We lost four chickens last week to predation. We think it was a weasel. We knew there were rats living under the hen house. Lisa did research and the evidence pointed to a weasel. They use the rat burrows and kill the rats and voles which is what actually attracts them to the area. That alone wouldn't be bad except when the rat supply ran out it went after the chickens. It got two of the wyandottesand silky and her chick. We set out traps and today we added some wire under the front of the house.
We got some gravel for the hen house job. I put some in the rabbit port yesterday. The gravel was still wet from rain and it froze last night. It was still frozen when I was shovelling this load. I moved the truck out into the sun so it would thaw.
We put the traps in feed sacks. Weasels like dark closed in places.
We caught a stray cat in the trap last night. We turned it loose.
The trench across the front of the hen house.
The wire got screwed in with washers.
Then we put broken concrete blocks and filled it with mud.
We put a layer of gravel on top of the mud.
Elizabeth, Luna's breeder, sent Lisa these pictures. Luna is doing well and is finding her place in the pack. She's trying to get in front of Satin. She stands somewhere between Satin and Paris in the pack hierarchy.
The calves are doing well. Yogi is still smallest and Harvey is getting big. Bevis followed the sheep down the hill at feeding time so I had to chase him back up to the barnyard with a stick.
This is Yogi having his lunch.
I had seen the large hay manger from the road so I went up to the pond edge to have a look
You can fit two round bales in it, I might try to build one.
Our pond is frozen over.
We had about an inch of snow over night. Most of the south facing slopes thawed quickly.
It was the first real winter weather we've had. Not much accumulation of snow but it was bitterly (or brutally?) cold and windy. The sheep usually wander down the hill mid-morning to graze or munch on hay. Today they wouldn't leave the barn so a little after noon I went down on the four wheeler and gave them some grain and loosened the hay for them. This freed up the barn so Lisa could go out and feed the calves. It's almost impossible to feed the calves if the sheep are up there helping.
Speedy has lightened up quite a bit since it got cold and we've started feeding them. Maybe he doesn't see us as intruders now. I still don't like turning my back on him. He's fast and moves silently, has sharp talon like hooves and weighs over 300 lbs. He jumped on my back once and knocked me down, so now I respect his space and keep an eye on him. He's cute though.
Lisa went to the Sheltie Christmas party on Saturday. They were running a little late for Christmas but had problems with booking the venue. I couldn't go because I was on-call. There were a lot of shelties there plus one extra, Luna. Luna needed a home so we adopted her. She was the right color. She is 14 months old.
You can see the location better in this wider shot. It is the driveway just past Nelson's road.
Google really needs to update their satellite imaging. None of our barns or sheds are in this.
Here is another wide shot. I sent the local news a link to the pictures and they put several on the evening news. Channel 18 News Report
They credited me on the broadcast version.
This was an early shot. I didn't know there was a fire until I heard the firetruck sirens. We don't hear a lot of sirens out here in the country so we always have to look.
This was across the road today. They had done a lot of work on the place and really made it nice since they moved in. The wind noise is annoying in the video but at around :59 you can see and hear a couple of small explosions. I think they were the tires on the truck that caught fire. It started in the garage and spread to a truck and the house.
Not really free but the sheep got to come out of their pasture today. They are grazing some of the good grass and weeds on the other side of the fence. It is greener over there of course.
Kentucky, like most of the country, has had very little snow this winter. We haven’t had any here until today. It was cold and windy as well as snowy. We didn’t get any accumulation to speak of. It was kind of nice to have a wintery day.
There are three calves still on milk. Since it’s hard to hold three buckets for three calves Lisa hung Bevis’ from the fence.
He was trying to get every drop.
My glove must have looked like an udder. My coat is Holstein colored too. He looks cute and cuddly doesn’t he? Well, he’s cute.
I didn’t think I looked like a nurse cow.
While Bevis was chasing me around, Yogi was trying to get milk out of Harvey’s udder. Harvey is a bull. The neighbor cattle came to watch.
The hay in the middle of the roll must be tasty. It’s funny to see them with their heads jammed in the hole.
We were taking Heidi some hay and breaking the ice in her water tank.
The big bovines came to see if we had buckets.
It never got much above 25 all day. This was about 3 pm. The van is outside because of all the hay in the garage.
At the end of the day it was just a heavy dusting, nothing to measure.
With a little coaxing Andy and Heather got the calves off the trailer and across the back yard. They stayed in the barnyard with Harvey all afternoon. We put them back in the stall for the night.
Heather was hooking up the halters.
As hard as they fought getting in the trailer at Andy’s you would think they would want to get back off.
I eventually got behind Bevis and poked him with a stick on his bony little butt and he walked across the yard.
