Saturday, August 18, 2007

More lambies

Well after Purple Tag momma had her big boy, Ripped Ear girl had her twins... a little ram lamb and a ewe lamb. Smaller than the little big guy but still quite a good size for twins. Unlike Purple Tag, who is happy to let me play with her lamb, Ripped Ear made a good show of maternal instincts and stomped her feet and lowered her head and shook it at me! Hopefully she mellows with me a bit and saves the attitude for the foxes, as I don't fancy getting charged every time I have to handle her kids!

Ripped Ear with her twins, ram lamb on the left with all white, ewe lamb on the right with spots on her face and legs.

Ram lamb up close after we got him to move away from momma.

On Wednesday at PG, I'd noted La had been really grumpy. I'd figured it was because he'd not slept well on account of eatting some stuff with milk powder in it. (Okay, he ate a dog cookie. I admit it! He was passing them out to the dogs and snurched one for himself!) As it turns out, grumpy was because he had some sort of bug, which he kindly passed on to both Nic and myself. La and I spent Thursday night miserable, La was better by Friday but I still felt ookie so Nic took the day off to watch La while I was plastered to the couch. Nic got a case of the tired-sore-throat-headaches but that's been it, lucky guy!

Today was mostly spent cleaning up the house, doing the laundry (heaps, our laundry machine is fixed!), hanging the laundry and tending to the animals - all of whom have largely been getting very restless over the past few days. (Read: dogs were bouncing off the walls.) Cleaned up the ducks pen and the chooks, was pestered heavily by Blossom for treats. (IOW She ran straight to me and started hopping on my shoes.) I did a heap of pruning in the garden!!! I still have LOTS of pruning to do on the trees (mind you we have a solid acre of trees in the front!) but was proud of how much I got done in one day! :-) Of course we spent a lot of time just watching the lambs, cute little boogers they are... La at one point got upset being away from me, so Nic set him down and he ran across the pasture to me!

"Mooommmmmmmm!!!"

Not the best framing job but I thought it was cute with me cuddling La in the foreground with the sheep mum checking out her baby who'd just come running back to her after realizing she'd moved.
I'm picking up some more chickens tomorrow... at least one (my wyandotte rooster) and possibly some silkies if I see any nice ones. While I was feeding my chookies today though, I stuck my hand into their food barrel (which IS sealed with a lid!) and notice two little brown shapes moving about! MICE! Ewww... yuck! I normally have a live-and-let-live policy but these guys can harbor some nasty illnesses so they were quickly whomped on the head with a thick stick and flicked out of the barrel. The chooks made short work of them, which they'll do to any live mouse they catch as well. Ick! Good for them I'm sure but gross all the same!

So: two ewes have lambed, four more to go!

2 comments:

Jayne said...

Oh those photos of you and La are adorable! :) Yuck to the mice tho-I am feeling ill reading about you whomping them on the head..think I need to go lie down now! :P

Amanda O. said...

I normally have a live and let live policy and don't mind mice when they're outside and doing micey things. (Like feeding the kookooburas for example.) But when they're in my chook feed and scampering across my hands, well it's not my favorite thing to do but I'm not going to have them making my chooks sick by weeing and pooing in their feed yk?