Danika has had her puppies!!! Yes I know I put down that she was due on the 1st, I counted the days wrong, sorry. She has 3 girls and 1 boy. They are all doing well. We are taking deposits on this litter now. Click on the link above to see pictures of the puppies.

she just had another boy!! so 5 pups 3 girls 2 boys!!

4/04/08

Wow can you believe that it is already April?

This year is already moving by fast. We have to put a hold on the building plans, due to weather. I can't poor the slab if we keep getting the rain. Yesterday I got a lot done. I woke up early as usual did all the morning chores. Which takes a couple of hours. Then I ran to the store to pick up milk, ended up with a lot of stuff for the garden. More plants and some dirt, just 4 bags. When I got home the kids were still asleep,(Taylor has a friend over for a few days) They stayed up late and were sleeping in late. So I went out and started working in the garden. I weeded one row and then came back in and checked to see if it was time to fix breakfast. I made the boys pancakes, bacon and eggs. Went back out and worked more in the dirt. I have quite a bit planted and re-planted strawberries. Got these watered so hopefully they will grow. I have lots of tomato plants, red,yellow,green and orange bell peppers, squash, peas, eggplant (a couple different kinds) and mixed salad. I also planted cucumbers yesterday. I bought seeds of herbs so I think I will put them in tomorrow. I have a few more things to plant that I bought yesterday, but it was suppose to rain and I wanted to check the yard to make sure stuff wouldn't blow away.

I had some clients come out and drop off their dogs to stay while they are off on their honeymoon. We then made another run to the store, the boys wanted to get inner tubes to float around the pond in. which they did with a bunch of the dogs, and I didn't get any pictures!! I do have some of them playing in it the day before though. I finished my day by playing with the dogs in the big play yard, and just enjoying the weather, it was very nice yesterday. We didn't get the bad weather they thought we would. We did get some rain but not to much. Which is great news.

Today it is a little cold outside, so I ma cleaning house and doing laundry. I made the boys cinnamon rolls (out of the can). I have also ran out of laundry soap and don't feel like driving into town, so I made my own. Now I know this works because I get onto a homesteading sight all the time and a lot of people on there use this. So I didn't make it up on my own, but this is the first time I will be using it. It is very low cost...ends up being just a few cents per load. Which is cool. Here is the recipe...

1/3 bar of soap (I used Ivory)

1/2 cup washing soda

1/2 cup borax

water.

( I have all the stuff because I wanted to make this along time ago, but still had store bought laundry soap so I wanted to use it up first)

First you shred up your bar of soap

put it on the stove in 4 cups of hot water, melt soap in water.

Add washing soda and Borax to mixture,

take off stove and put in bucket (I used a 5 gal bucket)

Add 1 gallon of water plus 6 cups

let sit over night and use 1/2 cup per load.

now I am doing laundry today so I am going to use it now, I don't know if this will make a difference in how it cleans or not, we will see. I do like saving money though.

3/31/08

ok I have some cute bunny pictures that I took today. They are so funny.

and some of my dog box,..the close up one is for my Dad he wants to see what I am talking about. lol

3/27/08

I drove out to Wichita Falls and bought a dog box. It will hold 6 large dogs, and has a place to store stuff. I think I will be adding a compressor and A/C later but right now it is perfect. I am also planning on getting a 6x10 trailer to put it on. I will be able to make 6x10 fence panels that I can slide under the box so when I go to shows I can set up a yard for the dogs to hang out in or potty in. I got a great deal on the box, I have been looking for a year and this is the best deal I have come across.. Most of the boxes I have found are to small for the GSDs to fit it.

3/24/08

This weekend, was a busy one. I finished working on my movable bunny pen. The next one will be easier, and I will tweak a few things on it, but it did turn out pretty good, and the bunny's love it. I finished out the roof with some Privacy fence wood that I had. I think it looks pretty cool. I will paint it, red I think. I also think that the other ones will have a bunny house that has 2 doors, and I think I will end up doing this on this one too. They are eating the grass right up and seem real happy.

This will also be very easy to cover with tarp during bad weather. The next one will have a roof that covers the whole thing. I will have to make it about 8in shorter so the 6' fence boards will cover it all, or use a different board for the roof. We will see, I haven't decided yet.

Danika's pups are doing very good. They have really gotten big this week. They will be opening their eyes this week, usually between 10-14 days of age. She is a great mom. But is starting to feel they are safe and will spend a little bit of time away from them. Of course she really likes to stalk the bunny's.

My garden is doing very good..meaning I haven't killed it yet. lol. I have peas that are sprouting and looking good. Also the tomatoes that have come up and the salad mix. I think I will have to replant strawberries, as I didn't water them in after I planted and I think the roots dried out. Darn. I am going to be working on support for the vines (pea's) and tomatoes this week. I will go out and take some pics and post them later on.

Update on the cows. The one that has survived is doing very good. He is now drinking from a bucket, and that saves me quite a bit of time. He is a happy fellow, but I think lonely so I will be looking to get another one soon. They are a herd animal, and the goats don't want to hang out with him.

Well better go and rotate dogs into potty pen.

3/21/08

Wow I didn't realize it has been 6 days since I was on here last. I helped whelp a litter, she is here at my house so I haven't gotten much sleep this week. They are noisy babies. Danika's litter is doing great. they are a week old now. I will be updating pictures of her pups on their page today. Nice big and chunky pups.

I have decided that I want to do as little mowing this year as I have to. So I have been making movable pens for the bunny's to live in as they love the grass and will eat it over the bunny food. Soooo I don't have to buy as much bunny food or mow!! And they fertilize as they go. lol. so I have spent the last two days building my first pen...well it is a great pen, but it is very heavy. Wont have to worry about it blowing away. lol. I still have to put the roof on it, I am just worn out. Yesterday I worked all day on it and finished most of it. I took a long break in the afternoon, about 2.5 hours and had some people come out and look at the pups, they took our sweet Werah home. They are super nice people and we couldn't be happier to have them as part of our extended dog family. Here are some pictures of the "girls" helping me with my pen.

This is Willow, formally known as Winy, it didn't fit her so we changed it.

And here are some pics of the bunnys that I put into a puppy pen to have at the grass that is getting overgrown.

And here is some of my new pen. As I said I still have the top to do. When we put the rabbits in it they kept going in and out of the little house. It is so cute. I think we have one that will be having babies soon, we were finding bunny fur on the ground and she is a big girl..We will have to put her in the big pen..and take out the boy bunny and have him stay in the new pen. Did you know that rabbits can re-breed the day the give birth?? So we will keep the boy away for a few weeks and then re-breed. I will keep you updated on when we have babies. Actually I don't really look in the houses that i have in the big pen. I know all the girls are bred, so I think that we will know when we have the babies when we start seeing babies coming out of the house...which is about 3wks of age.

3/15/08

Remember a few weeks ago I told you that Taylor got a new horse. Well I got to go and have her picked up today. I told lots of pictures here are a few of them. She is sooooo pretty. She is the big one, the pony is Taylors 1st horse..his name is CoJack.

we lost one of our cows. I am learning a lot about bottle raising cows. It isn't that hard if you have all the right information. With cows less is better. They are only fed 2x a day morning and night. and they should start out with 2 pints of milk and make it with more water than what the directions tell you to. If you give them to much milk they will get scours, and from this they can die very quickly. That is what happened to ours. the guy that I bought them from told me to give them to much milk. The other 3 are doing pretty good. WE have the food thing figured out. And they seem very happy. Funny little guys though.

Basically here on the farm we have just been keeping up with daily chores and getting the dogs trained. The weather has been good, today is going to be hot I hear. But only for one day then we are back to the regular nice weather. Oh I checked the garden yesterday, and we have stuff growing...I am so excited. I am going to have to watch for a late freeze but it is looking good. woo hoo...we might have fresh food this year.

Today is a busy day. I got up early and help Danika and then fed the cows, rotated dogs, an am now updating the blog, and it is only 8:30am. I have a couple of boarding dogs to pick up and take home today. and then I get to do some yard work. So I had better get to it.

Well we had a very busy week. I did get the waterlines in and set up for the garden. I also planted a bunch of stuff in the garden, all are seeds so they are ok even though we got a good amount of snow today. I have to say I really like working in the garden. I hope we get a lot of good stuff out of it this year.

The neighbor came over with his tractor and pushed over the random pipe fence that was running down the middle of my Agility yard. So we got a head start on the month...that was on my March to do list!

Today we got snow...I am not a big fan but Taylor loves the cold weather. I gave the bunnies a watermelon and they just loved it...They don't seam to mind the cold and snow either.

I have decided that this year we are going to homestead. That means raising our own food to eat and feed the animals. So I went and picked up some bull calves. I keep calling the the "bluebell ice cream" cows...but they are really called Jersey bulls. They are a few days old. And just as cute as can be. I put them in the back yard and they went running and jumping all over the place. They will be bottle fed for the next 5 weeks and then turned out to pasture and hay fed. We are thinking that we will have them processed in Dec and they will be about 8 months old and should weight about 600lbs. WE will also work the dogs on them so they can learn to move all kinds of stock not just sheep. I will be posting more pictures and info on them as they grow on my farm page.

Came home and found that one of my sheep had her baby. They just wait until the coldest day then give birth..crazy girls. Well good news is it is a girl baby, bad news is...I think the old ram is the daddy...bad ram!!oh well it is a girl.

Wednesday I went and pick up Taylors new puppy, she is a Border Collie and her name is Ability's Juno. Super cute little girl, red and white, and a very good pup. I will post more info on Taylors site and a link to it soon.

2/26/08

Today was the perfect weather day. I did get a lot done too. This morning I cleaned house, fed all animals, cleaned up after dogs, and did 4 loads of laundry...I just have to put it away now, and i have to do that before bed, as it is all laid out on the bed. lol.

Taylor and I then went to figure out how the water lines ran, as I am putting in a the automatic waterer for the garden, I will be hooking up into the main water lines and luckily I know how to do all of that so I don't have to have someone come out and do it for me. pvc is very easy to work with. So here are some pictures of what we got done today. It doesn't show it but we had to dig a few holes to find the lines..lol.

I had a couple of helpers hang out with me...here they are. At least they thought they were helpers.

I also have a few fun garden sprinklers. I got them last year on clearance, for only about $2. I just think they are so cute.

Also I have to put up some new bunny pictures. They had crammed themselves behind the crate..so funny.

I ended the day with some mowing. I am using the push mower to mow the new dog yard...yes the big one that is in front of the pond...very good exercise...so I do about an hour a day..it is looking very nice. I am also learning that we have to treat for ants..we have a lot of hills. Oh other cool news my trees came in the mail today from the Arbor day foundation. I will be planting them tomorrow. fun.

2/23/08

Well today would have been my sisters 39th birthday. She passed away in a car accident 15 years ago. I do miss her, HAPPY BIRTHDAY CARRIE ANN.

I don't have pictures today because I didn't put my card back into the camera yesterday, tried to get some pictures but nothing to save them on. lol. But I did get the strawberries in the ground, one of them even had started growing, so it was time. I also planted two of the silver maples near the Agility yard, this will give shade from noon on out there, which will be nice. very nice. The dogs got to be outside almost all day. They are very interested in the bunny's so I have to check on them all the time to make sure our little bunny that has a secret way out that I haven't been able to find is in the pen when I let the dogs out. So far all has been good.

Today I want to get the water hooked up for the garden, the van cleaned out, a couple of the dogs need baths, and work on a couple of the trees that need to be trimmed up. I am so glad that they are saying we will have nice weather for the next week, I am also wanting to get the pasture cleaned up of stuff that shouldn't be there. We will have a large load to the dump. I am going to see what can be taken to the recycle place I think most of it will be able to be recycled. hopefully. Taylor has been working on the fence where the new barn area will be. WE have a very bad fence out there, some trees have fallen on it and need to be cut up and burned. I guess we will have a huge bonfire one day out here. That will be fun. But for now we will just be stacking it in a pile where we will burn it. I also have to get the water out there, there are no water lines going to that side of the property. Luckily I know how to do that and don't have to pay someone to do it for me. same with the garden. I will just have to dig up the ground where the main water line is and connect to it. I am going to have all the pvc above ground for a while until I know that is exactly where it needs to be and then later in the year I will rent the ditch witch and put them all underground at the same time. That makes for less digging later, it is very easy to hook up to the line if it is above ground... The pond is still high. I have to take down a little of the fence by the agility yard so the neighbor can get in with his tractor to take out the extra pipe that is going through the middle of the agility yard, and then spread out the dirt so that area will not hold water. Hopefully that will be able to be done this week too..we are suppose to have high wind for the next couple of days so that should dry most of that area up so we can get the tractor down there.

WEll I guess I had better go and feed the sheep.

Later

2/22/08

New bunny pictures.

2/21/08

Two posts in one day...wow!! I went to Tractor Supply (TSC) and picked up a water and feeder for the rabbits. I decided to get a metal 5 gal water for chickens, it looks like it will keep them out of their water so it will be cleaner. And I won't have to fill up water everyday. This was expensive at $32.00. But will be worth it in the end if it works, which I don't know why it won't. The feeder is also metal and is for rabbits, it will hang on the side of the fence, and will hold the grain or pellets. Rabbits may like the cold but I don't so I got the "hiding spots" in and filled with straw, and put the bunnies in and came inside to warm up. I will go back out and put in the water and food in a bit. Oh they just love their new pen. They have been hopping around and just checking it all out. Here are some pictures of them right after I put them in. The male has the dark ears, and I tried to get a picture of him by himself, but the camera kept focusing on the chainlink instead of the bunny, but you can see that the girls are all white, and the male has a little tint on the ears and mussle.

Star the border collie has a window seat and is watching the rabbits, and really wants to get out there and herd them. bad girl.

2/21/08

Ok I have talked about meat rabbits in the past. I found a breeder that I really like, and went and picked up 5 does and 1 buck. They are about 4 months old. I think this is what she said, I was to busy looking at all the bunnies to remember. lol...See I get it when people call me back and ask me puppy questions that we already talked about!! I picked up California girls and (oh just had the song go through my head) and a NZ buck. The buck is a little younger than the girls, but that is ok, because they are not ready to breed, so he will catch up to them when it is time to breed. They have a couple of months to settle in and feel comfy in their new surroundings before it is baby making time. Here is a picture of the rabbits in the crate in the van.

We are going to raise them colony style. This way they get to hop around and just have a good time. No cages...now we will separate the buck, so we can control litters, as we don't want the rabbits to take over. lol But in general they will get to make burrows, and just be bunnies. We have a starter pen for them, but I have decided that they will go in the old barn where we have a very nice area that is very well fenced in and they will also have an indoor area that is concrete, that we can shut them in if we need to. But here are pictures of the pen that we put up the other day, and they will be in here until we have the other area ready for them.

I have a few pictures of the baby sheep. She was playing with herself and was very interested in the hitching post that is down by the old barn. She hung out there for about 20 min head butting it, pawing it and just being silly.

I took a picture of the wild blackberry transplants that I am working on...they look like they are doing good. I will eventually have these all over the place. Taylor will eat them all he loves them. As far as the garden goes, I bought strawberries but haven't planted them yet. I will this weekend and will be ready to cover them. I have lots of straw now and will cover them with this and I also have plastic so I am ready when it gets cold again. I am also going to do potatoes in barrels so I will be getting this ready and started hopefully this weekend.

I think I mentioned that Taylor has rescued some wild kittens out of the barn. Here is a picture of one of them. She is the most tame, and is actually very cute. There are 2 more that are black, one is very grumpy and the other shows no personality.

If any of you have been out to my house you have seen by plywood GSD cutouts. I love these, and you would be surprised at how many people tell me they thought I had a dog out. lol I cut out and painted two of them this week, and here they are. I will be attaching these to the fence out by the pond.

2/19/08

I got some new pictures of the pond that is now overflowing. Good news is that the agility yard that is right by the pond, is not flooded...Actually I could work dogs there the day after all the rain...it was a little mushy but not holding water. There is a spot near the pond where the Pipe poles are that is holding water and that will be an area that is added to the agility yard, but we have enough extra dirt to raise the level there so it will be dry like the rest. Now if we could just get a break from the rain so that area can dry a little and we can get the tractor down there to pull out the pipes and spread the dirt. lol

So yesterday I had a lady over to look at Vala and Vablo, and when she was getting ready to leave I noticed that one of the sheep was in labor. Right out in the middle of the pasture. Usually they will leave the group and go off on their own and have the baby...well she is a young girl so I guess that is why she hung out with the others. I was all excited, I have never got to see my baby sheep be born, I went in and told Taylor to come and see the miracle of life....he just rolled his eyes and laughed...like he hasn't seen an animal be born before. lol...so I headed out with my camera, chair, and drink...

I hung out for about 20 min, and my back started to hurt and it was lunch time so I was hungry...so I went back inside and told Taylor that the Miracle of life was taking to long and lets go get something to eat.

We picked up some food and then headed to a feed store that I was told had some rabbits. I am looking into raising meat rabbits, for food for the dogs and some for us. I have read that rabbit meat is better for you than chicken. Less fat in the meat. And with how meat is raised for the market, I am looking more into raising our own, and eating more organic. I have learned a lot in the last few days about raising rabbit, and I am looking into raising ours in a colony which is where you have an area 20x30ish and it is fenced in and they get to hang out in that area and not in cages..They produce more and looks like they have a great life. You have to be careful because they can be bred 18 days after they have a litter of kits, so basically every 6 weeks you will have new babies...hence the saying "breeding like rabbits". lol I am looking at getting 4 girls and 2 boys to start and might end up with 8 girls and 2 boys. I will update when that happens. So we head out to the feed store and they don't have what I want, meat rabbits get to be about 11lbs at 10 wks of age..that is when they are ready to process, well they only had the mini's and floppy eared ones. So we headed home.

when I got home I went looking for the new baby sheep that we should have crossing my fingers for a girl!! well mom still hadn't had the baby, matter of fact she was pushing but nothing but the nose and front feet were out...oh no, Taylor ran into the house got some gloves, oxytocen shot, which will make her contract and help us get the baby out. I was trying to catch her. She didn't want to be caught, so we brought out the boarder collie to help out. Eventually we got her trapped in the barn and she darted past me right into Taylors waiting arms.. I quickly gave here the shot and grabbed the baby by his front feet and pulled down and out. I was sure he was dead with all the running and who knows how long he was stuck in the birth cannal...but as I look at him I see the hart flutter...he is alive....and yes it is a HE darn...off we went to let mom do her thing without bothering her. He is vocal and she is talking to him, he tries to get up and we leave so she will hang with him and help him out. I go back in about an hour to see if all is good...and it is. Here are the pictures of the new boy. He is 3/4 dorper and 1/4 Romanov.

2/17/08

Taylor went and spent the night at his friends house Thursday, and Friday. So I had the place to myself..I was bored and knew we were going to get lots of rain starting on Sat. so I got busy with outside chores. Cleaned out the potty pen and puppy pen, put down new wood chips, picked up all the trash that had blown into our yard. Put together my new garden bench, moved it over to the garden and put some stuff in it. Made sure the sheep had enough straw in the barn, which they did so I didn't have to spreed out more. Cut out some new German Shepherds cutouts from a piece of plywood..have been putting that off for a couple of weeks. Did a bunch of laundry and cleaned the house. And gave Danika, Xayne, and Merlot a bath. So I got everything that I wanted to get done done...but that is not all there is to do. I also did a bunch of laundry.

When we get rain like we did on Sat. all we can do is put dogs out into the potty yard and bring them back in. This is why we will be having an indoor play area with the new building, an a larger potty yard. The dogs get antsy and want to play, but we are trying to keep them as clean as we can..and dry. I am very excited about the new dog building, we will have a 40x30 indoor play area, for hot or rainy days, for the nice days we will be able to play outside in the big play yard.

oh with all this rain the pond is very full. Its funny I have had a lot of people ask me how was going to get water in the pond after I dug it...if I filled it up with the water from the hose or what. Well we just wait for rain.

I also bought some new silver leaf maple trees. they were only 15.00 at Home Depot, and are in 5 gal buckets and about 10ft tall. We will be planting two where the new barn will go and two in the play yard. These grow very fast and have nice big leaves and provide a lot of shade. There were two here when we bought the place and they are just huge now. Also with the pond area being the lower part of the property this will give the trees lots of water, which they need the first year for good growth.

I picked up some new seeds for the veggie garden. Lots of strawberry plants. Taylor said the more the better so I got 50. I also bought transplanting pots so I can take some cuttings off of the wild blackberry bush at the back of the property and get them rooting so I can plant them up here on the fence. I know they have stickers, but from what I have been told they have the best fruit...and why not plant the best tasting fruit if you can, and they are free!! can't beat that with a stick. I will be buying raspberries, and some others I haven't decided yet. I am going to see about transplanting the grape vines too in the fall. Now on to some fruit trees. We have a nice drawf peach tree that gives lots of peaches, and a couple of pear trees, that the wind has taken the fruit every year.and a plum .but I would like to plant some apple, more plum, more peaches, maybe a fig. We will see. 2/13/08

We have a new baby!!! its a girl!!wooohooo!! I also took some pictures of a couple of new flowers.

I also posted new pictures of some of our puppies. click here

first here are the garden pictures from the work we did over the weekend. I am reading a book on gardening and she said to put wood in between the rows so you wouldn't be walking in mud and can define your beds better. I don't think I will keep them there. I know we will be doing raised beds, so I will most likely use the boards for that. The garden is 36x30 and has 18 beds. We will be adding more dirt, so they will be deeper, we tilled it twice and it didn't get to much up so it is about 4 inches deep right now. I added some stuff for drainage. so hopefully it will grow nice healthy plants.

We had a large amount of rain, Monday night from about 2 am till 5 am...and it filled up the pond. I was hoping to be able to clean up the property this week, of all the left over junk from the people we bought it from, but now it is to wet to drive down with the flat bed trailer...so we will have to wait until it dries up. But here are some pics of the pond almost all the way filled up.

Here are some pics of the sheep. The babies are getting big. Look at the black ram baby, he is only a few weeks old and is a big boy. He is skittish and this is why we don't have the Romanov's any more. We want friendly sheep. He wants to run every time I come near the fence, even with food.

Here is a picture of Taylor's pony. CoJack...yes he is now to big for this guy, but we will keep him forever. My clients kids have had a great time riding him when they come and visit. I will post pictures of the new horse when she gets here.

Here are some pictures of the dog play yard. The pond is at the very back of the property.

The dirt area is where the new dog building with be. The first building is 40x60, we hope to be able to add another building the same size before summer.

This is where our new house will be built. The dog building is where I was standing when I took this picture. Our garden is to the right of where the house will be.

I took this from down at the pond looking up to where the new house will be.

2/10/08

We had the best weather this weekend. Around 70!! both days!! So out in the yard we went. I bought $500.00 worth of cattle panels and put up the rest of the fence in the new dog yard. That took most of the day Sat. I also did a little house cleaning, but that isn't that fun to talk about. lol. I had enough panels to do the last fence, add 4 to the agility yard, and 8 around the garden area. This also expanded the area where the sheep get to graze. That area is now dog proof!! We have a couple more sheep that look like they will be lambing within the week. MORE BABIES!! Sunday, I wanted to get the garden area tilled, finished the fence for the dog yard only had to put up about 5 panels...and then we had play time in the new yard. I took lots of pictures, the dogs just loved it, ran and played all over and then came and sat under the tree with me. We hung out there for about an hour. Then I put everyone up and Taylor and I went and grabbed some lunch. We got the call from the guy that has the horse that we are getting for Taylor that he was back in town and we could come and look at her...This horse is a gift from a friend and is an amazing gift. I got so caught up in oowwing and awing over the horse that I didn't take any pictures...so you will have to wait to see what she looks like when she gets here later this week.

Sunday I did work on the garden area for about an hour...I borrowed the tiller from my neighbor and tilled an area approximately 12x36, I will eventually have a 36x36 area tilled and then will make 9 raised beds in that area. We will fence it in with the cattle panels then the sheep wont be able to get the garden goods. Now we will have to work on making in rabbit proof. We have lots of wild rabbits. I will take some pictures of the new garden area today...and post later.

Here are some more pics of the sheep. Our new 5/16th Dorper Ram. We will sell him to someone looking to improve their herd. He will be papered.

here is one of the sunset the other day...so pretty.

Today I feel like I am getting sick. NOoooooo!! Woke up this morning to a new baby lamb. It is another boy, this one is sired by our new Dorper Ram, Humfrey. His mother is a 3/4 dorper Ewe..so he is 5/16th Dorper with is considered full Dorper. So he can be sold as a Stud Ram. We will see. I might hold on to him, or I might buy a new ram to breed with next year. We will have to see.

Our Rescue gsd King, is a very cool dog. He does have some obedience, and we are now ready to look for a new home for him.We are pricing him at $500.00.

I have ordered the building. For those of you that don't know. We are building a full pet resort. We will offer full care, boarding, training, agility, obedience. We will have crate rooms and not kennel runs. We will have an indoor play space and a 2 acre play yard. We will eventually have 2 buildings both being 40x60. The first building will have a kitchen, office and groom room, and our crate rooms. So the play space will be about 40x20. Our second building will only have the crate rooms and the play space, so the play area will end up being about 40x40. we will only be keeping 40 dogs total so we will be able to give all the dogs lots of time. We will only have the dogs in the crate rooms like you would have them in their crates at home...night time and nap time in the afternoon. So I got the call that the bolts are in, and that I can go and pick them up. I am hoping that we will have the building up and going by April. I have a few more pups to sell so we can afford the concrete.

Well I am not feeling well so i am going to go and lay down.

Later Thursday 1/17/08

Early in the morning I got a call from one of my friends that deals with rescue, She told me that she had gotten a call from one of the kill shelters that a very nice GSD was brought in because he doesn't like cats. So she called me and I headed down to pick him up. He is 5 years old, very good looking black and tan and already fixed, but of course he doesn't have any obedience. He has a very nice pedigree, actually I temperament tested this litter when they were 6 wks old. The breeder is not a breeder he is someone that has a couple of very nice dogs and he breeds them. This is the biggest issue that I have with people that are not breeders who breed. They can't/wont take back a dog that they have bred because they don't have room or whatever reason. This is a nice dog, he doesn't need to be put to sleep, because no body wants to teach him. This is why I tell all my people to do lots of obedience and socialization the first 6 months. King is his name, he doesn't like to be touched on the hind end, his father had the same issue..we worked through that, and will with King too. I am planning on keeping King here getting his obedience up to where it needs to be and then selling him for his training fee. He will need an active home without cats or small dogs. I will make him his own page and post it on my trained dogs for sale page. Check back in a few days to view it.

We moved the sheep into the barn, or gave them access to it. They did spend the night in there, I saw them coming out this morning to graze. That and they know I am going to bring out some grain. lol No new babies last night. I have 2 more girls that are close to giving birth. Here are some pics of the one born yesterday.

17 January 2008

Trying to get back to doing this daily Well I woke up this morning to find that one of my sheep had given birth...on the coldest day of the week, what is up with that?!! why not on the first 4 days of the week when it was nice and warm. Now I am stressed that the baby will get cold and we are going to have to move them into the barn, which last time didn't go to well. We had a dog get into the barn and kill all the baby sheep.( not one of ours) I am going to read up on what the temp has to be for them to be ok with being outside. This is suppose to be a hardy sheep and can lamb during the winter without the babies getting to cold. Well this little guy is a Ram...he will be cut and then be a Weather.. He is also all black and that means that the old ram bred the new girls, and that my high dollar new ram didn't..isn't that how it goes. (Well we don't have the old ram any more, well we do but he is in the freezer.)She might have another today, she still looks a little round. I hope she doesn't have twins that would be so cute, and lets hope for a girl this time. I will post pictures later today, if I have time.

14 January 2008

Update on past couple of months Hello everyone. Well I haven't been that good about keeping up with this "daily" blog. lol. Well we have been very busy here on the farm. We have dug our pond and moved the agility yard. We have added more equipment also. As most of you know we are working on putting in a Dog resort here, and this is our year for that. I am hoping that we will be able to have our building up by end of March. We have already put up lots of fence, and have about a 2 acre play yard for the dogs. We love it and so do they. They also get to play in the pond, which is great fun. We are going to be fencing this off so they can only go in there when we want them to. Right now when we let them out they make a bee line for the water and are dirty and wet....I guess that does work in their favor as I do hang out with them longer outside for them to dry. smart dogs!!

I have decided to make the blog one that is not open to comments. But if you have a comment and would like to email me I have put my email address at the top of the page. I actually have never check the comments until today...and I will be able to answer your questions ect if I get them in an email.

Oh I also found out the two of our ewes are pregnate!! so baby sheep are on the way!! So we are going to have to set up a smaller area for the moms and babies. I am very excited I didn't know if we were going to have any this year. These are our two older girls, and hopefully they are both having twins. I will post pictures when they have them. WE are wanting to get our herd up to 30 ewes and we will cover them and have babies for sale.. we also produce meat for us and the dogs. And we also do herding. You can see more of our sheep on the Draggahaus Ranch page, link is on the home page.

I will be updating the website this week, we have two black and tan female pups out of Shotzy and Odin, they are very nice pups..and we have two black female pups out of Xayne and Xeppo. WE also have some older Male pups available and one older female they are now about 6 months old, very nice dogs.

21 July 2007

WEll I was going to go to the show in Hutto this weekend, but man I am tired. I didn't get anything done on Friday that I wanted to. I managed to break the riding lawnmower again... So if I get some things done today and feel like it then I will head down for the show on Sunday. I am only going to take 2 dogs and there are 4 shows on Sunday so I really could finish them out. At least Danika....I don't know about Xeppo.

We got our lamb back from the butcher on Thursday. So now I am looking for recipes. I have looked at a couple of websites, and see some that we really might like. We have 100lbs of meat so I think we will be able to try most of them and figure out which ones we like. Taylor said he isn't going to eat the lamb, but I will have to make him try it and see what he thinks. It is not that he was attached to the sheep, he just thinks there is something wrong with it, because it didn't come from the store.

This morning I got up and took out all the dogs for their morning potty break. We were only out there about 30 min before we cam back in. I then fed all the dogs and went out to let the puppies out to play in the big yard. We are teaching the to track, so I will take some dog food (dry) and spread it around the yard and tell them to search. They will drop their little heads to the ground and start looking for the food. Today I walked a path, and put the food on the path, this way they will learn to track a person. What they are really smelling is the broken grass and the dead skin that falls of of us onto the ground. they learn that they get rewarded (food) when they follow this. right now we have food all over the track, eventually we will just put food in spots for them on the track and they will learn to follow the sent to get the reward. This is the first time that I have done this for a litter of puppies. I usually only do one dog at a time and tracking isn't really one of the things that i really like to do. But the dogs love it so I am working them every couple of days out there.

I cleaned out their pens and water buckets then put the breakfast down. this morning they got the veggie mash. I have posted the ingredients before, so just look down the blog and you will find it. I recommend that you put BARF into your search engine and you will get lots of good info. I did talk to my butcher about making a meat mixture for me that has more fat in it. I am finding that my dogs are not getting enough fat into their diet. We are seeing dry itchy skin, and their coats are a little dull. Well he is going to take some of the cheep hamburger meat for me the 75/30 stuff and add fat to it, also hearts,livers,gizzards, then make it all look like hamburger. This will give them all the stuff they need use up some of the stuff that he doesn't sell, and end up costing me less than what I am buying it for now. that is a win/win folks. Hopefully he will be able to get it done next week. Right now I am adding veggie oil, peanut oil to their food, and it is working but animal fat is better for them. I am actually feeding my dogs for $2 a day per dog. That is less than most of the bag of dog foods, and it is so much better for them. The mash that I make would be enough for 14 days for one dog, so it can be made up ahead of time and frozen, then just thaw it out and give it to them. I am going to start rotating the meat that I give, I am having Walmart order 60 cans of fish at a time for me, so I will rotate days of fish, chicken, hamburger. This way they are getting different things. Chicken is of course the cheapest to feed, I get the 10lb bag from walmart and each dog gets 2 or 3 pieces a day. each bag has enough for 3 or 4 dogs, and that is only $3.90 a bag...so$.39 a lb. The can of fish is now at $.98 each dog would get one can. The veggie mash is $1.33 a day per dog. The hamburger mash will be $.78 per day per dog....so this would be a normal week for a dog.

Monday

Veggie mash, 1/2 lb fatty hamburger (morning) $1.72

Chicken (evening) $.39

Tuesday

veggie mash, 1/2lb fatty hamburger (morning) $1.72

Fish (evening)$.98

Then just repeat thoughout the week....

WEll i had better go and get laundry started. Have a great day.

19 July 2007

going to try and catch up on this blog thing!!

Last week was very busy. We had a dog show during the weekend. We showed Xayne, Danika, Xeppo, Shotzy in UKC conformation. They all did well. And we just had a great time. Andrew handled Xayne and did VERY good for his first time ever at a show, Xayne is a little unsure of herself on the floors and just didn't look as good as she really is. Taylor handled Danika who won all the female stuff. She received 50 of her 100 points towards her Championship. I handled Shotzy and Xeppo, both did good, but Danika beat out Shotzy..Xeppo received 20 of his points. WE decided to show Conformation with the UKC because they judge the dog against breed standard and our German dogs do very well in this. AKC has what they like, and it is very different from the German dogs.

So Friday night I got all the dogs their baths and ready to go. We had to run to Walmart and decided to go an night instead of on the way Sat morning. well we had the dogs drying and their crates were dirty and I didn't have any paper towels !!( I know what a bad dog owner, lol) So we left the girls in the hall bathroom and Xeppo in the dinning room dog run. Well when we got back around 12:00 Friday night, I walked down the hallway to look in on the girls, and give them a snack, well my very clean black and tan, and black girls, had white paint all over them!! I nearly died. I just stood there looking at them in shock, and boy did they think they were cute...Hey mom look what we did. So we started looking for something to get the paint off, which by now is dry. And we couldn't find anything. So back to Walmart I go. Picked up 3 different paint remover stuff, and drove back home...It is now 1 am. luckily the first one we tried worked and we got all the paint off. Taylor said " hey mom this will be funny someday", I told him that it would be funny tomorrow if we got the paint off.

WE are going to another show this weekend hopefully we will not have anymore things like that happen!! WE are going to another show this weekend hopefully we will not have anymore things like that happen!!

7 July 2007 re-posting

WEll I posted the other day and for some reason it didn't show up???!!!

Recap of the week.

WE got the boys haircuts that was fun.

Had a ton of rain.

Didn't get any yardwork done.

On Thursday I bathed all the dogs (10 of them) and then just hang out all day, wow that was hard on the back!

We went and saw the Garland fireworks on the 4th, and I have to say that they did the best job of directing traffic that I have seen. Being that I was a Military Police officer and had training in directing traffic, I can appreciate when it is done right, and boy do I get upset when it is done wrong. lol.

WE haven't been able to go to the pool because of the rain, or 6-flags which we were planning on doing alot this summer. I am very glad that I didn't buy the season tickets, that would have been a waiste of money.

I need to worm all the sheep this weekend, but we have to put up a pen for them and hopefully a shoot we will see how it ends up. I have one sheep that is limping and we will have to see what is going on over there.

I picked the peaches off of my tree. we got a 5 gal bucket full and still have a lot of them on the tree, this is the first big yeld that I have gotten from the tree, it is now a 6 year old tree. Looks like we will be peach rich...wooohoo. So now I will finish rippening them in the house and then cut them up and freezing them. I am going to see about canning. I have never done this so we will see how it goes. My neighbor told me I needed to make some peach icecream so we will give that a try. I love peaches so I am excited about that.

Today we are going fishing. I will post some pictures of our catches later. We are going to go to Cooper lake, they are not flooded, so hopefully we can go swimming in the swimming area and fishing in the fishing area. We are taking a few of the dogs with us on the "field trip" and I will do some training for the day.

I am going to also start painting my bedroom. A basic tan and pink. I am going for calm and girly. I need to work on my girly side. lol

I am starting the South beach diet. I need to do something to change the way that we eat. To much sweets. I cleaned out the fridge and am getting the shopping list ready. I am going to make it as easy as possiable. I will have a few basic meals, and I will add something each week so I don't get bored. I bought the cookbook and everything looks so good. I think I am going to go to the farmers market and pre-buy veggies, and then freeze them pre-cut and ready to just add to the recipie. I will keep you updated on that. I have about 80lbs to loose, and I am hoping by my birthday next year to meet my goal. That gives me a year, as my Birthday is Aug 17th. I am wanting to take Taylor to Hawaii for his and my birthday 2008, he was born there and we haven't been back since he was 14 months old, so I think it will be fun to take him to see where he was born. AND I want to be thin and a hottie for the trip. lol.

Well better go wake up the boys and get them in the van to go fishing. Have a great weekend.

28 June 2007

Hey everyone I am back!!

Well we have been very busy here on the farm. We have a summer visitor with us. My friends son Drew he is 14 and we have him for almost 2 months. We are really enjoying him, and I have more of my chores getting done. lol. Drew is a city boy and we are teaching him about farm life. We will be sad to see him go. I will be posting lots of pictures of our summer fun later.

WE have also added to our sheep herd. We brought home a new Ram that we have named Humfrey Bogart....he is a handsome boy. He is 5 months old and is getting to "know" the girls. We are taking our first group of sheep to the butcher on July 12th. WE have separated them out of the herd. We now have 10 ewes that are 1/2 or 3/4 Dorper and a pure bred Dorper Ram. Our girls should be bred starting next month and hopefully in about 6-7 months from now we will have lots of healthy babies. My goal is to have a pure bred herd of Dorpers by next year...around 40 sheep total, and then be producing meat for us and the dogs. We will sell whatever we dont' use. I am also thinking of getting a cow for butcher this year and raising one for next year. I really like the idea of knowing what I am eating. And being able to raise our own food is a great idea to me.

We have picked out the house plans that we like and have put together a plan of where to put the new dog building. I am looking at a 40'x80' building but my dream would be to have a 60'x80' building. I will see what I can afford and maybe add on later. I am really hoping that we can have the building built by Nov of this year.

WE are getting so much rain here that we are just not getting enough of the outside chores done. I would like to have the fence painted and all of the agility equipment fixed and repainted. We have gotten the first coat of paint on the equipment but need to finish it. I have decided to paint the pipe fence green. I just love this look, and it looks cleaner to me. Right now we are white and it just looks bad after a year. I would only like to have to repaint every couple of years, so I think the darker color will be better. If it doesn't stop raining we may just float away. lol.

I am going to try and blog everyday again. (Debby, hope this will make you happy!! lol) We were having computer issues, really they were router issues, but I have picked up a new one and I can now use my computer. I have lots of pictures to post on both the puppy pages and the sheep pages. I am going to start a couple pages just for the farm information, so check back and see how that is going.

Our neighbor down the streets dog killed all of Taylors chickens, so we are starting over on that. He has made a dog proof chicken pen, and I found some very cute plans for movable ones that we can have around the pasture. We will eventually have our own farm raised eggs, and I want to have them be pasture raised chickens.

WEll I am going to sign off here. Miss everyone and hope you all are having a great summer.

Heather