A morning romp…

Posted by kenleighacres on September 25, 2008
Posted in: family, whippet. 1 Comment

From the American Heritage Dictionary – romp v. 1. To play or frolic boisterously.  2. Slang. To win a race or game easily. 

Both of these definitions apply to my son and Danica’s run around the pasture yesterday morning.

In order to beat her, he had to use some cunning turns…

but she would easily catch up and pass him, which he thought was hilarious!

She’s starting to look like a big dog!

They both had a great time romping around the pasture on a beautiful morning.

Then they went and munched on blackberries for awhile 🙂

 

More quackers and the misadventures of Maisie…

Posted by kenleighacres on September 21, 2008
Posted in: Call Ducks, Ducks. 3 Comments

This last week my son and I traveled North to pick up some more Call Ducks. 

We now have a trio of Whites and a pair of Grays.

The little gray drake is his favorite and he named him ‘Snook’.

The little gray female is my favorite, but I haven’t come up with a name yet – any suggestions?

I love these little ducks and how entertaining they can be.  They are quite talkative and flirty with each other.  They are small enough that a 4-year-old can handle them easily.  A couple of the new ducks have been shown and I am hoping to show them next year and have show quality babies in the Spring.

After putting the new ducks in there pens, the little gray drake jumped up and flew off a short distance.  We looked at each other stunned.  My son jumped out of the pen to go catch him 🙂  Luckily he was easy to catch and didn’t go too far.  We didn’t want to lose any so we locked them in the covered pens until we could clip wings, something that has been on my list to do.  Which leads me to Maisie…

This is Maisie with her babies from earlier this year.  Isn’t she cute 🙂  I decided to clip wings today and the Snowy call ducks really needed to be done because they are the most adventuresome of the ducks here.  Maisie is the mom to one of the little vanishing females that Tammy has at Wren Song Farm.  I put them in the enclosed pen and I ‘thought’ I shut the door.  I clipped the wings on the drake and one hen and then went to catch Maisie, she pushed the door open and was in the outside pen – not a big deal…or so I thought.  She then very quickly jumped up and flew off, and boy did she FLY!!!  I saw her disappear to around the front of the house and start to turn.  I ran to the front with my husband and saw the cat chasing something in the front yard, but I didn’t see Maisie.  We have a hedge in front of the house along the road and my husband thought he heard her in there.  But we couldn’t see her anywhere.  We decided to let her be for awhile and see if she came out on her own.  She found a good spot and was not going to budge, so we continued looking for her.  Finally a couple hours later he spotted a couple tail feathers.  He went to the front, while I stayed at the back and he climbed in the holly.  Luckily she was really wedged under a branch and he was able to grab her – YAY!!!  I very promptly grabbed the scissors and clipped her wing.  Next year I will clip wings a little earlier 🙂

 

Whippets, Whippets, Whippets…

Posted by kenleighacres on September 18, 2008
Posted in: whippet. 8 Comments

This last weekend I left late Thursday night and drove an hour North to my friends house to consolidate all of our stuff and 5 dogs into her car and utility trailer to drive to Washington for the Whippet racing Nationals.  The pile of stuff was a little daunting and there was a little skepticism as to whether it was all going to fit.  Our pile was extra big because we were extra ambitious and made dog beds, dog jammies, beaded dog necklaces, whippet t-shirts, and dog cookies for a vendor booth.  We managed to get it all in and left for Washington at 9:00 Thursday night.  We arrived at a motel at 1:00 Friday morning, which left only an hour of driving for Friday.  We arrived at the field 9:00 Friday morning.

The location is beautiful with Mt. Rainier in the background.

Friday’s activities included a Fun Match with almost 70 whippets entered!

Here is Danica with her litter sister, Datura.  Datura went onto win Best of Opposite in Match.  She is a real cutey 🙂

and the racing was incredible.  The speed of these dogs is amazing.

This was my favorite of the weekend.  The dogs have to wear muzzles while they are racing and a lot of the muzzles are painted cool colors.  Danica’s breeder, Merril, took it a step further and painted teeth on a muzzle.  The dog wearing this muzzle is Chai and you can’t get much sweeter than little Chai, but she looked pretty ferocious with her muzzle on.

My goal for the weekend was to get a great picture of her racing with it on and I think this captures what I was hoping for 🙂

Our vendor booth was successful…

and it was fun seeing dogs walking around with the jammies I made on.

We left late Sunday night and I made it into bed by 3:00 Monday morning – it was a lot of fun, but I feel as tired as this puppy looks 🙂

A funny Craigslist posting…

Posted by kenleighacres on September 6, 2008
Posted in: Funny. 3 Comments

This was posted to one of the Yahoo e-mail groups I’m a member of, it was found on Craigslist –  it sure brought a smile to my face – Enjoy!

http://burlington. craigslist. org/grd/82455202 7.html

IF LAYING HENS ARE FROM MARS, THESE ARE FROM URANUS (7.00 each)

I believe I have the most dysfunctional flock of layers this side of
the Mississippi. No amount of Blu-Kote will keep these hens from
pecking themselves until they all moon me as soon as I walk in the door.

When I picked these girls out of the catalog, this isn’t the picture I
saw.

Don’t get me wrong — these are good layers. All large breeds.

We (me and a friend — my wife was away for the weekend and didn’t
have anything to do with this as she has told many people) imported
these layers from one of those fancy Midwest hatcheries a year ago. I
bought Silver-Laced Wyandottes, White Rocks, Partridge Rocks, Cuckoo
Marans (mostly roosters that made good soup), Reds, Barred, Partridge,
Araucana, Columbian, you name it. Healthy. Strong egg production. And
no bugs (they’d be easy to see).

I guess I wanted to create a veritable United Nations in my hen house,
and maybe that’s where I went wrong.

Instead I built a struggling parliament for a fractured country. And
some of the members possess only what could be called genocidal
tendencies.

So here’s my plan: I’m disbanding the government.

I need to send the members packing to the four corners of the country
(or state). Put them on a plane (well, car) to whatever yard will
harbor them, or at least keep their bare hindquarters warm for a few
weeks until the feathers grow back in.

Why?

Because I know it will work.

How do I know?

Well, you see, a few weeks ago, when my wife was collecting eggs, a
Partridge Rock escaped.

Let’s call her Fred (the chicken, not my wife). My 6-year-old daughter
named her Fred (she named the dearly-departed Araucana rooster chick
Princess). Fred is a very fast Partridge Rock, it turns out. Fred has
(so far) escaped the clutches of the family of raccoons that kill
every rooster that I’ve never been able to get rid of on Craig’s List.

(Have you ever noticed that Craig’s List always includes free
roosters? I swear there are more free roosters on Craig’s List than
there are prostitutes, err, women seeking men.)

(Not that I’m admitting to looking at the personals part of this site,
being happily married and all. I just heard about it from that friend
who told me to order so many chickens.)

(I digress.)

So, besides escaping the fearsome raccoon’s sharp claws of death, Fred
has grown all of her tail feathers back. All of them, which is a very
good thing considering how on occasion she now perches near the road
and I only just received a conditional use permit to keep said
dysfunctional hens.

(It cost me a hundred bucks to get a zoning permit even though I own
one of the oldest farms in my town. For this price I’ve been able to
teach my kids what it means to add insult to injury.)

So why don’t I just set all the chickens loose?

Well, if you’re still reading up to this point, let me review a few
parts of the story:

1. These chickens are good layers (most good layers are fetching $10
to $14 each right now, and I’m giving a dented-can discount).

2. Once these chickens are disbanded they should all behave better and
regain their normal appearance (although I cannot guarantee this just
as I can’t guarantee that a Vice Presidential candidate’s teenage
daughter will learn something useful in her abstinence-only health
class and won’t turn up at a political convention several months
pregnant).

3. These chickens aren’t all as fast as Fred, and the raccoons won’t
pay me $7 each for them (I’ve tried).

So, if you want a few laying hens — or if you want a lot of laying
hens and have all-suite accommodations to keep them apart from each
other — e-mail me.

If you don’t, it’s OK. I have a fall back plan: I’ll schedule a tribunal.

When we dispatched the roosters my 8-year-old son looked at one of the
birds on the block, picked up the hatchet and said, “I do like
swinging things.”

I’ll have him hitting home runs by the time we’re through.

Oh, and one last thing:

Fred stays. She’s earned her roost, if I can ever catch her.

Things you may not know…

Posted by kenleighacres on August 31, 2008
Posted in: Border Collie, Cardigan Welsh Corgi, Ducks, Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, sheep. 4 Comments

My friend over at Mud Ranch tagged me and I must reply with things that you may not know about me (I chose to do 5 just like she did):

1.  In highschool, I was rodeo queen for our local rodeo.  It was quite an adventure travelling around the state with my dog and horse.  A time that I will always remember fondly.

2.  I originally got my sheep to learn how to herd with my Cardigan Corgi, Darby.  I was taking lessons and wanted to practice more often.  The only way to do this was to have some sheep of my own.  My husband was not thrilled 🙂 he grew up raising sheep and was involved in 4-H and FFA.  He had Dorsets and proceeded to tell me about all of the problems they could have. 

Life works in funny ways because later that week I got a call from my sister saying that she just picked up a little goat at a place and there were 2 sheep in the pen available as well.  The conditions were horrible – an 8′ x 8′ pen with mud water for drinking and straw for food, with no shelter, in the middle of winter.  I brought home the funniest looking sheep for $25 for the pair, a ewe and a wether.  They weren’t great representatives of the breed…

but they got me hooked.  After doing a lot of research into what these funny things were, we added 5 bred, regitered ewes.

I love this picture of them – Zettle’s Aspen, Zettle’s Hattie, Zettle’s Blackberry, Zettle’s Harley, and Zettle’s Ginger.  Almost 6 years later, we still have Hattie and Harley. 

3.  Along the same lines as the sheep, I can blame the dogs for the ducks we have as well.  I wanted to teach my dogs how to herd ducks and I fell in love with the little Call Ducks.  They are very entertaining and have fun personalities, just like our sheep!

This is a picture of Kate herding ducks at a trial earlier this Summer.

4.  I can thank my husband for my love of photography.  He bought a really nice camera for me several Christmas’ ago and I was thrilled.  It is truly the best gift I have received 🙂

5.  It is 11:15 pm and I just heard on the news that It might rain tonight and I have 1/2 a ton of pellets in the back of the truck that I forgot to have my husband help me unload before he left for the weekend – ugh…  I guess I better go put a tarp on it!

A Morning Farm Walk

Posted by kenleighacres on August 26, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized. 3 Comments

It has been rather warm in the Northwest recently, but today we woke up to rain.  It was a lovely morning and we took a walk around the farm.  The sheep were much more open to having their pictures taken.

Wrangler and his girls

Pilot and his girls

Poor Pilot isn’t as handsome as he used to be.  He is rather accident prone and has managed to break both of his horns off, in two separate incidents.

Junior seems to have gotten over his frustration and is behaving himself.  Isn’t electric fence great!

Here’s a picture of our motley group of chickens.

The two hens are banties and they set eggs from another farm.  The babies are an assortment of mixes.  No two look alike and I would love to know what they are – any ideas?

This one is my favorite.

Did you know that whippets can herd???  She was having fun chasing them, but then would run for the hills if they turned around 🙂

Our blackberries are almost ready.  Hopefully by this weekend there will be a plethora to pick.

Every boy and dog should have a big pile of wood chips to play on!  They had a blast running up it and jumping off.

The little girl is growing up!

Posted by kenleighacres on August 25, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized. 1 Comment

I always forget how fast puppies grow up!  Danica is now 14 weeks old…

and she is starting to look more whippet like.

The three amigos – here comes trouble!

She is up for chasing anything, here she is chasing a swallow.

In whippet style, she LOVES to run and is already faster than Paisley.

 

Love ’em and Hate ’em…

Posted by kenleighacres on August 24, 2008
Posted in: Farm Life, Jacob Sheep, Lambing, sheep. 3 Comments

Rams that is 🙂 

I have given a lot of thought to this year’s breeding groups as well as where I was going to put everyone.  I learned several years ago that having empty pastures in between the breeding groups is very important.  We had a ram destroy several fences trying to breed EVERY ewe on the place.  He left us early that year… 

We have 4 breeding groups this year, which includes 30 ewes – 9 first timers 🙂 

Our first group is:

Kenleigh’s Douglas with Maverick Marloe, Red Wing Frodo, Windy Acres Kate Lynn, Kenleigh’s Liberty, and Windy Acres Darling.  As stated in a previous post they went together a little early 🙂  Douglas has behaved like a gentleman since!

The second group is:

Kenleigh’s Wrangler with Windy Acres Amber, Kenleigh’s Legacy, Zettle’s Hattie, Zettle’s Harley, Kenleigh’s Chevelle, Kenleigh’s Celeste, bide a wee Tess, Painted Rock Jeslyn, Meridian Shasta, and bide a wee Dolly Doll.  I’m not sure how it happened, but this group includes all of the overly friendly (climb on top of me during feedng time) sheep.  This pasture also had one of our llamas in it, but Wrangler saw him as a threat and was going to take him out, so we had to move him.  We haven’t had this happen before.

Our third group is:

Magic Moon Junior with Craft’s Miah, Rolling Hills Elsie, Rolling Hills Veronica, Windy Acres Darby, Windy Acres Dusty, Brenalan Amelia, Meridian Bella, Kenleigh’s Aimee, and Sagebrush Sera.  It’s hard to see in the picture, but Junior is feeling very dejected.  He was originally in the pasture next to the barn.  He made quick work of ramming through the gate to the next pasture which shares a fence line with Wrangler and his girls.  One of Wrangler’s girls was in standing heat and Junior felt like it was his duty to breed her.  We quickly moved him to the pasture with the electric fence before he was able to crash through the fence.  He was very upset and is still pouting in the corner – poor guy!

And the final group is:

Kenleigh’s Pilot with Kenleigh’s Eclipse, Kenleigh’s Holly, Kenleigh’s Azera, Kenleigh’s Ellie, Rolling Hills Dee Dee, and Kenleigh’s Sahara.  Pilot is the only one that behaved himself this year!  He was easy to catch and halter and he walked to his pasture like a pro.   

“Come here baby!”

JSBA’s AGM in Dixon, CA

Posted by kenleighacres on August 20, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized. 3 Comments

The Jacob Sheep Breeder’s Association (JSBA) held their Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Dixon, CA.  We left late Thursday night and drove through the night to make it a little more comfortable for the 12 sheep that we hauled down.  However, sleeping in the front of the truck at a rest area was not very comfortable for us 🙂  My husband drove until he couldn’t drive anymore and we decided to just stop at a rest area and sleep for a little while.  Needless to say we didn’t get a lot of sleep!  We continued on Friday morning and arrived at our destination mid-morning.   We arrived at Meridian Jacobs and helped Robin finish loading stuff in her truck and followed her to the Dixon Fairgrounds.  Our sheep and dogs were VERY happy to get out of the truck and trailer.   We got everyone situated in their pens and helped other breeders unload sheep as they arrived.  Friday’s dinner was delicious and was followed by Dr. Rowe’s Lambing Time talk.  It was very informative and I came away with several good ideas – such as using newspaper instead of towels to dry newly delivered lambs.  For anybody that has done this knows that the towel is never the same 🙂  We stayed at a friend’s house and it was wonderful!  She was concerned that the futon wouldn’t be comfortable, but we assured her that after sleeping in the front of the truck it would be great.

The weekend was very full, so we were up at 6:00 to go feed sheep at the fairgrounds and get back to Robin’s for the Pasture talk given by Roger Ingram and Dave Pratt.  This was my favorite part of the weekend.  We came away with a lot of information and inspiration to make some changes at home.  I will be talking about this more in the future.

We traveled back to the fairgrounds for lunch and a couple topics covered by fellow Jacob breeder Gary Anderson.  These were very interesting and eye opening.  One was the identical twin research they did on Jacob Sheep at UC Davis.  They found that horns and color placement are not completely controlled by genetics.  It was fascinating seeing sheep that were identical twins that had the same amount of color but not in the same place and the same number of horns but not the same amount of space between the horns.  Breeding Jacob Sheep can be so difficult with the horns, color percentage and placement, structure, fleece type, etc. that this was kind of frustrating and good to hear at the same time.  If these aren’t completely controlled by genetics than what does control them???  The other research project was on fleeces and whether they have changed drastically since JSBA has started registering sheep.  The other part of this was whether or not you can tell what the adult fleece will look like by the lamb fleece.  Unfortunately there were big changes found between the lamb fleeces and the adult fleeces.  Like I said – very eye opening!

The JSBA meeting was next and was very short and to the point.  After that was some down time and a chance to chat and look at sheep.

Saturday’s dinner was awesome!  Robin Lynde donated a lamb and a local Mexican Restaurant fixed it along with chicken, rice, beans, tortillas for fajitas, chips and salsa – YUM!!!

After dinner was a sheep dog demo and Kate got to show her stuff along with Robin’s dog, Rusty.  We used Robin’s ram lambs and we had to negotiate them out of their pen across the fairgrounds to the open area that was kind of fenced.  Both dogs did an excellent job and Kate was happy to do something besides sitting in the truck or pen 🙂

Sunday there was a fleece show where my girl Infiniti was awarded Supreme Champion fleece and our lilac boy Yukon was 1st place in his class.

Infiniti post shearing – she looks like a little holstein cow 🙂

After the fleece show was the inspector clinic with Doug Montgomery and Ingrid Painter.  It was a lot of fun looking at sheep and hearing everybody’s viewpoint.

We left at 1:00 and made it home at 10:30.  It was an exhausting, whirlwind trip – but so much fun!