It was one of those glorious days, you know the kind? It was the sort of day when the air was clean and fresh, the trees were dressed in gossamer gowns of sparkling white diamonds and pearls, the animals were joyously frolicking in their places, just content with being alive and I was at peace, almost, except for one major problem. I only have enough hay to last until the end of the month. The farmer where I buy hay from has 22 more paid for bales, but, because it was so cold, he and his wife, both elderly, up and went to Mexico until March. But, they forgot to tell me they were going. It was not a planned trip, so I cannot fault them entirely; it is just that without the farmer, I do not have access to my hay. I have ads on the local classified site, on the local buy and sell site and on the Edmonton Kijiji site begging desperately for hay. I am believing some will come up. It has to or the animals will all have to be sent to the auction. I could not bear that, not after painstakingly seeking out the rare breeds and driving hours upon hours to retrieve them, then getting to know them and care for them. No way. Although it was a beautiful day on the farm, it was also a frosty day for me in that other way. Sigh. Praying should help. Please do, if you do. Thank ewe.
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In every pack there is an underdog. This dog is not the smallest, but could be. In the pack at The Fat Ewe Farm, the puppies are the underdogs. Joe is pushing his way to rise in status, but Mikey keeps his distance. Jade is the order keeper. When the pack is fed, she takes it upon herself to keep the puppies away until the pack is fed. Jenna, the smallest, used to be the underdog. She and her sister, Jade, were abused when they were puppies, and they are shy of people. Jenna was just plain shy, but sometimes in the late fall, Jade and Ofcharka were beating up on Jenna and she had enough. She surprised them by fighting back and she hurt them both, earning a new place in the pack order. She may now eat freely with the dogs. Harley has fallen back, though. He will not take food from my hands very often any more and remains in the wings while the pack eats, so I take him food and drop it in front of him. Once he has something, none of the others would ever challenge him though. They still remember those big teeth and show him the respect he deserves. Ofcharka is sort of neutral. He does not bully the others, waits his turn, takes what he wants and keeps it. The others do not challenge him either, just let him be, but he is respectful of the every other dog. Now, there is Robbie. Robbie is the pack leader and can go up to any of the dogs, even Ofcharka or Harley, who are twice his size, and take their food. He does not growl or fight. He gives them that collie eye and stares at them, then takes what he wants. Mikey waits until the coast is clear and no dogs are around to see if there is any food left over for him. Jade will work at keeping him away, even when she has fed and the pack is just lazing around. He is the underdog, a sweet natured, big, beautiful Pyrenees cross pup. The pups are 8 months old and just getting their adult teeth up to size now.When they curl their lips in defiance, they still have little baby sized teeth, but they are growing. It won't be too long before Joe decides he will move up the ranks and Jade will fall behind him. Mikey may always remain the outcast though. For that, he is my boy and I save him the best morsels and when the others are not looking stuff them in his mouth and he runs to safety to eat them. This morning, because the dogs are fed morning and night, they had a stewed pigs head with oatmeal, which they thoroughly enjoyed, but Joe got a torn ear in combat with Jade. She did not give him permission to chow down yet and put him in his place. He stopped eating this time, but did not leave. Soon things will change. In the meantime, because ears bleed tremendously, there is a big mess and I am not sure how to clean it up. The blood is frozen to the deck. Poor Joe. A bit later, Ofcharka licked his ear clean for him and then Joe went to roll in the snow to clean the rest. Ofcharka is really gentle that way and likes to take care of the sick and injured. I love those dogs. Every day they make my life better and I am grateful for each of them and the work they do. Bless them. I would love to be ecstatic about the porch. I would love to extoll its virtues over the drafty, cold old porch, but I cannot. The porch is freezing! There is definitely no insulation in the floor, and I am not sure about the ceiling, though there is in the walls. The windows are recycled and drafty and were not installed correctly. They should have been sealed, and were not. The door is recycled and is one of the worst things about the porch. In this weather, it warps and does not close. The contractor used some old door jam which is the wrong size for the door. The gaps let the cold air in as though it was an open window. And, there is no threshold. That door has to be removed and a new properly installed. The windows have to be sealed. The floor needs an insulated sub floor. The list goes on and on. There is no house wrap under the incorrectly installed expensive cedar siding. I have been putting off the law suit, but need to make some time to go to the courts and launch it, though the likelihood of getting blood from a stone is marginal at best. In the meantime, the dog's water freezes in the porch, the snow stays on the firewood and the dog's meat stays frozen. ..not what I had in mind at all. Do I cry now or later? Chickens love to get dusty. It is a little gross, but they will cover themselves with fine dust, dirt, ashes, or a mixture of those. In the summer, I leave a shallow tray of diatomaceous earth mixed with fine dirt for the chickens to dust bathe in and in the winter, they have the ashes from the wood stove. I have often wondered why they like the ashes, but I am sure it does help keep the parasites at bay. The only thing is, when ashes are wet, they can form lye and to me it does not seem like a good thing to bathe in wood ashes, but then, I am not a chicken.
When the wood stove is cleaned out, mostly bi weekly, depending on the temperature outside, the ashes are poured into a upsided lid to a kennel that is mostly broken. It simply helps keep the ash in one spot. The chickens come out looking like they are ill, grey and poorly coloured, until I realize that they have been dust bathing. Silly chickens! Livestock guardian dogs are not like other breeds. They are aloof, almost to the point that it appears they are not even paying attention, but they are. They even know what you are asking of them, though they may or may not respond. They might come if they are called, or not. They might sit, or not. But come, well, that is almost always not. We have been working on stay. The reason there are so many dogs is to protect the livestock. They need to stay to protect them though, not gallivant through the farm chasing squirrels away. Yesterday, Ofcharka had two porcupine quills in his face, not lodged tightly, thank goodness, but they were there. He had to go to the vet's last year to get a mug full of quills removed and that was an ordeal in itself. Try getting a 150 pound dog into a vehicle when he does not want to go. I ended up getting a sedative from the vet to administer to him to just get him into the truck. Anyhow, it means he has been hunting in the woods. Two sides of the farm now have 5 foot high buffalo wire fencing. This keeps the large animals out of the woods and the dogs on their side for the most part. I would love to fence the other two sides the same, if I could train the dogs to stay with the animals. Then when the sheep and goats left, they would go along and protect them from predators. The problem is they did not bond to the sheep. Ofcharka will stay a few minutes with the sheep, then jump the fence and leave. Harley does the same. The pups have learned to get over the fences now too, so they do not stay. They seemed like they were going to bond with the sheep, but the pull of the pack was greater and they continually either dug out, broke through the fence or climbed over until I finally gave up. But, today I told them all to stay on the other side of the fence while I was feeding the horse and llamas and to my great surprise, they did. At least for about ten minutes they did, then Jenna went through the hole in the fence, followed by the rest of the pack and Ofcharka just jumped over. I yelled at Robbie, the border collie, and again, to my great surprise, he went back on the other side where he was supposed to be. That was a first. He and Jade were sharing a bone, though, so there was some incentive to be there. The dogs are all very young, with the pups at 7 months as the youngest and the majority around 2, except for Harley, who is 5. I will keep working with the dogs, of course. It is my intention to get a two long range shock collars as well. They kept the cows away from the farm yard last summer and that is not what I want them to do. Getting their attention might change that, especially Robbie and Ofcharka. The rest sort of follow Robbie, then Ofcharka. If I can control Robbie, then there is hope. He is a hard one, and today he was a star, absolutely excellent and followed every command. I am still in shock! But I sure do love those dogs, just as they is! I absolutely LOVE the ducks! For hours on end, I can stand and watch them conversing with each other, scolding, picking, fighting, waddling and bathing. Bathing in winter is particularly interesting. I do not give them much water when it is cold, only a bucket in which they can dip their whole heads in to clear their eyes, which is mandatory, and a small, shallow pan, which was supposed to be for the chickens. The geese and ducks will go to the bucket and dip their heads in, flapping their wings as though they were in a shallow pool, and spread the water by throwing it onto their feathers. Of course, in these frigid temperatures, the water freezes instantly. This is not bad though. The ducks and geese will then spend an hour preening, that is spreading the oil from a gland through their feathers, which further waterproofs and weatherproofs them. They are well insulated and can lay on the ice and snow if they tuck their feet up into their feathers, which they do. The feet of the waterfowl are more sensitive to the cold, it seems, than the chickens, though neither like the very cold weather. The Fat Ewe Farm has some interesting rare breeds of ducks. Of 11 ducklings purchased in the summer, only one female Ancona remains. The Ancona is a black and white duck, somewhat flighty and crazy, but absolutely the best foraging duck on the farm. I would like to try a few Runner ducks, one of the breeds from which the Ancona was derived to compare their foraging abilities, but more so, I would like to find a mate for the Ancona duck and see if I can raise some of these amazing little critters. There are three Saxony ducks but no drake there either. The Saxony is a pretty buff coloured duck with buff and white eye stripes. They lay eggs well from early spring to very late fall and are larger than many duck breeds, so make a nice table duck. I am searching for a non related Saxony drake for the spring. The Rouen is coloured as the wild Mallard from which it is derived, though it is a very large duck. They lay a great deal of eggs and are good at feeding themselves if given the opportunity. There are three ducks and drake of the Rouen breed. Khaki Campbell ducks were my first experience with waterfowl and I really loved them. They are crazy skitterish and will fall all over themselves to get away from me, but when I am not moving towards them, they will also come and see what I have and run all over my feet. They detest being picked up and so far, I have not tamed a single one. The second year, a duck got injured and was secluded. She nested and hatched 8 babies, and that is rare for Khaki Campbells. Maybe the secret is to sequester them away so they desire to set the nest rather than run and play. The Campbells were bred to lay eggs, and that they do extremely well. There are some other ducks living at The Fat Ewe Farm, but they are crosses from the ducks here, mostly Rouen, Campbell crosses and only the females are here, about five of them. I would love to try the Dutch Hookbill, Blue Swedish, and Aylesbury, the finest table duck ever bred, along with some Runner ducks. That will be a project for the summer, to try to locate pairs of these. Oh yeah, there are also four Muscovy ducks. These are large flighted ducks from South America originally, well, not these particular ones, but the breed is. They do not quack or make noise, but rather make a funny sound like a person with harsh laryngitis. They do not like the cold and do not far as well as the ducks descended from the Mallards, which is basically the rest of the ducks. There are three ducks and one summer baby that appears to be male. Muscovy ducks are constantly broody even at the sake of their own health. Last summer one duck spent three months under buildings trying to hatch ducklings. Finally, I tore up the nest and threw the eggs away, which were long overdue and bad, and she was locked up with the rest of the ducks. Muscovies will hatch the eggs of any duck or chicken though, so they are very valuable that way, plus they are supposedly tasty with very dark meat, but I have not eaten one. Duck eggs are three times more nutritious than chicken eggs and when they are plentiful, I won't touch the chicken eggs. They just do not compare. The ducks are fed minimal grain in the summer and have the run of the farm yard to eat grass, which they a lot of, dandelions, their favourites and bugs, flies and even the odd young mouse of vole. I am looking into alternatives for not feeding grain to the birds at the Fat Ewe , but I am not sure yet how that will work. In the meantime, I love those duckies! They put a smile on my face every time. |
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AuthorFluffy writes daily about the experiences on the farm and with the bed and breakfast patrons. Archives
October 2020
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