Looking Up

These are some happy farm dogs. It looks like I photoshopped Ryan's smile but no...that's just his face.

We went to take some photos in the orchard and found Amelia (the ewe) tangled in the electronetting. That wasn't so happy. She is fine but we'll have to be more careful about consistently testing the fence. I think the battery died and Oprah made a clean escape, then Amelia tried to follow and her escape ended in near disaster. An animal getting tangled in live electric fence could end pretty badly.

After leaving the orchard, we found all of the chickens huddled together under a clump of trees, which we've never seen before. We were wandering around trying to figure out what had spooked them when a hawk suddenly flew out of one of the trees. Ack! We've been so lucky about no predators so far with the free ranging chickens - I would hate for that to change. I met a woman the other day who has lost 30 chickens this summer to ravens. I never even thought about ravens going after the chickens - the dogs do a good job of chasing them away whenever they spot them. 

Then the owner of the horses and cows showed up to give them some treats. As the horses, dogs, cows and chickens were all going nuts for any crumbs, 2 large ravens landed amongst them all and started eating the crumbs, too. I encouraged the dogs to chase them but Abby and Ryan were too busy looking for scraps...when suddenly Speckles raced up to the ravens and chased them away! They tried to land again and she did the same thing. That's Speckles in the bottom left corner. She's one tough chicken!

Abby looks tiny next to Fred.

Mac and Molly (the other two Belgians) went to a retirement home a few weeks ago so it's just the 3 big guys left. Barney and Sam don't always seem to get along too well - today we saw them backing up towards each other and kicking each other with those huge, powerful legs. I'm constantly making sure that Abby and Ryan stay away from those feet! I hate to think about what could happen with even one small kick...

Barney (I rode him around the farm the other day- he was so good!):

Sam - the biggest horse I've ever seen: