More New Animals

Spring has been a time of lots of new additions on the Farm of Hale. This week has been no different. We have wanted to get some sheep since we got the farm but we had to get more grass growing so we could support them. I planted tons of grass seed in the spring and it is all doing really well so far so we decided it was time for sheep. We wanted hair sheep because we don't want to have to sheer them. Hair sheep have a thick wool like hair that they shed on their own. They are used for meat. One of my favorite meats is lamb so I look forward to having some to butcher. Anyway, on Monday we got some sheep. I had been scanning the classifieds the past month or so trying to find some for sale for a decent price, I wanted either Katahdin or Barbados sheep. One of our neighbors has hair sheep and had a bunch of lambs this year. I had never talked to these neighbors before but decided to call them out of the blue to see if they wanted to sell any of their lambs. Well, the neighbors were really nice and offered to give us two ewe lambs if we would give them back two lambs when we have babies next year. This was an awesome deal because we won't be out any money. Their sheep are mixed breed hair sheep but have mostly Barbados in them. We went and picked them up on Monday. When we got them home they turned out to be kind of wild and would not let you get within about 30 yards of them and would not come when you called them even if you had feed. So, I decided to try to get them in the corral and try to feed them and tame them down. This proved to be next to impossible, they are a lot faster than me and did not want to be corralled. It took forever but after much running and cussing I got them in the barn. I am going to leave them in there for a few days and pet them and feed them and try to get them calmed down a little. I am tempted to do something my dad once did, that to a 8 year old was one of the funniest things. He had these two really wild goats that were hard to catch and control so he tied them together to make them easier to catch. These goats would be running like crazy away from us and one would go on one side of a tree and one on the other side and the rope would hit the tree and sling them around into each other. It was awesome. Anyway, back to the sheep. I plan on getting a ram soon as well to breed with them and have babies next year and hopefully eat some of them. Here is a pic of the two ewes.



We also got baby chickens this week. We ordered some along with our next door neighbors and we received them on Wednesday, that's right they send them into the mail. We got 10 chicks total:Ameraucauna, Red Sex Link, Barred Rock, Australorp. These will help get our chicken count back up to where we want it. Here is a pic of them.