Gus, eye, rain and whatever else comes to mind

Everyone usually assumes that no news is good news.

In some instances that is certainly the case,
but not with Gus.

You do remember Gus, don't you?

I blogged about him HERE

I had been battling with his momma to try to accept that he is her baby and that she should love him.
But, that was not going to happen.
Luckily she did not have murderous intentions, just was not interested in the little guy.

Well, I thought, she actually does not even have to love him, all she really needs to do is feed him and I would be fine with that.

Well, after spending weeks forcing her to stand still while he would have a suck,
I gave up.

I finally decided that she will never do her motherly duties towards him.

And after a huge dump of rain, I decided to bring poor wet Gus, into the barn and would now raise him on a bottle.

Gus, is now growing well, he gets his milk twice a day.
He has some fresh soft hay, some grain and gets petted everyday.
Roy has his eye on him as a 4-H calf for next year, as he is pretty much tamed up already.

My eye is healing well
after my little accident last week.

I went from this

to this

The stitches come out this week and all should be good again.

We have had days and days of rain.
So much rain that our yard is a mud pool,
we have lakes on our driveway.

One of the reasons why I wanted to escape from the Netherlands was because of the rain, and the mud...

The cows are stranded in their back pasture and we cannot get to them with a trailer to move to a new pasture.

The sheep are drenched and were supposed to be shorn this coming week.

I have had enough rain.
I need the sun.
I need Africa.

 The sheep have been out grazing again.
I love it when the sheep are finding their own food.
The dogs are out doing what they were bred to do.

(These pics were taken with my phone camera, sorry about the quality)

And, one morning we had a little surprise.

The dogs were so happy with their new baby.

They bounce around me,

come and show me what they have found,

all grins and smiles.

We have now moved the sheep to another pasture,

 with lots of bush and predators,

 Vuk has joined the crew on guard duty.

With two bitches in season we have been juggling things around a bit.

I will be taking my camera out today to take some better pictures.

I have been fencing the new pasture for the cows, but it is slow going, more is damaged than I thought.

I hope to be able to swim the cows to their new lake soon...

We went to a neighbors auction last Saturday,

they were selling some teams, some horses and some equipment.

These are good friends of ours so we decided to go and spend the day at the auction.

I was so hoping that Eric would bid on the greys,

but he did not...

This is Cat, he spent the summer on our place two years ago.
 He was sold at this auction.

So, this is what has been going on in our neck of the woods.

I hope to add some new photos soon and to get back into some of my stories from way back then...

Yes, I still miss Africa.

For those who want to read up on some (predominately) non lethal methods taken to protect livestock

in Africa, take a look at this link from the Landmark foundation.

Predators on Livestock Farms

A Practical Farmers’ Manual for Non-lethal, Holistic,

Ecologically Acceptable and Ethical Management

It does me good to see the strides taken to protect livestock AND predators in these regions.
The only way to long term sustainability, is not to eradicate predators but rather to step up management of livestock.

The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned,
and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture.

~Gaylord Nelson