Adopt a Pond, Help protect our Wetlands

We're big supporters of Frog Watch & the Ontario Turtle Talley, and I've submitted more then a few sightings (& hearings) to them.

TorontoZoo.com/AdoptAPond

It really takes only a few moments to send one in & you're helping to map out the habitats, and get a rough idea of their population.

Last year we found an endangered Blanding's turtle on our driveway & headed towards a very busy road (at our old house); so I snapped a few pictures, and got him turned around back towards the pasture where he really wanted to be.

With the pond on property we're trying to figure out a balance between providing space for wild critters, and re-claiming much needed pasture space around it. So we haven't quite figured out what we're doing; but so far it's been home to a lovely bunch of leopard frogs, as well as the mallards that just moved in*!

*I wrote that then thought to myself I should go sneak around & check and see how they're doing. The nest has been abandoned, looks like something got into it. Lots of eggs were missing, several were opened. I'm really disappointed, but that's nature.

S**W!

The slushy snow only lasted a day but mother nature is making a fool of us all for thinking it was spring!

Little duck prints in the snow are even cuter then big duck prints in the snow!

 

Ducks taking refuge out of the wet stuff on the goat's see-saw. 

Everyone is hungry and excited to see the hay wagon.
We've run out of bales so we've got more coming today, will have to order jut a few more for next year.

This is all hay that got stuck under the pallets from the goats jumping in the hay,
there is lots more left in there but it's really time-consuming to get out to the animals.  

Thor & Megs have a really acrimonious relationship these days.
Meg has always been very dominant and will push any of the other animals off "her" food, Thor has taken exception to this. So any time she puts her ears back at one of the other critters he puts the run to her. 

She's not trying to kick him, actually she's quite intentionally aiming high over Thor's head, she's far more scared of him then she's letting on.

There they go again!
I'm just standing around laughing my butt of at Meg finally getting pushed around by someone!! 

Now Thor is happy!
Everyone has their own pile, Meg's been told to behave 

I'm sure he'll have her joined-up in no time...
(lol)

Spring, not the prettiest...

In my over-zealousness to get the barn aired out & de-frosted, I left one too many doors open and the cows got into the front where the hay is stored. No damage at all but they did fill their bellies! I was attempting to get a photo of them fleeing back to the paddock for you guys (they knew when they saw me they were in trouble!) but as you can see the goats had other ideas about whom I should be paying attention too... 

 Early Spring is definitely not the prettiest time of year around here! 

 We've had a very warm week and a few days of double-digit temperatures all the snow is melting (but not yet the ice!).


This is also a really bad sign for our young shoots of grass that are been trampled down by the horses big hooves, and nibbled up!

One more point for getting the fencing done a.s.a.p. this summer.

The horses really aren't too upset about the weather though!

Of course my hose is STILL frozen deep into the ground!! 

Wolves

Getting used to hearing me call them in

The foxes are being well behaved and are actually leaving our chickens quite well enough alone, although I'm not confident that is going to continue. However, there is now a much larger problem roaming around the area. The wolves are back.

Fewd!? OKAY!

I love wildlife, I really do, and to hear that we've got wolves back in this area is both very happy news because the local ecology is doing very well if it can support a top predator like a pack of wolves. From the farmer side of things, it's very very bad news. We're expecting calves on the ground very soon and this is a big problem.

For now the cows are being brought in at night, which is a whole lot more work for me, but they're adapting to it quite a lot better then I thought they would. It helps that I broke my rule (I know, after bragging just a few weeks ago they were on hay alone...) and bought them some beef feed as a treat for being well behaved and coming in.

All set up for cows,
and hopefully calves!

Actually I've taken a step up from that and went and got them some beat pulp today since those calves are coming so soon and Gertie is still a little underweight from feeding Steak & being pregnant (hopefully!).

Didn't want to go back out this morning

So we're actively looking for a solution in the form of a livestock guardian. Something that will protect all the animals on the farm from any predator that wanted to come by. We will keep bringing the cows in until after the calves have been born and are well on their way, but hopefully this is something we'll have to worry about a lot less next year.

It would also be really nice for the goats & sheep to be allowed to come in & out of the barn instead of being locked it at night over the summer.

Sheep are Trouble

Andy likes to changes things around
to the way HE thinks they should be

Went into the barn on Sunday morning to let the animals out and feed. Usually this is a pretty quick & quiet affair with the animals still pretty dozy from the night before. However, I could tell as soon as I got into the barn something was up.

Billy met me at the door, he was supposed to be locked into his stall. Then I see the hulking form of Andy round the corner and he's gotten out too. Okay fine, they must have popped the door somehow. I throw the feed down the pigs only to see they aren't there. The pig sty door is wide open, but I can hear them snorting. So I let the lambs out and head towards the goat & sheep stalls. The piggies are staring innocently at me from inside the goats pen, while all the goats (they can never pull off even a slightly innocent look) are maaaaing at me from the sheep's stall.

I don't know what went on in the barn Saturday night but it must have been one heck of a party!!!

Billy & Andy have gotten themselves out of their stall a few more times, but so far no switching the goats & pigs again.

Snow Glorious Snow!

There is a pretty good reason why there haven't been as many photos on the blog lately; and spring-like weather in February is most of it.

Poop covered paddocks are not exactly the most attractive looking thing. This happens every year, all that poop that was dropped over the winter is just hiding away in the snow, so once the snow melts the poop is left behind. If it were really spring the ground would have warmed up enough to wake up all the little microbes and they've very quickly start breaking down all that poop into great nutrients for the grass. In a few weeks all you'd see is lovely green grass again.

However, with the snow melting off but the ground still frozen hard, there are poopsicles all over the paddock and it's really quite a nasty sight.

And then on Friday...

And FINALLY I can walk across my yard without falling on my butt. At least for now.

Jump Start on Spring Chores

2C is absolutely insane in Ottawa (we're zone 5b) it should be -20c, or less with the wind chill. So I took full advantage of the warm weather on Monday since hubs was home to watch the kids (holiday).

 Why my muscles hate me today!

The deep litter worked quite well, in some areas more the others. There was a lot of build up under the water buckets, but that's also were the litter was the most decomposed. I think for next year I'll water the litter and see if that helps it along. I'm also trying to think of a way to add some worms to the litter (since we can't have any come up through the dirt, it's a concrete floor) but the chickens will just eat them all.

 The goats are "helping" again. 

We got all these wood-chips from hydro when they trimmed back all the trees around us. Be careful what you wish for because we ended up with 3 giant piles! The ones of the farthest left and right are great, very nice chips. The pile in the middle has a lot of greenery in it, so it's composting and steaming quite a bit.

It was the middle pile I used for the chicken coop, mostly because I needed to break that pile up before the wood chars.

The goats are quite happy to help clear out the pile, judging by my "goat pruned" trees around here, they really love a little evergreen in their diet.

 This is the first time I've walked into the chicken coop and thought it smelled really good! The chips are mostly cedar so it's quite nice in there. The chickens seem very happy with their new bedding, and I really quite like it as a flooring too. Maybe not quite as warm as the straw that was down before, but we'll see. It's already composting well too so it's warm just from that.

Happy Chickens

And because that wasn't enough work

I also removed the 1-2' of deep litter from the pig pen. That was a lot of work. Lots & lots of very wet and composting straw and old hay. Plus I started just before their dinner time I was navigating very heavy fork-fulls around annoyed goats.

I used the mostly chip pile to fill up their pen with just a few inches of bedding. Pigs are so clean I can easily scoop out the back 4" of their pen every now and then over the summer to keep the whole pen clean. Then I threw some hay into the sty for them to make a new bed for themselves. They seem to eat quite a bit of the hay as well as sleeping under it, so I really think it's a good thing to keep giving them and they only take a few flakes a week.

Happy Valentine's Day

Love is always in the air around here

Mads & Megs

Surv & Yank

Steak and...
OH gross! Steak!! Cut that out!!

Andy

I just want to squish is little face and call him Andy Dandy Candy, but I think he's the butchest animal on the farm!

My brave protectors

In case you notice one of the dogs is missing, that is because she is hiding behind my car, from the sheep...

What's all this fuss about?

ANDY!
Andy is a 200lb Suffolck, Rideau something-or-other almost 3 year old whether. You can't tell from the picture, but he's about the size of our water tank! Or, I'm 5'2" and is back is almost up to my hip.

Maddie was the bravest of the bunch!
See Meg in the back FREAKING OUT!

Or, according to the horses, the size of a small bear.

Yankey testing the waters.

Andy is the biggest sweetheart cuddle bug! Yanks immediately tried to tell him his place. I can say quite a few things about Yankey, but the girl has balls...

Show off

Meg proceeded to freak out for about 20 minutes, she's been living with goats and sheep and all sorts of animals for months now and this GIANT sheep was one over the line.

I should scare her with sheep more often

But I finally have a NICE photo of the surprisingly most un-photogenic horse in the world! She's stunning in person, especially when she starts showing off, but get the camera our and she starts standing weird, or sticking her tongue out or manure spots will magically grow on her side.

One lonely sheep + one lonely sheep
apparently =
one sheep scared poopless
and one wandering around asking the ducks
to be his new friends

Billy isn't so thrilled with his new friend right away, Andy is like 3x his size; but I'm sure by the end of a few days they'll be cuddled up in the straw together, best friends for life!

Dear Weather... F-You!

SERIOUSLY!!!
I could slide on my belly all the way
to the chicken coop!!

IT'S THE END OF JANUARY AND MY HORSES HAVE
THEIR RAIN SHEETS ON!
(Maddie checking for
treats IN the camera)

AND THE BARN IS FLOODED!!

 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGG!!!

The cold I can deal with - THIS is ridiculous!!!! 

Water, Water, Everywhere

And all of it frozen solid!


After spending $40 each on heated water buckets I wasn't overly pleased at the goats pulling the cords out of the wall so their buckets would freeze anyway!! (Plus major fire hazard). Luckily I bagged myself an electrician, all fixed.

Surv always runs over to
be the first to have a nice long
clean drink

The only problem with the cord running under the board is when the goats poo in their water, as they do every freaking day!! I have to pour their bucket into another bucket to take it outside, but it's a minor inconvenience for having running water for them.

The chicken water was less simple. The waterer itself cost us about $70, funny thing is we can also buy a heated base for it for another... $70. The layer birds do not make enough money for us right now for those kinds of investments.

(In fact I have about 8 full cartons of eggs in my fridge right now I can't sell because our front steps are not evenly spaced/way to slippery; so unless I want to go stand out beside the road & flag cars down, I've got to wait until spring/new steps.)

So using the extra small water bucket we purchased, I rigged this up.

Okay, it looks ridiculous, but works quite well. I had to raise the bucket up so the cord would reach, then create a ramp so the chicks could get to the water, then there are bricks IN the bucket. Hopefully if a chick does fall in, they can get back out. They'll probably freeze to death from being soaked, but at least they won't drown. (Let's just hope they don't fall in!!)

Speaking of things that are fixed, weeks of nagging finally paid off and the back doors of the "goat section* " are finally extended to fill in the area they were heightened.

*I've given up and we're no longer calling it the horse section since the horses are never in it & the goats always are.

Caught 'Yah!

Muhahahahaha MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Love this picture of billy, I took
it during the snow storm last week.
If you don't see it, look at his horns!

The goats have been contained! We finally found that last of their little holes, and after a week of being stuck in the paddock unable to cause trouble I can official say they are fenced-in!

Poor things, trapped in the paddock
with all their food, water & shelter

Except that the back fence still need to be replaced this summer and they'll be able to squeeze back out under the fence as soon as the ground thaws... but let's not tell them that until they figure it out.

As soon as that back fence is replaced & we get a donkey, I can start letting the goats out at night! Even now I can finally leave and go to the feed store and not worry about them. It's not that they ever went anywhere once they escaped (actually they'd just wander over and eat my garden or lawn), but you never know.

Oh also the ducks have decided
they live in the barn now

I don't know why the ducks decided to move out to the barn, may have something to do with an over-eager rooster not respecting species boundaries; but they've come in to live with the goats & the pigs and that's just fine with me.

The cows broke into this part of the barn the other day, and Gertie stepped directly on top of Louie. Despite his flapping and attempted squawking she didn't take notice and proceeded to put a great deal of weight directly on top of him before slowly coming to the realisation that (1) the crazy lady was yelling at her (2) there was something under her foot.

They're not talking to me.

Louie is none the worse for wear, although I think next time he'll get out of the cow's way a little faster. Muscovy really are indestructible! (I've heard lots of stories of them being run over by cars and just keep on truckin'...)

Ah! Winter...

 The best way to convince goats to come in the barn... lock them out!

We had a bit of freezing rain all day so the horses are in the barn warming up, it's also supposed to rain again in the next few hours then clear overnight. So they'll stay in until about 10pm then they can go back out.

I let the ducks out, but the chickens stayed in the coop all day & I can't believe how much warmer it is in there! Because we only have people & not "chicken" doors, the doors stay open most of the day & the chickens go outside & running around. Looks like I've got really good reason to keep them in on really cold days (when they don't really want out anyway). It's nice our coop is so big they can still run around when locked in.

 The de-icer that got left here by former owners works great! This thing was frozen so solid this morning I had to get a rock, about 2 hours later & it's clear! Beautiful, saves me from having to buy one.

This hose on the other hand... is not coming out until Spring. It was really muddy and warm one day (and one of the cows must have stepped on the hose, it's DOWN there!) and then froze solid the next day. I've tried buckets & buckets of boiling water, but it is stuck. 

The Joys of Winter...
At least all the mud is gone!