Fiber Workshop - Day 2

Today was packed!  Farm News consisted of some happy stories and sad stories this week.  We discussed coccidiosis, which often affects young poultry.  When introducing young chicks, poults, keets, or ducklings to an area where others have been raised, it is important to thoroughly sanitize the waterer, feeders, and everything they come into contact with.  Coccidiosis is always present.  Most of the time, older animals can just fight off the issue.  Young or weak animals cannot fight off the naturally occurring parasite, and need help!  We talked about the medication used to treat this issue.  In other news, the class learned that the vet came out and determined that the sore spots on the mini horse are signs of a fly bite allergy.  This year has been an awful year for flies, and it seems our little girl is allergic to their bites.  We will continue to work hard to eliminate flies from her area, and to use repellent to keep them off of her as best we can. The good news is that, in a few weeks, the flies here in Georgia will start to die off! 

The classes continued their lesson today as we talked about different breeds of goats and rabbits that give us fiber to spin into yarn.  The groups were able to spend time with Vincent VanGora, our angora rabbit.  He was recently shorn, so the students were able to see how much fiber one bunny can give!  Of course, we spent some time giving sweet Vincent some love.

In art, the younger class worked with yarn as they created yarn “paintings” using contact paper.  They cut their yarn to the lengths they needed, and carefully made designs and pictures across the sticky surface.  The older class had a more intricate project that will take more than one week to complete.  They covered cord with yarn, and then wrapped it in a way to create a coil.  This coil will eventually become a trivet.  It took some practice, but they are getting the hang of it!  We will work next week to keep wrapping the design. 

Our story today was about an angora goat named Kidd.  Kidd didn’t want to be sheared, so he left his Texas farm and ran away.  The story was a great fit for our lesson!  In the end, Kidd realized that being sheared wasn’t a bad thing at all.  As a group, we talked about times where we don’t want to do things that we actually need to do.  We talked about little siblings refusing to get their haircut, times we didn’t want to go to the dentist, etc.  Kidd was a very relatable character!

We checked out the animals outside, and it looks like Tootsie, one of our Nigerian Dwarf does, is about two weeks away from kidding.  I love this part of class, where kids can slowly walk through the year on a farm!  Right now, the guinea keets are following their mommas through the pasture, the turkeys are strutting in the cool air, and the Nigerian Dwarves are getting ready for their fall kids! 

This week's writing assignment will be all about descriptive words!  Come up with any farm story that you would like.... but be sure to use adjectives and adverbs to make your story vivid and descriptive.  We will be talking about adverbs and adjectives in class, as we work together to describe the different animals on the farm and their unique behaviors.