Lambing =/= Kidding

 Two days! Two ewes! Two lambs! I'm glad that Limu and Flo at least coordinated, but also wild shenanigans abounded.

RELEASE US

1. Of course they both lambed out in the field, not conveniently in the barn. No problem! I know to use the lamb to lure the ewe where I want her to be once she's got it mostly clean. This lead to Flo getting confused, going back to where she had him, and deciding that clearly Sif had disappeared her lamb somehow... even though he was hollering for her in the barn. Lesson learned: BACK away from the ewe, keeping the lamb between her and you. If the lamb leaves her line of site for even a fraction of a second she forgets where it is and panics.
2. Lambs are really quite stoic. When I dip a goat kid's navel (a process that involves turning them on their backs for good coverage), they holler, which draw's mom's attention. Lambs are just like "welp this is my life now," once again causing the ewe to be confused, because wait where did my baby just go? Oh wait there it is!
3. Lambs get up MUCH FASTER than at least my goats do. This leads to a toddling lamb looking for the milk bar while mama is trying to wash its face. They kind of circle each other. This is adorable.
4. Ewes have TINY LITTLE NIPPLES. Is the baby nursing or is it just sucking the side of her udder? I'm not sure. Shine a flashlight under there. Now the baby is confused because it got bright all of a sudden and it was just born.
5. With both ewes in stalls with their lambs, Jake from State Farm can no longer find his ladies like 95% of the time. Where did they go? Are they lost? Ram screm ensues. He sounds like he smokes a pack a day, more so than usual.
6. Sheep are follow mammals - their babies follow them very closely from day one. Goats are cache mammals - they hide their babies and go back to feed them until they're strong enough to keep up. This makes finding the babies both very easy (they're with mama!) and very difficult (mama could be anywhere!).
7. If I pick up a lamb, the ewe does not know where it went. The lamb, still stoic, says "welp this is my life now" again. The ewe runs around in a panic calling for her baby. Sheep, turns out, do not look up.

NYOOOOOOM

They are extremely cute and I look forward to them frolicking in the pasture, and also, Soay ewes generally blow their fleece shortly after lambing... so also FLEEEEEECE. They're so soft and allowing more scritches than ever before!!!

I'm all alone...

I desire friendship. Sheep desire NOT THAT.

 So I am trying to make friends with my new sheep.

They come from a fairly large herd and are not dairy animals, which means they are mostly accustomed to being handled if they need medicine or something - so, not great associations. Also the ewes are Soays.

You have nothing we desire, human.

Soay sheep "developed" from feral/wild sheep on the Scottish island of Soay (hence the name), and at that time their experience with humans was "those weird things that come get our wool once a year." They are not even shorn, they shed their wool out in the spring. So they are smart for sheep and have fairly good survival instincts, as well as being extremely hardy.

The survival instincts are becoming a problem, actually, because those instincts do not include "the human and the dogs will keep me safe." Fortunately we were making progress (the secret to sheep friendship is animal crackers), when we had a flood and the electric fence between our pasture and the neighbor's pasture was no longer zappy for awhile.

If I wanted to be in that field I would already be there.

Sheep, it turns out, are stupid enough to continue testing the fence, smart enough to figure out that their wool insulates them once it turns back on again, and filled with desire to trespass. Limu, in particular, is the "smart one" and ring leader.

You offend us! You offend our ancestors!

Things that we have attempted to break them of their crime habits:

1. Keep them off that field for a week so they'll "forget" that they can get through that fence. They did not forget. I spent hours cleaning the wool off the fence wires for NOTHING.
2. Shear Jake from State Farm (who needed it anyway) in hopes that one being trapped would keep them all close. JfSF screamed for awhile and then figured out how to crawl through anyway.
3. Triangle collars made of PVC pipe. Flo removed hers within an hour. By morning all sheep were naked and trespassing. Limu took off her collar IN THE NEIGHBOR'S FIELD.
4. Give up. The sheep vanished without a trace and were found an hour later way down behind the bend of the creek.
5. Keep them off the front field again and just let the goats up there at night, with the sheep on the back, because the goats need more field but also need hay and giving them both at once causes Sheep Crime.
6. Triangle collars PART TWO. With holes drilled in the PVC. And even more zip ties. And swearing. We haven't actually done this yet because I'm tired.

But lady they LEFT ME!

Meanwhile the girls are beginning to breast boobily about the pasture, making containment more important than ever - because if they drop lambs in not my field somewhere I will loose my mind.

Buy stock in animal crackers. We're going through a lot of them.

Chickens are possibly insane.

So today was the day we had scheduled for breaking up the breeding pens and letting all the poultry (except for the grow outs, which live in the tractor) range together.  This will dramatically simplify management and chick sales blow chunks this year anyway (thanks, Rural King!), so it was time.  The birds have never been out of sight of each other - they could see and interact with all the birds through the fences.  So I thought that this would be fairly trauma free.

I forgot about roosters.

First Hendrix had to fight Norris.  Then he had to fight Jones.  Then Jones and Norris had to fight.  Doesn't matter that Jones and Norris had been in the same pen this entire time, during which Norris had been the Boss Rooster from day 1.  No, they had to resort everything.

Did you know that comb and wattle injuries bleed?  A lot?  Like, more blood than you think a chicken could reasonably loose without passing out or something?  So if any of you are around here in the next week or so, please remember that there are no secret cock fighting rings at 4Farthings.  Just a bunch of asshole roosters who occasionally loose their ever loving minds and become psychotic comb biting jerks.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go put Blu Coat on everything.

Goats: occasionally too smart for my own good

Now I love my goats.  They make me laugh every day.  They do however tend to develop some behaviors that also make me want to scream.  The most frightening at this time revolves around these kinds of latches:

And the fact that goats can open them any time they wants to.  Let's just make this clear: any time she wants to, a goat can get into 2/4 of the kidding stalls, the coop, the stall off the milk room, and THE MILK ROOM.  Did you know I keep feed in the milk room?  Fortunately none of them have figured out how to get open the twist top bins I use, even by knocking them over and jumping on them.  I am also grateful that, generally speaking, they only want in when I'm in there (they know I can get the feed cans open).

So now all my doors and gates have hook and eye latches higher than the goats can easily reach, too.  Or close with a carabiner.  Heaven help me if they figure out how to operate a carabiner.  This is also conclusive proof that goats are smarter than sheep - the previous owner of our property ran Katahdins, and found all these latches to be perfectly adequate.  He also kept several of the tube gates shut by hanging the chain on a nail.  Yeah, goats figured that one out in about five minutes.

And the lesson is...

So this morning two of the roosters were fence fighting. I have the silkies shut in the new coop with the khaki campbell ducks for population balance (if any of you speak duck, tell the khakis THE CONFINEMENT WILL END WHEN THE BABY MAKING IMPROVES). Today I opened the old coop yard so the chickens could get in there and clean up the weeds, so of course Chick Jagger (Wyandotte) decided that this was the best possible time to try to fight Punky for the title of Lord of the Poultry Yard. Now roosters fighting isn't usually funny, what with all the violence. But with a fence in the middle it looked more like a chest bumping contest, and was kind of hilarious... especially since Punky wouldn't back down from a bird literally twice his size! That is also worrisome of course because if they could really fight, Jagger would destroy Punky. I happened to be standing there filling the waterer in the yard. Slowly, slowly I moved around to the side. And sprayed Jagger with the hose. He of course ran away because DEAR LORD THIS ROOSTER ATTACKS WITH WATER! And Punky just stood there strutting and crowing, because Jagger ran away = I WIN. Which is good for me because having a small rooster that respects me well as top dog is better for me than Jagger, who is doing that crazy adolescent rooster thing. But the lesson here is that I am a jerk, at least to roosters. But for once me breaking up fighting poultry actually worked out for the best. I hope.