A Father's Day Kinda Post!

Happy Father's Day, Dad!!! 

We love you!

 

 

Dad, Ashlee, and Linsey

 

 Dad and Alex

'

 

Dad and Me

 

Dad and Hank

 

Dad and John

Chickens Galore.

So if you have been keeping up with my blog and read my past two posts, you know I have 42 baby chickens.

My mom and I have wanted chickens for a while and both of my sisters have chickens, so it was only fitting that we have chickens too! 

Plus, we live on a farm. We have cows, horses, dogs, cats... we need chickens!

Now we got em! 

We got some feather footed Cochins! All different colors. Ironically got two of each.  These are what they call straight run... we don't know what they are and I hope we don't have any roosters! (yeah right.) Ashlee ordered ten straight run cochins last year and got NINE roosters. What a joke.

Buff Orpingtons

Silver Laced Wyandottes 

Barred Rocks

Americaunas

Production Reds

and Speckled Sussex

The above pictures are no longer accurate on their size. They are getting HUGE! They have all their wing feathers pretty much and they're all flying around the watermelon box.

 

They are quite fluffy and they are learning how to roost!

 

Barred Rocks learned how to roost first. They got the biggest first for some reason... followed by the production reds, buffs and americaunas. The little cochins are still as fluffy as they can be, so they can't fly well yet! I saw a speckled sussex on the stick today, so the cochins will bring up the tail end!

 

I can't believe how tiny they were when we first got them. They are growing fast!!

I have been slowly desensitizing the dogs to them day by day. Lola was first and she deserved a big wap on top of the head after going after the first one I put on the ground to show her. She went over to the car on the other side of the garage and laid down. I took a different chick over there and she just turned her head away saying 'how dare you put that in front of me'. It was so funny!

Latch was next, he also deserved a wap on top of the head. After that he never has messed with them again. He even let one barred rock chick jump all over his front legs and paws, just staring at it the whole time. Such a sweet heart.

Cutie pie... she's a different story. She LOVES babies. So, I haven't had to worry about her YET. I know for a fact she looooves to chase chickens... Poor chickens in the middle of our horse ride were tortured a couple of times, but never killed. She is pretty much deaf all around and can't hear very well when you tell her 'No'... we'll see how that goes. 

I showed Tug his first chicken today and he must have learned from Lola and Latch's hits they got not to mess with the chickens! he's pretty smart! He just looked at it and turned around like it wasn't very exciting. 

I even try to entice them a little by picking the chick up and letting them flap their wings back to the ground... the dogs don't bat an eye! So hopefully we will be set on the dogs and chickens relationship! No dead future chickens I hope! If they start chasing the chickens... I'm going to get one of those nifty shock collars and zap their little butts.

That's all that is going on right now! Just trying to get these baby chickens out of the garage! Our coop will be here by next weekend!! It was built by David's Chicken Coops. I'm really excited about it! It is going to be verrry pretty! We will have to build the 'run' off the side and run water to the pen, then we will be all set to put the chicks in!

Once I can let them out when they are bigger and I have my twenty of the forty, I will take pictures and post names! :)

Photos

A few photos to sum up the past month

Picture I took tonight on the way home...

My precious little baby that had to be culled. :(

 

New Necklace

Early morning leaving for work

 

Lola belle

 

My love.

Lots of this!

 

little baby!!

Our house. Typical site.

 Opie!

 

Sister

 

Baby Faegan!

 

 and lastly... my favorite meal!

The Last 30 Days

I have been BUSY! 

To sum the past 30 day so of my life up... amazing! 

There has been a lot of anticipation on my side of things.

Josh and I were waiting for a trip to get here. We made a six day trip down to Boca Grande, FL to visit my grandfather and boy did we have fun! I love going on trips with him. Everything is always perfect.

We got to go TARPON FISHING! :)

I hooked a tarpon at 8:26 and fought him until 10:18. I handed the reel over to Josh only to get it back 20 minutes later to reel him in the rest of the way. Over 2 Hours of fighting that fish.

The fish was giant... 150lb

Come to find out... we had such a hard fight because he was Foul hooked. Oh well it was fun anyways!

Pictures don't do him justice....

Wish I could have gotten my hand in the picture.. he could have eaten it. 

I also was anticipating the arrival of 40 precious little beings.... 42 to be exact.

Aren't they precious!!  I love them. Half are mine/mom's and half are my sister's.

I was also anticipating some check offs for nursing school. Check offs that kept me in the program. I passed so no worries there!

I have been able to do a good bit of riding as well. Sweet horses are doing just fine!

Now I am anticipating a beach trip with Jaclyn and a 7 day cruise with my family and Joshua! It's gonna be a good, good summer!!

Possibly more time for blogging?! Possibly!

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to a terrific mother!

There is NO way to describe how much she has done for me and all my sisters and brothers.

 She raise one heck of a family with the help from my daddy! Somebody had to do all the spanking... and it definitely wasn't her! :)

She is so loving and giving. We had some of the best Christmases around our house all because of her! She would hide all our 'good' Christmas presents inside the others and we would find them. She bought us our clothes, cooked our food, and kept us girls from dating looney boys. 

 She juggled five kids (twin boys at that), managed a business, cooks wedding cakes, caters weddings and events, and still has time to be the best mom around! Everyone notices it and asked us how she manages! 

How?

She's supermom! 

The best mom ever and I'm glad she's mine!

Thanks for everything you have done for me mom! You will always be appreciated and loved! 

Happy Birthday!!!!

 

He's growing up too fast.

Thirteen today.

Stop growing up, Flint!

Horse Problems

I need a little advice from the fellow horse people in blog world. This I rarely ask, because there are so many different opinions and people chomping other peoples heads off, but I am willing to listen!

I have this horse.. (obviously!) and she is terrible. Haha!

Ok not really terrible... she just needs some major work.

She's just like her mother was. Spunky and wild.

Anyways, the problem...  Sometimes she is hard to catch which is very frustrating. It is frustrating for all horse owners at times. I have patience and I just continue to walk after her where ever she heads until she finally gives in. I don't beat her or punish her once I catch her, I simply halter her, pat her, and walk towards the house. That can be fixed by just spending time with her- catching her, releasing her, catching her, brushing her releasing her. BUT then thing is.... when you do get them to where you can catch them and you start riding them again... that is where the problem comes in! They think, oh well if she is going to start riding me again I'm going to not let her catch me again! So... how do you fix this?!?!

This horse also has trust issues. I worked her in the round pen the last two days and she did great until the part where she is supposed to follow me around where ever I go. Some people call it hooking on. I let her go in the round pen and she turns away from me. I drive her away.. change directions.. and make her go the speed I want her to go. Then as she starts lowering her head/chewing/licked/relaxing/turning her ear in towards me I turn away and release the pressure. She almost (not almost...)... she never walks towards me, but she will turn towards me. I will walk towards her and she will let me pet her but it's like she is scared of me- but my approach/stature is a relaxed as I can be. She is really tense and holds her breath, but as she relaxes I will turn away from her. She usually takes off running or walking again by herself. After a while she would let me walk up to her but she would never follow me. It was just frustrating me because I've never had a horse not follow me and I honestly don't know what to do about it.

So, what would you do? Would you continue catching her and loving on her, would you work her more in the round pen? Would you sack her out or something similar to get the scary mode out of her?

I'm at a loss. Sort of!

I'm going to go out and catch her in a little bit and just rub all over her and be sweet to her and let her go.

It also doesn't help that I have 5 other horses running around with her egging her on!