Saturday, November 29, 2014

Surprise Triplet Lambs Born at the Wrong TIme of Year

On Sunday, November 23, I went outside to feed the sheep as usual.  We had known that at least one ewe was pregnant but did not expect lambs for another month at least (ideally later than that), so when I went out to feed them in the morning and found one ewe with triplet lambs following behind her I was quite surprised.  Especially since the weather had been below freezing and there was snow on the ground.

I got them into a stall in the barn and made sure they were okay.  They were already dried but the tails on two of them were frozen and I expect may fall off due to frost bite.  I tried to warm in my hands but it could have been too late.

After a day it was clear that the ewe, named Girlie, was not producing enough milk for all three lambs so I went to the feed store and bought a bag of lamb milk replacement formula which cost around $50.00.  I also bought more nipples for the bottles.

Two of the three lambs, the one in front is not being bottle fed, the one in back is.


I am currently bottle feeding two of the three lambs at least three times a day, four if I am home from work.  Unfortunately the weather only got worse, we have a huge amount of snow now and the temperature fell to -34 C (including windchill) which is about the same as -29 F.

The lambs are doing okay and I am monitoring the other ewes as well, it looks like 3 of them are pregnant too, so we have started giving them extra rations and bringing them in the barn for the night too (mind you with the cold temperatures I would have started to bring them in the barn at night anyhow).


Thursday, November 20, 2014

Oh Gosh a Starving Stray Cat Has Shown Up At My House

The other night my daughter's boyfriend said he saw a fluffy (he thought it was black and white) cat run out of our garage.  Drat!  This meant that a stray has shown up on the farm and one thing we do not need is more cats.   We have five cats already (only one of whom we adopted).

The following day my husband was cleaning out the deep freeze, and found a couple of meat packages that had been ripped so he put them in a box and set the box on the deck so we could take it to the dump later.  It is below freezing here and we did not think the frozen meat would attract coyotes, but it did attract the stray cat.

I was just about to go outside and I noticed a fluffy tabby and white cat sitting at the box trying desperately to get some food.  I opened the door but the cat took off.  At that point I figured it was feral.  Later in the afternoon I spotted it again trying to get some meat but this time when I opened the door the cat did not run.  I approached it and patted it.  I went back inside to get it some cat food.

As you can see this poor cat is really hungry.
I do not want to bring the cat inside as we have plenty of cats indoors already and the oldest cat gets very upset as it is, and we do not know if this cat is vaccinated or anything about it.  I have plenty of sheltered areas outside and put more food outside for this cat.

It is definitely friendly so I assume it was a pet, perhaps abandoned, or scared off its home by coyotes.  I put up a poster at the mailboxes but so far nobody has called about this cat.  It is thin and so I am going to continue to give it extra canned food.

If nobody claims the cat then we will end up keeping it, but for now I do hope somebody calls and says "Hey that's my cat".

Here is information on what to do if you find a stray cat.