Sheep Mom's AdventuresRaising Shetland Sheep off the grid

Early this morning, I woke up to 6 surprise Serama chickens in the living room. My husband and daughter were at the post office at 5:45 am to pick them up. Tuesday we had found out that a couple of chickens were already in the mail to us from a friend, as a gift to my daughter. Well, when they got to the Post Office, there weren’t a couple, but 6!!!! And the poor things were a day late. So they are now “in quarantine” in the living room.

new Seramas

We already have a house full of my daughter’s chickens, in containers or cages of course. A special insulated coup is being built (slowly!) outside but isn’t ready yet. So if you ever call us, you will hear various roosters crowing in the background. And then there is the house rooster that runs free, with a diaper on (yes, a diaper!). It is a special chicken diaper found on the internet. It works great. Besides these “house” chickens, did I mention we have 70 plus outside chickens? Did I also mention that out of these 70 plus chickens we only get about 1 or 2 eggs a day right now? It is very embarrassing, with our chicken population, to get caught BUYING eggs at the grocery store! In a small town, word might get around. That would be like an apple grower buying store bought apples. I usually wait till no one is in the aisle and then “sneak” them into the cart. It is a sore spot with my husband to be buying and going through 2 40# bags of chicken feed/week and not get any eggs. Eating the chickens is out of the question. My kids have named them all and know them individually. They KNOW if any go missing. I know a light bulb in the chicken palace would get us some more eggs, and we have done that in the past, BUT we do live off the power grid and that would mean more gas money to run the generator.

The shetland sheep are doing well. We have 2 adult wethers, 2 adult ewes, 2 ewe lambs and 1 lamb wether. The ladies are going to be going to this year’s boyfriend next week for a “visit”. They will be gone about a month I think. Right now they are being treated like royalty and getting a little grain. Since they are in an inner pen separated from the others, it is a challenge getting the grain to them. I don’t want to run the gauntlet of the other ruminants (other sheep, 3 llamas and 2 goats) jumping on me and trying to get to the grain (and leaving bruises on my body), so I have devised an elaborate ritual. I wait till my son feeds the millions of chickens (because they also swarm me and attack the grain), and my daughter tosses hay to the ruminants. The grain is stored in a cargo trailer that squeaks when I open it. They KNOW when I’m going for the grain. I fight off the chickens and fill a plastic cup with the carefully measured grain and HIDE it in my pants! Then I non-chalantly stroll around outside the fence for a few minutes till they all lower their heads and get back to eating. When I enter the pasture, the goats run up to me and I show them I don’t have anything in my hands and they walk away. I can then enter the inner pen where the girls are and give them their grain. Unfortunately, there are 4 chickens that have gotten wise and wait in hiding. As soon as I pour the grain into the bowls they come rushing from their hiding spots and fight the girls for the grain. I have to fight them off (like in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”) so the girls can get the required amount of grain. But it is worth it. I can’t wait for next year’s lambs.