipse in our area. I have not yet talked to Kris to compare stories; maybe her horse got a little more excited.
I thought it was cool but not "life changing".  I guess it really makes a difference with a total eclipse.

A Few Days Ago

Well, I have done it again; made it through half of a month without blogging.

 Now that Helena has recovered, she comes up to me and looks at me with her sweet eyes as if to say, "hi, my good friend, how are you".  She ran when she saw me, when she was recovering.  And then the same thing started showing in Rachel (the drunkin walk).  Now
then I had to think it was something causing the walk that lead to Helena's other injuries.  I talked to my practitioner again and she suggested a deficiency of some kind.  When I asked my feed specialists, they said- niacin.  It turns out that chickens can eat waterfowl food but waterfowl can't get enough niacin in chicken feed since chickens don't need as much niacin.  So now we know.  Low niacin apparently effects different individuals differently, There wasn't a problem in the last two years.  Since we caught Rachael early, she didn't have the severeness that Helena did.

In other news, the sheep are enjoying a cool day after 3 or 4 hot ones.  Pumpkins are taking over the hugels.






 The 2 chicks are much bigger than mom and can fly over the fence.  They still don't mingle with Donald, Red, and Black much.  Red doesn't like them and will block their entry to the coop at night if she goes in first.  They have learned to try to get in first but occasionally I have to offer an alternate solution.

Headed over to the fiber shed for the afternoon since finally it isn't too hot.  I made a 2 liter bottle air compressor but I am not sure it helps that much.  When I was scrummaging through a nearly empty recycling bin with our recycling attendant we had a hard time coming up with 16 2 liter bottles.  The ones we did find were tonic or seltzer (except for a couple).  We were both surprised we didn't find more Coke and other diet sodas.  He then theorized that soda drinkers probably don't recycle. Hmm .