A lot has gone down since my last post. We have a total of 7 Shetland Sheep, 13 Pygmy Goats and 6 Alpacas (5 adults and 1 cria). The Spring should bring many changes for us. We are expecting lambs and possibly kids. We will have cria as well, but not until Fall.
This weekend was dedicated to deworming, body condition checks, bringing in new hay and putting new straw in our sheds and barn. As much "fun" as this sounds, it was actually pretty rewarding. The animals even left grain uneaten because they were so excited about the new straw. I guess, it's the little things...
We have been extremely lucky to have mild Iowa Winter weather up until this point. Other than one skinny Alpaca (that we are handling), everyone seems to be doing well. Our ducks are being little troopers. The Guineas are pretty upset about being shut inside, but an evil predator bird was killing them off left and right. I actually witnessed the end of one murder as I flipped on our front house lights to see a large bird carrying off a dead Guinea. Needless to say, I was not pleased.
About a week ago, we added a Pedigreed Netherland Dwarf Buck to our rabbit line-up. We will be mating our pair of ND's soon. This will be our first breeding, so we are fairly excited. We continue to breed Chihuahuas on a limited basis. We had a run of bad luck over the last year, so we backed off. We have 2 newcomers to add into our breeding lines when they are grown. We hope this will help repair and excel our breeding program.
Work, Work, Work...
It was actually nice spending extra time outside with our livestock this weekend!!!
