Saturday, July 07, 2007

All work and no play... not.

Neil and I were woken up early this morning by Berk barking non-stop. I lifted my head to look out the window at him to see what direction he was barking in. He was barking into the barn... at the geese! Neil had gotten home late last night with the two new embden geese. They were in our large wire dog kennel so Neil and I lifted them into the barn still in the kennel, put some hay and water in with them and left them for the night. Well, this morning Berk and Emmie discovered them and were not happy about having strange large birds in their barn. I trudged out of bed to go silence Berk before the neighbors started to complain. I moved the kennel closer to the fence so Berk and Emmie could get a good look at them. The geese put on a good show and didn't back down at all. They stayed there several hours until the dogs started to ignore them and went to lie down. Then I moved the geese into the male alpaca pasture which shares a fence line with the dogs so the geese could stretch their legs and get something to eat. The dogs got all excited again but it didn't take as long to get them to settle down this time. I sure hope getting these geese help with our poultry killing LGDs.

Speaking of poultry the first of our young roosters crowed today. Or at least he tried his best. It was the Hill Roamer rooster we had gotten with the goats. I am looking forward to hearing more of them crowing soon.

We had a full day working out in the barn today trying to get things finished so we can rearrange some of the animals to make room for the 7 alpacas and our rescue llama that will all be arriving a week from today!

Neil finished framing in the backside of the barn and got the siding up as well. I managed to get another acre of the pasture mowed while helping Neil as much as I could. Once the back wall of the barn was done we needed to reinstall the automatic waterer that the cows and donkeys are currently using since we put a wall where it formally was. But, I got to move it to it's permanent home on the other side of the 20x24 run in area that will soon belong to the female alpacas. The cows and donkeys are getting demoted to a smaller run in area on the other side of the barn. Finally, with most of the siding installed on the walls the cows no longer need to walk around and over the siding piled in the barn.

We finished up in time to get all cleaned up and headed into town. Neil took us to the movies to see Ratatouille by Pixar. It was only the second movie that the kids had seen in a theater and they did great! I was surprised the kids didn't fall asleep during the film as it was a two-hour movie and we had gone to a later show that didn't start until 9:35pm. But no, they both watched the entire movie through to the end. It was a good movie... as usual Pixar did not disappoint! For those Pixar fans out there you will LOVE the "short" at the beginning of the film.... so funny!

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