Sunday, March 30, 2014

Still lamb-less

Well the yard looks a mess from all this rain, but all the sheep stood still long enough to get a picture. I was trying to get a few of their enormous bellies, but as soon as they  learned the cookies were gone, everyone scattered. This picture was sort of funny though, everyone looking in different directions. From the front we've got Rain (drop), Olivia, Nina's butt, and all the way in the back is Mellie. Mom was quite sure we'd have babies in all this rain, but still not lambs. 
Olivia's large belly looks to have a dropped a bit, I'm hoping she will be giving birth soon. If history repeats itself we should have twins, too : )


Here's another shot of our pretty little mama, Olivia



We wandered over to give some lunch to the hens and silkies. Donnie's little black hen wanted a closer look before we started feeding them their snacks. She's such a silly hen. 
Donnie had gotten some great work done in the new silkie shed so that we could move a few in. Right now we've got the 6 week old chicks in there along with our newer silkies. 
When we went to feed, Sundance did a little dance around Donnie's feet. I tried to get in on video but he was moving around him much too quickly.. one day I'll get a good one.


This week SHOULD be warmer, we just need to survive this weekend of rain first. Maybe we will get our new lambs with the nice spring weather. Don't worry, we'll make sure we update here immediately! 

Monday, March 24, 2014

Chicken Work

Well, I didn't realize it had been so long since we updated this. I assumed our next post would be full of little lamb photos.. Unfortunately, we are still waiting. This Thursday is the due date estimation, and don't worry I  have informed the girls of this. I'm not sure they were all that worried about it as they chomped on hay and  waited for more grain, spoiled brats.
While we haven't had any new babies born we have had some progress with our few warm days in the past month or so. Thank goodness it's been starting to look more like spring, minus today  of course. 

So, we have added a few new chickens to our flock our the last few months. Two polish will stay and a couple of silkies to go along with our current  few. We decided to add some coop space, and in the words of my old swim coach, "go big or go home." We've done just that by repurposing an old shed that was left empty. With the help of a few Amish we got it into a great place near all our other chickens, and now the work inside is starting. Putting up nesting boxes, fixing up some good roosts, and closing off half to keep  two separate groups in there. Here is Donnie and Mom checking out whats going on in there before we made any decisions. 



Mom got some great work done outside. Peas are planted, tons of plants are started inside, so she (and all of the chickens) were turning over some of the beds outside. We've been moving in some of that great aged manure into the garden areas so we have excellent soil to grow in.





She also got some leaf clean up. She's SO lucky to have the puppies helping. Christian loves laying on anything on the ground. He's a little weirdo, as soon as I put his bed down he's on it, or if part of a blanket is on the floor, he's in heaven! Mom was not so amused.








Miss Maisy, our wry neck Buff was VERY helpful during all of our work outside. She checked all the dropped screws and tacks and walked around all the fencing as we started to put it up. As you can see, she got nice and close to the camera when I stopped working to take her picture. I believe she was telling me to get back to work. Slave driver..