Yesterday morning it was 4 degrees F when Mom fed us our breakfast. She paused to scratch Mr. Tumnus’ back and hair came out! She looked closer and sure enough, the Boers are starting to shed their cashmere undercoats. Boers have cashmere?
We’re getting ready for a blizzard! We don’t have them very often here in the Ozarks, so it’s an event. Mom and Dad are scurrying around, making sure we have everything we need. That’s important because once it starts to ice and snow, we’re stuck at home.
Our sheep have bugs! A few of the sheep started scrubbing themselves on things three weeks ago. Uzzi and I were worried that we’d get bugs too, so we booted up the computer read up on lice.
Here in the Ozarks, hay is expensive, so Mom and Dad buy most of our hay in big bales. It’s cheaper that way, but you have to know how to handle it or it gets wasted.
Note from Sue, Martok’s human mom: Martok agreed to share his annual Christmas letter to his beautiful Nubian mother, Ozark Jewels Peppercorn, again this year.
It’s only December, but it’s really cold in the Ozarks this winter. Our water buckets keep freezing and that worries Mom a lot. That’s because us bucks and rams and wethers need to drink plenty of water year-round. Not drinking enough can lead to a deadly condition called urinary calculi.
Mom wrote an article about raising ultra-rare chickens that you will be able to read in the March/April 2011 issue of Hobby Farms. To do it she talked to Marjorie Bender of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, who told her all about the ethics of raising rare breeds.
Last Wednesday morning, when Mom put the Boer goats out for the day, big, fat Salem stayed behind.
Meet my newest sons, Biscuit and Bijou. Aren’t you surprised they were born in October? So was Mom.
Dad gets mad when we goats and sheep pull hay out of conventional feeders, then fling it around, dropping most of it on the ground.
