Random thoughts from the moose cave.

it looks like a high-tech material jonboat to me...

ha!

I have another pair of shoes that look like I'm wearing baked potatoes on my feet. Comfy but ugly bugly

I want a pair of antonio's bedtime slippers in my size.

really bad...

my ribs smell like they are about ready for step two.

and I chopped some leafy celery and an onion into the water. gonna leave one or two ribs and make some soup with it...

got eggers boiling in smoky's (it works so much better on a real stove)

needa go plunge them into some icy water.

I feel very domesticated today...

my house smells of BBQ ribs.

and fried taters.

it's a good day to be me...

gonna feed the gatos first so's they'll leave me alone to eat in peace.

There are a lot of coyotes in this area, and quite a few sheep farmers. I saw a donkey kick the crap out of a coyote once. In this video a deer does a number on a dog. The technique is not dissimilar. In many towns in B.C., including Cranbrook they are having significant trouble with deer attacking all manner of things and animals. People fear it's only a matter of time before there is a human victim.
Turn the sound down, the soundtrack is seriously stupid.

usually we close or herd after a year and dont get another ram for about 3 years.(But we have 7 rams for 250 ewes) You do want to avoid really bad interbreeding where you have a small herd and you do want to keep back crossing a ram with 2 or 3 generation of granddaughter lamb ewes. This can confer a loss of hybrid vigor .

Keep good records of ram and ewes and lambs )I assume you will be building your herd from within). You can back cross a lamb ewe with a ram that is born of your main ram and another ewe not related to the ewe lambs mother. Its not hard as long as you keep good records and dont screw up ( however even if you do, just send thoise lambs to market or use them yourself).

Actually loss of vigor isnt a big deal unless you show. Often severely inbred lambs will show some loss in traits as they expand on traits that are negatives from the ewe or ram. Youll know, things like spotted hair, or different levels on front and rear legs. You will see after maybe 2 generations of inbreeding. SO, with a small herd, yo have a much better chance of doing inbreeding cause your ram is so close to the entire flocks bloodline after one genertion.

we get the occasional deer (ours don't talk like hood rats)

maybe I could offer up some salt and corn for protection services...

do you pen a pair up to breed them, or just leave the boys in the field and watch?

I'm not real voyeuristic...

I'm thinking of spraypainting their names on their sides so I can keep track.

tell me some more about donkeys, please...

I had ruled out a horse as too much work, but there is a horse barn (2 stalls) on the property with fenced pastures.

a donkey,ll eat abot a bale of hay every three days. (They arent as messy as the sheep who, without good hay ricks, will walk all over their dinner(Never feed by just dumping hay on the ground, the sheep will **** and sleep in it and then eat it and spread parasites . We use a series of hay ricks and a cattle feeding set up that came with the dairy barn at the farm.

A Sicilian donkey os about 40" high , They asre sweethearts with people and will pay for themselves better than a gard dog. If youve got coyotes, this is a real concern (what kind of protection do you want)

I sed to travekl a LOT and my wife was always "rnning shotgun" with wold dogs and "Coy-dogs" we had more of a dpomestic dog problem bt wed lose sheep every year . We installed an intercom and a radio transmitter around the paddocks.Yo can always tell panic in the herd and it was always dogs or cor dogs, and the problem was always in the middle of the night.

MArrema , Komondoor, Great Pyrenees, etc are all great sheep dogs bt they live with the herd fll time and get like really rank after a few weeks out in the mud and the barn.
The dogs still like the family and want to be pet and acknowledhged as the top dog and they really STINK. SO a donkey is already sed to being a hoofed animal (NO we dont shoe a donkey but we do trim hooves ourselves). A dokey is actually less maintenance than a dog or a horse for animal protection. Id say that a donkey would take one acres worth of forage (pasture). YOU want to maximize the se of pasture and either grow or buy in your winter hay. We do both and we dont waste time on really fancy hays any more. We grow a good pastre mix of primarily orchard grass that we had tested several times and our raw protein is about 17% (as compared to alfalfa which is 23-25%). ALfalfa, for us, is abot 300$ a ton and orchard grass is abot half that. SO its mch more economical to feed orchard grass hay. AND, they are working on newer orchard grass hybrids that prodce 20% protein.

Good orchard grass and some dry weather grass are good(Your ag extension service is great for help as to whats the best forages for your area). NEVER plant clover or any other high leaf stuff like sudan or sudax, it will cause toxicity when the frost hits it and can give off cyanide.

INFECT YOUR FEET wear flip-flops. Flip flops should be thrown away every week , unless you autoclave em .

we have a birder collie and a catahola, They work for a living and are bsy just moving the sheep. They arent great protection dogs

1the border collie is a very sensitive dog whose job is moving animals about. Its not a fighting dog and would be frightened by a challenge from a pack of coys

2The catahoula is a total opposite. They love to kick ass and beat up coy dogs. BUT, unless you have a pack of about 4, you are sending the poor dog to mits deth becase it is relentless and will fight until its beat up badly. We learnt our lesson early and since cataholas are half nuts to start with, a whole pack of em wold drive you crazy. They are smart and demanding and they are always testing you as pack leader. We had an earkier catahoula get all chewed up by a pack of dogs and we spent thousands getting him patched up. He had his neck opened and almost died of blood loss .
A gard dog is specially trained to harass and then will back off a bit and then harass again. With a small pack (like 2) they can overcome any bunch of coys . ALL protection dogs are very big dogs (120 pounds and up) whereas a catahoula is like 65 pounds of tazmanian devil.

unless you use your border collie just for herding, dont get one, they need work and thats their fun. A border collie is so smart that, if yo dont keep them stimulated, they will think up their own fun and games and I guarantee yor not gonna like what they come up with. We once had a female border collie that we could NOT ket in the house. She would rearrange furniture . I guess she read something about feng shwey

I have a big round thing that looks like a hay bale goes in it to feed horses. I think the sheep and certainly a donkey could eat from it. If not, I have a plasma cutter. we can make it work...

I think I will start with a pair, and add ewes as I can afford to. I guess I'm gonna see if I can find a free donkey anywheres...

I gotta hurry up and order my chickens. If I can't find any araucanas locally, the hatchery is already out until may 21st for delivery of female chicks...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-fcHS_5mhM&feature=related

Most breeds will breed as the day length shortens and then its abot 141 days for gestation. When you get a few, I would keep the rams and ewes separate or else youll have trouble keeping off season breeding and then its difficult to synchroniize estrs .
The worst thing with sheep is to make sdden changes in their diets (when we breed or sheep, we always prepare the ewes by feeding them mostly grain for a few weeks before w introduce a ram). What we try to do is "synchronize" estrus in the herd so that when we have ;ambs, they will all be born in like a two or three week period. Otherwise they will stretch lambing from January to April which gets in the way of getting other work done.

I'd wear my crocs 24/7, if I could get away with it.



They look a bit funny with my suit, however.

Yeah...I'd say that wouldn't be a good look.

Crocs make my feet hot. I like them in the winter only. Even with the holes my feet feel stifled.

I like flip flops. Frankly - if flipflops need to be thrown away - why not other shoes? I walk the same place in regular shoes as I do flipflops. I do not lick my feet or eat off of the floor. We like bare feets anyway - so the first thing we do is kick our shoes off. I have boys as well...which means muddy shoes so we have baskets at the front door, back door and basement door - shoes go in there.

I am not a germophobe though. I probably should be a little more careful. But I can't imagine not having my flipflops.