Australian Shepherd Puppy Plays in Water Bowl

Just a quick update on Molly and Lucy, our new mini Australian Shepherd puppies....

Molly discovers the joy of water!  Check out this short video of her digging in the water bowl.

We think Molly is going to be a water girl... what do you think?!

Meet Molly & Lucy ~ Mini Australian Shepherds

Molly (left), and Lucy (right)

Welcome Molly and Lucy, mini australian shepherds, to our Kansas homestead!

These two are sisters, born March 2nd, and are red merles.  Molly is the bigger of the two, and I've already nicknamed her Molly the Monster, because she definitely has the upper hand over her sister, Lucy!  Being that they are mini aussies, they will only weigh in the 20 to 30 lb range.

Molly strikes a typical Aussie pose

We have big plans for these girls in the future... perhaps some agility training and competition, or frisbee training.  We'll see which they prefer.  :-)

For now, basic puppy training will get them headed in the right direction.  We have fresh, new blank palettes to work with, and we want these girls to be polite and well-mannered from the get-go. 

Lucy chews on the tug-rope

There's a whole photo album posted on Facebook, so friend me if you want more puppy love.  I'll try to be a better blogger and post frequent updates here for everyone.

The next few months will be lots and lots of fun with these two very smart and intelligent girls!

Sally, Our Buff Orpington Hen, Has Chicks

A week ago Sunday, this is what we found in Sally's nesting box... two baby chicks!

Sally had been sitting on a clutch of eggs since late February.  Needless to say, by the time April 7th rolled around, we were ready to get rid of her eggs.  Chicks only take 21 days to hatch.

And then, amazingly, two eggs hatched out these little barred rock chicks!

Looking back, I think what happened was this....  several times, when Sally hopped out of her box to get a bite to eat and a quick drink, one of the barred rock hens would get into her box.  So Sally would just hop into a different box and sit.  Hours later I would find her in the wrong box, with the clutch of eggs cold.

So even though many of the eggs didn't hatch, I believe our barred rock girls laid a few late eggs that finally got a consistent "sit" from Sally and hatched out these little sweeties!

Sally is happy.  She has always wanted to be a mom.  :-)

Now only time will tell if we have hens, or roosters!!  Hopefully, these two little cutie pies are hens.

Don't you just love it when little chickies poke their heads out from mom's feathers?!
SO CUTE!

First Snow

I know, hard to believe, huh?  February and we're just getting our first snow??

But it really is our first snow!  The precipitation will be good, we need it SO bad.

In honor of this special day, here are a few unretouched, straight out of the camera shots...

As the huge flakes of snow began to fall, it was a very unusual snowfall in that it was falling straight down.  There was no wind whatsoever.  That, my friends, is very unusual here on the Kansas prairie!  The rain and the snow are usually hitting the ground sideways!

It's been falling straight down all afternoon.  No wind.  So odd to stand outside and hear the silence.

Yes, there's a bit of blue cast to this last photo, and I'm not fixing it.  At least not right now - maybe later.  You can check my photo blog later to see if I play with it.  You can see how much more snow we're getting now.

By tomorrow I imagine it will all be gone since it's forecast to be in the 50s. It's a very, very heavy and wet snow.

The chickens and guineas are nowhere to be seen outside.  I guess they've decided that the coop is the place to be today.

Time for me to bundle up and head outside to give the horses some dinner!

Our Canada Geese Return!

What a surprise, when I heard honking overhead this morning - especially since I had been wondering lately if we might be lucky enough to play host to our pair of Canada geese again this year.

Hubby was outside feeding the horses and when he returned to the house, he confirmed that two Canada geese had landed near our pond.

Could it be?  Were these OUR Canada geese, the very same pair that had built a nest and spent significant time on our property last year?

We had been wondering lately .... would they return?

About an hour had passed and again, I heard honking overhead, so I went to the front of the house, and lo and behold, they had moved from the pond to our front pasture, west of our chicken coop.

This was almost a sure sign that this pair was indeed "our" geese, since we had often fed them with chicken scratch at this very location west of our house last year.

We currently don't have any scratch feed, but we do have bird seed, so hubby took a scoop and scattered it for the two geese.  They were hesitant to come too close to him, but once he left, they commenced pecking at the bird seed.

The guineas have been having absolute fits all day.  They are not happy to see these big birds re-invade their turf.  Several of the guineas have been fluffing up their wings and charging the geese.  Last year, the geese put our guineas in their place right quick, pulling out quite a few feathers in the process.  This year, the two geese (so far!) have been pretty complacent, just watching the guineas and their defensive antics.  It is almost as if the geese are yawning and saying "really? is that all you got?"

It will be fun and exciting to see what our pair of geese do this year -- how long will they stay?  will they build a nest by the pond again?  will the eggs outlast our resident coyote population this time?

Only time will tell.

They've been hanging out near the chicken coop in our south and west pastures today. It looks like they might stay awhile.