Lesse … shot my workshop with a 12 gauge shotgun (accident, oops).
Luna the d.Bag donkey opportunistically broke out of her pasture when I bumped the fence with the front of the tractor and knocked one of the horizontal cross-members off. Put the ‘sheps to work chasing her down and herding her into a pasture for capture.
After about 4 hours of livin la vida loca by herself in the “big” pasture, she was clearly ready to return to be with Soleil. I ran to the local store to buy donkey bait (carrots and peanuts) and lured her into custody with a few carrots. Probably the easiest capture and return to date. She normally fights me like a ISIS noob and ends up choking herself out. Not this time! Easy Breezy.
I think I need to buy Deuce a hockey helmet, cuz he’s too damn dumb around the donkeys, and as much shit as I talk on camera … I’d actually HATE to see him get his front teeth knocked out, or his cranium vacated. Luna has it in her to kill with those kicks of hers.
Oh, yeah. And my rooster thinks he’s hen apparently. In this day of “gender fluidity” … no surprise I guess.
As I described in the opening segment … I was on my first cup of coffee, doing my morning situational awareness review (SAR) (news, weather, etc.) when it dawned on me that I was hearing something … a bird of some sort … that struck me as … different. I thought, hmmm, sounds like a baby chicken. DOAH! I forgot about the duck eggs in the incubator in the window sill behind me!
Sure enough … first baby duckling had hatched! As you may recall, I found a clutch of duck eggs in a next next to my duck pond, and couldn’t find the mother duck. Thinking perhaps a coyote got her, I moved all 20 of the eggs into an incubator. I’ve incubated over a 100 chicken eggs, but never any duck eggs (until NOW!). I did some research, and estimated their hatch date to be the 10th of October. Obviously, I was only 2 days off. We ended up with three newborn ducklings by the end of the day, and there is still about 7 eggs in the incubator, with one showing signs of hatching now.
Also found that one of my mamma rabbits dropped a litter of 10 to 12 new rabbit kits into a nest box over night.
Then, I found a free-ranging rabbit of mine with a whole nest of maggot larvae in an open wound in her neck. GROSS!
Spent some quality time with the pupperino (Deuce). He and Hooey helped me unfurl a big ol’ hay roll in the freshly seeded ‘park’ next door, which we’ll need to distribute over 1.8 acres today (Tuesday).
Long day … but a good day. Country living at it’s best.
What an exciting update! My Mother, bless her heart, decided she wanted buy Hunter and new playmate. So, yesterday Hooey and I drove to a local breeder of German Shepherds (GSD) and Belgian Malinois. They are an AKC registered breeder, and provide a lot of dogs to law enforcement agencies.
They had 3 male GSDs pups available. Interestingly enough, I chose the runt of the litter, as she (the breeder) had given him a lot of personalized attention and segregation from the rest of the litter so he could bulk up in size and weight to match his litter mates. In doing so, she warned that he was a little spoiled vis-a-vis attention, and a tad ‘vocal.’ PERFECT! That’s just what Hooey and this farm need!
She asked if I had a name picked out. I told her that I tend to like to spend some time with my animals, to get to know them and observe their personality … to come up with a name that ‘matches.’
I brought Hunter to the kennel with me, thinking we might let her help pick out her own puppy, but with about 25 dogs barking in the kennel, there was NO WAY I was letting her out of the truck. She just had the look on her face. WTF??? LET’S GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!!
So, I loaded up the new pup into a crate in the back seat next to Hunter and headed for home (45 min drive). Didn’t get to the end of the breeder’s driveway before I get a nose full of what was OBVIOUSLY puppy poop. He crapped in the crate in less than 100 feet of travel.
With our eyes watering from the stench, and the puppy screaming in poor Hooey’s face … all of this AFTER sitting in my truck for 30+ minutes surrounded by an entire army of GSD and Malinois killers barking their heads off … poor Hooey just turned inside out. She wears a seatbelt in the truck (THANK GOD), and first tried to climb into the front seat with me. No go. Then, I looked back and she was literally climbing out the back window while I was doing 55 MPH down a country road. Yeah, THAT stressed out.
By the time I got home, the whole side of my truck was covered in her slobber. She held her head out the window most of the way home, and was drooling from all the stress and anxiety. Poor girl.
About halfway home, I thought … AHA! I think I’ll name him DEUCE! No, not after Deuce Bigalow … but because he dropped a ‘deuce’ in his crate. 😉 Not sure if the name is going to stick, but for now, that’s what we’re calling him.
As I hope you can see in these first few of what I’m sure will be a million videos of him … he’s cute, sweet, smart, funny, loving, curious and adventurous. And, he has quite the lungs on him. Vocal indeed.
Interestingly enough, Hunter isn’t doing as well with him as I expected. I always thought she would be an amazing mom. She still may, but with just over 24 hours under our belts, she’s just now starting to play with him a little.
The three of us played on the floor together for awhile, and I could tell her prey drive was seriously engaged. I could almost HEAR her subconscious yelling at her “IT’S A SKUNK, KILL IT!” No unsupervised play time for them until I see that prey drive vacate.
I wish I would have gotten some video of our opening the barn and chicken coops this morning. He stuck his face right into each door that I opened, and you should have seen the chickens reactions! Comical.
At the end of the video, I demonstrate how you can convert your AR rifle (or pistol, in my case) into a ‘can launcher’ by swapping out the upper, then use the launcher to deploy an arborists throw line by launching a 16 oz throw line weight WAY down range. To me, a can launcher isn’t very practical, BUT using it to shoot an arborists throw line up and over a tree? Now that’s practical!
