Animal Crackers - Wet Cold New Year

Howdy -

Hope you have had a wonderful New Year Holiday - It has been just nasty and cold here, so not many outdoor projects going on here. The only have too outdoors has been the baby bottle feeding with two of my baby girls. Ok, only Jackie was a half too.. but Lizzy got in on the action and has been getting some bottle feeding too. Makes really sweet friendly goats bottle feeding.

Every four hours does get hard when it is cold and raining... but my girls are so worth it. Aren't they?

 Jackie is smaller than her sister Lizzy... but not skinnier! This girl has really packed on with her bottle feeding! Which is the point as she was so tiny and not healthy when I started with her. Now she runs, jumps and hops with the rest of the gang. I am so in love with these two girls!! And those eyes just melt me!

Now we had some promotions here... I have always referred to this group as "The Boys" well now that we have had more babies it just didn't feel right to call these guys boys anymore. So now this pen is renamed "The Men's Pen". At some point we are going to have to move on most all of these guys, probably auction. But I haven't gotten to the ready point just yet. I am such a sissy. Surprisingly they are all wet from the rain, usually they are in hiding when it gets barely moist outside. But with so many days this week if they wanted to eat they had come out in it.

Donkey's they are totally different. Cold Wet doesn't bother them at all. In fact the girls were way out in the far pasture in the rain eating. But the boys - they had been up close to the house and from the looks of Pavo he had a roll in some mud... 

 

Leon and Elenore moved into their new coop for Christmas -

Now to be honest... Leon is not happy only having one girl. But I am hoping that maybe this year we can try and raise some little Leon's and Elenores! More Elenores would be best...

Sam is our other Rooster - He has been left in the Heritage pen with three other girls. So he ended up with more to crow about... You can tell he has been out strutting in the rain most of the day here - At some point we will add another pen and pull Sam and Cora out into that pen by themselves. Cora was just last week released back into the larger pen. Since she broke her foot months ago we have kept her off by herself. She limps a bit and every once in a while she stumbles on her own foot but I am so proud of her and how well she had done.

Now I don't know if you caught that statement above... but we had four roosters just a week and a half ago... We had to put down Alister "Alice" he broke his leg, probably fighting with Leon. We tried to save him, but it was so bad and couldn't save him. We were so sad. Then out of no where we lost Perrywinkle this last week. For no reason. He was fine one morning, off a bit that evening and gone the next morning. 

I have been so upset about loosing my boy. He was so sweet and I was so happy about he had trusted me enough to eat out of my hand. We have just been crushed. I know that is part of chickens. But man doesn't make me like it or accept it.

Now we will look forward to 2015 - I hope you all have blessed new year!
HUGS and -