Meet the animals (part 1)
On our farm we have a LOT of animals - more sheep than I can count of both commercial and pedigree breeds. We also have a lot of horses - Dales ponies predominantly, as well as pigs, chickens, dogs and cats!
I was going to write this blog about what it's like living on a farm, but I think that will have to wait because I started writing about our animals' characters and couldn't stop!
The animals are HUGE characters and all have interesting stories. A few of them are:
Buck the chicken who demands to be fed every morning - she is the biggest diva and although we have trained her to do a little hop for food it's very much on her terms! She swaggers into the barn, walks where she wants regardless of if a human or horse is crossing her path, and generally exudes big diva energy. Buck is very lucky to even be alive actually - she was found on the roadside with 4 siblings as a days-old chick. Luckily a passer-by found them, and my sister took them in and raised them (we have a brooder warming plate for young chicks). They are VERY lucky to be alive as I don't think they would have survived at all if they hadn't been found. We have no idea how they ended up by the road!
Emperor - one of our Dales stallions. You think of a stallion and you might think of a fierce, fiery horse who is a bit scary.. but Emperor is a Labrador in pony form. He likes nothing more than coming in from the field for some attention and is the politest, kindest boy you could meet.
The guinea fowl - collective. We have ten of them, and they exist purely to entertain us. They have a strange symbiotic relationship - they move as a pack and we don't have a clue who the leader is or how they make decisions.. they just move as one! They sleep in the stable barn at night and if they decide to come in we all have to stand solidly still, because if someone moves they take fright and then spend the night on the roof, which isn't really ideal. They also make the strangest noises and sound like squeaky gates.
Head-dunker - Head-dunker is a Teeswater sheep who is now quite ancient but has her name because instead of drinking out of a water trough like a normal sheep.. she dunks her entire head in! She doesn't seem at all fazed by this method of drinking and in fact seems to thrive on it.
I actually could talk about each one of our animals because they've all got massive characters but if I do this blog will be incredibly long!! Suffice to say, our world is dominated by these animals' lives, and that is really the crux of living on a farm. The animals come first, always.
A couple of pics to finish of just our lovely animals - most of my phone is of them!
In my next blog I will write a bit more about the day to day of the farm, but if you have any questions please feel free to drop them in the comments!