A Little Winter

We did get sleet & ice last night. We also got a new lamb. Al found the little one at five this morning & assumed her to be about an hour old. Mama was doing a great job with her. Al tucked them both safely in a stall with lots of fresh hay & water. I waited until almost daylight to go out & take a few pictures. It was dark in the stable even with a few small lights on so I simply set the flash on my camera, pointed in the general direction of ewe & lamb & just shot away. I managed to get a few decent pictures.

Although I never got a good picture of the little eweling standing up, I can report that she has some crazy long legs. Her little belly is full & mama is very attentive & sweet to her.

We had a bit of damage to the big dog kennel as a large pine branch came crashing down into it. We only use that kennel when we babysit our children's dogs for short visits. The kennel was empty & we have time to repair it so no complaints.

We also had some pine branches down throughout the pastures. The sheep & sweet little Ralphie, the goat, were already hard at work on clean up.

This sweet sheep was just trying to ignore the whole thing.

Gwen was tucked away in the old barn. Again, I had to just sort of point & shoot in the dark to get a picture of her. She was just wagging her tail & grinning. We'd let the back sheep into the old barn for the night so Gwen had obviously chosen a high perch to keep track of the flock.

Once I was sure that all of the animals were safe & sound, I did take a few pictures of the ice. It really  was beautiful.

Ravi

Last week as I was walking in from gathering eggs I noticed that Ravi, one of our Anatolian Shepherds, was perched on top of a round bale in the front yard. I had one egg that had a small crack in its shell so I handed it over to him. He very delicately nibbled away the end of the shell and enjoyed eating the raw egg.

I went out today to gather eggs & discovered Ravi resting in the tractor shed. Since all of our chickens are free range egg gathering can be a bit of an Easter egg hunt! We do have nest boxes in several buildings around the farm. Those buildings have small openings where the chickens can come & go all day but the dogs cannot get in to steal eggs. Many chickens lay there but some of the gals are a bit more random with their laying. Someone had made a little temporary nest in the hay on the floor & had laid an egg just a few feet from Ravi. 

He was ignoring the egg when I noticed it. I asked him if he knew it was there & this was his response:

I laughed at him, added the egg to my bucket & walked around behind him to look at the little nest that a few of the gals share between some of the square bales that we loaded in last week. This is what I noticed as I walked behind Ravi.

I added that egg to my bucket as well. I attribute my lucky finds to the fact that Ravi had already had a nice breakfast & was more busy sleeping it off than seeking out a midmorning snack.