A little of this and a little of that.

Here is the  week's round up.

Firstly, Katcha's babies are doing great.
Their eyes are opening, they are growing like weeds and are looking good.
I can really appreciate all the work Katcha is doing.







Snowy's Pups are also growing well considering that they don't have momma.
The pups have me figured out.
during the day they sleep, are quiet and  eat.
At night they are loud, they scream at me for food and attention.
One of the pups, Tarzan decided he wanted to live outside the box.
He would squeak so much that I let him go.
He would crawl around the house to look for me.
Did you know, that the pups sometimes suck on their front paws..
that is seriously cute.

We are finishing up with the haying.

That does not mean that we are done.

Just that we have another 130acres to bale and another 80 to cut.

But, the end is sort of in sight.

Due to rain, all the haying came to a still stand.

that of course gave us time to do some other chores.

One of these chores was setting up the windmill at the dugout for aeration.

Finally it got done!

We pulled the bulls from the cows on the weekend.

It rained and rained.

The kids and I gathered up the cows,

separated the bulls and brought these guys back home.

Another job done.

Hand raising pups..

When Snowy died and left us 7 pups to care for,
the task seemed more than daunting.
And, in all honesty, IT IS DAUNTING AND TIRING!
We did not have high expectations that the pups would survive but did know we would give it a good try.
Ten days in things are still looking good.

Thanks to alot of people who gave me advise and sent me encouraging emails,
we seem to have our act and routine in place now.

The first few days we had the pups on a puppy milk replacer.
The pups seemed to be slightly constipated even though we were doing belly rubs to stimulate the pups to "do their business".

I now have the pups on a homemade  formula.

Since their birth the pups have mostly tripled their birth weight and seem to be right on schedule with their growth.

The formula I am using is:

 10 oz Goats milk
(or tinned evaporated milk and some water if, I or rather the supermarket, runs out of goats milk!)
1 cup of plain fat yogurt

1 egg yolk only
1/2 cup of home made beef liver broth
1 tbsp canola oil
1 tsp Karo syrup
pinch of electrolyte salts.

The pups where getting fed every three hours around the clock.
Slowly the times are extending and we are now on a 4 hour routine.
Phew, it is tiring.

Besides, the milk replacer we have also found that we need:

a huge amount of towels

assorted stuffy toys
(This is Tarzan and his tiger..)

puppy absorption pads
(they pee copius amounts)

baby bottles

baby wipes (we have used over 1000 baby wipes in 10 days)

Due to the pups having a very strong suck reflex, we had some delicate issues.
The pups had taken to sucking on the little boys private parts causing them to become seriously swollen and hurt.
One pup developed an abscess due to this.
So, we made a decided to separate the pups to prevent further problems.
Each pup has its own stuffie to sleep with and of course the pups get a lot of cuddles and attention from us.

Edward and Harry

Once the pups start eating from a dish this delicate issue should diminish.

We know that this is not ideal however, we will, as soon as we can, place the pups together.

The pups are now taking over a huge part of the living room.

It helps to have some students and kids to help with the bottles, butt cleaning, burping and cuddling!

Each pup has a name.
We decided to name them after famous orphans:

So we have Annie
Cinderella (Cindy)

Pippi

and the boys are:

Edward (Cullin from the Twilight movies)
Tom (Sawyer)
Tarzan
Harry (Potter)

All the pups are doing great.
I do wish however that they had a mom...

 

Then and now

On June 18th, this little parcel arrived at Canada post for me:



Now, they are free range little road runners!

Beep beep!

They live a free life.
This does entail some danger of course,
from maurauding border collies (since Jet left we have not lost one chicken...) to owls and hawks.
That's the price of freedom.

However, things are looking good.

All have survived and are now ranging in ever larger circles around the chicken coop. They have a nice thick wooded bush right next to the coop to hide away  if danger does lurk close by.

They go nicely into the coop at night and have learnt to roost high in the rafters.

This is a young rooster.

This breed has a sex-colour linked gene.
That means, that you can tell the difference between the males and females by the colour of the feathers.

Even as a day old chick.

The males in this "breed" ( it is actually a cross breed red rock) have a yellow tip on their heads,

and grow out to have a grey barred feather colour.

The hens are black at birth and can vary from brown/ black shades to totally pitch black.

I love having the chickens around,

they add so much life onto the farmyard,
and can be very comical at times.

If all is well, we should be getting a whole bunch of free range eggs next year.

perhaps,

I will need to start a bed and breakfast to utilise all these eggs!