Friday, October 19, 2012

31/21 - Life and death on the ranch

It's a chilly fall day here on Liberty Ranch.

Life and death on the ranch seems to come in waves. It seems like nothing will be born, and nothing will die, for a while. And then boom, at all once... animals are being born and animals are dying.

There are so many animals on the ranch though, I'm sure there are losses and births that I forget about, or never even know about. Like baby bunnies being born, or some pig dying. That is pretty normal.

The past week though has been a bit crazier, just with the goats and sheep. We lost one of our MiniNubian bucks last week. He had been doing great, and then suddenly went down. I tried treating him, but no success. It's kind of a long story with him though, as his genetics were not great.

There were twin doe kids born the other day. Perfectly healthy, cute little things.


Yesterday morning there were twin kids born, a girl and a boy. Pretty, colorful lil' things. They are doing great. Pictures of them are on the post below.

Then this morning during feeding, we noticed that one of the ewes was missing. That's not normal. So we looked around, and ended up finding her dead in the shed. She was a healthy ewe and didn't seem to have any problems. My best guess would be that she may have been bit by something and during the busyness of the past few days, we didn't notice.

And last but certainly not least, my sister's almost 9 year old Bullmastiff, Arrow, has been going down the past few weeks, and really the past week. Poor thing. I don't think she will make it much longer. But she has lived a spoiled life and has been a great dog.

And that, is just a few examples of life and death on the ranch. The new little lives on the ranch are exciting and fun. The ones passing on makes things sad. But, it's part of life, unfortunately, because of this wicked world we live in.

Hope you all have a great day!

Suriyah

1 comments:

Kris said...

That is sad when animals die, but you are right. It's part of life on this earth. I'm so sorry for your losses. I had one of my favorite ewes die last month because of Barber Pole worms. The sheep really had a hard summer because of them. And I didn't know enough to help her. But now I know a lot more and have gotten them under control and the sheep are all healthy now. But it is sad for sure.