Category: Animals

I started working outside a little bit with our first stretch of nice weather.

The chickens have a hay day with mulch and dirt around our home.  This is my strawberry bed.  You can see the coffee filters surfacing from all the dirt they have kicked off to the side of the box.  I managed to get it cleaned up and dirt/manure added back to the strawberry bed in hopes of salvaging what is left.

The guilty party.

So usually I blame the chickens for messing up all the mulch around our farm.

However…

Sometimes…

I’m wrong…

That would be Chance.  I had just gotten all the mulch raked back around our elderberry bushes when he came flying by and tunneled right through all the newly piled mulch.  He was too cute to scold.

Our new adventure.

These are Romanov cross bottle lambs from Dad’s farm.  They will be raised on a bucket of milk replacer (you can see the bucket hanging in their building) and supplemented with a bottle as needed.

We did take time to relax and even enjoy some time with friends at the end of summer.

We spent a nice Sunday afternoon with friends at a nearby river. 

We anticipated it to be our last warm day for the year and took full advantage of it just incase.

Even the animals took it easy.

Cat fight.

The big guy was victorious.

Chance, our pole cat, he has the longest tail ever.

Murphy

Pudgy in the strawberries.

Aren’t they sweet!!

Summer is winding down.  Soon we will have to buckle down for winter and the long cold months ahead.  For now we are enjoying the sunshine and warm air.

The flowers are in full bloom around our farm. 

We have more butterflies, bees, and dragonflies than I have ever seen.

Probably due to more fruit and flowers than our farm has ever seen.

Passionflower…we got starts of this plant from our neighbor.  We planted it under an old gas tank out by our wildflowers and sunflowers.  It is an aggressive vine that can easily take over if not controlled.

Sunflowers

These sunflowers are out near our wildflowers.  They are 6-12 feet tall and just beautiful.  There are so many genetically modified seeds out there (thank you Monsanto) affecting a plant’s ability to drop seeds that will germinate the following year.  We decided to buy organic seeds in hopes that some seeds would make it back  into the ground and come up again next summer.

Here is our naughty little cat, Pudgy.  He’s looking toward the cat door where he is supposed to be headed so we can lock him up for the night.

“Eh, I’m not ready to go in yet!”

Pudgy was a tame sweet kitten when we first brought him home.  As he got older he got wild.  We can pick him up if we catch him at the food bowl, but you better hold on tight.

When all the other cats are locked up for the night, Pudgy likes to lounge on this chair and refuses to go into the pool house where they are locked up safe and sound.  Every so often he pushes us to the limit and gets locked out for the night.  He then has to resort to sleeping under the pool deck.  The following evenings he tends to be the first one in the pool house….remembering vividly his night out in the “wild.”

Have a great day!

Monday we got a phone call from a neighbor that a sheep had died in our pasture.  We had been battling intestinal parasites ever since we received inches upon inches of rain leaving a nice damp pasture for them to thrive.  We assumed we had overlooked someone and they had succumed to the infestation with the help of a 100 degree day.

Dad went to check it out and called back to let us know a coyote had killed one of our ewe lambs.  He was nice enough to deal with her so she didn’t lay out there all day until we got home from work to take care of her.  Randy had been letting the sheep out around 6:00 before he leaves for work.  It’s still fairly dark, but we felt confident they wouldn’t wander out far in the dark and hadn’t had any predator problems to speak of.  This particular morning this little girl was not only at the far end of the pasture, but had crossed the electric fence to the other side away from the llama and most of the flock.  She was a target.  The coyote scooted under the fence and nabbed her.

That evening we had a guy come over to set snares to try to catch the coyote.  Since the lamb had already been hauled off it was a long shot she would come back for it, but we were still hopefull.  We found where she had dung under the fence and the hunt was on.  Above the hole  you could see a bend in the fence where she had come back through the fence in a hurry, went to high, and ran her nose into the woven wire fence leaving a big nose print.  The lamb wasn’t eaten completely so between that and the nose print in the fence we thought she had gotten startled and bolted, but may be back for the remains.

It’s day 2 and no coyote has been caught.  We have to rotate the sheep to the other side of the pasture this weekend which will put them on the side the lamb was killed.  We were really hoping we would catch the coyote before we had to move them, but so far nothing.

I’m so thankful we have someone who wants to set snares and try to get the coyote for us.  Snares are awful and shooting a dog is not something we would enjoy at all.  The only thing that would keep us going if we were left to the task is the thought of our little defenseless lamb and what it went through when that same coyote killed her and the fact that coyote would kill again if given the right opportunity.

Wish us luck as we hunt down the killer!

Eleven cats is a lot, yes, but when you have a farm there is plenty of room for everyone.

Except this little guy who is always in our Kool-Aid.

I know what you’re thinking…eh gross…don’t worry…I said it for you at the time.

Our million dollar kitties.  Cooter (left) has been in multiple “fights,” and I use the term “fights” very loosely because I’m not sure if one opponent just lays there and takes it if it is still considered a fight.  He has been stitched up, bandaged up, and hauled to the vet numerous times.  One time we think an owl or hawk actually got ahold of him and tore his back open.  Murphy (right) had something bite his foot (possibly a bull snake or snapping turtle we’ve found around the farm) or something fell on it we’re not sure.  He’s been to the vet, had it drained, and stitched up only to have it not heal.  A few weeks later he was back to the vet to have it ex-rayed and opended up to find a piece of bone had broken off inside his foot and was keeping it from healing.  He was stitched up and sent home for recovery.  You can see his left foot is stitched up.  Poor little guy, but he’s doing really well now.

Murphy and Cooter were hurt at the same time and in recovery in a dog kennel in the house.  Now Murphy is certain they are BFFs for life….Cooter still needs some convincing.   

Steady Bandit.

Yum.  There is always good eating on the grill.

Chance

Roxie

Bo

Cooter

And a couple jealous dogs on the inside looking out and wondering why those stupid cats are getting all the attention…their words, not mine.

We bought two Romanov rams from Dad.  One will be used for breeding to our Dorper and Romanov ewes, and one will be used as a teaser ram.  We are hoping the teaser ram will do a couple of things for us:  increase prolifacy, compact our breeding season, and make it possible to lamb a little earlier in the spring (and still maintain a high number of lambs).

The Romanov for breeding is an exciting and daunting mission.  Romanovs are known for their large “litters” of lambs, so we are in hopes he will increase our numbers but within reason.  He is a quadruplet himself which is not a rare occurence for Romanovs.  Do I see bottle lambs in our future?

Meet the boys:

They didn’t have as far to travel as the Texel boys did…5 minutes not 5 hours.

Introductions were made.

And lunch was served.

When they finally got the courage to go out to pasture they headed straight for the Texels who had already bonded.

Look….sheep like us.

Eh wait…maybe they aren’t like us.

They still keep their distance from the Texels or the Texels from them, but hopefully they will all hit it off soon.  At least they aren’t fighting.

Then to add to the chaos we weaned four of our Texel ram lambs and threw them into the mix.

This is what I came home to.  

They have pretty much been keeping to themselves also.  But have finally stopped crying for their mamas.

We have upped our ram count from two to six in the last couple of weeks.  We loaded up mom and dad’s pickup with a stock rack and headed to Sedalia, Missouri for the Midwest Stud Ram Sale.  We also hauled two puppies to the sale so they wouldn’t have to stay the duration of the sale (6 days) with their owner before being sold to individuals attending the sale.

And the shy one….aren’t they cute!

Once the puppies were dropped off with their owner it wast time to get serious.  We headed to the Sheep Pavilion where the Texels were to start looking at rams and deciding who we were going to bid on.  It was so hot and humid while we waited for the sale to start.  I thought I was going to die.  I’m not really great in the heat and that’s putting it nicely…I’m a sweater.

We ended up with the two exact rams we were hoping for.  A Texel Yearling from Fisher Texels and a ram lamb from Erdman Texels.  Randy went to get the pickup moved closer so we could load up our boys and get headed back home.  We had a 5+ hour drive ahead of us and wanted to get them moving so they could keep cool.

Once we got them home they were quarantined from the other sheep to make sure they were healthy and happy before shocking them with our two rams.  One of which is kind of a pain.

We were happy with how the sale turned out.  It is always a little stressful.  Between the drive, bidding on them, and hauling them home…it takes it out of us.