BFL Breeding Groups In at last! Birds & Dog

Poor Granite has been so anxious to go in with the ewes.

  And today he finally got his wish.

Harwell, being a ram lamb, didn't know what he was missing.  He wandered about, trying to go back to his buddies in the ram pen.  However, by this afternoon, his mind was on other things - including food. :-)

I will leave the groups together for only 25 days, so we can expect April lambs.  If a ewe or two doesn't take, that will mean fewer lambs which is fine by me.

The Shetland ewes were very interested in Harwell.  I will try and get them set up with Greyson by the weekend.

On Friday last week, as I drove in the driveway after work I noticed two BIG birds fly up and land in a tree near our chicken pen. I thought they were turkey vultures at first, but when I got out of the car I saw they were Bald Eagles.  I dashed in for the camera, hoping that my chickens, who have NO respect for fences, would be safe.  One of the eagles took off and soared over the pond and then over our pasture, but I got these photos of the other one as it looked out over the pond. Fortunately, the chickens remained untouched.

Speaking of chickens, I got six new layers last week - three Barred Rock pullets and three Red Star hens. My favorite egg layers!  I am SO happy to be getting lots of eggs again. And some of them are the really DARK brown eggs that only pullets lay.  I LOVE those for acid-etching. So I will blow them out and use the insides for pumpkin pie.

Last night I cooked up the big pumpkin I bought for Halloween (I forgot that I had planted pumpkins on our 40 acres when I made the purchase - so those turned into sheep food). I got enough mashed pumpkin to make 12 pies this winter. Yummm!  I also baked the pumpkin seeds and saved some for next year's plants.

This past weekend was the deer season opener, so Shachah got to wear his blaze orange deer season clothes...

As I went to put this on him last Friday night, he saw the garage door was open and, for the first time since we've had him, he went for a stroll all on his own.  I was freaking out calling to him, trying to get him back inside the fence or at the very least, on a leash. Great Pyrenees are known for liking to wander and I sure didn't want him wandering around on the opening morning of deer season!  First he checked out the neighbors to the northwest - the ones with the fancy little dog. She came out barking away at him and he stopped and looked at her.  Then she took off back to her kennel and he came back to our yard.  Then he headed over to the ewe barn and from there he decided to check out the neighbors to the south of us.  I was really getting worried thinking what a pathetic sap I was chasing him with his dog food in one hand and leash in the other.  But when the neighbor dogs barked at him from their kennel, he turned and headed for our pond.  He seemed to know that was their territory.
Thankfully by then Stan was in the backyard and called to him as he headed for the pond.  Just like a baby who gets really excited when dad comes home from work, Shachah gets so excited around Stan.  He ran right back in the fenced yard. Whew!  I'm sure he wouldn't hurt anyone -- he had the run of his old neighborhood and he's never bitten anyone -- but for him to take off at dusk before the deer season opener was a big scare for me. He's so big and so smart and has a mind of his own, that's for sure.