Category: Animals

We had a rough weekend with the sheep. We had a mama at Dad’s house go into labor, have problems, I tried to pull the lambs, and couldn’t. We took her to the vet where he pulled twins (not alive). Dad was relieved we saved the ewe, but she died in the night Saturday. Her body had just been under too much stress for too long. The sheep have been taking out the electric fencing on a regular basis and helping themselves to the pasture. There are so many of them and some of them have wool, so they just push right through it hot or not.

We also managed to leave a gate unlatched and the donkey, Dusty, got out Friday. Then, we left a gate unlatched on Saturday and all the mamas and babies escaped into the front yard. Dad was in the house in bed and looked out the window to see about eight sheep eating out in the yard. We had gone back to our house to get our garden planted and received a phone call. Too many people in and out of gates to keep it all straight ~Smile

There is good news, however. When we brought the ewe home from the vet we arrived to a ewe with healthy twins (a boy and a girl). Doesn’t completely make up for the one we lost, but it helps.

I won’t go too into detail, but let’s just say we are struggling with Dad’s sheep.  My db left for firefighting training yesterday evening, so we are short another person.  We had a ewe miscarry a baby lamb last night, however, she is wild and in a pen with 200 other sheep so we couldn’t catch her to separate her into a pen by herself.  If we don’t get her caught soon we risk losing her to infection, mastitis, or who knows what else.  We have another sick ewe, so sick we got her separated no problem.  We are doctoring her and hopefully she will make a full recovery.  It just breaks my heart to see them sick, in pain, and scared.  We are all starting to wear down and tempers and attitudes are starting to show the strain everyone is under.

On a happier note, our little bottle baby is looking better everyday.  He was so happy to see me yesterday (he had already eaten and wasn’t just hoping for food) we couldn’t crawl through the panels fast enough to get to me.  He is like a puppy and makes me smile.

The weather was absolutely fantastic yesterday. When I got home from work I spent as much time outside as possible. Our cats needed some attention as did the sheep and llama. Our sheep like to have their noses rubbed and in the summertime their backs, but they have gotten too wooly for that. We noticed our cat, Psycho, has a bald spot on her side. She is a very old cat, so there could be a million reasons for the fur loss. It hasn’t slowed her down though, she’s still as fiesty as ever. I pulled chili out of the freezer for dinner and doctored it up and added some mozzarella cheese. It wasn’t too bad. We had church at 8:00 for Ash Wednesday. I will be honest it was our first time to attend an Ash Wednesday service, but we both really like the pastor and his wife and have decided church is just something we are going to make a part of our life. Neither one of us have regularly attended church before, so it is fairly new to both of us. We don’t get out at night much, we are morning people to say the least. So, it was nice to get to take a minute to look at the stars and the moon. The sky was perfectly clear last night. There is nothing better than seeing the stars at night, and Kansas is great for a view of the sky. In Alabama between the trees, the haze, and the city lights we very rarely saw stars at night.

The girls got with the program and laid 6 eggs last night giving us a full dozen of the miniature eggs. I think they are getting settled in their new home. I can’t wait until we can put them out on the garden for some spring cleaning. It’s the last day of the week for me, woohoo!