Hello Goodbye

I was at a big dog training conference for the last week - what a busy time to leave the farm! Nathan took great care of everything, including the puppy (and I managed to not give him a list of any kind - even though I was tempted - now that's trust ;) ).

Everything has grown so much in 6 days! The seedlings are all huge, the ewes are *really* huge and ready to burst, the broiler chicks are monsters and Zoey looks like a real dog now and not a puppy.

 Broiler chicks first day on pasture last week:

Zoey grew ears and legs:

 Today we had to say goodbye to our farm icon, Zebra Head. Our king rooster just ended up getting too big for his legs, we think. He was originally supposed to be one of our 6 meat birds but he had so much character that we kept him. He was probably close to 10 lbs. He got stepped on by a goat and never fully recovered from that (he had been limping since the fall) and then something else must have happened to his other leg and suddenly he wasn't fully weight bearing on either one. He basically just sat around and ate...we gave him over a month to see if he would recover (kept him in the coop/outdoor run so he wouldn't be too mobile) and he didn't gain back any mobility at all. 

Goodbye Zebra Head, we'll miss your giant presence on the farm. 

In other not so great news, Zeb the llama got really sick last week. We noticed him lying down more than usual and he'd had diarrhea. When we went to try and catch him, he let us walk right up to him - bad sign. He was really weak and could barely walk, and he was really really skinny. We feel awful that we let him get that skinny unknowingly. Hard lesson learned - physically check all animals regularly, even when they are skittish! We should have found a way to get our hands on him and check him earlier. We called the vet to the farm the next morning and she said that basically it is likely that he has something bad, like cancer (he is older-middle aged - 14). She dewormed him just in case and gave him some pain killers, and we've been keeping him in the barn and giving him beet pulp with grain along with letting him graze and giving him hay. He is a lot better than when we got him out of the pasture last week, but I'm not feeling too hopeful. We'll see how it goes.

Sick Zeb (the foam is from licking his salt block):

In much better news - we got the 4 piglets today! They are so so cute. They're probably around 30 lbs right now at 9 weeks. I am going to try very hard to not get attached but... it's going to be difficult.