Today I started the fencing for the boy sheeps' own area. Right now they're living with the chickens. But like any chicken pen, their's doesn't have any grass. Chickens are assholes that way. Also Triplet, the wether (means he's neutered), keeps getting into the chicken coop and tries to eat all the chickens' food. The chicken door isn't that big but somehow he squeezes his butt in there. There are some boards that kind of create an A frame cover over the door and I've put a bar across it to try and keep him out. But now he's learned to push the cover away from the chicken door. So I'm going to have to screw that in place too. The sooner I can get the out of the chicken pen, the better.
I also did manage to get pictures of everybody. I'll post those in the order of who has been here the longest.
First we got chickens.
None of these are the original chickens we got because a weasel or something got into our chicken coop and killed about 16 chickens. In one night. And didn't even eat them. Just killed them all for the joy of killing. Little fucker. That's when I built a better chicken coop. Now nothing gets in. (Except for Triplet apparently.) But these are most of the chickens, ducks and guinea fowl we have now. I say most because they wouldn't stand together for a group photo. But I got most of them in it.
We have 3 muscovy ducks, two cayuga ducks, 5 guinea fowl and a random amount of chickens since I always loose count. We also have a little old english game bantam rooster named Heihei. I've ordered 10 buff orpingtons, 10 silver laced wyandottes, 6 silkies and 3 OEG bantams due to arrive next week. The silkies and other bantams I'm hoping to use to hatch quail eggs since quail don't usually set. I had quail last year but I don't think my setup was right so I'm going to try something different. Probably next year.
The next year we got rabbits. Right now they're in cages but I plan on switching them to a colony setup this summer.
This is Jenny.
This is Hermione.
This is Severus. He's Jenny's son.
The next year, we added pigs. These are American Guinea hogs.
These are our girls. Pippi and Annie. They're named that because their mother died after they were born so the lady I got them from raised them by hand. Pippi is the slightly bigger one. I'm hoping to get a boar for them this year.
This year we got 5 sheep from my husband's work. He's not a farmer or anything. But they have solar panels that power part of their facility and they had the sheep to keep the grass down. But this year they decided it wasn't much more expensive to just have it mowed. So some of them went to auction and the friendliest ones went to employees. We paid much less than what they usually go for on like craigslist and such.
This is Kyle. He's our ram.
This is Triplet. The little shit that's causing all the problems in the chicken coop. He's also never really been handled when he was a baby so he's the shyest of the 5. Except when there's food involved.
This is Pepper. She seems to be our herd queen and the friendliest of the girls.
This is Mint. She's the second friendliest and the fuzziest. Those dreadlocks are just part of her winter coat and should fall off some time during the spring/summer. If not, I'll need to do some shearing. But probably not. These are 'hair' sheep and shed their winter coats every year. Most people think of wool sheep that are always fuzzy and have to be sheared every year.
And last but not least is Roni, our shyest of the girls. I believe she's also the youngest of our girls and probably hasn't had any babies yet. The other two girls are about 5 years old. I think Roni was born last year.
But that's it for the livestock roll call. We also have 3 dogs and 3 cats but those are strickly pets, of course. We also have an indoor lionhead bunny who is also a pet. Technically (except for the chickens) all of our livestock are also pets because they're our breeders. We do have our livestock animals for meat, but that will be once they have offspring and those offspring are butchering size. As for the chickens, extra or aggressive roos get invited to dinner along with any hens that are too old to lay. I just simply don't have the money to feed animals unless they are giving us something back.
I still haven't gotten all of the dishes done.
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