Snow in June???
No its the Cottonwood trees blowing their seeds everywhere.













Chicks starting to hatch.











First chick just out of its shell.






Now there are 8. Still hoping there are more that will hatch.

My thoughts are with fellow blogger Rita and her family today.
She had a death in her family and the funeral is today.

I sure get myself into it sometimes!
Colin, my grandson, has been telling his class about his grandma's "farm" I use the term Farm loosely as I don't think of my little back yard menagerie as anything close to a farm.
Anyway, I went with my daughter to pick him up from school yesterday. His teacher, Mrs Wilson, came over to tell me how the kids love hearing all about my "Farm" from Colin. The conversation progressed to how lucky Colin is to have a grandma with a "Farm" and how the other kids would love to be able to see all my critters, how much even she would like to see it all.
Anyhow, You have probably guessed what I did. Yep, I invited the whole darn class over to let them see my "Farm"
Now I am having second thoughts. Our place is a mess, so many unfinished projects. The kids probably won't notice anything except the animals but there will be parent drivers. I can lovingly call my place Hillbilly Heaven but I hate that someone else will think that!
I sure know haw to get myself into some pickles sometime!!! I will stress now until it is over.

OK, I will try this one more time.

I had some pictures sent to me that I wanted to put on the blog. After several failed attempts to post them I finally got it figured out.
I had the pictures on the page the blog half written, when, not sure what key I hit but lost everything dam thing that was on the page!
Its no wonder I can't get my graph posted if I can't even get a couple of darn pictures on here..!!!

OK its working. First picture is of me and Sharon. I am holding Missy, Sharon's little dog. Sharon is holding Jolene.

Next picture is of Andy the goose. Isn't he a handsome fellow?

When I started my blog last year I decided it was not going to be anything personal, just strictly about my critters.
I changed my mind on that yesterday and I wrote "20 Things about me" Some of it pretty darn personal too!
My dear friend Sharon called me today and wants to know why on earth I did that. Just because someone might be interested I guess.
She said I left out that I have a tongue ring and a tattoo. OK, I also have a tongue ring and a tattoo of a frog on my ankle. LOL

I think I should stick to blogging about the critter from now on.

Gerrrrr... I have been trying to post a picture of me and Sharon together, I keep getting an error message, maybe next time!

20 things about me.

1. I was born in Bristol England in 1948.
2. I was married at 16.
3. I had 3 children
4. My oldest son died aged 25
5. I moved to Canada in 1972.
6. I left my husband after 21 years of marriage.
7. I started a house cleaning service.
8. I learned to appreciate good wine.
9. I am hopeless at math.
10.I hate flies.
11.I love animals.
12.I have had many great friends.
13.I have 6 grandchildren.
14.I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia/chronic Fatigue/M.E. (All one and the same illness)
15.I have clinical depression and have been hospitalised because of it.
16.My husband and I got back together after an 18 year separation.
17.I have 7 goats, 19 chickens, 3 roosters, 10 ducks, 2 geese, 12 rabbits, 3 dogs, 2 love birds, 2 buggies, and 2 fish ponds.
18.I like to be on my own rather than be with a crowd of people.
19.I am very content with my life.
20.I don't like cooking or house cleaning but love to be out side cleaning up in the garden.

I was born and raised a city girl and as much as I have always loved animals, I don't think in my wildest dreams I ever thought I would have my own little hobby farm, Let alone be able to clean maggots from an infection and give injections!

Arnie seems to be feeling a lot better. I clean his wound daily, first with liquid soap, the pink stuff that you get from the vet, then with a weak iodine solution.
It gets sprayed with a purple antiseptic and then with fly spray. Finally he gets a shot of penicillin.
I wait for Rob to get home to help me with him. I could never handle him on my own.
He is a very powerful goat, he is also a very smart goat. It is the only time that as soon as he sees us approaching him he runs! Any other time of day he is one of the first to come great us.
Once we have him its takes both of us to hold him and get him tied to the fence. Once he is tied Rob leans against his side and I work on his head.
He calms right down as I work on him, Although it can't be pleasant for him I think it must feel better each time it is done. He gets a treat before and after the treatment and as soon as he is released he becomes quite affectionate.
Although he is going through bit of a rough patch because of it at the moment, I still believe I made the right decision to have the horns removed.

Our little Jolene is a week old. She is the most adorable little thing that I have seen in a long time.
She is fearless as she wanders around exploring her surroundings.
She brings me to tears of laughter sometimes as she runs sideways after a chicken, only to fall over in her haste to get away from it if it turns around and walks towards her. Sometimes she attempts to head butt one of the other goats. Luckily she seems to roll well when they put her in her place with little butt back! lol

Arnie on the other hand is not doing as well as I had hoped. His head has become infected. Flies have gotten into it and last evening I had the most unpleasant task of removing maggots from inside the still open wound.
I am waiting for the vet to return my call. I have penicillin here but not sure how much to administer. I also want to ask if it would be a good idea to bandage his head again for a few days.

My computer has been acting up lately and with blogger changing its format, again, I don't know if the problems I am having are my computer or blogger.
Yesterdays post was small because the page would fragment all on its own making it impossible to see what I was typing. It took several attempts to finish the page that I finally posted.
Now I notice the comment box is missing. Anyone no how I get it back!
I don't know about the rest of you blogger, but I love to get comments on my blog.
P.S. (Never mind, it is back on this post!)

Little Jolene is doing well. She is 3 days old. She is already starting to explore her surroundings and has even demonstrated a couple of little goat skips. She is so adorable. We are spending time with her and handling her as much as we can so that she will be always be people friendly. Tough job huh, but hey, someone has to do it.
Salinie is a very good mum, it is so cute listening to her 'talking' to Jolene.

Our newest critter arrived at 1 30 a.m. May 17th. Robs 60th birthday.
She is our first baby goat to be born here. We have named her Jolene.

I have written about Arnie the goat and his horns before and how dangerous he is with them. He gets aggressive and isn't afraid to use them!
I have considered trying to find a new home for him but was hesitant to do that.
He hasn't had the greatest life up to now and once he leaves here who knows what would happen to him.
I talked to the vet about removing the horns, thinking it would be a huge surgical procedure to have done, however, the vet said it would be a fairly simple task.
So we made the decision to go ahead with the surgery.
We took him in this afternoon. He was given a shot to knock him out and then some freezing to deaden the area around the horns.
Using surgical wire the horns were cut off in seconds. Rob chose not to stay and went for a coffee. I stayed and watched. I will spare you the details! I kept the horns.
The picture is Molly checking out Arnie when he came home. He was still a bit groggy when I took the picture.
Molly has horns but is not a problem with them.

When Maggie, our goat, died last year from eating from our Rhododendron bush, the vet told us that once the toxins enter the goats system there is very little that can be done to save them. Goats have three stomachs and they are not able to throw up.
Last Tuesday Jenny, our little yearling angora, had all the signs of eating a poisonous plant. There were no more Rhodo or azalea bushes as I dug them out after losing Maggie. I checked the plant area (that is outside of the goat pen) to see an Iris chomped down from the top.
I went online and sure enough Iris is on the poisonous plant list.
I wrapped her and myself in blankets and settled in for the night.
I was sure she wouldn't last through till morning.
She made it through that night and the next day, She was so weak at one point that she lay by the duck pond and couldn't hold her head up. I was afraid to leave her for fear she would drown.

I talked to he vet who told me what I already knew, there was nothing he could do for her. Get water into her and give her lots of TLC was his best advice.
I cried a lot and prayed even more over her.

By Friday evening I was beginning to know she would make it but scared to get my hopes up.
Saturday morning she was up and out with her best friend, Hey Babe.
By Sunday you would never know she had been so ill.
I have dug all the plants out of the yard now. I have given some away and replanted other at the front of the house, Far away from the goats.

we also had a sickly little duckling. We were not so fortunate with it as it died a few days after hatching.