Friday, Jan. 15th... Busy, Busy, Busy...where have I been...I didn't even know I'd Left...

This is Calli standing and Kay Lee sitting... barn cats extraordinaire...
who are mostly in the house......



These last few days have been a blur of activity here on the Cluckin' "A" Critter Farm. Vick's family came to stay for a while, which we enjoyed extremely. They don't live that far away; only about an hour, but you know how an hour is in a normal days activities... Therefore, we find months flying by that we don't see one another, and then with the snow and icy roads, it sometimes drags out more in the winter. Vick's Dad had a few Dr. appointments in Albany, so it was really smart for them to choose to visit for awhile and knock that hour, to and from, off of their agenda and spending it with us instead. It was like a mid winter vacation for them and we all had a blast. Now we are back to the usual schedule of morning and evening feedings, browsing and roaming birds everywhere, when there is a little bare yard for them to congregate in.....or busting a hole in the ice for the stupid ducks, which instantly plop into the freezing water as soon as you step away from the hole you just opened up for them. Brrrrr...they make me shiver just watching them, but they love it!



Now this is cold.........
See the chicken shaking his head as he walks away?



Speaking of love......yesterday our neighbor, out the road, came and dropped a huge round bale of hay into the alpaca's pasture. After driving back out of the pasture and I closed the gate, Wayne jumped off of the tractor to talk a bit as we paid him for the bale. As we chatted about his sheep and goats, the coyotes and chickens, etc, etc, we saw Iggy rubbing, ramming and rearing against the bale. He would rub and rear up and rub against the bale and then take off running and bucking around it and come right back to the starting spot and do it all over, after grabbing a big mouthful of hay first. Luke never budged... he just stood facing the bale munching and Bollero was like the little kid he is. He pops around, kicking and bucking, the stops to eat a little and does it all again. They all love the bale of hay, but I believe Iggy has reacted to it the most, showing his upmost approval of it being in HIS pasture. I know it will surely help make the hay in the loft stretch through out the winter now, leaving more and better hay for the rabbits.
Little did I realize the importance of dry old hay to a bunny. We have to watch and be careful of the feed we give to the angoras so they remain healthy. Too much of one thing and not enough of another and they can become fiber bound. They lick themselves to keep groomed and it is essential that they have the correct food and plenty of water and hay to keep any ingested fiber moving through their digestive system, keeping them healthy. We thought we lost one of the Vermont boys to a fiber obstruction a month ago, but it was a stomach tumor instead, so even though we lost one of our bunny kids, we were relieved that it was to natural causes and was nothing we did wrong. We lost a good $155.00 when we had him put down, but would have spent twice that to make him well if it would have been possible, but it was not to be, so we let him go.

Bollero and Iggy

Iggy

Luke

Each day now we can try to get back to the plans at hand for the farm...and if there is no plan readily available, well then... we need to stop and devise one. Summer is coming, but spring will surely be here long before that and we want to enjoy this year a little bit ourselves. I still have plans for a turkey house, and finishing the gift shop (inside) as soon as it is tepid enough to work outside again...and it will...soon!
We are going to work on the loft wiring first, because we have been threatening to do that since fall, but have always jumped to another...more important job needing done at the time or we simply weren't prepared to shiver and work with bare frozen fingers. Sometimes, I couldn't even stand to bare my fingers, to pulling on or perform the cutting of wires, with the Psoriasis raw fingertips I sometimes had.
Oh well, for once... the time flying by so fast, doesn't bother me. Before when I bitched about that, there were retreating daylight hours, summer flowers dying off, fall celebrations flying by unattended and Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays whizzing past us before we were ready...But now... it's only the barren dark and cold days, with freezing possibilities of knee deep snow and isolation, always a threat on the horizon. At this rate, we will be noticing robins flitting around the yard and a smell of spring in the air. I'm sure the next fifteen days of January will whiz by... along with the short month of February, and we'll burst into March like a lion and out like a lamb. At that point we'll pray to have most of the jobs mentioned above completed so we can do other things we'd like to this summer.