Spring Updates

Here are some more baby pictures:

One of Patience's three bucklings. We've had several kids born with their ears sort of inside-out like this, which is a little disturbing at first; fortunately as they get older the ears fall forward naturally.
Another little doeling--either Temerity's or Mercy's. It got a little difficult to keep them all straight this year, since most were black and white. We just sold this girl to a lady from Bend, who was so eager to buy her that she made a 10-hour round trip!

Buckling #2--a very sweet picture that belies his rambunctious nature! He and the other buckling like to jump off hay bales and crash into people's chests--it's quite something.

This is the third of Patience's bucklings, the one who was nursed back from the brink of death. He couldn't walk for several days, but a warm spot in front of the woodstove and regular bottles from my longsuffering mother and her husband finally brought him around. They decided to wether him and keep him as a companion for our buck Faithful.


Unfortunately, poor Faithful has met a sad end. He had a short but good and productive life on our farm, and yesterday my mother found him dead in the barn. We're not sure what happened, but he had seemed droopy for a few days and his body must have been weakened and vulnerable from his difficult childhood (which I posted about some time ago). We won't ever find another buck like him--he was as sweet and mellow as a wether, while being an impressively virile father of really beautiful babies. Even tiny Lucy could run around him fearlessly.

It's been a tough spring. We had our first birth problems--two stillbirths out of twelve kids total; Temerity has hoof rot; Mercy had a bad reaction to alfalfa pellets and is producing hardly any milk; the pasture is soggy and overgrazed; Erin rejected one of her twin lambs (she's doing fine and is being bottlefed, and we've found a home for her, fortunately); 22 chicks died or were eaten by rats; the birds have been busily digging up most of the seeds I've planted in the garden; and now we've lost our buck.

We have been able to sell all the babies except the two bucks so far, all to good homes, so that is a blessing. And spring is around the corner, though it's blowing in fiercely with almost constant rain. All of us are looking forward to dry sunny days, hoping that better weather will restore our animals to health, our family to sanity, and our garden to a paradisical riot of bounty.