Get Out Now

With a big cold front on the horizon, I'm trying to let all dogs, young and old, have as much time outside as possible. We currently have 13 canines and trust me, you don't want any of them to get stir crazy. 

Ironically, Kenzie thinks of this as punishment. She's the spoiled princess for those who don't know. Our half Malinois, half corgi girl. Don't get me wrong, she likes to go outside for brief periods and then go back to the couch. However, I'm encouraging (by not opening the door for her) to enjoy the beautiful day longer. I've gotten a lot of side eye from her. What is it with my animals having attitudes lately? 

All the English Shepherds had their usual ball. More stick finding, more chasing each other, more exploring. Today, they learned some sticks aren't actually for play (keep growing little trees, you've got this!). 

A Little Late

One thing ALL my animals have is an internal clock. They know when it's feeding time. They also know when I'm a little late. 

How each one of them handles the delay is up to the classification of their species. The cats literally get right in your face. The dogs will start to roughhouse. The goats and sheep baa. The cows will get to their designated feeding spot and start singing. The donkeys though, they judge. 

Ten minutes late today and the pic is the look of disapproval I received. No neighing. No friskiness. Nothing but silent judgement. Truthfully, I dig their style. 

Outdoor Play

As today marks the puppies eight week birthday, I think of how much they've grown and changed. They all have their own personalities and all the teeth they have! 

Taking advantage of the beautiful day, they got supervised yard time. No kennel, no grown up dogs around, just the puppies to explore a larger area on their own. They're fantastic at coming back to me when I call them all en masse. That's extremely helpful as I've purposely not given them names except for baby. If one starts to go to the weeds, I call "baby, come" and they all come back to me. I'm going to take advantage of each good weather day to do this, it's great for everyone. 

Of course, even though we don't have trees on the land, we somehow have sticks which the puppies are enjoying gnawing on with their teething. One found a long weed she thought was a stick. I let her think that. 

Streamline

One thing about a farm, you're always looking for ways to streamline the endless amount of work there is to do. Whether it's finding more efficient ways to feed or creating different pens for different needs, there is always a way to streamline. Not all ways work, but I say it's worth trying. 

We're currently working on streamlining the feed aspect with a new hay storage and looking into buying cattle cubes in larger quantities than the feed bags. We have a silo that needs to be installed and then between the two new things, the trips to the feed store should be less. That's the idea anyway. 

Later, I'm going to start thinking about streamlining the water. Some farms have automatic water fillers, some do rain catching, there's still the stock pond idea, things like that. While I'm thrilled about our well and so thankful we have it, filing up the many water troughs to keep up with our thirsty animals takes valuable time. But that's after we get the feed sorted. 

Deer in our yard. One of probably several animals on the land I don't have to feed, thank goodness. 

Tootsie Bunch

First, I apologize for missing the last day last week. It was a "snow day" even though we didn't get snow. We had kept the puppies indoors because of the cold and they had tons of energy! 

I took advantage of the prettier weekend though and updated the puppies pics while they were enjoying outside time. For ease in identifying, I gave them Brady Bunch names. As the numbers get fewer I'll come up with other identifiers. I don't actually call the puppies these names, I mainly stick to "baby" for all of them so their new owner will have the joy of naming them. 

They're becoming really incredible puppies. We've got active ones, chill ones, and a few that can go either way. None of them like the camera yet though! I'll keep working on it. 

P.S. Fur Real Farms website is active!