Thursday Dose of Cute: Down at the Sheep Barn

Great Pyrenees livestock guardian Daisy and nine-year-old pet wether Teddy.

Bye, bye, breeding season! These weeks are flying by so fast it's frightening. On August 27th we moved our six-year-old ram, Da Big Guy (born during the 'D' year) in with 15 ewes, and last Thursday we moved him back out. If all went (and goes) well, adorable bouncing baby lambs should start arriving the end of January.

A ewe cycles every 17 days, so we kept the ram in a pen with them for 37 days: two cycles plus a few extra days just in case. Hopefully, though, lambing season won't last nearly that long. Last year nine ewes had 19 live lambs (plus one newborn that died), which was fantastic, but they spread those lambs out over a month.

The idea is to have all the lambs arrive in as short a time as possible, although that doesn't always seem like a great plan when you're short on sleep and babies are being born every time you turn around. But the alternative—endless days of round the clock barn checks with nothing going on—is even more exhausting.

During the past few years we've significantly reduced our flock in an all around effort to simplify our lives and reduce expenses, so besides Da Big Guy and his 15 babes, we had a separate splinter flock this year of just eight sheep: three 2013 lambs that we'll have butchered next spring, three big old pet wethers (they also make great ram companions), my baby Cary (who I decided not to breed again after her first horrible experience), and nine-year-old Silly, a sweet old retired girl who is Da Big Guy's mother.

When we pulled Da Big Guy out last week, we put Teddy (aka Uncle Teddy) in with him and merged the rest of the flock back together.

We combined this merger with a sheep working session, trimming some hooves, running everyone through a zinc sulfate foot bath to treat foot scald (raw spots between the toes from moisture), and giving everybody a dose of organic garlic juice and apple cider vinegar as a natural wormer and all-around health tonic.

More photos and story below. . .

Tuesday Dose of Cute: Hunky Farmguy Logic

This was an actual conversation. . .

Wednesday Dose of Cat Cute: Growing and Harvesting Heat Tolerant Lettuce (and The Whole Picture)

Lots more below. . .

Thursday Dose of Cute: Down at the Sheep Barn

Four more photos and a Jasper report below. . .

Thursday Dose of Cute: Heading Out to Breakfast (and Another Farm Life Tale)

I was planning to post this series of photos with just a sentence or two about why the sheep were still spending each night in the barn, but then I realized some of you might look at the pictures and wonder where all the lambs are.

I haven't been up to writing about that just yet. I've been telling myself that the story wouldn't really be complete until we picked up our mail and got the check, but that was just an excuse. So I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you what's been happening.

More photos and story below (hover over each image for a description). . .

Sunday Farm Tale: Chickens and Eggs

Farm fresh eggs: they're what's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Ever since a kind friend brought Whitey the Chicken a dozen fertile eggs to sit on six years ago when she went broody for the first time in her life at the age of seven, our chicken population has expanded each spring.

Whitey died last year at the ripe old age of 12 (when I checked a few years ago, the world record for oldest living chicken was 14), but her legacy lives on. She raised seven chicks during her one and only stint at motherhood, and we kept one of the roosters, which meant that we now had fertile eggs—and our hens have been taking advantage of that fact ever since.

I once read an alarming statistic that said something like 95% of hens in the United States have had the instinct to sit on a nest of eggs and hatch out some chicks—known as going broody—totally bred out of them. So despite the fact that we don't really need any more chickens, I've never discouraged a hen from doing what she's naturally supposed to do. Plus it's always fun having baby chicks around.

Last year, though, six of our hens hatched out a total of 40 live chicks. Lokey alone was responsible for raising 20 of them. A friend says she's worth her weight in gold.

More photos and a lot more story below (hover over each image for a description). . .

Monday Dose of Cute: Oh, Happy Day

Just hanging out, waiting for their breakfast hay to be delivered.

Two months ago we moved all of the sheep who weren't in the barn having babies off of the big front field, which is our main grazing pasture, and into a pen about a half acre in size across from the barn.

Until yesterday they lived a boring (in a sheep's opinion) existence in there, laying around, eating alfalfa hay twice a day (that we had to buy because our own hayfield didn't grow during last year's terrible drought), and impatiently waiting for the day when they would once again be able to roam the fields, munching on fresh green grass.

12 more photos and the rest of the story below (hover over each image for a description). . .

Sunday Dose of Cute: The Waiting Game

Four year old Freida

Can you believe it's already the end of January? How has your new year been going so far? Ours hasn't been going quite as expected.

It started with Joe throwing his back out on new year's day morning. Remember last spring when he was housebound for several weeks and ordered not to lift anything heavier than five pounds for at least a month? It's like that. Fortunately this time we had some medicine on hand (left over from the last time), and he was able to make the 70-mile round trip to the chiropractor the next day.

Things were going okay until a few days later when, in a freak accident, I managed to stab myself in the ankle with a metal electric fencing stake—in the exact same place the snake bit me, which was still store after two and a half years.

It was a lot like the whole snake bite ordeal all over again, and almost as painful, only without the morphine drip and three hot meals a day—and with a lot more blood. For a while I even had the Luggable Loo back on my side of the bed.

I once read that farming is one of the most dangerous jobs there is, and I believe it. We're always getting banged up, but in our nearly 13 years together we've never both been out of commission at the same time. Until now.

More story and photos below. . .

Lucky Buddy Bear, Ace Cattle Dog

It's hard to believe that our beloved Lucky Buddy Bear turned eleven years old this month. He's been suffering from some age-related hormone issues (aren't we all?) that we're still trying to get figured out, and he is slowly losing his eyesight, but for the most part he's doing well. The vet couldn't believe how good his teeth looked.

Bear is half English Shepherd and half Australian Shepherd, which are both excellent stock dog breeds. When Bear was still a little cub, we bought a book called something like How To Train Your Stock Dog Even if He's Smarter than You Are. After reading the first couple of chapters we gave the book to Bear.

It has been so amazing to see the natural instincts our different farm dogs possess. Bear simply knows what to do, just like Daisy and Marta, our two livestock guardian dogs, know to protect their flock. Two different types of dogs, two completely different jobs. And then of course there's Beagle Bert. Nobody had to teach him to head off after a rabbit.

Even though Bear has never been formally trained as a stock dog, he does remarkably well. He helps with everything from rounding up chickens and herding sheep to keeping the donkeys (and sheep) from attacking you when you're holding the treat bucket. He's also an excellent guard dog, often staying up all night warning off coyotes and monsters.

He's far from perfect (probably because we never trained him), and there have been plenty of times over the years when he's done exactly the opposite of what we wanted him to, but he's always been more of a help than a hindrance. And what a big personality. I can't imagine the last eleven years without him.

Despite having no experience with cows except for being around the freezer steers we raise two at a time every few years, Bear was in top form recently when a hungry mama and three bad little calves escaped from the neighbor's pasture into our (obviously much tastier) hayfield.

15 more photos below. . .