I’m not sure if we have mentioned it, but the grey horse loves babies – of any sort.  She and the puppy have had quite a time because she keeps wanting to sniff him, and since her nose is as big as his head, he finds that a bit frightening.  So, this morning when I looked out and noticed that she was craning her neck to try and get her nose over the barrier between them and the sheep, I suspected we might have babies.  When I went in to the sheep area, though, I didn’t immediately see or hear any babies, so I decided the horse was just being a knuckle-head.  Then, the sheep shifted, and there were two of the cutest little tri-colored lambs standing next to their mama.  I did a quick gender check, and they are girls.  These are the cutest ewe lambs we’ve had yet, and I’m looking forward to adding their coloring to the herd.

Mama and her babies

All is well until I hear a crash behind me, and the horses are suddenly there in with the sheep.  Meeka (the aforementioned grey) had pushed down the board I had wired up to keep the horses out of the sheep area this summer.  The floor is just not stable enough for them.  But, she really really wanted to see those babies.  So, now I had 22 sheep of various sizes, 2 newborn babies, 2 full grown horses, and Zeke (the border collie puppy) all in this tiny little area.  Mama sheep is understandably upset.  The babies are just trying to stay near mama.  Zeke is trying to stay out of everyone’s way, and the horses just want to get to those babies.

I pick up Zeke and put him up in the upper part of the barn to get him out the way, dash back outside to holler at Sarah to call Grandma to take her and her cousin to school, because I’m not going to make it now.  Sarah of course wants to know why, so I tell her, “I’ve got baby lambs and the horses just broke into the barn to come greet them!”  Luckily, she understands exactly what this means, and dashes back in to call for a ride to school.  I return to the barn to try and sort everyone out.  After a little looking and thinking, I get some grain and lure the horses out.  They’ll do just about anything for their morning grain, even leave babies.  Of course, I also got three of the summer lambs (mostly weaned but only half-grown) with them.  They don’t want to go back in, so I leave them out with the horses for the time being and go back in to feed the sheep.  Then, I go to the other side of the barn to give the horses their hay out in the lot.  It all sounds kind of complicated – mostly because it is.  But it’s doable, and the babies will have a chance to get fast enough to be able to avoid the horses. 

45 minutes later, I finally have all the sheep where they need to be and fed, the horses fed, the appropriate gates opened and closed, and can head to town to meet Steve when he drops off the PT Cruiser to get the damage from the suicidal deer of a few weeks ago repaired.  We then spent most of the day getting my grandmother’s new television purchased and set up for her.  Her old one had died of old age after a long a distinguished life of service.  When we finally got home, we snuggled the lambs a bit and took some photos.

Sarah snuggling one of the lambs.  It is impossible to not smile when holding a less-than-one-day old lamb.

Yes, I am once again posting at 3:47 am. But this time, it’s because I got the rotten little thieving bugger.

Steve woke up to open windows at 1:30 this morning because it had gotten too warm in our room. I heard chittering, so he went out to check. After a fruitless search, he returned to bed disappointed and we went back to sleep. At 3:40, we one again heard the death-squawks of a stupid chicken. There were more of them not going in the coop than we had thought. This time, we actually did dash into action, with no discussion whatsoever, and out we went. Steve had the shotgun, and I was reaching for my 30-30 when I remembered that I had neglected to load it after I unloaded it following my patrol last night. So I was back to the 22, since it was the only other rifle handy. I actually managed to find a good flashlight – a tiny little AA mag lite that was hiding in a glove drawer – because all of the dim flashlights have been moved form their usual locations.

We did our patrols around the house and coop without seeing anything. Yesterday I had seen a chicken foot and feathers under the barn, so as a shot in the dark (literally) I passed my good strong light over the crawl space under the barn, and happen to catch eyes flashing red in the light. I called Steve over, but by the time he got there, the eyes had gone up and into the barn. I was considering our options when I saw the dang things up off the floor, above the old wool area. I was actually seeing them through the big gaping hole in the barn roof. I pointed the eyes out to Steve, and this time he managed to get his eyes on the too. He traded me weapons and took a shooting stance. The little bugger dropped out of site. Steve relaxed moved forward to get a rest. The bugger popped back up again. Now Steve couldn’t see the eyes. He came back to me, and saw the eyes. Took his stance. and the eyes went out. This time he held his stance, and the eyes came back on. He couldn’t see them. We did this for a while, with me saying, “There they are! and him replying, “Where?”

Finally, I convinced him to give me the rifle and handed him the flashlights. The eyes moved a bit during this exchange, and I was afraid the stupid bugger had finally lost interest, but then they came back on. I was ready. I got the scope on him (I usually detest scopes, I will admit just this one it helped because I could see more than just two glowing eyes), and pulled the trigger. The rifle discharged, and then we heard a large thump followed by a lot of random thumps – death throws. Steve looked at me with what I’m sure was amazement (I wasn’t looking at him, so I can’t say for certain) and said with some shock in his voice, “You got it!” I responded with, “Yeah – I got it. I’m a good shot.” He seems to periodically forget that fact. It was gratifying to remind him with something more useful to be shooting than a target. And it was a heck of a good shot, after all. We were in the old ram pasture, by the chicken coop, and the critter was in the barn – at the upper end below the old feed chute.

Locations of all interested parties

We went to see what I had gotten. It might have been a cat after all.  The horses met us at their corner of the other end of the barn and were looking at us as if to say, “What are you doing out here at this time of night?”  They followed us until we went into sheep area (I installed a board so they can’t go in but the sheep can).  We went through the sheep and up into the main area of the barn.  Sure enough, there was the dead raccoon in one of the old feed troughs that Steve had stacked in front of the old wool bin.  I head shot him!  Steve again expressed his wonder (yes, I’m gloating a little.  I’m almost done).  And we returned to the house.  I, of course cannot sleep.  Steve is already back in bed and is sound asleep.  I’ll take a nap later.  For now, the chickens are again safe.  Even then ones that are too stupid to go roost in the nice safe coop.  At least until another raccoon comes through.

The chicken thief came through again last night. I was awakened by the death-squawks of one of the last of Steve’s chickens that were too stupid to go inside when it got dark. I looked at the clock – 3:40am. I did my wifely duty and got out of bed (Steve was of course at work) to do a night-time patrol. I didn’t find anything. This morning, however, I see a pile of feathers on the other side of the tractor from the chicken coop. Steve had parked both the pickup and the tractor next to the coop for easy access when this weekend, and there, right in front of my nose, was a pile of feathers. I was so focused on the coop when I went out the gate that I didn’t even look over there. Stupid chicken must have roosted on the tractor for the night. The carcass was gone, which suggests that it might be a female dragging it back to her kids. Raccoons are the worst. They are sooooo hard to get rid of. Tonight, we’re setting up the live trap and baiting it with the horses’ sweetened grain mix. Hopefully the cats won’t like the grain mix, but the raccoon should think it smells great. Wish us luck.

Yesterday afternoon, I had to move the hay truck. It had been parked next to the barn. Again, for easy access this weekend when the unloading was scheduled to take place. When I went out to move the horses (orchard to barn for evening feeding), I noticed Sarah standing at the gate to the barnlot and yelling. I asked her what she was doing, and she pointed out to me that the pasture renter’s cows had discovered the hay. They had pulled one bale down and broken it open. Once it was gone, the couldn’t reach any more, so they just stared eating the lower level of bales from the ends in. They ate one almost half or one bale and probably 1/3 of two more bales. So, I moved the beast of a truck. Yes, I got it started. No, it wasn’t easy. Yes, it steered – sort of. No, I didn’t run over anything, although that was due more to prior planning than to functioning brakes. I was mindful of Steve’s ruminations over the brakes on the truck and moved real slow and coasted it into it’s current parking spot. The thing steers like a drunken tank so I’m not sure how Steve’s going to get it out – I pretty much just steered a great big circle, but I’m sure he’ll manage. He’s coming to an understanding with the truck, after all.

Right now, he’s out working on the fence with Mr. President. He’s hoping they will be able to finish this weekend. Since the hard part is done (the posts are all driven), he might even be right. Pulling the wire actually doesn’t take all that long. Although it kind of looks like rain out there, so maybe not. Time will tell.

I sent Sarah out last Friday evening to lock up the sheep, which she did. The next morning, I looked out at 5:30 am, and the sheep were out. I said to her, “Didn’t you lock up the sheep last night?” To which she replied, “Yes, why.” I described the current view out my window (21 sheep happily grazing in the pasture and not in the barn, and she agreed that perhaps she needed to rethink her gate-locking technique. I agreed, until I went out to the barn to find the gate still locked! And locked in a manner that I would have considered secure. So the issue was clearly not her technique. The next night, I spent in the Tri-Cities with Steve, so our nephew locked up the sheep, and they got out for him too. Now, last night, I really needed them confined, since the mobile slaughter folks were supposed to be here at oh dark thirty to take our one boy who is large enough to fulfill his mission in life.

So, I dutifully locked them up in the barn, after which I made a detour past the chicken coop to make sure the chicken butler had closed (it had) before coming inside the house. By the time I got in (I had to detour around to pet on the horses, after all), it was nearly full dark. I went upstairs to change into my lounging clothes, and happened to glance out in the pasture to see 21 dark blobs that looked an awful lot like sheep grazing in the pasture. The little buggers hadn’t even stayed in the barn for 20 minutes. I told them if they that they were on their own and settled in with my book for a while before going to sleep.

So, this morning, I was up at 5:00 to get out to the pasture at 5:30 so I could get the sheep contained. They, of course, were not in the pasture closest to the barn. Nor were they in the ram pasture, nor on the back hillside. That left the orchard. I decided to try the easiest path first, and went towards the barn, calling, “Here sheep sheep, here sheep.” I’ll be danged if it didn’t actually work, and they came into the barn all on their own. You likely could have knocked me over with a feather. I got them all in, surveyed the situation, and decided they must be sneaking out one of the 2 foot square (approximately) holes in the end wall of the lean-to. Luckily, we have a gate that encompasses the area outside these escape routes, so I closed it and then proceeded to put as few sheep as possible into the small outside pen for the mobile slaughter fellas. By now it was close to 6:30, so I was expecting them at any time. I came into check on a few things. 6:30 came and went – no mobile slaughter truck. 7:00 came and went and still no mobile slaughter. By this point, I decided that they were probably not going to make it before I absolutely had to leave for work at 7:30, and wrote them a note telling them which animal to kill (blue ear tag #2), and hung it on the outside gate with duct tape (which I was actually able to find because Steve had organized the old house earlier this summer).

On this trip, I also noticed that the chickens were not out, which was odd because it was full light and the chicken butler should have been open. Not so much. Into the coop I went to flip the switch to manually open the door. I happened to look into one of the nesting boxes, and spied one of the latest batch of very wild kittens hanging out. Now, this means that he had to have been in there when the door closed at 8:00 last night. I’m thinking this may be our egg sucker. He, of course, disappeared as soon as I saw him, so no capture was accomplished. I informed Steve of my suspicions. My job is done.

So, added to Steve’s already impossible list of tasks is eliminating the escape routes from the barn. Hopefully a single panel will fix this, as the lean-to is going to be taken out of service next year following the repair of the barn roof. It’s looking like the horses may have to winter in the orchard. Now, this won’t really hurt them – they have fur coats – and if it gets really bad, I’ll take them into the lamb shed, but we need to think about how best to feed them so that we loose as little feed to snow / wind / rain as possible. I haven’t come up with a good solution yet. I’m still working on it.