Elk on the Road

The elk are back!

2 Cats in the Yard, Buck & summer Flowers

Bart brought his big backhoe up to dig the holes for the new solar panels. Orange decided to supervise so we have 2 cats in teh yard now.


This buck showed up today too. Don't know if we got deer tags or not yet but he might be a tasty buck if we do.



I really liked these flowers growing over the old hay rake.

Some of our Wildlife

Magpie - We have hundreds of these birds. While pretty they also can steal a lot of dog and chicken food.


This is a marmot in the rock wall.

Metal Roof & Fall Turkeys

Bill's back to finish the porch roof.


Here he's bending the metal for the various edges.


Getting ready to cut another piece.


Later that evening we went up to the neighbors for dinner. One of the local flocks of turkeys came strolling by. A large group of chicks and several hens and a tom. I only got a few pictures of them but there were a lot more than in this shot.

First Buck of the Season

First buck of the season arrived today.


A really nice 2 by 3 still in velvet. Skinny though, hope he fattens up before hunting season.

Porch work & Big Frog in the Pond

Porch coming along. The railing is being started now.



The pond by the house has some rather large frogs in it, Including this one about the size of my hand.

Ducks on the Pond

I was filling the horse water tanks when I noticed a huge amount of quacking, thrashing and splashing in the small pond by the house. This mother duck was racing back and forth tying to convince me she had a broken wing and I should come chase her.
Her ducklings were hiding in the reeds near where I was. They all got out and found mom.
I was able to sneak up on them and by moving slowly got a few pictures.

Day Before Shearing

One day before we go to pick up Eifion. 14 deer in the front yard and snow!

Right at Home

I guess the pile of wood shavings mulch makes a great bed/lookout area!

Sheep and Chickens

The spare sheep has settled right in. He hardly even moves now when we go outside. He is eating the hay for the horses and donkey and we've had to move sheep away from where he is. I sure wish he'd head on out to somewhere else.
The new batch of chickens is growing well too. They are now off the main newspaper litter and on pine shavings. We still put the food and water on paper. Four have died but the rest are doing well.
Meanwhile it's time to put the adult rams and the ram lambs together into one big ram bunch. We sorted out one old ram who will go to slaughter at the end of this month and 2 who are sold and will travel together to their new place in a couple of weeks. The rest of the rams, all 27 of them, are now crammed in together in the mixing pen. We start out with a bunch of hay bales in the pen and the feeders full. It's small enough that if they all lay down at once they cover the floor with sheep. The idea is not to let them get a big enough space to be able to run and bash each other too much. By the time the hay bales are gone they are getting better. We slowly open up the pen giving them more and more space until in a couple of weeks they are now one big ram bunch. It takes a while to get them to sort out who's boss but this has worked for us for several years and seems to be the best way to integrate the youngsters with the old boys.
The ewes, lambs and replacement ewes are now all in one bunch grazing. Pastures are doing well and the lambs are growing well. We should be getting 30 days weights this week and we'll see how they are doing then but just looking at them most are looking very good.

Spare Sheep

We have a spare sheep today. A Rocky Mountain big horn ram. A young one by the look of the horns. He was in the grazing pen with our sheep out in the yard. We scooted ours back into the corrals and took down the fencing. That's the end of the grazing the front lawn for a while I guess.

The guard dogs do not like him and bark at him a lot. They ignore deer so I'm not sure why they think he is a threat.

Off to Wool Festival & Bears

Heading out today to attend part of the Taos Wool Festival. I'm taking my second revision of a Monmouth cap and the start of a scarf from a chart that I am having problems reading in hopes I can get some help from some of my knitting friends who will be there.

The Monmouth cap is interesting. My first one followed the many on-line patterns fairly well but when it was done, although a very nice knit cap, it doesn't look at all like the one in the Nelson Museum. So I started another of my own design but am stuck on the double knitting part for the brim. I think I have a plan to finish it but want to run it by someone else first.

About a week ago we had bears visit us very close to the house. I keep meaning to put up the pictures of the tracks but just didn't get around to it until today. There were at least 2 bears one larger and one a bit smaller. The first track was a small distance from the house as you can see. It was fresh, we back tracked and found fresh scat too.
Bears can be very serious predators of sheep. They will go into a killing frenzy and just keep killing sheep without eating any of them. So far our guard dogs have managed to keep them away but I am anxious to get the bears off the mesa and hiberbating. The next morning we found more tracks very close to the house. Right by the porch as a matter of fact.

There is a huge overpopulation of bears. When Colorado got rid of the spring bear hunt we started having many more problem bears that come in where people are and learn about domestic stock as food animals. We are allowed to protect our stock but the increased density of houses in rural areas make it harder to find clear sight lines to shoot the offending bears. Predator protection costs add a lot to the cost of our wool and our meat. Each guard dog puppy has nearly $2000 invested before he or she is deemed a reliable guard animal.

Sometimes I wish the urban folks who think predators are cute would come see the devestation they can cause. But no one wants to see the bears shredding sheep and guard dogs, or the coyotes dragging still living lambs off while their mothers try to save them, or worst of all, wolves first attacking and killing all the guard dogs of a flock before decimating the poor sheep.

So far we have been very lucky, we have not lost any sheep to predators once we had enough guard dogs, 4 for our small 20 acres of land. We have lost geese and many chickens and had sheep injured who survived. I hope we can keep enough dogs on hand to protect our precious animals.