One of my projects this Winter has been to take pictures of all of our animals and make a page with info about them and then I made a 3-ring binder book for our records. It's been a fun project (I like being organized) and will help a lot to have a place where we can keep track of our animals better.
In the process of making the record book, I have been going back through old pictures too and now decided to share a few of the pictures I either found or took for my book.
This was when we first bought our 7 bred heifers from our neighbor. We have since sold one as she didn't breed back.
One of our cows...
One of the heifer calves from our cows...
We've raised 9 calves so far from Ivy since she had her calf this Spring. This is one of them:
Our naming theme this year was tractors so we have Case and Heston, Allis and Chalmers, Ford and Fendt and so on... :)
One of the heifers we raised off of Ivy's milk last year (then a grain theme). And that horned heifer in the background is my dad's heifer. :D We've been keeping up with dehorning our animals although it is a very undesirable job. We bought some "Dull-it" from Dr. Paul Detloff and that seems to help take some of the pain away for the animal thankfully.
This big boy, Buckwheat was the first calf we raised (actually bought him at the same time we bought Ivy). We sold him to a guy near Mandan.
I love this picture of Michael milking Ivy in the pasture! :D We only did that the one time as it wasn't worth the hassle of catching her out there and then the rest of the herd was so snoopy!
Ivy's calf from this year:
Pearl is very happy living at Heather's farm. :)
We still have a nice sized flock of Shetland sheep (14 ewes), despite selling a few with their babies...
This is what they look like now--in all their wooly glory. :)
Sadly, most of them ripped their ear-tags out. ;(
We sold this flighty fellow to a couple who only has 1 Shetland ewe who is also wild. :D
While in MN in early November, we bought a young registered Shetland ram named "Black Knight".
We have 7 white ewes. We sold the ram we used last year (Gad) and Amram is our ram this time.
Here is Chloe (one of our very first sheep).
We raised this wide-faced ewe (Joanna) up as a bottle lamb. She had a nice lamb this Spring. She's still a very friendly sheep. I'm so glad that Elsie will get to grow up with little lambs and kids as I did.
We still have our original 3 does, Peanut, Buttercup and Annie.
Each of our does had (besides bucklings) 1 doeling, which we kept...
...and then some old friends of ours wanted to get rid of their 2 does so they gave them to us on the condition that they can get a baby from each someday in the future if they decide that they want to have goats again. :D Meet Calypso....
...and Hazel. They're half Nubian and half Alpine. Big goats!
We have not had much success with keeping billies around for very long. :( This is the 3rd billy we've bought now. This guy came from our friends, David & Susanna Dagley down in SD.
I can't leave out our faithful guard animal, Oscar the llama. :D
And these noisy birds (guineas)...
We were down to 5 Narragansett turkeys this Spring.
Then, they had babies, which we raised and sold. :)
Our chickens are finally getting back to laying eggs again. Michael ended up buying eggs from some other farmers for over a month.
We added 2 kitties to the barnyard this Summer since we were down to 0 cats!
Meet Hither...
...and Thither (both boys). We need to find a nice mama cat so Elsie can grow up with kittens too.
After lots of talking, we decided it was time to find new homes for Ruger and Beretta. Ruger went to a really good home where he lives indoors with an older couple who spoil him with special food and lots of walks and love and attention. I get regular updates on how he's doing.
Beretta went to be a companion to another Basset Hound named Fred. They reside in Tappen. The main reason we sold her was she kept killing our chickens. She was a good dog besides that.
In October, our 2 new female AKC registered Basset Hound puppies arrived. They were born around the same time as Elsie.
This is Elrosa (Rosie). She is super loving and friendly and into EVERYTHING we do! :)
And meet Medora--a little less enthusiastic than Rosie, she enjoys holding still so she can actually be petted. :D They are both learning to come pretty well now and sit when I offer a treat. Still working on the not-jumping-up-on-people part.
There you have it. I don't think I left anyone out, except for the fish in the living room aquarium. :D
We love our animals and, even when we tease about selling them all so we could get away more, we always end up deciding to keep them. We are very grateful that my family (usually Andrew) is willing to do our chores now and then so we can go visit our MN family!!
Hope you enjoyed the online farm-tour!
