Ferocious the cat finally managed to bring down a sheep.
Here the young ram known as Pinto poses for some glamor shots.
His hope and ours is that he is a pretty enough sheep that someone will want him for a yard sheep. Just cause he is cute. Failing that, a grim, but tasty fate would await him.
The recently born lamb has been named Ashley. Ashley loves her mommy.
She is growing fast, but not as fast has this picture indicates. Her front feet are off the ground. Mommies are fun to climb on.
The boys have begun to play with electronics. Here are some parts that they are using to make sparks.
They have gotten sparks that were two centimeters long. That is probably about 22,000 volts. Why? Well, if you could make 20 thousand volt sparks, wouldn't you?
We got two ducks. A drake (male) and a duck (female).
They are Muscovy ducks. A breed of ducks I have wanted to have. We don't really have the time to start another livestock project, but when we do, it will be ducks. They were available, so we got them now. Hopefully we can keep them alive until we can get all enthusiastic about ducks.
I like the ducks. Josiah the rooster, does not.
There has been one "bird fight" already. Roosters have a spur, a sharp pointed weapon, on each leg. They use these in combat with other roosters. The drake attempted to either dominate or mate with one of the hens. I was very nearly as surprised as the hen, and stood there in shock doing nothing. Roosters are very gallant. In fact Latin for chicken is Gallus and I suspect the word gallant actually comes from the word for rooster. Josiah did not stand in shock. He instantly attacked the drake throwing his full seven pounds of furious rooster defending a hen.
Muscovy Drakes do not have spurs, they instead have three sharp talons on each foot, one on each toe. These are not the razor sharp talons of birds of pray. However they are serious weaponry in the poultry league. They are not gallant.
The birds faced off and almost instantly Josiah was up in the air trying to stab or slash the drake with his spurs. The drake can not fly, the duck can, but the male is too heavy to fly. But he can jump. He leaped into the air and raked the rooster as he pushed him with his giant webbed feet. The drake is fourteen pounds, of strong, un-gallant waterfowl.
Josiah was knocked end over end. He fled the chicken coop leaving a few beautiful iridescent feathers from his back in the bill of the very ungentlemanly drake.
The fight was over before the water thrown from the pail I was carrying hit either bird.
There have been no further incidents. The drake has lost interest in chicken hens, and Josiah has lost interest in fighting the drake.
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