Lovin Life

Lovin Life
Chasity, Napoleon, Christian & Cleopatra

Sunday, July 24, 2016

We have SHEEP!

So life has been incredibly busy and that is an understatement. With the last update on the blog- I was going to keep you updated on the sheep as they were set to arrive in a few weeks. Well, a few weeks have passed and well, a few more weeks have passed. I think we knew we would be busy- what I don't think is we knew how busy we would be and telling a sheep or lamb to do something is nothing like you think it will turn out.
We had to get them somewhat used to being handled, so a little coercing with grain goes a long way. Then we needed to test them for Johnes' Disease and OPP. That was another nightmare- chasing sheep all over the 2 acre pasture. As we had no stable housing in place to "catch" them. Then we needed to do fecal floats- which consisted of walking around the pasture and waiting for everyone to drop magical beans so we could go pick them up. Great news was all of hard work paid off. Fecals were so good no one had to be dewormed!! And everyone was negative for OPP & Johne's Disease. So on to better things right like letting us rest in the pasture and not be bother by humans.... Not so much. We have to vaccinate against overeating disease, tetanus and CL. So in the middle of all of that- with a few of our chickens being killed by a not so friendly neighborhood dog- we had to introduce Molly to the herd. She has come a long way and the sheep are doing a great job at training her. Just think I was so worried about her hurting the sheep, as I hear her yelp for overstepping her bounds and one of the ewes has head butted her into the pasture. After Molly had a brief introduction we purchased 2 more lambs from another farm. I wanted desperately a black ewe as we have white, brown, red, grey and a variety of all four. So from what was to be 2 to 5 or 6 to now 8- soon to be 10.
You can add, eh?


Looks like my husband and his "chicken math". That chicken math is he wanted "no more than 3 varieties" and just a few of each. This is how it is in reality. First bunch 10 black astralorps, 5 plymouth barred rocks= 17 (we bought 15 they sent 17) then we bought 6 more "black sexlinks" from TSC, that is what 23? well, oh yea and that is 3 varieties.... right? UH, well... lets see we ordered another set of chicks and that is well..... 10 speckled sussex and 5 lavender guineas= 16- right! ( we ordered 10 they sent 11). So where are we in this chicken math.... oh yea 17+6=23  a neighbor dog killed 2, so -2= 21. 21 +16=37. So yes, we have 3 varieties of chickens and 1 variety of guineas.
A few of the gang members


So back to the sheep math- as he would say to me. We have at present 6 sheep (1 ram and 5 ewes), 2 lambs unregistered. And are slotted to pick up another registered ewe lamb and whether lamb in the upcoming weeks. Our lambs will not be old enough to breed this fall, so maybe in spring they will be ready, and our whether will be going in the freezer as he is big enough. Our goal at present is to have 1+5+2+1+1 and that will eventually equal 13 right? Oh, well I guess we have to buy more sheep, oh yes- permission to buy more sheep! I love that idea.

Addition+2... =13!


Stand by for updates on the next happenings on the farm- we have baby bunnies and our chicks are beginning to lay eggs....

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