Megan's 2008-2009 School Year

Bottle Lamb

New Lambs

    About a week ago, my sheep had 2 lambs, one boy and one girl. The boy weighed 10 1/2 pounds, and the girl was 11 1/2 pounds. The Mom had the girl first and I was so happy she had had a girl. Then we discoverd somthing terrible. We were trying to see if the mom had milk, and of course, my luck, she has no milk.

 The lamb was trying to eat, so Dad told me to go make some milk. We came in the house and I started measuring out the powdered milk, and Dad was digging around in the freezer. I came into the kitchen and went to the sink to get some water for the powdered milk when Dad said,"Lets try this first." He had saved some milk from a diffrent ewe and put it in a icecube tray and stuck it in the freezer. When we finished heating up the milk, we went to take it outside.

When we got back out to were she was, she had had the boy. The mom was cleaning up the boy. I picked up the girl and tried to feed her. Since she had not eaten anything yet, it was pretty easy to feed her because she was hungry. When she finished I picked up the boy and fed him some.

I'll try and get a picture of them sometime soon.

Moving the lambs

Well, it is time to wean the lambs, because the are all over 60 days. We went outside and got all the sheep in the barn. After they finished their corn, we pushed them all over to one side of the barn. We sorted through and gave some of the sheep wormer and some of the lambs a shot. Then we weighed the lambs (  they were heavy) lol. When we finished sorting them all we brought the lambs over to a different barn. ( with the horses and the older rams) Last night I heard a whole lot of baahing going on Poor things ) : lol. 

New Cow

      This past Monday we were trading some of our sheep for a cow. When the guy came that was giving us the cow, my dad talked to him for a while. Then they put the cow over with our rams and horses. Us girls were waching from the windows in the house, and the horses were chasing the cow.

Then, Dad and the guy went over to the other barn and the loaded up the sheep. We stopped watching and were just doing school, then all this sudden Dad comes in the house and told my big sister to get in the truck and go find the cow because it just jumped the fence and was running full bore! My dad went back outside and asked the guy what he should do to get it back, and the guy said get some hay...it might come back, and then he left. So we were like ahhhhhhhhh what do we do??? Well, Katie got back and told Dad where it was then Dad called one of his friends that has a four weeler and they went after the crazy cow ( I mean it is crazy, wild, insane, untame, nuts...ec..) and it does not even have a harness or nothing!

Okay I'm going to skip a couple of hours here because well they just kept trying to get it home for several hours. So after a long time Dads friend got his four weeler stuck in a drift and while they were trying to get it out, the cow ran off, and they could not find it. By now it was pitch black out and cold, so they decided to just leave it until morning.

Tuseday,  we finaly got the cow back. But then it got out again! AHHHHHHH but after a few more hours we got it back! Yay!!!  We put her back in the barn. (this time we were not taking any chances) Dad put up a bunch of boards so she could not get out. ( ;

Meggie

My Sheep

         I have a sheep named Tippy, she is three years old. When I woke up on Monday, I went out side to check the sheep. And what did I find??? I found a 12 pound lamb!!! I picked it up and it was a little girl!!!!!! eeeeeeeep!!! yay. I'm very happy. She is very cute. She has a brown spot on her butt and her ears are tipped light brown.

She was so cute on Monday. She would try to play with the rest of the lambs, but she is so big that she kept tipping over. She apparently did not know her own weight. lol. She is more steady now. Anyway she is a healyth little ewe (girl).

Yup, The funny thing is.... Tippy has always had white girls with a brown spot on there butts and tipped ears. and her rams (boys) are always spotted.

Meggie

Sheep

         We  have Katahdin hair sheep, and for about the last week we have been noticing something wierd about their eyes. When you would look at their eyes you would see that they are kind of red and watery. So we were thinking that maybe the hay that they were eating was poking them in the eyes so they were watering. But a few days ago, Dad went out to check on the sheep and one was walking really slow. She walked right up to him but did not see him, So he tapped her on the nose and it startled her. When he looked at her eyes he saw that they were kinda blueish colored and foggy, therefore he knew that she was blind. Dad came inside and called the vet and asked him what he should do. Then he came back into the kichen and was like, "Ready to go to work girls???" 

 We were like, "What do we have to do???"

" And Dad said," We have to go cut out all the sheep's eyes or else they are going to die.

"We just looked at him, (With a disgusted faces) and were like, "are you serious???"

and he was like, "no, but we do have to go and give them all shots."

 So we got on our barn cloths on, and went outside and got all the sheep into the barn and gave them shots. But then we ran out of L.A. 200, so Dad had to go to town and get some more. When he got back, we went back outside and finished the job. We think that they might have pink eye, but we are not sure.

 I will see if I can get get some pictures up in a couple of days.

Meggie         

Moving Hay

    A couple of weeks ago my Dad got a new feeder for our sheep. We were helping him put hay in the feeder, but the bale of hay fell into the feeder the wrong way, so..... it was not exactly fitting well. So dad told me and my sister to start jumping on it so it would go in.  We finaly got it in and went inside.

   Then last night Dad told us that the hay was all pushed to the middle of the feeder and the sheep can not reach it.

So since He had to work today we had to go out and push the hay around to the sides of the feeder. My sister had tried in the morning and could not get it to move. so we went out this afternoon and tryed to move it. I went over to the feeder and was poking the hay with a broom stick, but that was not working very well so I put down the broom stick and started using my hands. it was fun talking to the sheep, but my hands were frozen ( they were very red.) So i did not realy feel how cold I was even though it was snowing out. but  I finaly got the hay moved around. the sheep looked very happy as the ate there hay.(: 

Jelly.

       Yesterday, I made Grape Jelly. I started out by mixing some grape juice and sugar. Next, I turned the burner on the stove to medium. Then, I stirred it about every 1 to 2 minutes. ( which it took forever to boil!!!) When it finally started to boil, I could not even take my spoon out of the water, Because it was trying to bubble over!!!! ( it was alive!!! ahhhh!! jk lol) After a few more minutes the bubbles started jumping out and burning my hands. ( It was very painful. ): )  I could not take the jelly off of the stove until the jelly started to sheet.

For those who don't know what sheeting is, Sheeting is when you take a metal spoon and put it in the jelly, then pull it back out and if the jelly all slides of slow and together it is done. But if it just dripps off like water then it is not done.

Then Mom finally said that I could take it of and start pouring the jelly into the jars. Well, it turned out that I had "umm" cooked it a little to long.  It was pretty thick when I was trying to put it in the jars, So by the time I got all the covers on the jars it was already set up.

The Woods

Yesterday my dad built a big fire, to burn up a bunch of dead trees. My little sister wanted to go out to the woods by the big fire. However Dad was on the skidloader, therefore she could not be outside because, Dad might not see her running around and she might get squished. I decided to go out with her. We went out there and we started picking up sticks (mostly me but she picked up a some).

 Soon dad got off the skidloader, so I went and looked for some rakes. I found a few so I brought them out to the woods and started raking. I raked and raked and raked and raked some more. I was trying to make it look pretty, hehehe. I did not get all the sticks and leaves raked up, but I got some. I was raking around a willow tree, that  is kind of tipped over but still alive. It is kinda nice cause I can sit on it.hehehe.

Later it got dark out and my little sister wanted to roast marshmellows. My dad made a little fire just for her. she was very happy. We sat on a dead tree (we have a lot of them for some reason lol) and roasted marshmallows. My little sister had like five, I told her she would get abelly ache, but surprisingly she didn't. Maybe she fell asleep before she could get one idk. Well that,s all for now.

Hello

 Hello Everyone, My name is Megan. I am in 8th grade. I live on a farm, it is pretty cool. I have 3 sisters, Katie is the oldest. Chelsea is next. Then there is Me (Megan lol). And Paige is the youngest. I have no brothers, but thats ok  lol.

I have 2 dogs, Gus is a rat terrier. And Shasta is an English Shepherd. We have 5 Cats (outdoor cats.)There names are Duster, Fingers, Mittens, Sidney, and Snickers. We have lots of Chickens. (too may I think anyway lol) So we get lots of eggs. LOTS OF EGGS! teeheehee lol. We also have one horse Ruthie and one pony Tono. But Tono acts like a giant dog lol. He is very sweet. You can just sit on his back and he doesn't move, its nice but also not so nice because when you want him to move, well.... he won't. but part of the reasone is he has arthritis.(poor guy I know lol.)

We alse have sheep, Katadin Hair Sheep is the name of the breed we raise. They are a good kind of sheep to have, because you do not have to sheer them. They just shed by themselves, they go and rub up against the fence, trees,barns and what ever else they can find. We have a garden, but it has been over run by weeds. so ya. Well I will write more later when I think of what else to write.

                                                                               ~Megan