The Call of Shame

This is a story that I'm not all too proud of, but its funny all the same.
Yesterday at work, it was the first day of spring fling. TONS of people came out, so it was a pretty busy all day. After the day was over, and everyone went home - me and another co-worker were closing up the farm. Since it was going to get down to 30 degrees that night we had to close everything up, so that the animals would not freeze. I was sent to close that doors to the rosters outdoor pens. They live in a hut, but they each have an outdoor area they can get too.
I went in the first pen, and the rooster in there jumped up and started attacking me. Let me just say here that I might have a small fear of chickens, even before this happened, so I was freaking out. So I turn to get out as this thing is clawing at me and pecking me and pretty much trying to kill me.
I turn to open the door and realize.... Its locked. The door closed behind me, and normally we have little wires that help us pull open the door even when we are inside - but this one did not have that....
So here I am with this rooster trying to kill me, and I am just standing there kicking it. I know your not supposed to kicked the animals... but that was the only way to defend myself! To keep the rooster from getting to my leg I had to hold up my leg to keep it away.
Of course I knew what I had to do next, call Greg my co-worker... But that was the last thing I wanted to do. In the summer we always tell the new volunteers coming in, during their training the story of someone who got stuck in the chicken coop. It is pretty much the most humiliating and embarrassing thing that could happen to someone. Finally I gave in and called Greg who just started laughing as I awkwardly told him, trying not to cry. That rooster was scary!
After the longest three minutes of my life he FINALLY came. Of course I had my leg up that entire time, trying to keep the rooster off of my. So my leg hurt, but I was free! Greg then took out the rooster and held it and the rooster was being all nice and friendly to HIM. He tried to get me to pet him, but No Thank You.
I am pretty sure I will never live down my 'call of shame,' as Greg called it. Soon enough everyone will know the story. This summer, they will probably tell the story of how I got stuck in the chicken coop. As long as I stay away from that rooster, I should be okay.

2am Surprise!

Today I have another baby story for you.
This past Saturday my boss Mary must have heard something in the middle of night and went out to the barn to check on it. Turns out that one of our angora goats was giving birth at two in the morning. (If you didn't know, Angora goats are different then the rest of the goats that we have which are dairy goats. Angora goats are raised/used for their wool, like sheep.)
Now finding a goat giving birth in the spring is not uncommon at all, the thing is with Abigail (the angora goat that gave birth) is that she was not bred this year. We have figured out how she got bred. We have a pen of our angora mothers and their children who all live together. Then we have a pen WAY on the other side of the barn with our mail angora Leroy. So there was No way that she just happened to wander across the entire farm and get into his pen. Now one of the other angora's children, Peter, was neutered late. He was living in the pens with the moms, so that's how we think that happened. Accidents sure do happen on a farm, and now we know to get animals neutered on time. So now we have twin angora's.
That's not the end of the story though. One of them, a little girl (she is the brown one, which is actually called red on an angora goat.), well she was born pretty weak. Her mother would not nurse her well either, so we had to take her out. She wasn't getting enough milk, and being weak as she already was she needed extra. She now lives with all our other crazy goats/lambs and she is doing much better. At the farm we explain to the kids that she was born sick, and so her mother wasn't able to take care of her so we did to give her lots of extra vitamins and medicines cause her mother can't do that cause she is a goat! The other baby that Abigail had was born a bit stronger so he (I'm pretty sure it is a male) is still with his mama. It is a bit sad that they can not live together, but maybe once they are off milk she will go back and meet her brother. Personally I am glad we have some baby angora's, because I love them. They may scream a lot, but don't all goats. Our angoras are some of the sweetest on the farm, so I don't mind having more. Plus the black ones are always my favorite, so we have one more of them - Yeah! Mary wants to name the little girl (brown/red) angora: Little Red, or Red Riding Hood, but we will all just probably call her Red. First goat named of the year! Bellow are just some pictures of the two baby's. :D

Me & Red. 

Sleeping babies just melt my heart.

Molly (Part II)

This post is sorta a follow up to THIS post from earlier this month. If you have not read 'Stories of Baby's' I suggest you do. That was honestly one of my favorite posts I have made. In that post, the first story I talk about it about a sheep named Molly. I was there teaching a class and she gave girl to twin girls. I wanted to do a follow up on how they are doing now, so that is what this post is about. 

        As you can see, I have a lot of pictures of the little marbled lamb that was born to Molly. That is because the all black lamb likes to hide in the corner with his mama, which makes it hard to take pictures of him. But the marbled lamb comes up to the fence any time you pass through. Also I might have a slight bias to the marbled one, because she is so beautiful  I've always wanted to see a marbled lamb and now I helped give birth to one! Thats not the point of the story though.

        If you remember, when Molly gave birth to the twins - she could not stand. Now the sad part of this story is that she still can not stand. We are not sure why, we think it may have something to do with old age. Molly is now 10 years old, and that is high up in years for sheep. Even though she can't stand, that doesn't mean the baby's are not doing great. They are still getting plenty of milk. I don't have a picture of it, but what Molly will do is push her butt in the air so that she is only standing on her back two legs. That way the lambs can nurse every so often. We always knew she was a good mama, but this is just amazing. The lambs are looking healthy, and hopefully we can get Molly back to what she was.
Even when Molly doesn't stand up, the lambs still nurse (see pictures bellow). They have learned to drink from lower down, which is not normal at all but they have adapted well. We will see how Molly does in the next few weeks and months to come. I pray that she will be able to stand once again - soon.

Yellow Fluff.

                 Today on the farm, we got a few new animals. With spring fling starting in just a few short days (Friday!), and some field trips also coming up this week - we wanted to be prepared. Thats why we got some new baby chicks, and some baby ducklings! We didn't order as many as we normally do,. There are about 5 ducks and maybe 10 chicks, but that is still plenty enough. In all these pictures they are just one day old! I have to say that I love them when we just get them, its the cutest time in their lifetime. When we first get them they are all so tiny that you can fit 3-5 of them in your hand at once. Plus, they are SUPER fluffy. Our ducks and chicks do live in the same place until they get older. Ducks grow faster than the chicks, so they will move out when they get too large for the chicks. For now though, they are all the perfect size. In these pictures it was about 5 minutes after we got them, so they are not even a day old yet. They were born just that morning.

Babies by the Dozen

I finally got some pictures from the farm! You'll be seeing lots of pictures of lambs and baby goats (kids). I don't have much else to say, so just enjoy! I apologize for such awkward picture placement (and some words too), but I'm not sure of the best way to put pictures up on here. So thank you for putting up with it.

The twin lambs above are new borns. They were born about an hour before these pictures were taken. In the picture on the left you can see that we are helping them nurse for the first time. Originally there were three of them, but one was born a still born. It was actually born after the mother passed the after birth, which is a Very rare thing to happen. We've never had anything like it, and it is quite a sad thing in all honest. But the twins that are up above are quite adorable. I love the little one with the white patches on the head. New born lambs are adorable. :) 

The new born twins needed a little medican

So Many Baby's! This is only one pen of them.

Mama & baby :) ~ Nursing!

The two twin lambs above are the ones that I watched give birth. Molly is the mother laying there. She is still down, she can't stand fully yet, but that doesn't mean the lambs can't nurse. They are both attempting to drink at the same time in the picture, but also at times she will lift her but into the air and the two will nurse. It is a spectacular sight. The marbled lamb is my personal favorite. :)

I tried to take as many pictures of baby goats as I could. These are the best ones (the lighting in the barn is not the best, so some pictures are not the most amazing ever.) We have two pens of goats. One with all our French Alpines, and one with the triplet lambs, nubians, and our twin sonins. 

This little goat is my personal favorite.
It was the one that fell asleep on my lap the first time I fed it. 

We have a row of four jug pens set up in our sheep pen for all the mom's and there babies. So many babies!

We have twin sonins this year! We had none last year, so I'm pretty excited.

One of the triplet lambs. This is the weakest one that has trouble getting up, so she likes to lay around a lot. She sure has some spunk though. Then there is me holding the goat I just fed. 

Lambs and kids sure do get along. They are all playmates and sure enjoy each others company. I feel like the lambs may think they are goats ;) 

In this picture, this little lamb is attempting to stand up. This is one of the triplet lambs that was orphaned. They are still pretty weak, so getting up is a bit of a struggle. Plus there legs are so long that they wobble around on them, which can be quite cute. They are doing SO much better than before though. All three get bottles, so it is more mouths to feed. But this means we get some bottle lambs, which are always fun. One thing I love about the triplets are there speckled skin, that you can sorta see in this picture. When they grow older they will not have that in there wool, there wool with be all white. But for now they look adorable. 

SO MANY BABIES! When ever you go in there, you get swamed. 

The french alpine pen is a little more calm. Until you walk in. 

Our one little lamancha hangs out with the french alpines. This little alpine above was a pretty big single that was born. He's a little off white, more of a light brown compared to our normal white ones.

Little lamb 

Babies sure do sleep a lot. 

Little lamb snuggling with mama.

I hope you fell in love with all these babies as much as I have. Next will coming naming them all, which might just be my favorite part. Maybe second to feeding them, but that does take a while. We give all our kids, and the three orphaned lambs bottle about twice a day. It involves a lot of cuddling to get them to drink. Soon enough they will be big enough to drink on there own, and will be begging us for milk (which can be a very loud process with so many babies.) If anyone lives in the West Michigan area I would suggest going to Critterbarn.org and checking out our spring fling. It starts this coming friday. The farm will be open for free and you can come see and maybe even feed if you come at the right times our babies. There is tons of other things to do and see on the farm as well, so consider checking it out. Spring Fling will be going on from  March 29 - April 6! 

R.I.P. Christmas Tree

Today we took down our Christmas tree. It was a sad sight to see it go. We only kept it up and extra three months... No big deal right? There is now a sad hole where it used to be, but I think it was time. I'm pretty sure we are the only people to ever keep there tree up for this long. 

RIP Christmas Tree 
You shall be missed. 

Stories of Baby's

Tonight was probably one of the best nights of my entire life. It was the first time I have ever seen a lamb born. I've seen one goat born, but that has been it. I was helping my boss teach a class at the farm, and when we went over to look at the mama sheep who were all pregnant - well, needless to say, one was giving birth.

Now a little back story on the ewe (a ewe is a girl sheep, if you didn't know). She is one of the oldest on the farm. Her name is Molly, and she happens to be one of my boss' favorite sheep. A day or two ago, she laid down and made no motion to get back up. She was not dead, she was just too weak and too pregnant to stand. We knew she was ready to birth, so when she did she did so laying down - which is fine. The only problem was that she could not stand up after words to nurse her new lambs. That was a big problem, because the lambs need to get the first milk (or colostrum) from their mother as soon as possible because it has a tone of good bacteria fighting nutrients and things in it. Now Molly did try to stand, many times, but she honestly couldn't. Her back left leg was too weak to put weight on; we found this out later.

She gave birth to twin ewes, which my boss was VERY excited about. She actually started crying when they were born - bless her heart. This was exciting because Molly is getting up in years, so now we have some girls that we can keep to keep her blood line going. The thing I loved, is that one of the lambs was marbled. That means it has patches of black and white wool! We have not had one of those lambs at the farm in a long time. And let me just tell you, it is the most adorable little lamb you will ever see. Sadly this is the ONE night I forget my camera... sorry. Hopefully I will be back soon to take lots of pictures.

Back to the milk though. We had to do a bit of improvising, this meant getting a bail of straw and putting it under Molly. That way her stomach was on top of the bale and she could sorta-ish stand. The lambs did get a good drink of milk, which was a blessing. Also Molly was being a bit feisty  which may not seem like a good thing but it was. That meant that she still had some strength left in her, so she will most likely make it. :)

Now while Molly was giving birth, of course this class was going on. The class is for 2-5 year olds, and they are watching a sheep give birth. The parents were ecstatic, and the kids did good too. Now if you have never seen a sheep give birth, its not loud like human's its a very quiet thing. So its not like we were tramatizing the children. In the end, all seemed well.

That was only part of the night though. (I was at the farm until about 10... it was a late night to say the least.) Two little Nubian goats had been born earlier that day. One of them was black, and one of them was brown. I got to feed them, twice :) With new goats, it takes some time (meaning a Long time) to get them to drink all their milk. It also involves cuddling them on your lap to get them to drink. Now that part is not so bad. After the little brown goat had drunk as much as he/she (I don't remember what gender they were) could hold in its tiny belly, the goat fell asleep in my arms. I sure didn't want to move after that, so I just sat there for a bit with it sleeping in my arms. Thats one of those precious moments that I will never forget. Not even a day old baby, asleep in your arms.

Later that night, I tried to feed all five french alpine goats. They were all in one pen together, so when you sit down to feed one, they all try to climb on you. That was a bit of a struggle, but in the end it turned out good. The other thing of that, is that french alpines all look around the same and the five we had all looked the same. One of them was bigger than the rest, because he was born a single, but the rest looked a lot alike. This meant I had to keep track of who I had fed and who I had not. I could only feed one at a time, because they have to sit in your lap as you feed them to get them to drink. All's good that ends well though.

One last event stuck out to me, and this one isn't the happiest. Probably because its the hardest to write about. When you live/work on a farm, there are always learning moments. Now this is one of them. I don't write this so that we can 'point fingers' (as my boss frazed it), but so that we can all learn from this. Its not to criticize how awful our farm is either. I'm pretty sure anyone who lives/works on a farm can tell you, mistakes happen - no matter how hard you try to prevent them. That really applies to life as well, but I can see it at the farm as well. Anyways, the story.

At the farm, we separated our sheep into two groups. Some are in the back, and will give birth in June. The other group is in the barn and are all giving birth now. So they were bred at two different times. Somehow, one that we bred for the first group was switched with one from the second group. The problem with this is that the first group (that is birthing now) gets extra feed to help with the lambs growth. That means that the one switched, that actually was pregnant now, did not get the extra feed. We caught the switch about a week ago, but the lambs were born on Sunday night.

They were triplets, little speckled things, but we think they were born about a week too early. Due to a number of complications, we lost the mother. She had a hard bag, and the malnutrition, and possibly some other bacterias there was just no hope. As of now, the three lambs are still alive. At first, it was bad to be honest, but they are doing a lot better. One of the lambs got adopted by another mom who only gave birth to a single, but tonight we found that the mother was rejecting the lamb so we had to go back to being a bottle baby. The lambs are doing MUCH better, but they still have a ways to go. I got to help feed them, and they are just precious. I'm praying they will make it, and so far things are looking good. The only thing is the little girl who is the weakest of the bunch. But we did get her to stand tonight, which is a HUGE improvement.

To sum this all up, tonight was amazing. I would say I can't even put it into words, but I just did. I'm also just glad that everyone survived.... there were times that I wasn't sure. Hopefully the babies will keep coming, and be even more healthy. Hopefully I'll be able to take some pictures asap, cause they are adorable and sadly they will not stay that small forever. So, goodnight to all and take the babies advice and get lots of rest :) - they sure do sleep a lot.

French Alpine Twins!

On Wednesday the 13th, 2013 - Twin French Alpines were born on the farm. The one above is a little girl who has a floppy ear, and is pretty much the cutest thing I have ever seen. The other one is a little boy (in the next set of two pictures he is the one on the right.) Sadly they were both born a bit sickly. They would not drink their milk, so they've been tubed a few times now to get the milk to them. I'm not sure what they have, or if they have anything, or what is wrong but they seem to be doing a bit better. When I walked in there they were laying down, but then they soon stood up and started wagging their little tails at me :) So they seemed pretty happy. Hopefully they will get better at taking the milk, and then everything will be good to go. The little boy is smaller than his sister, which I find quite adorable. When he stood up, he arched his back to stretch and then hobbled around for a bit. I nicknamed him a acho because when I sneezed (don't worry I turned far away from them, so I wouldn't get any of the sneeze on them.) he jumped. So his name is not acho, but thats what I'm going to call him. I thought I could nickname the girl flopsy, because of the adorable ear she has, but I find it a bit too cheesy - even for a goat. They are the first goats born on the farm this year, and now I can't wait for more to come!!! This is only one of the reasons that I love spring, it is my favorite season after all. Hopefully there will be more baby's soon to keep you updated with :D