Around the Homestead…

The chickens have started laying well again giving us anywhere from a 12-16 eggs a day.

We picked up this fun little egg basket at TSC and really love using it to collect eggs.

Everyone’s favorite place to be when the weather is nice.

Notice the upside down rocking chairs…gotta love that prairie wind that sends everything that isn’t earth anchored down soaring.

Buddies

This is 1112…one of eleven bottle lambs we got from Dad last year.  Since this picture she has given birth to two little ram lambs who are just as cute as their mama.  She is so sweet and loves attention and hugs.  Not your typical Romanov is you are familiar with the Romanov breed.

Enjoy your day!

Texel, Dorper, and Romanov Sheep For Sale…

We have just placed an ad in the High Plains Journal to run thru the last part of May into June.  We are selling some of our 3-4 year old Texel ewes for $225, a 2 year old Romanov ram for $300, and our 2 year old Dorper ewes for $225.  Our flock has just gotten too big with both of us working.

Romanov/Texel ewe lamb.

**Not all of the ewe lambs are black.  We only have two black ewe lambs for sale and one black ram lamb.

The ewes are all nice and healthy with good udders.  They have done well for us, and we hate the thought of shipping them off to the sale barn and would love to see them sell off our farm and go on to another farm.

Texel ewe with Texel Romanov ram lamb.

We have about 7 Dorpers to sell and possibly as many as 20 Texel ewes to sell.  We could fix you up with a nice starter flock if you want to include our Romanov ram.  We will also have Texel/Romanov ewe lambs and Texel ram lambs for sale for $175 up until we take them to the sale sometime in July and August.

Dorper ewes very pregnant and taking it easy.

Leave a comment or email me if you are interested.  Thank you so much and have a wonderful day!

2012 Lambing Season…

Our 2012 lambing season isn’t quite over, but we have put a big dent in it and have been so very please with the results.  I will let the pictures and a short description do the rest.

Texel Romanov Ram Lamb

Romanov Texel Ewe Lamb

Texel Twins

Texel Ewe with Romanov Texel Lamb

Texel Romanov Ewe Lamb

Romanov Dorper Lamb

 Randy and Big Texel Ram Lamb

And there you have a big chunk of our lambing season in pictures.  We loved crossing the Romanov Rams with our Texel and Dorper ewes and our Texel Rams with our Romanov ews.  We will have Texel Romanov crosses for sale the first part of July if anyone is interested in ewe lambs or a ram lamb.  We will also have older recorded Texel ewes for sale.

Hope everyone is enjoying an early spring!

Another Rescue….

Gotcha!!  It isn’t us this time, but it does run in my family’s blood.  My brother just rescued a full blooded Dachshund, Brody, to add to his collection bringing his dog total to three.

This little guy was taken from his home when his owners decide they wanted to harm him and didn’t want to feed him or care for him properly anymore.

Can you imagine?

The little guy now has a safe place to lay his head, adequate food, buddies (2 Bassets), and people around him to give him the attention and love he deserves.  He has already had him neutered and vaccinated.  He was emaciated when he got him, but is starting to fill out from a good feeding schedule.

He is so sweet and always wants to be where you are…he follows you faithfully.  If you are bound and determined to get a full blooded breed look for a recue site for that specific breed.  Everytime you buy a dog from a breeder or a pet store…it is one less shelter dog who finds a home.  These dogs (or cats) deserve a safe home and someone to love them!

Have a great day!

Lenny…rescued a kitty lately?

Our cat population is now at eleven.  Mom had a cat dumped near her store.  She couldn’t find a home for him, so we volunteered.  He is the sweetest little guy and loves to be held unlike 9 out of the 10 we already have.  Just yesterday Lenny and I snuggled up on the hammock to catch some vitamin D.  He is so much fun!

Please spay and neuter your pets.  We domesticated them…that makes it our responsibility to take care of them properly.

Lenny is neutered and vaccinated for rabies to comply with our states requirements.  We also had him tested for feline leukemia…which he obviously tested negative for.

If you want to improve the quality of your life…rescue a pet or even a farm animal.  Animals bring joy to your life!

Have a wonderful day!

animal videos on youtube…

I posted a couple videos on youtube until I can decide if I want to upgrade my blog to include videos.

So for now I will just give you a link.

Beltie drinking from Faucet

Ruby at Breakfast Time

Ruby at Dinner Time

Enjoy!

Finding joy and contentment…

Randy and I have different lives here than we have ever had before.  We have lived 1/2 block off the ocean.  We did the subdivision, suburban life in the South.  We’ve traveled, slept in, partied, ate seafood, swam in the ocean, walked on the beach, and spent our weekends shopping and eating out.  The winters were mild and we kept a tan nearly year round.

Our life now is not quite as “typical.”  We now live on a farm which includes sheep, chickens, and llamas along with our crew of rescued dogs and cats.  Our days start around 4:00 am and the end of the day varies according to the season.  We don’t sleep in, unless you count 6:00 am as sleeping in.  Our seafood comes from a shop over an hour away and only on occasion do to the cost and distance.  There is no ocean and are no beaches within a days drive.  We try to shop second hand and seldom eat out.

This time of year we long for the beach.  We long to pack up our car for an unplanned roadtrip to Nashville, the Gulf, or Myrtle Beach.

It isn’t so easy to just pack up the car and drive away without a care in the world.

We have lots of animals that count on us to take care of them.

And we would miss out on this if we hadn’t traveled down this path.

What would have happened to her?

Or him?

Our these girls?

Or this little cutie?

Our lives may not be glamorous.

 Our lives are sometimes hard physically and emotionally.

But it is worth it!  It does matter!

We may not get to see the world.  We may not even get to see our country in its entirety.  Or stick our toes in the sand while the ocean water covers our feet whenever we want.

We just have to remind ourselves from time-to-time that our life here does matter and has made a difference to someone.  I’m writing this post for myself.  For the times when I feel like I am missing out on life by being here.  Life is what and where you make it.  I read a verse in the Bible the other night that reminded me of that:

Just tell me what to do and I will do it, Lord.  As long as I live I’ll wholeheartedly obey.  Make me walk along the right paths for I know how delightful they really are.  Help me to prefer obedience to making money!  Turn me away from wanting any other plan than yours.  Revive my heart toward you.  Reassure me that your promises are for me, for I trust and revere you.

Pslams 119:33-37

It isn’t always easy to be content with your life…God’s word once again brought me back to where I needed to be.  To live the life we were called to live and find joy in the lives others live that are different from our’s and seemingly more exciting or life changing.  The places they travel, the daily freedoms they enjoy, the mission trips, adopting, whatever it may be, and remember we are all here for different reasons.  We all have our place as long as we are here.  Our’s may not be the same as the next person, but it is our’s to live out joyfully.

I hope everyone can look at their lives and see your life, no matter how routine and humdrum it may seem, is important and making a difference in some small (or big) way and find joy in it.  I have had to do that recently.

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!  God bless.

A Day at Home…

Friday I was off and home by myself.  During the week when we are at work Dad comes down once it is light out and lets our sheep out to pasture.  Today I got to let them out myself.  They are so excited to go out on wheat pasture.  They run and jump and are so cute.

The first few pictures I took were blurry because I had a little black and white sheep jumping on me.

Guess which one it was???

Bet you can’t guess…

And last but not least is the big guy heading out to guard his girls.

Hank is such a great guard llama.  He has really been a good investment and does so well with the sheep.  Llamas convert their feed to energy very well, so it takes very little forage for a llama to maintain a healthy weight.  This was just one of the characteristics about llamas we used to convince ourselves we could afford to take on Sylvia and then Celia and Lexus when they all needed homes and the thought of them ending up in a sale barn and then who knows where was too much for us to bear.  Hank stays with the girls and does great with them even when they are lambing.  During breeding we had enough llamas to keep one llama with each breeding group.  Now that we are no longer breeding the girls all stay together with the rams.

Three weeks before letting our ewes out on wheat pasture we began adding magnesium oxide to their salt and mineral to help prevent wheat pasture poisoning (grass tetany).  So far it seems to work well as we haven’t had any incidents of grass tetany the few years we have been fortunate enough to have wheat pasture to graze.

We also have a pen with three ewes who no longer have their front teeth so they are unable to break off the wheat and graze well enough to sustain themselves and the lambs they are carrying.

They get some really nice hay, a protein tub, and rolled corn every evening.  They also have a nice little shed Randy built full of fresh straw to snuggle up in at night.  These ewes are from the original 15 we bought to start this adventure.  We’re not sure how old they were when they bought them, but were sold to us as “older ewes.”  We have had them  six years this fall.  The life expectancy of a sheep is about 10-12 years, but their prime production years are from 3-6 years and begin tapering off around 7 years of age. (source)

Although they are’t going to win any medals anytime soon, they look so much better than they did when we first realized they were falling behind the other and pulled them from the rest of the flock.

After I got the old girls situated I set up all the feeders to start the rest of the girls on corn for the final six weeks of their gestation.

All it took was about three kernels of corn to hit that first feeder and those little chubby, wooly, pregnant sheep came running.  We start them off gradually anytime we change feed on them, especially with grain.  We will continue to increase their corn until we get them up to 1/4 to 1/2 lb until they begin lambing.  Our Texels take very little grain to maintain during their pregnancy, but we will have to keep a close eye on the Romanovs.  They tend to have more lambs and may need a little more grain to ensure they don’t get pregnancy toxemia.

So far everyone looks healthy and happy…we hope it stays that way through lambing season.

Romanov, Texel, and Dorper Sheep…

Our original starter flock of sheep started with 15 Texel/Dorper crosses.  From there we began breeding up to full blooded Texels.  Along the way we acquire some Romanov ewe lambs from Mom and Dad and decided to add Romanovs to our premanent flock.  This year we used Romanov rams on our Dorper ewes and Texels ewes along with Texel rams on our Romanov ewes.  We are hoping this will give us not only multiple lambs (a Romanov trait) but also a faster growing, without as much grain lamb (a Texel trait).  We are now up to 80 ewes and 4 to 6 Romanov and Texels rams.

Yearling Romanov ewe

Two yearling Romanov ewes

Dorper ewe

See her squint anticipating the flash…and people say sheep are stupid.

Texel ewe…she was born our first lambing season and is actually only recorded at 50% Texel.

 She, however, acquired very “Texel” traits from her sire.

We plan to have Texel/Romanov and Dorper/Romanov lambs for sale in early summer.  We may also have a small starter flock of high percentage Texel ewes for sale with their recorded papers.

Have a great day!

Beltie…

Last winter we took on eleven of Mom and Dad’s bottle lambs.  They were mostly from Romanovs who had multiples, triplets and quadruplets, and unable to provide enough milk for all the babies.  One of the babies we acquired we lovingly named, Beltie, for the white belt around her tummy…like a belted cow.

Before she saw me.

The minute she saw me coming she was up and on her way to greet me.

She’s so sweet.

Most of the time.

The little cutie is so good to let me take her picture, but just gets a littlel too close.  I think she eventually got her feelings hurt from me pushing her back so I could get her in the picture.

Then she got bored with the camera and started digging in my pockets.

 

I had to catch her on the other side of the stock tank to get a decent picture of her.

That is Beltie in all her cuteness.