I have bred my first two does, Marion and Molly, and the other does are starting to cycle already. In the past, we've only had one doe cycle before the end of September or the beginning of October, and this year we've had two for sure, and possibly another. Supposedly their cycles are dependent on daylight(shorter days are when they start cycling) so I'm thinking it's possible that the gray days from all the smoke around here maybe making the difference.
Not much else has been going on right now, but here are a few pictures from the last two weeks.
This here is my black and white duck that turned brown and white. Never seen something like that before.
Kate loves swimming, but has only recently started jumping in like Duke used to.
The splash ahead of her is her toy.
Jinger has reached the stage where, as with every puppy I've had, I wonder if I'm gonna be able to handle her, or if she's gonna turn out as a wrecked adult and I'm gonna have to sell her. So far I haven't wrecked one though, so I think I just need to keep slogging through and take problems as they come.
One evening Kate wouldn't stop trying to play with Bonny, while Bonny was playing with Jinger. Bonny was getting more and more annoyed until....
..."Stop it or I'm gonna bite your head off!" At this point I called Kate away as she showed no signs of comprehension and I didn't want Bonny to attack her and start a fight.
The main difference between this being a play snarl and a fight snarl, is the tongue sticking out-they don't do that when they play, but rather, only when they are angry. Or Bonny doesn't, anyway.
We got the new buck pen finished shortly after my last post, and the boys like all the extra space. The nasty little things have lost their baby charm and stink like mad. You can't pet them anymore, because all they do is blubber, lick, and strike you with their front legs. They aren't aggressive though-if they were they'd be headbutting, not striking.
This is how the does generally spend their evenings. From left to right: Bunny, rooster, rooster, Hassie, Eclipse, Minx, Marion, Skitz, Bluebelle, and Desi.
I like how these girls posed for the picture. From left to right: Bluebelle, Marion, Skitz and Desi.
I'm buying Hassie from Mom-I may have already said that before. She is a Bunny/Everest kid.
This is a "hifties" doe-joint ownership between Mom and I. Her name is Eclipse, and she is Ebony's kid by Everest.
I noticed this interesting turkey tail design on one of the stumps out back.
Jinger.
Kate's preferred method of play is stalk and spring.
And lastly, old Sadie. She will be 14 in November, and is mostly deaf, but her eyesight seems okay. If you haven't seen her in awhile, it would be prudent to look in the shop. She sneaks in every chance she gets and tends to find some back corner to take a nap in, thereby often missing detection. She has stayed overnight in there before and left a present for me in the morning, as well as doing the same in the sauna last winter. Oh well, I guess it's pretty harmless, even if she's always been the most disobedient and useless dog on the place. It's not like she sneaks into the schoolhouse, digs in the garbage and eats Dots while sitting on Mom's precious blue chair and the quilts covering it or anything(anymore)-she's just never been trained much.
One last thing: We have a stray cat here, who runs into the haystack every time we see it. It's been hanging around for three weeks or so, and isn't showing any signs of leaving. I'm thinking it's a female and has kittens, but the hay crack she goes into is not large enough to grant admittance to humans. It also must branch off, because when we use a flashlight we can see all the way to the back and there are no animals back there, even though we know she went in there. So I guess we'll be waiting until the kittens walk out on their own, and either try to tame them down or catch them in a live trap. Otherwise we are going to have a cat population problem like we had years ago. Maybe this will be my opportunity to have a new cat of my own, since I lost mine last summer...
No comments:
Post a Comment