llama Grove Groove

As the rain continues, so does the exodus from the soggy barn. We’re very sorry to see them go, but without proper drainage, the barn is simply too wet for our animals to spend the winter. The French drain didn’t hold under the weight of the cows and horse.

Cinnamon, our juvenile milk cow, has found a new home where we hope she will be very happy. She is a sweetie who loves having her cheeks scratched and really only has one motivation in life: a little treat.

Leif the guard llama is auditioning for a 4-H family this weekend. We expect that he will probably find a new home Saturday.

Brody the horse is looking for a new home as well. He’s going to go stay with our friends and horse trainer to be keep company with other horses for a while. We’ll bring him back when we are able to do so or he will find some family looking for a wonderful Georgian Grande pinto who also have time to train him.

The chicken stall is still dry, so they will be able to stay safe and dry. What’s  a life without our chickens?

Someone had asked me how to know what a llama or alpaca is thinking. Here’s a good example. This pictures is a llama, Lief, happily sharing his morning hay with Brody. They get along like that.

Here is a picture of what it looks like when the llama is done sharing. See his head? The neck is arched, ears back, lips in the air? The horse was soon covered with green, slimey spit. Of course Brody decided he didn’t need extra hay that much. It was a real surprise for the horse, since he’d very politely shared his own breakfast with Lief.

The biggest challenge to living out here and keeping a real life with everything a real life has to offer is getting things done in a timely manner. Mother nature has her schedule, the boss at the paying job has a schedule, friends have schedules, and we all have a laundry list of items to get done each week, season, year. Some things start to slip. They might not be done right when they should. Like thinning the apple trees or putting down a new layer of gravel on the driveway. So we only weeded half the garden. *shrug* Things being the way they are, we chose the half that had veggies. It seemed a reasonable solution. We also haven’t been putting the big animals into stalls at night; this way we don’t have to clean any stalls but the chicken stalls. Besides, the big animals have a llama to protect them. Why won’t horses just run off coyotes already?

The biggest outside put-off item on the agenda this week was trimming the horses hooves. He’s got really good hooves. They grow strong and slowly. He only needs them rasped every few weeks to keep them down. But when other things take priority, the rasping might be skipped or forgotten. So today he needed the clippers as well as the rasp. Ray did a great job his first time trimming hooves. He’s always taken care of alpaca, llama, goat, and now cow feet, so really it expands his repertoire.

Ray also cleaned the barn, took the neighbor’s tractor into town and had beet juice put into the tires for stability and to top it all off, he made breakfast. A true Renaissance man.

We awoke to an escaped cow. The horse is a little rough sometimes on these little guys when he plays, and they almost always find a way out of their pen when he pressures them. For a little while, the unnamed cow will hang out mowing the back yard.

Though we said we’d try the cornish cross broilers, a little research proved that these are not the chickens for us. Any chicken that has to have it’s food intake monitored is not the right chick for a free-range, calf-pasture sharing bird. The side effects for not watching the feed ranged from the birds not being able to stand due to the weight of their breasts, to heart failure and a noted stupidity of the breed. So we’ll stick with our dual purpose layers and see how the year goes.

Cinnamon the cow has taken very well to her llama overloards. The llama ladies have shown a maternal side that had previously only been glimpsed when Mariah was indulgent towards alpaca cria. Now even tomboy pack llama Ursula is allowing the calf to try to suckle and none of the camelids spit at her. The horse is still routinely covered in spit, but he seems to ask for it. He’s indulgent in his own way, too. Yuri the Suri was spotted standing on his hind legs to eat from the horse’s feed dish, sharing breakfast.

Project for the weekend: Set up a chick area in the milk stall, maybe get the cupboards up in the feed area. Take time off if the weather is terrible. Get the fir trees trimmed back from stairs and garden areas if the weather is fine. Oh, and teach the darn horse some manners. He’s too smart for his own good.