Helping with Deer's Twins

Deer is a wide bodied girl.  I never know when she is pregnant because she always looks like she is about to give birth.    

When she didn't eat with the rest of the herd I hoped we would have a lamb.  She chose to stay under a tree at the top of the hill where she could watch the rest of the herd.

Every once in a while she would decide the rest of the sheep wandered too far away and would go round them up and yell at them.  Deer is not a sheep the rest follow but she was in such distress they listened to her.  

I don't normally watch out for the sheep to give birth but she was seeming to be in some stress and it was a beautiful day so I followed her around.

While I was watching her I kept hearing running water.  Hoping it was a neighbors hose I followed the noise.  It didn't take long for me to find the leak.

I got some help digging out the hole.   

While I was digging her labor must have taken a pause because she started eating so I took a break and went into the house and cleaned up.   

Finally she chose a place closer to where the rest of the herd wanted to be and she was protected.  

When she started to give birth the feet were pointed properly but the head was turned.  I might have waited longer to intervene but 2 years ago she gave birth to a stillborn twin, so I broke the amneiotic sac and turned the head so it was facing the right direction and in the next minute the first ram was born.  

She immediately started cleaning it.  He took his first wobbly steps and got to nurse.  15 minutes later his younger brother was born.

She got back to work cleaning the newest lamb.

Proper Livestock Guardian Dog behavior.  Being near the new lambs and watchful but not looking directly at them.  They even are looking in opposite directions so all areas that the lambs could be attacked from are covered (or Natasha is looking at her human).

Luca is so calm and protective of the babies that Deer relaxed when he was close.  That all changed when Champion the Pig wanted a look.  I didn't pause to take a picture just scooped up the babies and took Deer and her lambs into a safe pig proof place.

Here they are 18 hours old trying to keep up with the herd.

Deer will have her hands full with the black sheep.  He already is busy sticking his nose into everything and not following his mom.

Thanksgiving Break

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?

New Lambs

The fencing is amazing and working wonderfully.  Do we relax?  

Do we enjoy life? Do we take a trip to the beach?  NO!  We do not!  

We decide to buy 3 more Shetland Sheep.  We call to meet with Dianne a local breeder of Heritage Animals that I have been speaking too.  We do not own a trailer yet so while we are sitting discussing who to ask if we can borrow their trailer a friend calls to say he knows someone who a trailer has been abandoned in front of their house and they contacted the police but nothing has been done and they want it GONE.  So we go to pick it up instead of borrowing one – it has no license plate and we do not want to drive it so we finally end up at the breeders without a trailer.  We learn a lot and have a wonderful visit with all the Heritage Animals.  My 3 youngest children pick out 3 lambs.  These will be our first registered sheep. 

The next day we go pick up the lambs and put them in our dog crate.  We have a big dog so all 3 fit easily.  We put the new sheep,

 Marshmallow,

 Maxwell, and Dot

 into the new area enclosed by the electric fence.  

Deer is very bossy to the new sheep she pushes them around when they walk in front of her or eat a weed near her.  Blackwell seems to enjoy them.