Farm stuff

Spring is here, even if I don't want to admit it.  Over the weekend Annmarie had me spray the bugs trying to get in the house.  She said they were swarming on the sunny end of the house.  What an understatement.  I thought I was in a B horror movie, a bad one, when I started to spray the bugs.  They were in a huge soccer ball sized pile and then covering the entire sunny side of the house.  I fired up the little hand pump sprayer and bugs started flying every where.  I was jumping around and swatting bugs off my face and arms nonstop.  Not a fan of dive bombing bugs.  Luckily, I only muttered obscenities so no bugs flew into my mouth.  After I did our house, I went down and did the same thing to our in-laws home.  A couple of days later it kicked in and the bugs are much better.  I would have tried to attract the chickens over, but Zeke is being a pest and chasing the chickens at every opportunity.  I was hollering at him on Sunday for harassing a chicken and he came running back to me with a feather stuck to the corner of his mouth!  I watched the chicken get away, but he loves to chase anything that will run away from him. 

We had another set of lamb twins today.  Annmarie called me at had me get on the road early so I could be here to monitor the babies.  She had noticed that the mother was in labor and had locked the sheep up in the barn lot.  I came home and the ewe had one healthy baby at her feet, so I went into the barn and started setting up the pen so we could isolate her for a few days.  I came out with the water buckets and on my way to the creek I found a little baby covered in dirt all splayed out on the ground.  So I picked up that baby, her acknowledged baby and put them in the pen.  I then had to chase all the sheep into the barn then sort out all but her.  She kept trying to run out, after one failed attempt I did manage to get her locked in with her babies.  I then went and fixed a bottle, got some rags and went out to dry off the baby and bottle feed it.  I got it dried off and it ate about 1/2 ounce of milk substitute.  I then dragged the healthy baby next to the reject and left the reject wrapped up in towels to keep it warm.  I am not sure the mother will accept it.  So I will be going out every 1.5 hours to check on the baby and feed it.  It is a little boy.  I didn't check the other lamb's gender.  The healthy lamb is almost three times as big as the reject.  Not sure whether to blame the ewe or mother nature.  She will get a red check mark against her record any way.  If you are not a perfect mother, we are keeping track.