Ranch Update

I've been needing to do a general update on the ranch for quite some time now. . .

Well, things have been going pretty good! As always, there are new animals coming, animals being sold, goats getting milked, bottle babies to feed, work being done. The last week the weather has cooled off from the over 100 degree days we were having, and it has been so nice. We had a male llama that had gotten heat stress. I clipped more of his hair off, and then it rained and the weather cooled off, and he's doing much better - praise the Lord! The days and weeks where the heat never goes away, when it's over 100 in the day and 90 at night, can really, really take a toll on all the animals. I think we only lost a rabbit or two and maybe a few birds, which isn't bad considering the amount of animals that are residents here ;). The does' milk production dropped some, which is to be expected in the heat. But other than that, all the animals handled it pretty well.

Last week I had blogged that we got 3 new female llamas. Well, we kept one, and the other 2 girls went to a new home with Peppy, our baby llama that was born in January of 2011. So that's good. At the moment we have 2 female llamas - "Salty" and "Martha", the new girl. And 3 male llamas - "George Washington", as we like to call him, and 2 others who are for sale.

As always there are donkeys around the ranch. Some are being broke to ride, another one is our pregnant large jenny who lives with the sheep and goats. She is due in October. . . donkey foals are SO cute, I'm looking forward to it!! The newest little guy is rather hilarious. The other night me and my sister were doing a show online, outside, and this little guy kept making noise in the background. . . he's pretty loud for how small he is!

And as Fall gets closer and closer every day, it's breeding season, already. I have not bred anyone yet, but I finally wrote down my breeding chart for the year. None of the does have come into heat yet, but I have noticed a lot more head butting the past few days, and one of the bucks (little Tic-Tac) is in rut - so that is a good sign. I want to get all the does bred asap so we have winter kids (January/February), as I do NOT like warm weather babies. The latest I really want anyone kidding is March but, I can't make the does come into heat... so here I sit and wait.

I hope you all have a fabulous day enjoying the wonderful weather God has given us!

Suriyah