Thorsby Critter Auction Buying Pigeons

The Thorsby Auction market is located in the town of Thorsby, Alberta.  It is an auction market that holds cattle sales once a week (Mondays) and horse sales once a month.  They also hold an odd and unusual critter auction in which sellers bring many odd and unusual livestock animals and exotic pets (mostly rabbits, caged birds, and guinea pigs), and interested buyers can bid on them.  These auctions are in the spring and fall.

They auction off the birds first, often chickens, peafowl, ducks, pigeons, and so forth depending on what people have brought.  After which they sell goats, pigs, sheep, llamas, alpacas, miniature horses, donkeys, and some cattle.  Every auction is different,  you really never can be sure on what will be there, and what the prices will be.

The first year we attended laying hens were selling for fifty cents a piece.  There were well over 40 birds, Isa Browns I think.  After that year I never saw laying hens so cheap again, one year there were only 5 laying hens in the whole auction (there were other hens sold as a pair with a rooster, or specialty breeds such as Silkies).  In some cases laying hens sold for over $15.00 a bird.

King Utility Pigeons

We have seen llamas sell for $20 a piece but at one auction the auctioneers were paying people a dollar to take a llama. 

You see it all at these places, including some signs of neglect, such as donkey's with neglected feet.

Sometimes you get a bit of information on the animals (such as the miniature horses) sometimes you do not even get their name. 

In the past we have bought and sold sheep at the Thorsby Auction Market, I find the prices tend to be rather low, as such fewer people bring sheep to sell than in the past and many opt for private sales, or take them to other auction markets where "meat" prices are high. 

This year we sold a bunch of farm equipment that we were not using and bought 2 pairs of pigeons.  In the past we have purchased laying hens, but this year we want to take a bit of a holiday and to have fewer birds to look after in general.  Although hens are great to have, they are more work than pigeons.

Tumbler Pigeons

One pair we bought were King Utility Pigeons, apparently people eat them; not us, they are pets.

The other pair we bought were Tumblers, these being pigeons that fly and then "tumble", it would be cool to get a video of them in flight, apparently though this also puts them at risk of being taken by hawks.  I am not sure I fully understand the behavior, why they fly this way, but it sounds interesting.

I took pictures of the pairs, I should like to get better pictures in the future, as the colors on the Tumblers did not show up well.

At this particular auction I managed to purchase the birds for less than $10.00 each. 

The Thorsby Auction market is less than an hour south west of Edmonton and has unusual critter auctions every spring and fall.  To find out the dates call the Thorsby Auction market at 780-789-3915.

Fat Rumped Sheep

Typically when people think if sheep they think of a classic looking animal with white wool, and a docked tail.  When shown an image of a Fat Rumped sheep they think the poor thing has some sort of growth, but fat rumped, and fat tailed sheep represent about 20 - 25 % of the entire sheep population on the planet, most being the the Middle East, Africa, India, and parts of China. 

Fat rumped, and fat tailed sheep, are not new, they have been around before Biblical times, and are very adapted to their environments and a nomidic lifestyle in harsh conditions.  They are among the more unusual types of sheep.

photo source

Fat rumped, and fat tailed sheep do not have their tails docked, over time these areas get larger.  These sheep store fat in their tails, or rumps, much like a camel stores fat in its hump.  Few people know this, but donkeys store fat in the same way, along the sides of the crest of their neck.  The tails, or rumps, have been used in cooking, but is less popular now than years ago when other cooking oils and fats were harder to get.

Some of the more common breeds include the Blackhead Persian, which is a hair sheep, the Awassi, and the Karakul sheep, whom we have talked about before due to the cruel industry of harvesting fetal lambs.

Fat rumped, and fat tailed sheep are very exotic, and a bit funny looking to people who have not seen them before, but they are ideally suited to life in harsher desert areas. 

Read more, and see more pictures, of fat rumped, and fat tailed sheep, by clicking here.

Turning Patsy Sheep into Art

Patsy, as you may recall, is a Jacob x Barbado sheep ewe.  She has 5 horns, although in this picture you can only see 3 horns clearly.  Even though it is spring we still have a foot (or more) of snow here, and not much can be done outside, so I thought I would take a picture of Patsy and do some photo manipulation work to it using a program called Corel Photo-Paint 8. 

Here is the original photo of Patsy sheep.

This is not a great picture, she is at a funny angle, there are the legs of another sheep in the background, and the upper corners are bright and distracting.  As such it is a good photo to have fun with and turn into some art.

Photos, of course, are copyright owned by myself, not for reproduction!

I first had to add some color to the white parts in the background, and blur out the pair of legs.  I also had to make Patsy's eye darker so it would not be lost in the art rendition. 

I came up with several images, this is just one.  Here I used a program called Fractalius. 

If you would like to see the other images (including one where she looks more like a rug), and the steps used to get this image, you can see the full link called Art, Fun with Patsy.

Other Links of Interest

How to Take Better Photographs of a Pet

Painting Sheep -this blog

Patsy has Twins - this blog