As you can see, little Ulla did a U-turn
and changed colours losing her roundness. Hello Ullrick!
This means that our poor hens and
sheep have three odd sounding boys beeping and yodeling to them in the
mornings. Monty takes this in his stride, as he is too much in love with our
guest hens to really care about the other boys in the band. Little Matti (not
so small anymore...) on the other hand is already having sparring sessions with
the new guy. This is still a rather sweet affair, both trying to stare the
other one down. As they have the eyes on the side of their faces, they end up
leaning their heads and it looks like they just have a bad hearing problem.
Both of them...
Then mini Ullrick fluffs up all his
tiny feathers and they start to dance. Matti has grown up and is now a very
handsome young cockerel. Mini Ullrick looks like a worn down bottle brush, so
the whole thing is still a game to Matti. He refuses to be challenged by
someone so young, which still brings his mother along for support, when out
fighting. What the spring holds for us is a totally different kettle of fish...
As the stable is full of snuggled up
animals my days seems to be constant cleaning and feeding marathons. The snow
is melting away again but the grazing is over for this year. The slimy grass
that will appear after the thaw is no good to anyone. I do wish that the hens
would pop out occasionally when the weather gets warmer, as they need the
exercise to stay nice and polite with each other. Mindy, Mandy, Molly and My have
been out to play in the snow for a while almost every day during the cold
spell. They run and battle with each other. A lot of head butting and jumping,
but they soon start calling to be let in again. Half an hour’s worth of fresh
air seems to be enough when it's cold outside. It has done them a world of good
though, to stretch their legs and run off some of their roundness.
I'm writing this blog early in the
morning, snug and warm in a big armchair in the living room. The days of
sitting up in bed writing are over as dear husband needs to get some sleep in
the mornings. This is not possible since Ebba the dog moved in. If she finds
that dear husband is in bed after she's been out to check the world Ebba runs
full pelt, leaps and lands on him, loudly wishing him a "Very Good
morning". She then starts to chew on him for a bit, just to make sure he
notices her and then a second leap from a short distance. Having 20 kilos worth
of happy dog landing on you entitles you to be slightly cross. Dear husband
just groans and I remove us from the room, briskly. Ebba is still waiting for
the morning walk with her hero but now there is a closed door between them. The
wait is not long, as dear husband only has time for an hours nap before the day
begins.
Ebba is a fixer. She has removed all
the support sticks from the indoor flowerpots. By standing on furniture she
managed to pull them out without tipping over a single flowerpot. She then
played her favourite game of "shredder" and turned the sticks into
mulch. This game is apparently best played in our bed, very quietly so I did
not hear a thing. Dear husband got home from work and wondered if I had started
chopping wood indoors. Ebba was very proud.
Ebba likes the taste of furniture,
mats, plants, pillows and us amongst other things. She also finds the drain in
our shower to be fascinating and spends time guarding it. Why, we don't know,
but it looks very sweet when a happy dog hurries past, on her way to check the
drain situation. (It has been cleaned, so it should not be smelly....).
Ebba does not like walking on a lead
with me. She behaves almost nicely with dear husband but takes walking with me
as a joke. So until we get our act together dear husband is the main dog walker
in our family and I spend a lot of time running around in a sheep paddock.
(There are some funny, ironic jokes in that but we won't go into them right
now....). I am learning to throw a Frisbee and that is a new skill, I guess.
Teaching a dog some common sense, not so much my thing, it seems...
Monty, Ullrick and Matti will be a
problem, early next spring. Where to place two sweet little cockerels and how
to be able to do it.... We do have a lot of hens in the stable at the moment so
maybe, just maybe the three boys could cohabit and behave. That's what I hoped
about Monty and little Eric this spring and that did not happened. We'll
see.... We just have to enjoy the winter and take what comes later. Ebba said
she could help us out with the excess of cockerels but we politely declined the
offer.
Sheep spend 15 percent of their time
sleeping. Ebba, not so much...
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