When I posted about my 2 year blogversary, I never expected to have such a
fantastic and warm response to the farm updates. Thank you! I am SO glad
you enjoy them. It really feels GREAT to know that not only do we love
our wacky little farm, but you appreciate our
efforts as well. Thank YOU!
With that in mind, yesterday evening I
slipped out to the barnyard to see what I could see and I thought I'd give you an update on the goings-on out there!
Dixie Cup and Cleo are growing like weeds! Pictured above is Dixie Cup and here mama, Dixie. Cup is growing up to be a beautiful little heifer. Remember when she was born, she was as black as black can be? The sun has slowly bleached her dark black baby hair to be a beautiful reddish brown color. Her hair will be dark black again after she sheds out her baby summer hair. Too bad too, because both her and Cleo are as pretty as can be with their auburn colored coats.
Here's Dixie Cup again with an apparent itch on her hiney. I was surprised to see that her tongue is two very different colors on the top and bottom. Who knew!
She found a stick quite interesting and a little bit tasty.
What I find interesting about Dixie Cup is that while she refuses to let us touch her, she finds us completely fascinating. She watches our every move. She's gonna be a wild one for good, I think (just like her mother...).
This is one of my favorite photos from the evening. It started out as Cup (left) investigating some of the weeds in the pasture. It wasn't long before Cleo (right) decided to join her. Cup, who is two weeks older than Cleo, looks to be nearly twice the size of little Cleo. But both of them have the beautiful coloring from the sun, though both of them really are black cows.
Here's Cup again, checking out more weeds. Fascinating weeds...
Cleo must have decided that she was NOT going to cooperate for our little photo session. Here's the only other photo I was able to get of her. Her face is much more feminine than Cup's face. It will be fun to see how pretty she gets as she grows up. I'm hoping she grows up to have her mother's temperament as well.
As for the baby chickens, they're also growing like weeds! Here's one of the Red Frizzle babies, looking every so lovely in her frizzled out feather-do. Even the feathers on her head are frizzled! If you raise chickens, no matter how many, I highly recommend raising a few frizzles. They have so much personality and are so fun to watch! I could spend hours watching them run from one side of the chicken yard to the other - and back again. We purchased our Frizzle chicks as day-old chicks from Ideal Poultry. Very healthy birds, and though 25% of Frizzles won't actually have the flipped, frizzled feathers, 5 of the 6 chicks we received in our order do. The one chick that doesn't have the flipped, frizzled feathers, is still a beautiful chick with unbelievably soft feathers! I'll try and get a photo of her soon... she's a beauty!
Here's one of the Red Silkie chicks. This is the first time I've ever raised Silkies, and they are a bundle of energy! I love how it looks like she's wearing fluffy white slippers on her feet! In this photo you can see that the skin of Silkie chickens is dark, not white or yellow like most chickens. You can also see in this photo that Silkie chickens have two toes that point backwards, in addition to the three toes that point forward. Other chickens have three toes that point forward, and only one toe that points backwards. How's that for some chicken trivia!
Princess (our fourth Dexter cow expecting a calf this year) is starting to look like she's contemplating having her baby soon. Her baby will for sure be black, but we're hoping that she has a little heifer this year. Last year, she delivered Ribeye, our little (and I'm not joking when I say LITTLE) polled bull (polled means he is naturally horn-less). We're keeping Ribeye for breeding (being polled is a GOOD thing!), as he's quite a charming little fella to have around. Princess is our prettiest cow, and we'd like to see her good looks passed on to a little heifer. Here's hoping!
Life on the farm... good, clean (?) fun.
Happy Friday!
