New puppies!

This is Lizzy's first litter of puppies and she is such a good momma.

They came really early in the morning and she had then all cleaned and fed by the time we got out there.

It was really cold that night but she kept them all warm.  3 girls and 3 boys. 

Is that not the sweetest thing you have ever seen?

Violet

This is Violet

Violet is a Jersey/Dexter heifer.  We got her to be a family milk cow, but the opportunity we had to have her bred didn't work out so she has just been here eating the grass.

She has been very lonely since the other steers went to slaughter in November.  She really misses having friends.  So we have some jersey calves coming at the end of the week to keep her company.  I just hope she is nice to them, she is a lot bigger than they are.

Go with the flow

Anyone that has a farm or a number of animals can tell you that you need to be prepared for things to NOT go according to plans.  The more you plan, the more awry things will go.  So even though I am a planner at heart I have learned to embraced the 'go with the flow' way of life.

Case in point, above you see a lamb and a pygmy goat in my living room.  Yes you read that right in the living room.  This is the last lamb to be born.  On Jan 25 we had a male born to one of our favorite Ewes.  We named him Lambert.  On the 29th two more boys were born and we took them to our friends for them to raise because we don't want too many this year.  Then This one and her sister were born on 2/1.  We gave the other female to our friends and kept this one and her name is Holly.

You may not have noticed but each of those days is either a Sunday or a Wednesday.  These are the two worst days for us to have new bottle fed babies born because we are either at church for Sunday services or at church for youth activities.  So we missed a few Sundays at church to stay home making sure the lambs eat and stay alive and there were 2 Wednesdays that the lambs had to come with us.  Yes everyone at church knew that I was there because they heard the lamb baaaing.

So we named her Holly, then added a second name a few days later,, her name is now....Holly Houdini.  You guessed it, she is an escape artists, hence the reason she is running loose in my house.And when this part of our adventure is over my floors are being disinfected and scrubbed.  I am just so thankful I decided not to put in carpet.

The little guy on the right is Nedward and he is a pygmy goat.  You can't see it in the picture, but he is actually smaller than the cat (wish I had thought to get a picture of him with the cat).

Is that really what I am seeing?

I called on an ad in the TN Trader for a Nubian buckling.  When we arrived at their house to take a look at him and leave a deposit we saw this...

The girls and I looked at each other then back.  Definitely not dogs, too big for coyotes.  Can they really be wolves?  Must be a hybrid.

They are not hybrids, they are full blooded wolves and they are as gently as dogs (with big sharp teeth of course)...most of the time.  It was very intimidating being so close to them, but they were so beautiful.  This family breeds them and sells the pups to trainers for movies.  I am just glad they couldn't get out of the cage.

January

Winter always brings new lambs.  I had decided to give away the Ewes to get rid of the hoof rot.  I soon realized they were all pregnant.  So I decided to wait until the lambs were born.  We needed to watch closely so we could snatch up the lambs right after they were born.  The first one came on the 10th but we didn't know about it till she was half a day old since the Ewes were way out in the pasture.  We spent almost an hour trying to catch that baby...and Madison had to do the lamb dive.  One day I will have video of this, but I never seem to have a device to record when it happens.  She stalks it slowly and then pounces and dives to catch it.  Sometimes she misses, but more often she catches them.  If it wasn't for her we wouldn't have caught the lamb.  We gave that lamb to our friends at the other end of town, their son really wanted to raise a lamb.

These were born on the 17th.  They were both females.  The kids names them Lilly and buttercup.  Now the bottle feeding begins.  6 times a day for 3 days, then 4 times for 10 days.  It is a lot of work luckily Madison loves to bottle feed lambs.

They ate really well and I was surprised.  It can be really difficult to get the lambs to take a bottle, but once they do it is easy.

Madison had a lot of fun taking lots of pictures. 

The lambs will live in a rubbermaid tub in the house for a few days until it is warm enough outside and they are down to 3 feedings a day.  It does make for a stinky house though so I get them out as soon as I can.

She is such a good momma.feeding her babies.

I moved these out to the porch early because, well....they are smelly.  We had the stock tank on the porch for the chicks so it made a great pen for the lambs.  They were unhappy being away from us and tried to escape so we had to put the chairs over the top to keep them in.