Here's a short introduction to the other animals on our farm:
THE CATS
This is Whisper
Whisper is an indoor/outdoor cat. If he sprays in my house again, he'll be an outdoor/outdoor cat! He was given to me by a girl at work. He'll be neutered in a couple of weeks. Hopefully that will help with the spraying. I think that if I was a cat and someone neutered me, I'd stop just about everything! Just in case. I could only get one pic of the barn cats because they aren't around when I want them to be. This one appears to be the sentry:
We probably have 8 or 9 barn cats. All of them are black or black and white. Like our other animals, they sleep. A lot. Some farmers don't feed their cats cat food, so they'll catch the mice and rats that eat the grain in the barn. We do feed our cats cat food, and cow's milk that's left over. For the most part, our cats are pretty healthy. The tomcats are huge! I've actually seen Tommy (original for a tomcat! again, I didn't name him) laying on a bale of hay in the barn and when a mouse ran past, he just yawned, stretched and turned the other way!
MY CHICKEN HOUSE
These guys are in my back yard. I love my chickens and duck. I used to have 3 more male ducks and a couple of roosters. Waaay too much testosterone in the chicken yard! The males were mounting anything that moved. They were pulling the feathers off of the backs of the chickens and my female duck. My friend Adaira took my male ducks to a beautiful little farm with a lake and the ducks love it there. We won't discuss what happened to the roosters. That's a farm secret that I don't want to know about. I can tell you that we don't eat our animals! They are our pets. In my mind, the roosters are hanging out at a huge chicken farm somewhere happily fertilizing eggs all day long! The remaining duck is Lola. She has her own little swimming pool that she loves! She also likes it when I spray her with the hose. The chickens do not. I can't remember the names of all of the chickens. They all come to "Here chicky chicky!" So does Lola, for that matter. So did the male ducks that Adaira took to the other farm. I told her to let the gentleman know that was how he had to call them!
THE BUNNY
This is Petey. OK, I did name him. I got him about 5 years ago at the Washington County fair. He is such a sweet rabbit.
He's also a spoiled rabbit. He has a winter home and a summer gazebo:
Oh....Petey likes to swim!
THE COWS
Finally, there are the cows. My husband is a 3rd generation dairy farmer. We're a pretty small dairy with a total of just 38 cows. Most of our cows are holsteins (the black and white ones!), but we do have some jerseys (little brown cows), angus (beef cows), and now Ed is mixing in some brown swiss. Here are some of our cows.
Many times, we end up with orphaned or injured animals that we try to help get back to their environment. We've had birds, chipmunks, a baby raccoon, bunnies, a turtle...you name it!
But, by far, everyone's favorite is Amos. We'll talk about him next time...
We currently have five dogs:
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| ZOEY |
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| AFTER THE SKUNKING |
Zoey is the oldest and only female. She's a 10 yrold Blue Heeler. You should see her herd the cattle. She can put the whole herd through a single fence all by herself! However, she chooses not to, and follows me around everywhere I go. She was hit by a car a few years ago, and the Vet and I put her back together in my breezeway! She had some serious head and chest injuries, but you'd never know it now. As a result of her accident, we now have an underground dog fence which, unfortunately for the dogs, can be pretty funny at times! Zoey is, however, afraid of her own shadow. She'll either run from you, or try to herd you! She is also the mother of the next two dogs:
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| GUS & ROSCOE |
Gus is on the left and Roscoe is on the right. They are 6 year old Heeler/Beagle mixes. Gus is also afraid of his own shadow. But, wait till you see how Gus loves Amos. Roscoe thinks he's the boss and the other dogs tend to agree with him.
This is a typical day....they're in trouble again and sent outside. Roscoe is angry and Gus' feelings are hurt so he is turning his back on me!
I can never stay mad, though. Look how sweet they are when they're sleeping.....
Next comes Oscar....He's the father of Gus and Roscoe. He's a 9 year old beagle that is just about the sweetest dog you'll ever meet! Here's how Oscar spends most of his time, and he snores really loud!:
Then we have Rufus and his brother Hank. Hank lives in the farm house with Andrew and Kelly
These two get into sooo much trouble! I'll be telling you lots of stories about them!
My family and I live on a 120 acre farm in Washington County Pennsylvania. My husband, Ed, and I have 3 sons. Andrew and his wife Kelly live on the farm in the old farmhouse. Michael and Jacob are both attending Waynesburg Unversity, but they're home most weekends and during breaks. That's the thing about a farm. Everyone has to pitch in with taking care of the animals, cleaning the barn, baling hay, planting fields, harvesting crops, fixing equipment.... A farm is a LOT of work, but its worth it! We love to share our farm with others! Nothing makes me happier than to watch children experiencing the farm. Seeing it from there eyes is truly a gift. We have a lot of changes coming up with our farm in the near future, so I decided to start blogging again. I don't want to forget our farm the way it is now, and I want to share the changes with you, as they come. Most important, I want kids to be able to enjoy our farm family and be able to ask questions about our farm life!
