Gotta share some seasonal joy

This may be the best 12 Days ever...



Happy Ho Ho to one and all!

I don't remember buying any gargoyles...

On my way out to do chores tonight, I glanced over at the chicken coop, then ran back inside for the camera.
Because this:

 The chicken coop roof doesn't have lumps.  Or gargoyles.  Though apparently, it does have turkeys.

Getting a little closer:

"Hey!  You birds get down from there!  Go back inside!"

You can see how well they mind...

I remember saying recently that I liked raising turkeys.  Oh, yeah - right here.  What was I thinking?

And me without my camera...

Sorry, y'all.  Because it would have made a great picture.

I was on evening chores tonight, since Madman did them this morning.  Everything went smoothly, especially considering it was snowing hard, with high winds.  (It was raining when I left for work this morning, then the temperature plummeted and it was snowing when I was coming home.  Because it's Vermont, and that's how we do things up here.)
Smoothly, that is, until I got to the chickens.  I filled their feeder, then was excited when I found two eggs in the nest boxes.  (We've only been getting one egg lately, so two was just great!)  I held them in my left hand while I checked the waterer.
Madman had given them a full one this morning, but hadn't pulled the other one, so both waterers were in the coop.  Since we'd need one for the morning, and there was no sense leaving both of them to freeze overnight, I decided to grab the one that was sitting on the roost and head for the house.
Unfortunately, there was a sleeping turkey perched on top of it.  Now, in hindsight, I probably should have grabbed hold of the turkey with both hands and set her on the roost, then picked up the waterer.  But I had one hand full of eggs, so I just reached up and tried to nudge the turkey off with my right forearm, figuring she would just step back onto the roost.
Wrong.
I've mentioned that turkeys are pretty mellow.  Just 'everything's hunky-dory' sort of critters.  But apparently that's not the case when you wake them up out of a sound sleep, while wearing a headlamp that's shining brightly in their eyes, and start pushing them off their perch.  She went just the other side of bonkers and jumped up onto my forearm, while flapping wildly.  It was sort of like having a falcon on your arm, if the falcon weighed 15 pounds with a 4-foot wingspan and was having hysterics.  She kept whacking me on the head and shoulder with her wings and wouldn't Just. Let. Go.  I was trying to encourage her to step off onto the roost, but she wasn't having any of that.  It was somewhere along this point that I put my thumb through one of the eggs.
So now I've got an hysterical flapping turkey on one hand, and a dripping mess of busted egg in the other.

And me without my camera...

24 hours of rain on top of 3 inches of snow is not a pretty sight

Slippery is the word of the day...

On the bright side, the turkeys have speeded up chore-doing by moving themselves in with the chickens.  We've given up trying to keep them in their own pen, and accepted the one-less-set-of-waterers-and-feeders-to-fill-in-the-wintertime as a plus.
We were a little worried how the birds would take to each other, given the size and species differences.  The turkeys (bless their gentle little hearts) are very happy.  But then, turkeys seem to be generally happy with whatever is going on.  They stand amongst the chickens saying "You are like us!"  (I picture their voices as sounding like the chirpy tones of the average four-year-old.  I'm a great anthropomorphizer...)  The chickens, meanwhile, don't seem to be unhappy, but they tend to stare up at the turkeys while thinking "You are not like us..."
So far, so good.  It's funny seeing them all on the roost at night, little chickens cuddled up to big turkeys, like kids asking for one more bedtime story.

Yep. This one's gonna stick.

Crap.

The sheep, shown here happily munching on hay, have a light dusting of snow on their backs.  Cuz, why would they go inside a shelter when there's a perfectly good snowstorm to stand out in?
.

 The ones who seemed ticked off by all the white stuff are the turkeys.  They're too young to have experienced it before, and they spent most of the day stalking around making loud "Pwweot!  Pwweot!"  noises.  Apparently this is Turkey for "WTF?"

They spent the latter part of the afternoon perched on their gate.  I think they were tired of walking in the white stuff, and why would they go inside their shelter when there's a perfectly good snowstorm to stand out in?

I think they've been taking sheep lessons.

No NoBloPoMo

For the first year since I started the blog, I'm not going to do NoBloPoMo.  I'm having trouble posting once a week - once a day is totally out of the question.  Though I will try to post a little more often.  The activity level of summer has tapered off, though we still have sheep, chickens, turkeys, and rabbits to tend. 
We butchered our original turkeys, selling one and putting the other two in the freezer, but someone gave us two pretty Bourbon Reds, which is a heritage breed..  They're not old enough to tell what sex they are yet (and after the loop one of our first turkeys threw us, we're not going to guess), but we're hoping for a male and a female so we can try raising some of our own.  With our luck, that won't happen, of course, but we can still hope.  The same person also gave us two young female rabbits.  Our sole surviving rabbit, Stiffler, is verrrrrry excited to have new girls in the neighborhood.  We put them in a cage next door to his, and he's been combing his hair and practicing his pickup lines ever since. 
Soon, Stiffler, soon...

Okay, quick show of hands - who wants to see some pictures of sheep?

(AKA the Lazy Blogger finally gets a post up...)


Leading off with the fellas, Merlin and Orion.  They're still by themselves in the back pen, waiting to be reunited with the girls.  (Another week or two, or when we can get ourselves organized to do it.)

I knew that Orion's horns had grown, but I didn't realize how much until I took this pic:

 and compared it to this one from last year when we first brought him home:

And here are the Little Guys, who are now about the same age as Orion was.  Which means we've gotta do some sheep separating soon (or hopefully, sell them) before they realize they're Almost Grownups and take some unfortunate action.

 

You all remember little Smokey.  (Formerly known as he's-not-named-Smokey.   Because he so totally is named Smokey.)

 And a side-view of his snazzy little horns:

 

And this little guy is now known as Sauron.  (Only because Beelzebub is too hard to say when you're chasing him through the garden...)  Actually, he's a little sweetheart, who loves to be petted.  Just don't stand between him and the food.  Just sayin'.

 

 

And here are Onyx's other two lambs.  The one on the left is the one Madman named Abigail (formerly known as the Spotty One), and the other one is Tiny.  She was the smallest of the three lambs, and in my efforts to not name her, I started referring to her as 'the tiny one', and somehow that became her name.  (Names are such a tricky thing.  Even when you don't name things, they end up with names anyway.  Hmmm.)

Check out the crimp in Tiny's fleece:

 Just makes you want to squish it, doesn't it?

And I have to share a sheep story with you.  When the meter-reader comes to our house, he has to walk between the sheep pen and the house to get to the electric meter.  When our sheep see anyone in the yard, they go nuts, since in their not-so-humble opinion, the only reason for humans to exist is to feed sheep.
The last time, I happened to be home when the reader arrived.  He must have been a new guy, since I'd never seen him before.   The sheep went on Full Alert the minute he hit the top of the driveway, and started sounding off as soon as he opened his vehicle door.
"Hey!  Human!  Human in the yard!  Hey!  You there!  Yeah, you!  Feed us!  We're hungry!  Really!  They never feed us here!  It's been days!  Or weeks!  Or maybe months!  We don't know because they won't let us have calendars!  But it's been really really really long!  Really long!  Food's in the can over there!  Hey!  Poor starving sheep here!  Hey!"  All six of them were blatting their heads off at the poor fella.  He strode dutifully down the path to the meter, glancing over at them a couple of times.  I don't think he spoke 'sheep', so the expression on his face could best be described as 'WTF?'  When he was almost back to his car, he stopped and stared at them for a minute.  The sheep were totally batshit by this point, because he had walked right past their food can without feeding the sheep! 
I'd been watching through the window the whole time, and at this point I was laughing so hard it was hard to stand up.  I don't know if he thought they were going to jump the fence and eat him, but he sure did have a sheepish (sorry sorry sorry - you know how I am) look on his face.

I imagine he's used to barking dogs in his profession.  But I don't think he was prepared for a bunch of raving sheep.

.