Animals, animals, animals

We have a few animals around here.  The number fluctuates depending on what is sold, what is born and what dies.  The kids love the animals that fit in their laps (or used to).

This is Stripes.  She is a 2nd generation cat in our family.  

This is one of her kittens, Potato Chips.  He is such a sweet cat and has a little raspy purr.  We really should find him a new home, but we aren't that motivated.  His sister is a tiny copy of their mother.  They are both very calm and friendly kitties.  Unless you are a mouse. 

We sold all of our sheep this summer.  It was too much responsibility for me, even though at this point they were taking care of themselves.  I was thinking ahead to winter and didn't want to worry about all of that.

This is Molly, on her last day as a member of our family.  She was terrorizing the farm a little and needed a home where she could get more human attention.  An older (than me) couple took her about a month and a half ago.  Leah sobbed.  She'd become much more attached to Molly than I'd realized.  She's OK now.

As part of the deal that we could find Molly a new home, we got a new puppy for Leah to attach herself to.  (No one else around here is as much an animals person as Leah!)

This little puppy is Lucky.  She is technically Daniel's dog.  We had her first and knew that she had a sister still available.  She was anxious to meet Molly.

But I think she was happy to be reunited with her sister.  They were only separated for two days, so it wasn't a huge reunion.  They had already grown a bit in these pictures.

Meet Georgia.

 Here they are two months later.  When will they stop growing?  They are growing SO fast!  They are about 15 weeks old now.  We had to buy choke collars so that Leah could handle Georgia.  That is one strong pup!

We set up this kennel for them yesterday, got them off the grass and are using the house as a weather shield. We had to steal it from the chickens though and will have to put up something to contain the birds soon.

I've heard some specific meowing/crying late at night for the past week.  I'm sure we'll be dealing with more kittens in about 4 months.  I'd fix Stripes, but that is a sure way to never see her again.  You might not believe it.  We have too much experience to think otherwise!

We still have one cow.  And too many spiders.

Shearing Sheep

Part of owning sheep is getting them sheared each spring.  It's easiest if you can do it yourself.  We do not do anything easy.  Fortunately, our bishop had some experience shearing sheep as a teenager and offered to help us out this year.  It was very nice of him.  Especially since he's the Bishop and very busy. 

He loaded up our 6 sheep into his trailer and drove them 3 houses up the road to his shed he'd already set up for our activity.  The day was hot and he'd be dripping in sweat by the time he was through.

In the end, we had 6 MUCH skinnier sheep and two bags of wool (Baa, Baa, black sheep).

After the work was done, Bishop got out a horse for Leah and Joseph to sit upon.  The other kids were invited, but too shy to accept.  Leah gets excited when she only smells a horse.  Being on it's back was major points in the Bishop's favor!

As fun as the shearing was (which it really wasn't, though we tried to ignore how hard the Bishop was working while we stood and watched), we may not have the opportunity again.  We are trying to sell our little flock.  With Chad's frequent absences, it's not something I relish doing in the winter.

 But at least we tried it and have the memories!  meh-eh-eh, meh-eh-eh

Down on the farm

Our farm is growing!  We had 3 little kittens born on Mother's Day.  They are very cute and still haven't started venturing away from their momma.  Leah is very drawn to animals and these babies are getting a lot of her attention.  She doesn't handle them yet, but she crawls under the table where they are and stares at them...for a long time.

We hatched chicks...twice.  We've come to admit that we are no good at hatching eggs.  We don't know what we are doing wrong, but the first time we started with 2 dozen and ended up with 4 chicks (though many more had been moving the day before they should have hatched).  The second time we started with 32 eggs and had 5 eggs hatch, then one chick died several days later.

Luckily, there is a mill in town where we can buy as many chicks as we want.  We bought 15 chicks to go with the first batch.  One of those chicks died; I mentioned it in a previous post.  Then we had our 4 chicks and got a call from Chad's dad.  He had access to free chicks and we could have as many as we wanted.  So we weren't really in need of more chicks, but the price was right.

Fast forward to the present...we have 54 chicks.  FIFTY-FOUR!  We'll see how that works out.

We did sell 3 of our lambs a couple of weeks ago.  We still have our bottle-fed lambs since they are not afraid of us.  We have staked them out in the orchard to help us keep the grass down out there.  But lambs are not very smart and we are constantly going out there to untangle them.  I'm glad it's summer and we can send the kids out there.

Tonight, Chad and I held a mini-rodeo and caught the last two lambs to put them in a back corner of the orchard that is all grass.  We hope it's not too late to tame them (though my hope is weak).  It was quite a site to behold.  When lambs don't want to be led, they lay down.  So we dragged two lambs and got tired and sweaty.  It was so much fun.

I am grateful we have the opportunity to raise these animals.  I watched Joseph help me wrangle the tame lambs as we hooked them up tonight.  He got pretty firm with one of the lambs and smacked her on the rear to get her moving.  It was funny...I don't think she even noticed.  There aren't very many 4-year-old boys having that experience.  Even Sarah tries to manage the lambs sometimes.  :)  The kids gather eggs, fill water troughs and throw hay over the fence.  Tonight they helped plant more of the garden.  It's a great life.  If we ever have to leave it behind, I will be sad, but grateful to have lived it at all.