KKB - how did you do that? (It is a heart covered in live bees, right?)
Well, I have been making the most of the nice days and doing tons of work outside. Yesterday we spent a lot of time preparing the veggie garden to be tilled. Hopefully in the next few weeks the neighbor will bring his big tiller home from work and till it for us again like he did last year. My garden planner says I can start my first seeds now
Its not spring yet but it is getting closer.
My RP tom is displaying this morning for the first time since his illness. I'm taking that as a sign he is feeling better! Blackhead is unlike anything I've ever dealt with before in terms of how long it takes them to recover. With a respiratory infection, as soon as the antibiotic kicks in, they're back to eating and sounding better, even if they still have some doses to go. But with this, there was a week of twice a day pills but even after that it was a while before he got his appetite back and since he started eating, it has still been quite a few days until he felt well enough to display. I picked him up yesterday and he maybe feels a little thinner than before he was sick but amazingly, he didn't lose a ton of condition during his illness, despite not eating for so long.
Meanwhile, I watched my BR tom mate one of the BR hens yesterday. He and the Blue Slate tom were dancing a dance around her, each trying to make sure she picked their display over their rival's. Eventually she squatted and the BR tom climbed aboard. I'm guessing that means I will - finally - see eggs in the not too distant future.
The little lamb - Snowball - is doing great. I tried letting mum and baby out with the rest of the flock, figuring since she was born in the flock, and sheep flocks typically do stay together during lambing, that baby would be integrated into the flock fairly easily. It didn't go so well. One of the other pregnant ewes, would butt the lamb any chance she got. The lamb didn't seem too bothered by it - accepted it as "play" - but the mother ewe tried to keep herself between the ewe and her lamb to protect it. So that was fine - I figured it would settle down after a little while - and I'm sure it would have. The problem came when the ram decided an "open" ewe was unacceptable and she must be impregnated immediately. She he started trying to mount her and between trying to ward off his advances AND keep herself between the ewe and the lamb, the poor mother was having quite a time of it. Not to mention that several times while trying to run from the ram, she inadvertently knocked the lamb flying. So I separated the ram and the goats into the sheep pen, and left the 3 ewes and the little lamb out to graze and peace finally reigned. The lamb is SOOOO cute to watch - I could (and do?) do that for hours. She imitates everything Mum does, so if Mum grazes, so does she. I was really surprised to see her nibbling at grass and hay so young. And she is very cheeky. She runs up to the ewe that always butts her, and then scampers away as soon as the ewe turns her head to butt. We have a couple of very old round bales out in our pasture and when they were grazing near them, the lamb had a ball running up to the top of the bales, hopping and skipping the whole way in that leggy, lamby way. Then Mum would call her down and she'd go scampering back down again but as soon as Mum turned her back to graze, Snowball was back up on those bales. It was so cute!
At night Mum and baby go back into the "nursery" to spend the night. They are alone there and Mum got the hang of that very quickly. Now all I have to do is point her in the right direction and she will lead baby back to the nursery and wait for me to secure the gate in front of it. I feel pretty confident they are safe there at night. The rest of them get locked into the sheep pen at night. I don't know when the next lambs will be born but I don't want it to be way out in the pasture where they are vulnerable to predation, so I figure if I keep them in the pen at night they are much safer, and during the day I let them out to graze but I am here to keep an eye on things.
One of the other ewes looks like she could deliver soon but the other is not showing any signs yet. The one that is showing no signs though, is by far the biggest (bigger now than Mum was on the day she delivered) so she is either having a huge single, or maybe a multiple birth.
Trish, glad to hear the MRI results - hopefully you can get more mobile now that the snow and ice are melting and you don't have to fear more surgery.