Thursday

10:24 PM, 11 February 2010
Temperature: 48 F, some wind, overcast, drizzling on and off

Morning chores went unremarkably. All three kits still continue to be alive; their eyes may be beginning to open. If we can keep them alive for the next four or five days, they'll probably be fine. 'Probably' being 'it's still out of our hands', of course.

Minnow and the others eat just about as much as we'll give them. They haven't seemed too thirsty, although there remain issues with them knocking over their water crocks or otherwise dropping waste into them, which is unfortunate. Still, even if we got them bottle-trained the reality now that they're in the grazing arks is that the water bottles would actually be more time-consuming to deal with rather than less, requiring more fiddling with by removing and unscrewing, refilling, rescrewing, re-attaching. The current method allows us to pour water into the crocks through the chicken wire without opening the arks, which is a big improvement.

Came home from errands this afternoon to find a ewe out of her pasture. One of the ewes in with the poultry; there was fencing down again, more of the white line, not orange. We suspect that when the fence is off, the ewes end up rubbing against it in an effort to get to the grass and evergreen branches on the other side there, resulting in some of the posts popping out as it just doesn't have as good holding power as the orange spikes. We'll be looking into this and in the meantime, try to remember to leave the fence on as much as feasible.

The barn cats are doing fairly well. Tootles continues to be standoffish while the others are their usual selves; he hissed at one of us the other day, resulting in him being chased down and grabbed and given firm laptime until he got over his mood. Tonight he was standoffish but without hissing and did eventually come over for attention of his own volition, which is an improvement. They do try to steal the flashlight, however, if it is left unattended; the above photographs are evidence for the prosecution.

Still no new lambs. The pregnant ewes are beginning to resemble overfilled water balloons. It doesn't seem to slow them down very much, however. We did go to the farm store and got plenty of hay, so we shouldn't be running short any time soon.