The piggies go to the market :)

We had Steve's Mobile Butcher come out a couple weeks ago for our six pigs. It is always such an interesting process to see animals being butchered, but to some people it might be too gory.  So beware, this is where your food comes from!

The goats

We got a couple Nigerian Dwarf goat wethers (neutered boys) for eating weeds. Trey named the white one is Winston, and Janika named the grey one is Twinkle Toes. Although, I was going for something more like Zeus and Apollo ;) These guys are supposed to be eating the weeds, but like all goats, they want to eat what they are not supposed to! But they are fun anyway.

Our #13 heifer's calf, and his story

We've had some pretty interesting cases of animal sicknesses here. And I a lot of them are things people have never seen before! But, with the help of many friends, we get by. This is the story of "Freaky", one of our heifer's bull calves. Within minutes after a calf is born, they will want to try to stand up, but this guy couldn't even sit up. He would keep swinging his head over and had no control of his legs. And the poor heifer had no idea what to do with this weird thing that just came out of her! We knew that he would be alright eventually, but this calf didn't have that kind of time. Calves need colostrum from their mother's milk asap in order to survive. So, with the help of Mike and Jesse (who had some of their cows out with ours), we herded the heifer up to the barn area into one of the pens that was next to a head gate/lock. Since this calf couldn't stand up to nurse, he was gonna have to get the milk somehow, so that's when I had to milk a basically wild (and mad!) cow!

We put her in the head lock, Mike/Jesse would pull her tail to the side so she wouldn't kick, and I had to crouch down right next to this literally mad cow and hand milk her one teat at a time! It was very interesting. And I actually had to do it the next day too! Luckily none of us got hurt, and it did work. The next day Freaky calf was standing and nursing, but this isn't the end of the story!... 

Here is how he got his name:

After a few days, I noticed that his eyes had turned a very milky blue color and were really popping out, like they were filled with fluid. So he is probably blind, but was still able to get around and nurse. Then the next day, I saw that his hind leg was bent badly, so mama must have stepped on it. This calf was looking a little freaky by now. With his white eyes and crooked leg. Not to mention how small he was (we think he was born about a month early), woolly hair, and his big head too. So me and Deloy casted the broken leg, which was the first time I'd done that too. And we put a shot of medicine in his eyes to hopefully help then clear up. He is on the mend now, and you can start to see brown on around the blue on his eyes too, which is good news! 

So, we don't have a farm, we have a circus! 

Our lambs

Bummer lambs are orphaned lambs or extra lambs. Sometimes a ewe (female sheep) will give birth to 3 lambs, but she only has two teats, so one of the lambs has to be bottle fed.

Lottie loves our new bummer lambs. She loves to keep watch or chase them if they decide to run away. But her favorite is licking their poo off their butts. Uh, yuck!
We had four, but the one I'm holding died, which was for the best because he had a broken hip. His name was Shaun the Sheep.
Now we have Justin Bieber, Niqui Manaj, and Catalina, but we all just call her Lamby :) She is our special girl and gets house privileges. You can see the picture of her in the diaper. She was very small when we got her, too small, so she had to stay inside for a week so she was extra warm. She even came with her own wardrobe of sweaters! Now she is outside with the others, but occasionally gets to snuggle on the couch or scamper about in the living room. They are all very lovable and always so busy exploring everything.

Bambi's Story

One of our Jersey cross calves, Bambi ( named him that because he looked just like a baby deer when we got him :), who we had grafted (adopted) onto our Jersey nurse cow, Honey. Honey had a very bad abscess in her hoof, so we had to give her an antibiotic shot, it was a lot medicine too. So then the very next morning, I found Bambi almost dead. He couldn't even lift hi head! Let alone stand to nurse her. So I had to tube him (literally stick a tube down his throat because he couldn't suck a bottle) with electrolytes so he can get re-hydrated and get his energy back. I definitely think this is from the antibiotics we gave Honey, because it goes right into her bloodstream, which goes right into her milk, which goes right into poor Bambi :(

After about a week, Bambi finally got better. He could walk and nurse, but his front left leg didn't work. He would just drag it around. Me and Deloy splinted it, but that didn't do anything. And after a while, Bambi started getting wounds on the leg from dragging it. So I wrapped it to protect it, but i had to move him and Honey to an outside pen (from the barn where they were) where it had snowed; yes this is all happening in the middle of 0 degree winter! Only a week later, I took off the bandage because it had gotten wet, and the wound had become infected. It spread to wrap around his whole leg. Eventually, his whole hoof/bone up to his fetlock joint (the wrist or ankle) was just hanging on by a thread, like a loose tooth. I could even kinda twist it, yuck. Then one morning I found that darn hoof laying on the ground, and it stunk real bad too!

Bambi's leg is still healing, and he will kinda walk on his half leg. He is a waste of a calf technically because we won't be able to sell him, and he is a Jersey so he isn't beefy at all. So he will be for our home dinner table. But he is/was definitely a good learning experience!

Fun day in the snow

Janika (in the purple) and her friends

Trey got snowed!

 Fun day in the snow. The neighbors brought over their ATV and attached two sleds to it and pulled the kids around in the snow covered alfalfa field.

Our audience

Lottie and her boyfriend, Shep

Winter pictures

 We've gotten at least eight inches of snow so far, more to come and colder weather just around the corner. I'm happy if it gets above 20 degrees! Today it is 10. I like living in the snowy winter, except for the water freezing, and if it's a windy day, it's hard to do anything outside, but I still like it here a lot! The animals seem just fine in this weather, they are very tough little buggars!

Lottie keeping watch over everything, she goes straight to this spot, or right next to the fence, every day.  This is also the truck Jeff got, it's got issues, but it gets the job done. It's practically impossible to not have a truck on a farm!

The big calf pen, they get to be outside now and run around,
very happy boys!

Trey driving, Marina on the sled.
 It worked fine until the truck died-again!

Our herd is growing!