Happy Easter

Andy, Lynne and Heather came over for Easter dinner today. We had planned on having roasted leg of mutton because it’s traditional and we’re shepherds. We had steak. The oven chose this afternoon to break down. The baking element burned out and since it was Easter we couldn’t go to the appliance store and get one. We thawed out some Larry steaks and put them on the grill. Lisa made green beans and mashed potatoes, there may have been gravy too. Lynne brought some yummy garlic rolls and sticky buns.

We colored brown eggs.

They were very pretty.Colorful

Kate’s Easter bunnies.

They have their eyes open now.

We have had a lot of storms lately. The ground is squishy.

Sheep Panels

I had the day off yesterday so we went down to Liberty, KY to get some sheep panels. Edith has a bunch of them and we asked her where she got hers since we haven’t seen them in the local farm stores. It turns out Liberty is the gate capitol of the world. They have several of these big gate companies. We went to Floyd Gate Company.

They make the gates and feeders on site.

They come in red or green.

These are the sheep panels we bought. Eight feet long and three feet high. And the bars go all the way to the ground. The bottom bar on a cattle panel is far enough off the ground that most of the smaller sheep can squeeze under. Obviously 44 isn’t one of them.

The prices were so good we picked up some gates too. A 14’ and two 10’ ones.

This is the wire stretcher/unroller we got the other day. I saw it on craigslist about ten minutes after the guy had posted. He only wanted $75 for it so I called Lisa and she jumped in the truck and went to Cynthiana to pick it up. We didn’t think it would last long at that price, they’re $350 new at Tractor Supply.

 

This is the stock photo from the manufacturer. It shows a little better how they work. We’re ready.

Wyandotte

We got some Golden Laced Wyandotte chicks about two weeks ago. I forgot to blog them, sorry. They aren’t much older than the bantams but they are a lot bigger breed. They are supposed to be a good broody breed with large eggs.

 

Lulu

Edith called Saturday morning. She had been up late with one of the lambing ewes, it delivered two and she knew there was a third but couldn’t wait up any longer. When Cory went out to the barn Saturday morning he found the third one and got Edith up. It was abandoned by its mom and cold and hungry. Edith took it in the house and put warm towels on it and gave it warm lamb formula. Then she called us because she had to go out of town and told Lisa she could have the lamb if she could nurse it to health. We had it in the front bathroom with a space heater and heat lamp for the first three days. Lisa was tube feeding it every two hours. It took a while for it to learn how to suck on the bottle. Finally it was on the bottle and moving around so we had to move it to the garage into the X-pen. Meet Lulu, she’s a little ewe lamb and now seems to be full of life at the ripe old age of five days. Since she made it this far she gets a name, gender-specific pronouns, and, of course, a blog post.

This was yesterday, she was a mere four days old back then.

Lisa taught her how to drink from the bottle, now she loves it. Way better than having a tube shoved down her throat.

She pees too.

Lulu Videos:

Lulu at five days old.

Organic Lawn Mower

We let the sheep into the yard. They do a pretty good job mowing. Louie and the cattle had to stay out.

Little grass eating machines.

Moe was pruning the willow tree. We need to set up some sheep barriers around the plants but the mowing concept is sound.

We blocked off the front and back yards. The garden is in the back and we don’t have it contained yet. Those PVC lattice things slow the dogs down but the sheep jump right over them, think “counting sheep” and that’s what they do.

Shepherd

We had to take three ewes over to the ram today. Lisa got them cut out and loaded, the video shows how. We set up the sheep panels inside the chain link to make a holding area for transitioning to the back yard. Once they were in the yard she just led them to the trailer. Having tame animals makes life a lot simpler.

Bess, Tilly and Molly are the ewes.

They would follow Lisa anywhere.

Especially if she has a bucket.

They follow her even when she doesn’t have a bucket.

You never know when a bucket might appear.

They jumped right in.

They did get to finish off the bucket for their troubles. They’ll be with the ram for about a month. They went to Edith’s but the ram is going to another farm to breed some ewes so that farmer is going to take ours ewes along to stay with the ram. We’ll have to go to that farm to get them. They use dogs for herding so that will make it easy to corral them and fun to watch.

Death Row

We went over to Beattyville this afternoon to pick up some rabbit holding cages. These aren’t for breeding, just for keeping the rabbits until they get big.

They were big and heavy. The bandage on my arm was from loading the larger of the two cages. It has a metal roof and it sliced my arm open. The man where we picked it up had some first aid supplies so I got fixed up.

We dropped them off in the back yard. They need some cleaning and some repairs.

After we dropped the cages we went over to Cory’s to pick up Lucy. She’s our first heifer beef. She was born March 18 at the same farm on Todds road where little Larry came from. We stopped in on Edith after leaving Cory’s.

Lisa and Edith were discussing sheep business.

Edith’s rooster was beautiful. He’s an Ameraucana. We want one.

  She had these ewes in the lambing shed. They are due to lamb any time now.

Holes

We put in four of the posts for the horseport yard. This is the beginning of the new fence that will go around the pasture that is on the same side of the driveway as the house. The horseport will have a yard that has access to the lower sheep pasture and the upper pasture. It will allow us to close off one of the pastures and still give the animals access to the shelter.

Kate eating dandelions.

Kate’s babies at four days old.

We dug the holes first then went back and added concrete.

I was on mixing duty.

Mixing.

Nice hat, huh?

Kate Plus Eight

Kate had eight babies yesterday morning. Some are all black and some are spotty like her.

Pancakes

Marianne and Anne came to visit for spring break. Marianne made pancakes for breakfast this morning.

Pancakes well plated.

Cujo looking for food.

Rosie went to Bath county to get bred. She wasn’t into it.

I got the auger hooked up and the fence posts marked.

Andy came down and helped put in the test hole.

It works great!

The Vandivers came to dinner.

We got some bantam chicks because they are considered frequently broody. Since none of our hens want to raise babies we thought we could give the eggs to one of these. There is a drawback though. Darrell was murdered. We think a big hawk or eagle got him. One of the hens went missing at the same time. We’re looking for a new rooster.