Shrew on her last day.
Shrew picking a fight.
We bought a turkey The Shrew to replace our
female turkeys that had been eaten by the coyotes. The Shrew was a nasty mean bird who killed a
baby turkey and would pluck the feathers off of any bird she could get
near. We decided to butcher her for
Thanksgiving. In the weeks leading up to
butchering time I watched a lot of Youtube videos on how to butcher a
turkey. Finally the day arrived and Teen
Son, his friend, and I got to work. We
hung the shrew upside down slit her throat and let her bleed out. Plucked her and then cleaned out her
insides. It was not as bad as I worried
it would be. 2 days later we cooked her
for Thanksgiving – she was tough but delicious.
The Shrew was a nasty bird and she was only 6 lbs it's a lot of work but not horrible.
Part of the Thanksgiving gathering.
We went
to a friends for Thanksgiving. We had a
wonderful time and stayed after dark and the sheep were still out. When we got home we all went in different
directions to find the sheep, feed the cattle, take care of the dogs, put the
cats away, take care of the fodder. We
found the sheep near the top of the property and they were feeling full of piss
and vinager jumping, skipping, and running.
The sheep ran down to the sheep pen then turned and charged the fence to
the cow pasture. The cows didn’t like
the sheep running towards them so they charged the fence. Our young heifer, April, didn’t stop in
time.
April eating happily after she recovered.
The spot where April got stuck. The new silver is an old gate we "fixed" the hole in the fence with.
We have a telephone pole laying
against the fence and she slipped over the pole and against the fence and ended
up trapped on her side between the pole and the fence. It was 9: and very dark, the wire cutters were not
where we thought they were the other cattle were mooing and stomping around
us. I turned the flashlight on my phone
and held it in my mouth and got the hay and fodder to the rest of the fodder
while Darling Husband took the good flashlight to find some wire cutters, and Teen Son tried to keep April calm. Finally we got the fence cut and April
free. She refused to eat and walked with
a limp but she didn’t seem hurt otherwise.
Getting the sheep used to Tessa.
Every day of Thanksgiving Break we worked with the
dogs and sheep. Our sheep love to run
and dogs even Livestock Guardian Dogs love to chase. Luca is a really young dog to be trusted with
the sheep. Tessa a young Anatolian Sheppard
is intense. She likes to follow them at
a distance of 30 to 50 feet and they like to run so she kept them running. Every day we would put Blackwell, Hotrod, and
sometimes another sheep on leads and the Guardian Dogs on leashes and walk
first one dog then the other. After a
couple hours we walked the sheep without the dog on a lead. That worked great until we added 2 dogs. When Thanksgiving Break ended we were able to
allow both dogs and all the sheep to free range. It is so nice when things work.
A silly Pielbuey
The sheep have anywhere on the property to go so why are they stealing the cattle's food?
