Farm

Talked to the vet this morning to discuss the results of Pumpernickel's most recent poo test. She still has worms, but they are at a moderate instead of high level. Also, her cockadoodledoo levels were high (internal critters all sheep have but can get too high when the animal is stressed). We had to swing by the vet before heading out to get the new sheep so we could pick up some more meds...some cockadoodledoo stuff and some vitamin b (injectable...aie).

After the vet, we hopped on the road towards Roanoke and points beyond. The farm, Ingleside Icelandics, was sort of near Appomattox, and we drove right past all sorts of Historic Sites. We pulled into the driveway at the farm and saw our sheeps waiting for us in a little pen. We chatted with the Ingleside folks for a bit and then loaded Pearl, Sadie, and Sydney into the back of the truck. These sheep are so big and fluffy!

On the way home we stopped to get gas. While the gas was pumping we stared in at the sheep. This guy filling up his SUV next to us kept kinda peeking over. Finally, he came over and grinned and said, "Can I see?" His daughter came out of the gas station, and she came over and they both peeked in and made "oooo" and "ahhhh" sounds. The guy thanked us and said, "It's not very often you see someone at a gas station with sheep. Thank you for letting us look at them!" It was cool.

Finally we got home. Andy put Pumpernickel up in the barn 'cause we had to give her meds, and then we set to getting the sheep out of the truck. They did not want to get out. We ended up pulling and pushing and finally prying Pearl out, and once she was out the rest followed more easily. They ran right into the field and started chowing down.

After we got Pumpernickel her meds, we opened the door. Pumpernickel RAN out of the barn and headed straight for the other sheep baaaaaaaaaaaaing all the way. She seemed incredibly happy to see her new pals and went over to each in turn and said hello. Then the new sheep sort of circled her and sniffed her butt and went back to eating grass.



A little while later, though, Pearl decided Pumpernickel was a little uppity or something because Pearl ran over and headbutted Pumpernickel right into the fence!



The next fun task was to get the rope-type ties off Pearl's and Sadie's necks. The ties were on to help catch and move around the girls (Sydney has horns), and if we'd been thinking we'd have taken the ties off while the sheep were in the truck. Instead we spent about an hour chasing them around. We did finally get Pearl's tie off by tempting her over with some grain, but Sadie was too shy for that. We stopped, though, when Pearl started to pant and we realized we were stressing them. We would have just let them go for a while, but at one point Sadie got the loop of her tie caught on a nail on the barn. Finally, we herded all three new sheep into the barn and managed to get hold of Sadie and get her tie off. All the while, Pumpernickel just sort of looked on from afar..wondering what the big deal was.

So, um, yeah, we went with option D...if you hadn't figured that out yet.

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Today I built a hay rack for the sheep. I'm not sure if it is 100% sturdy if it is bumped into a lot and stuff, so it might need some extra supports, but it stands upright and holds hay, which is what's important!

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We need to get a friend for Pumpernickle. We found a farm in VA that has Icelandics for sale. They are also having a special for September because they need to get rid of some sheep soon. In addition to the special, they'll take another 10% off the top if we buy three sheep. This is a good deal for what looks like some good sheep.

Here are the links so you can see the sheep we are looking at:

Sadie and Sydney - http://www.inglesideicelandics.com/index_adultsheepforsale.htm
Pearl - http://www.inglesideicelandics.com/index_lambs.htm

Should we get:

A. Sadie

B. Pearl

C. Sadie and Pearl

D. Sadie, Pearl, and Sydney

A or B = less cost up front, a little bit less cost on maintenance, and no income from lambs next year.

C = more cost up front, a little bit more cost on maintenance, and no income from lambs next year.

D = larger cost up front, a little bit more cost on maintenance, and possible income from lambs next year.

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Wow, just a slew of entries today from me. But I couldn't resist putting up some pictures of Pumpernickel from this afternoon:

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Today we went to get some hay. I always thought I was a pretty good packer when it came to filling vehicles, but these folks somehow managed to get 21 bales of hay into our pickup. It may not sound like much for a truck, but bear in mine that the cap was still over the bed, which severely limits how high you can stack bales.

We also realized that the craft shack (now known as the hay shack) is the perfect place to stack hay. You can pull right up to the door and it is dry inside. Only some of our barn is perfectly dry, and sometimes the moisture wicks up from beneath and starts to mold hay stacked on the ground. Now we just keep 1 or 2 bales down in the actual barn. Pumpernickel seems to really enjoy the new hay, it seems to be a better quality than what we had before.

Today is the Floyd county fair and harvest festival! Must get there in time for the cheese eating contest!

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Sourdough died a bit ago.

She had pneumonia. Andy went down to check on them around 9 or so, and Sourdough wouldn't get up. He called the vet, and by the time she got here, Sourdough was lying on her side and breathing sort of shallow. The vet went to her truck to get an IV and some other things, and by the time she got back, Sourdough was barely breathing. So, Andy and the vet decided to just let her go, and so they sat with her until she died. Andy trimmed off as much of Sourdough's fur as he could, so maybe some day when I know what I'm doing I can make a nice scarf or something. We buried her under a birch tree up by the craft shack.

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Yesterday I finished our latest and greatest chicken tractor and we moved the d'Uccles into it (since they were pretty crowded in the last one). It's larger (4x8 versus 4x4) and has more room inside so they can lay eggs and still have room to sleep and poop without (hopefully) getting the eggs dirty. They still need a few roosts, but I keep forgetting to grab the dowels out of the truck.



Next step is to clean out their old house and move the little chicks in there. Although that will not be permanent, as they will eventually outgrow it unless we give some away first. We also might move some in with the cochins and japs once we can figure out who are hens and who are cocks.

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Andy found a teeny itty bitty egg today. This is the smallest egg by far. Perhaps one of the younger hens has started laying? We didn't crack it open. I think Andy was scared a teeny tiny chicken baby would fall out. The egg next to the wee egg is a "normal" egg for our chickens. The marker next to that egg is...a marker.

Sheep Update: Pumpernickle seems to be doing very well. Sourdough seems to be getting a tiny bit better, but she's still pretty sick. She did go out side and eat a few leaves of clover this evening, and that made me happy.

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About a week or two ago we noticed the sheep seemed sort of thin. It's really hard to tell if a sheep is skinny or fat or regular because she often has 8 inches of fluff hiding her body. You have to really wiggle your fingers down into the sheepy fur to find the actual sheep. When we noticed the thinness, we started trying to fatten them up by feeding them more. We also gave them a dose of dewormer. Turns out, the dosage levels on the container of wormer aren't all that effective...or so says the big animal vet we went to today.

This weekend, we noticed that Sourdough wasn't quite as hyper as usual, and the grain they get every night wasn't all gone in the morning. Yesterday when I went to let the sheep out of the barn, Sourdough was flumped in a corner and had to be prodded to get up. Not good. Nope. Not good at all. We gave her another dose of dewormer.

This morning, she was even more listless. We did see her eat and go potty a little, but she just was not doing well. I went to work, and Andy turned detective. All the signs pointed to severe worm levels. Andy called our cat vet who referred us to a big animal vet who told us to bring in poo.

While we were waiting for the test results, I heard someone in the back of the vet clinic say, 'Hey, you remember the other day when you had that goat that had more worms then you'd ever seen before? Well, come look at this.'

Sourdough's worm levels were extremely high. Extremely. The vet told us to dose both sheep (Pumpernickle seems mostly okay, but her worm levels were high, too) with six times the amount recommended on the bottle. Wow. The vet also suggested we give them some watery yogurt to help get their gut bacteria going again.

The only good thing about Sourdough being so listless was that it was pretty easy to get her meds and her yogurt into her tummy. We got everyone dosed, and Sourdough even joined Pumpernickle at the hay for a few munches.

We'll see how they are in the morning. Here's a picture of them a few weeks ago. Hopefully they'll be out munching grass and baaing at us again soon.

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The ducks have become incredibly difficult and will not behave. I think they are teenagers. They've decided they don't want to go to bed at night, and they don't want to eat what's for dinner. The ducks would much rather run around the yard and eat crickets and moths. Next thing you know, they'll be demanding cell phones and cars.

Right now I'm liking the chickens better. Here are the chicks at their recent modeling session.



We're also getting eggs from the chickens, which makes them more likeable. We haven't eaten any of the eggs yet, though. We did crack open a teeny egg we got to see what was inside. I was thinking it would just look like a teeny egg, but it was all yolk.

Here's our first egg still in the nest.



And here's all our eggs so far (minus the teeny one).

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