Homesteading, homeschooling, animal loving, adoption loving, country living family
We spent Monday, Memorial Day, our Anniversary, day “off,” shearing sheep at our house and Mom & Dad’s. We had more than last year, but fortunately Dad had a lot less. Mom and Dad help with our’s and we help with their’s. Fair’s fair!
It’s a dirty job! It’s hot! And it’s really tiring!
But in the end we got it all done.
Randy and I were in bed by 6:30 that evening. We were exhausted!
Things are finally starting to warm up outside. The cats spend the majority of their time lounging, but we have seem many a mice meet there maker as a result of these little bundles of fluff.
Our Buddha kitty, Bo.
Is he not the cutest thing ever!
Something got ahold of Cooter awhile back.
But he is now free of drain tubes, and his hair is starting to grow back.
Sleeping on the cool concrete on the front porch.
Stewart and Bandit.
Stewart, orange kitty on the left) actually caught a nearly full grown rabbit over the weekend. It was awful. I tried to chase him down to get him to drop it, but he’s a quick little dude. Needless to say he bolted under the pool deck, and I covered my ears and ran into the house so I didn’t have to hear it screaming. It was so sad.
And last but not least is Roxie, our chubby little girl whom we honestly believe has never caught a mouse and probably never will. She much prefers a non-moving food dish and some cool concrete in the shade.
Not the most productive group of cats, but they do mouse. We’ve seen them with tons of mice, a mole, and a rabbit so we know it’s possible for “most” of them.
Hank gives these treats two hooves up….I got the recipe from Gentle Spirit Llamas . I adjusted my recipe below.
Camelid Cookies
1 c shredded carrots
1 c uncooked oatmeal
1 c flour
1 t sea salt
2 T extra-virgin olive oil
1 T sugar (I omit the sugar)
1/4 c molasses
1/4 c water
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix sticky ingredients in a bowl. Measure out balls about the size of a teaspoon and place on a foil covered cookie sheet. Bake 15 minutes or until golden brown.
**As always, be mindful of any possiblity for choke. While some do feed whole apples and carrots, cutting them into smaller pieces is a good idea. Additionally, be knowledgeable around what plants or garden produce might be poisonous such as potato and tomato vines. (from Gentle Spirit Llamas website by Cathy Spalding)
I spent the morning taking photos of our sheep out to pasture. They are so wooly and cute right now. I just love the way they look out on fresh spring grass.
Texel Ewe
Usually hair sheep can keep their tails, unlike wool sheep. Here is Paige. She was once a bottle lamb at mom and dad’s who made her way to our farm.
Dorper Ewe grazing. (Shorty)
Dorper Ram Lamb
Dorper Ram Lambs headed out to pasture.
New hair sheep, Dorper, baby nursing.
The two proud papas.
Merle is up front and Cash is in the back.
Romanovs are flighty little sheep, but really make for nice lambs. Here are two Romanov/Dorper cross ram lamb twins.
Texel Ewe munching. (Burns)
Texel Lamb
Texel Ram Lamb
Texel mama and baby
Texel ewe grazing
Texel ewe lamb…you want to talk about a stout little critter. Texels make for some hefty little lambs.
Texel ewe lamb
Another chunky little Texel ewe lamb by her mama’s side. Texels are nice heavy milkers who can provide milk for their lambs for many weeks.
A lost little soul up in the lots. He misplaced his mama.
Texel ramb lambs
We had an SUV stopped out on the hill overlooking our pasture just watching them. They sat up there for 20 minutes or so…taking it all in. Hank the llama and over 100 sheep grazing away.
We will be holding on to our lambs until fall in hopes of a good market. Until then we will try our hardest not to get too attached and take good care of them.
Our chickens have the run-of-the-house so to speak. They can go anywhere on our farm and even off our farm if they chose to. Luckily, the road and the neighbor’s fields haven’t occurred to them yet.
Our banties are generally our most mobile. They would rather forage than eat dumb ol’ chicken feed any day.
A few Rhode Islands have made their way into the bantie coop, so the little blonde chickens are rubbing off on the red heads.
They just work and work…and throw mulch everywhere all day long.
Let the destruction continue.
We may not have mulch around our blueberry bushes, apricot bushes, etc. but at least there shouldn’t be a bug to be seen either.
Remember this little lamb?
Well here she is now:
We named her Annie and she is now like a puppy to us. She comes when she’s called, cries when we pull in the driveway, follows us around in the lots and when we walk the pasture.
It’s hard to take pictures of a bottle lamb. Generally they are at your feet and when you back away to snap a picture they are step-for-step with you.
Here is what most bottle lamb pictures look like. We just love her and so glad she grew up big and strong!
Sunday was cat trapping day at Grandma’s. She has 13 cats and wanted her females spayed so the cycle would not continue toward an uncontrollable number of cats. You think 13 already sounds uncontrollable. Try thinking about 5-7 females having litters of 5 or so kittens. Boo….population explosion! We just could not let that happen.
Grandma actually caught the first two in this dog crate. They went crazy spilling their food and trying to find a way out.
With all the comotion from the first two there was no way the other cats were falling for that trick. So we had to break out the live traps. Randy got the traps all set, and I put some sof t food at the back of each one. Then we headed inside and Grandma, Randy, and I watched as the cats slowly crept back around the feeding area and one by one got locked in the traps.
We marked the males with purple marking paint and let them go and moved the females one by one into the dog crates and loaded them into the back of Grandma’s pickup. They spent the night in the garage, and Mom took them to the vet first thing this morning.
One apparently got loose at the vet’s office, but all have been recovered and all is well. We will pick them up tomorrow for a new life on the farm.
We still have 4 more to catch and either take to the vet to be spayed or if they are male mark them and let them go. Our vet is also marking all the females once they are spayed so we won’t accidently haul them back in to her.
Have a great Monday!
We have gotten to the point with our chickens we allow them to go wherever they please. This was fine in the winter when things were dormant and the flowerbeds were empty. With spring fast approaching we are questioning what we are going to do with them. One group has a small backyard on their coop. I’m in hopes of planting them a garden back there and beginning to let them out on it instead of giving them free rein of the property. The other group of chickens used to stay primarily in the sheep lots, but have now gotten pretty daring and end up in the front yard, front flower beds, and strawberry beds daily.
This is just a taste of what our front step looks like after the little birds have had their way with our flower beds. Not fun to come home to. We appreaciate their help in turning the soil and bug control, but once seeds and new plants go in the ground they may be on lockdown for awhile.
We bought stakes over the weekend to stake chicken wire over new seedlings trying to come up. We will see if this deters them or not. They may all need to be moved into the coop with the backyard. We are just hesitant to try this because it will mean mixing our Bantam rooster (just a little guy) with our Rhode Island rooster (a really big guy). This will be a last resort.
In the meantime, my broom is my friend and my evenings are spent uncovering the echinacea and black-eyed susans trying to come up in the front bed and recovering the roots of the strawberries growing in the box behind Cooter in the above photo. A small price to pay for fewer summer pests and some really yummy eggs.
The other day it was cold and rainy. When we got home Randy found a newborn baby lamb laying in the lot without a mama insight. We found the mama and put her in a pen with the baby. She wanted nothing to do with the little lamb. She butted her with her head, refused to let her nurse, and never even cleaned her.
In the mama’s defense she was a first-timer and apparently just not ready to be a mama. The baby’s mouth was cold by now. Who knows how long she had laid out in the rain that day. I took her inside, put her in a warm bath, and gave her some dextrose. After a hot bath, a shot of energy, and some blow drying to dry her off and warm her up she was ready for a bottle and sent back outside with her mama.
After three days in a lambing pen with her mama and still no signs of motherly instinct the baby was pulled from her mama and the ewe was put in a pen to dry off her milk supply. In that time we had held the mama so the baby could nurse every 4-6 hours and supplemented her with a bottle. She just wasn’t up for the task of mothering her little one.
We were to the point where we could have started weaning our bottle lambs to two bottles a day instead of three. With this new addition we are back to doing a bottle every 4-6 hours for the first week. Not at all what we had hoped for, but she’s adorable and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
We have a ewe, Ebony, squeezing into our creep feeder somehow. So last night Randy tightened the entrance (twice because she could still fit after the first adjustment) so she couldn’t get in there and hung a bucket for our bottle lambs to nurse instead of bottles. Ebony was a bottle and bucket lamb not so very long ago and has not forgotten the pleasures of milk replacer. We had to make sure there was no way she could get in or the bucket would be gone in a matter of minutes.
The bucket is filled with milk and a frozen 2 liter of water to keep the milk cold. This prevents the lambs from overeating, but ensures they have access to milk as often as they need it. Our’s has three nipples along the bottom to allow enough access for all our bottle lambs. Our little orphan lamb was the first to pick up on the bucket. It seems the younger they are the better they adjust. It had just been too cold for us to feel comfortable making them drink cold milk from a bucket. Finally, with temperatures in the 40s at night and 60s during the day (at least for now) they are officially on a bucket and seem to be picking up on the idea well enough.
No more rushing home to do bottles then turning around and doing them again before bed. No more midnight bottle feedings. No more 3:30 in the morning feedings. Our lives are FINALLY getting back to normal. If you have sheep and have not used a bucket of cold milk for your bottle lambs, you just haven’t lived yet. They are WONDERFUL!
Our second born is holding his position as Vice Alpha. Over his dead body will the new guy surpass him.
He may be bigger, but size doesn’t matter. The little guy still gets the big bed.
Fortunately, Thai is good-natured and lets the little guy push him around. Koal isn’t letting go of his position as second in command anytime soon.
Who is Alph? Who is first in command you ask.
That would be this big mess of a dog who by the way isn’t allowed on the bed.
That would be my spot she’s wallowing all over. Love it!
Ash got the biggest bed of all!
A Simple Prairie Life 