bloonskiller911-Females rule the world :(

[bloonskiller911]

Hi all. My name is Jon and I am from Indiana. I am married and have three daughters. Safe to say that things are a little one sided in my house!! We have 10 ewes (Suffolk crosses), and a North Country Cheviot buck, 5 goats, a Nubian, and three of her Nubian/Boer cross daughters, along with a Boer/pygmy cross buck, (this is only for this year, waiting on a good Boer buck to breed too), 30 chickens, all except 2 being hens, 2 dogs, 3 female cats, 4 ducks, 2 geese, and 2 horses. You can see now how females rule the world, at least in my little realm!! Funnily, All of this started with a Rooster, but that is another story. One random rooster that we found on the side of the roadway, and in five years we have came to this, little hobbies that have came to full endeavors, learning as we go, and knuckling under most of the time. This is the year that I hope everything turns for the better, and we actually see a slight profit. Our goal is to market meat lambs, and goats locally. We have had an influx in the sheep and goat market her recently, with it becoming a very popular meat, which is good for us. The chickens pay for themselves. We sell eggs, and hatched chicks(I have an incubator) to pay for feed, butcher our own and have meat and eggs for ourselves, our daughters WILL NOT eat store bought eggs!! Ducks and geese are a new addition this year, all were gifts. People think they are so cute as babies and then realize the mess they make, then its "oh, Jon and Ashley have a pond, these would look great there!" true but we get a lot of animals that way oh well, works for us. This is a little of our current story, I will try and be diligent in keeping it updated. Lambing and Kidding season should start for us any day now. Exposure to the Billy for the goats and the ewes to the buck was five months ago, so we'll see what starts to happen.

 

[Southern by choice]

LOL You do realize you are also outnumbered here!

Having the whole family involved is such a blessing!
Kidding and lambing is exciting, exhausting, and the best time of the year! It will be fun to see all the kids and lambs.
The bigger question will be .... how many kids and lambs will you end up keeping? There is just something in the female brain that thinks every lamb and every kid needs to stay because everyone is attached and they all "LOVE" this one.

BTW- all of us ladies here like having the men on the forum. Men bring different perspectives, are usually much more laid back and generally have a sense of humor that is greatly needed!

Know your not new but welcome to the world of journaling!

 

[bloonskiller911]

Yeah I know I am outnumbered here also. I've lost the boys vs girls thread so many times I can't take it any longer!! We try to have our girls as hands on with us as possible. especially during complications. my hands do not fit as well as my wife's oR 13 yo daughter's when it comes to repositioning lambs/kids, or pulling. The little girls are good at loving them and "making" them tame!!

 

[bloonskiller911]

I am horrible about keeping this journal up. Between craziness at work, and busy-ness at home, this is rough!!

So far we have had three nannies kid. All singles, two little does that have been disbudded one that we will keep, and a little buck that will be sold intact. We have one more FF to kid and that should be in about 3 weeks.

Seven of our 10 ewes have lambed. 3 singles and 4 sets of twins. One ewe lambed in October and may have been re bred for May, we'll see. The three ewes left are yearling and judging by woohaa and udders we have about 2 weeks for one and at least a month for the two, and I am not complaining. We have been getting all the cold weather that I am sure a lot of you are experiencing. Busting the pond open to pump water is getting tedious!! Thank God for my wife. She takes care of almost all of the day to day things and with work crazy, she has taken on the majority of my chores for the evening. I haven't went to the barn for 5 days, but she needed me to band tails and do tags.

I keep telling myself that this time next month everything will be gravy, and I know it will be but I just need to get there!! Sorry for the ranting journal entry for anyone who reads this but you all know how it is. I am just thankful that we haven't had to bottle feed anything this year so far (knock on wood)!

 

[OneFineAcre]

My wife keeps things going around here too

 

[bloonskiller911]

A year an a half later and I am back to post. It has been crazy here! We had a house fire in October, no one was home--Thank God. We sold all of our sheep do to the fact that we couldn't properly take care of them but kept the goats that have thrived, and gave away all of the chickens and rabbits. That was the dark days. Its bad to lose your home, I think it was worse to lose our hobbies and pets!! But there is light! Our home is in the finishing stages of completion. We have chickens back and are pasturing ewes for a neighbor and are going to buy some of them. The goats have thrived and we are looking at this as a hidden blessing and a test from God. We, my wife and daughters, are closer than we have ever been, figuratively and literally--we are living in a 2 bedroom 14X50 trailer at the moment. The memories we make are about us not about things, and we really do think of this as a blessing. On a side note I left backyardherds.com for a bit. I didn't want to see anyone's lambs or kids....sorry, that was selfish of me. I am back now and can't believe how much I have missed. I won't be posting in here for a while as I have way to much reading to catch up on!!

 

[Sumi]

Glad to see you back So sorry to hear about the fire and everything… But glad to hear you are all o.k. and came through this with such a wonderful, positive outlook!

 

[samssimonsays]

Welcome back! I am sorry to hear of the losses but happy to see you are back!

 

[OneFineAcre]

So sorry for the loss of your home. You seem to have a great spirit in finding a silver lining to the dark cloud. Welcome back.

 

[Latestarter]

I commented that it was good to see you the other day on another post. Wow, so sorry about your fire losses. So happy that no harm came to family members. I'm glad that you are able to look at it in such a positive light. I'm sure it helped bring your family even closer together. Glad that things are starting to come together and some semblance of normalcy is not too far off. Nice to have you back!