Saturday, March 28, 2015

Blessings of Rural Life


 Chores are a family event.
During the winter the girls and I rotate who is outside, that way someone is always in the house with the boy.
Now that it's spring, we are all outside!
The girls first outdoor animal chore is cats and dogs.
Our youngest daughter who is 4 is in "charge" of making sure they have food and water.
She can also help collect eggs.
Our second daughter is responsible for the hen house.
She feeds and waters and collects eggs.
The oldest daughter feeds sheep hay and can also feed our docile horses, ponies, and donkeys.

Sometimes I feel a pang of guilt for my kids.
They don't know what it's like to ride their bikes to the pool
or have a neighbourhood kid "gang'
They come home from school and have homework and chores
and
when that is done they can play outside with each other.
BUT
I have to remind myself that they get to witness a full circle of life.
Birth, life, and death
untainted and unedited.
They get to know what it feels like to save a baby chick from the claws of a cat
and 
hold a brand new lamb.
I can't imagine a better life.
 


There is a quiet joy found in rural life for me.
I spend lots of time walking from pen to pen to check on our animals.
It's me and my thoughts 
most of the time some wind
and occasionally the gibber of a small child
I can hear my sheep and the horses.
I hear the owls and the doves
and the chickens
I usually have the cat and dog to keep me company.

I am really busy.
There is no two bits about that
but
in all the chaos of life and to-do lists
Animals must get fed.
I must make those walks to feed and check.
No matter what happens in my life,
I still find quiet
and there
is
joy
and
peace
in 
that.


Thursday, March 26, 2015

Buttons Newborn Video 2015

unsteady newborn lamb.
Buttons had a rough lambing last year 
but
this year she fell right into the groove of things 
and has been so fantastic!


Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Buttons Lamb 2015 days 2 and 3

This is this little guys second day photo!
His eyebrows KILL me!
I love him and his adorable old-man-ness!

Day 3
I love that he is filling out!
Those baby wrinkles disappear so quickly!


For our lambs first 3-4 days we keep a pretty detailed record of them.
I check on them at least every 4 hours and document anything I see.
I have livestock records for everything on our little place
so
I just changed my sheet slightly and made a lamb record form in excel.

Records are really important. 
I have learned their value in dealing with our horses.
It is hard to remember every detail of a timeline and when a vet comes out it is really handy to have an accurate account of all the things you've seen or done.

It's also made lambing easier for me.
I am a rookie and I get a ton of information from other people
and so my own record keeping
helps me to remember what happened with LAST years lambs....
What is normal and what isn't.

If you want a copy of my livestock record or my lambing record,
just send me an email,
I would be happy to save you the time in excel!


Animal Name: Vet Info:
Animal Type: Clinic:
Animal Breed: Name:
Description: Cell:
Sire:                                    Dam:



Date Description
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Buttons Ram Lamb 2015

 Yesterday evening I noticed that Buttons bag (udder)
was REALLY full.
I feed twice a day and during the evening feed
she wasn't her normal gluttonous self!
I figured she would lamb in the next day or so
I checked at midnight and I didn't notice anything.
I checked at 5 and she was uncomfortable
I went back out at 9
not really expecting to find this
sweet little guy.
 



He has eaten.
He has pooped.
and
He is exhausted.
 I will post more pictures later today after they both have had some quiet time.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Our Geese

We sold our geese this week.
We were all kind of sad to see them go.
They weren't very nice and you couldn't do anything with them.
They were amusing to watch in their little kiddie pool
but that was about the extent of our interaction
other than the terrifying moments that they got out of the their pen!

But they gave us some experiences
and laughs
and they will be missed 
but 
they went to a really great bird farm.

Monday, March 16, 2015

Pregnant Ewes

Gestation for sheep is around 147 days. 
Like humans, some sheep go longer and some shorter.
We could lamb any day.
I take photos of our ewes every day at the same time to help document the last couple of weeks.
 The above is a shot of Button's hips.
She is most likely carrying twins.
 This is Bella.
That is a pick up truck tire. It kind of gives you a scale of how tall mature Babydolls are.
They must measure under 24" shorn.

This is a front shot of Bella.
She is also carrying twins.
This shot isn't the best at displaying how impressively big she is right now.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Chicken Plan



We ordered another 25 chicks for the end of March.
They are a basic dual purpose.
We've had to establish a
"Chicken Plan".
For the past couple years we have had around 20 mixed barnyard chickens.
We get a good amount of eggs ranging from 18 eggs to 3 eggs.
Our girls are getting up there and they molted this past summer.
I sold a few this spring
but
we spend quite a bit on feed. 
In the winter we spend about $40.00/month in chicken feed.
We can buy eggs for cheaper.
So
our new plan.
We are going to buy 25 new chicks every spring.
We will let them mature and lay through the late summer.

We are then going to butcher half in the fall and let the other half lay through the winter.
Come spring we will buy 25 and start over except 
at fall butchering we will butcher last years old hens and half of the young hens.

It should be a good experience.
I was lucky that I grew up with a Dad that hunted and taught us how to butcher and clean animals.
I also grew up listening the my mom and grandma talk about butchering chickens.

This will be a learning process for our girls and Dusty.
They are feeling a little nervous about this endeavour
but
there is something satisfying about raising your food.
I know what it is fed.
I know how it was treated.
and as we sit around our table to eat there is a respect that is gained through this process.
That is priceless.
 

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Introducing Rams

Our ewes are beginning to bag up
which means....
we are getting close to lambing.

We recently acquired a new ram so he has been in quarantine in our barn. 
We need the space for our ewes and he has been separated long enough.
Moving all our rams together takes a little bit of finagling.

We have been slowly building pens for our sheep.
It's been a process to figure out
how we want our place set up
to manage all these animals the most efficiently.

So this year we have a mobile ram pen.
They won't stay in this forever
but
an important lesson we learned last year
was to put rams in a VERY small pen
when you are introducing them or reintroducing them!
{we learned this the hard way}
 Its nice that the trailer is light enough we can pull it around with our quad.

 Backing it up to the barn so we can get it ready for all the boys.
 This works perfect for us because it frees up our barn space and it has a divider in it.
We start by adding straw.
 We only bed down the front half because that is where all 5 will reside for the next couple of days.
 Next we add tires. Also a pretty important step. This prevents them from being able to get a clear run at one another.
 Clifford and Stinky were at the barn so those boys get loaded first.
They are both easy to handle and just jumped right in.
 Then we went and picked up Teddy and Jessie. These guys are pretty used to being trailered. Jessie is a juvenile ram and so he can be a bit unpredictable but he loaded without and issue.
 We closed the middle divider when we were loading Teddy and Jessie so that they other two couldn't escape and they couldn't fight while we were getting them into the trailer.
We then open up the middle divider and push Teddy and Jessie in with the others. We did this same process when we brought Fabio to the barn.
 They will spend at least the next couple of days in these uncomfortable close quarters so that they won't hurt one another. 
This is the shuffle at the start.
We stay out with them for the first bit to make sure everything is okay.
Like the gate in the trailer will hold them bumping.
We then go back out to check on them.
When Dusty went out this last time the had some of the walls on the trailer pushed out.
That's why it takes a couple days.
We will fast them through the day until they settle.
We will feed them tonight and hopefully they are too tired to fight.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Pre- Lambing Work

We start lambing in less than a month!
Winter seems to drag but somehow all of our lambing preparations seem to "spring" up on us.
In the next coming weeks we will be busy getting our pens ready, checking all our supplies, clipping faces/hind-ends/udders, and every ewe will get handled more.

I am so thankful the forecast looks good for the family to be outside! 
We just bought our baby new rubber boots! 
Last year during lambing he was only 2 1/2 months old! 
It was a little more work lugging a human baby around 
while trying to work with some of our new mamas!

Our older girls were a big help last year and are very excited to see this year's lambs!
With the warmer weather and the ewes being handled more
it means more pictures!
These guys are so cute and love posing for photos!